Since Living Alone
She only knew how long she’d been staring at her laptop based on the bars of light beaming through the dusty blinds and into the apartment. The mid-afternoon light kept crawling across the floor, the dripping faucet, and the naked hooks on the wall. A marker of time as she sat and sat, her memory swelling with ads, emails, hashtags. Virtual breadcrumbs and cookies showing her the way, giving her a path to fall back on if she ever needed to, giving her a digital ghost to occupy if she ever forgot what she was.
Her thoughts hovered to the single pot of water on the stove. Getting cold. A fly was resting on the pot handle, wringing its hands quietly. She had forgotten to make tea.
It turns out there’s a link between the size of a primate’s brain, and size of the communities it is able to form.
The line was still repeating in her head like a mantra, even though she read the article over a week ago. The voice was assertive and curdled, a combination of her mother and Siri. A voice from a stiff jaw and a chin that doesn’t move its teeth when it talks. The title of the article said something about how humans are deeply social creatures, and asked what happens when we’re alone for a long time?
Was she a deeply social creature? Had she been alone for a long time?
It turns out there’s a link between the size of a primate’s brain…the line playing as she clicked the “pay now” and bought an electric kettle on Amazon. Pippa had taken the kettle when she moved out two months ago, even though Pippa never used the kettle.
It turns out there’s a link between the size of a primate’s brain…tapping the snooze button on her phone alarm in the morning, catching a glimpse of the recycled notifications on her home screen.
It turns out there’s a link between the size of a primate’s brain…taking a shower, watching stray shards of bath bomb glitter get caught between her toes, watching the water droplets trickle and dance down the curtain and sides of the tub, pulled by gravity, pulled by certainty. Watching them pause and then move faster. And then staring and waiting, waiting for gravity to pull the water from her body and drain it through the soles of her feet. She would cry a little, the water collecting behind her eyes like rain in a gutter, not totally knowing it was crying because she was standing in the shower, but also knowing it was crying because she was standing in the shower. She could search for the answers later.
how do I know if im crying in the shower?
why do people cry in teh shower?
what triggers you to cry?
Opening and shutting her eyes trying to restart.
Then, the dripping faucet, the hooks on the wall, the mid-afternoon light on the floor, and a blank laptop screen reminding her of the loss of power and time in her limbs. A feeling of not being able to move or speak.
Since living alone, this freezing problem had been happening more often. Maybe she needed a deeply social creature around to keep her power on, to keep her heart pumping?
Her attention skipped to the fly buzzing and bashing itself against one of the small square windows. The fly had moved from the pot handle to the window so effortlessly. How easy it would be to set the fly free, to open the window. But how easy it would be to not let the fly free, to not open the window.
Did the fly count as a deeply social creature? She and the fly had been together for eight days. Eight days. Did that count as a long time?
When she shut her eyes and listened to its buzz, she could almost convince herself that the fly was whispering to her. The whispers mixed with the dripping faucet, the periodical footsteps in the stairwell, and the purr of traffic outside. If she kept her eyes shut, she could almost convince herself that the sounds were just echoes inside her bony body rubbing against the porcelain of a bathtub. She could forget how many days she had been alone.
*
You’re not my mother. Where I go is not your business, Pippa said one evening sitting on the couch wrapped in a towel after a bath. It’s better if I move in with Alisha. I gave notice to Dennis, so he can put up an ad for you.
The towel was leaving a wet spot on their brown fabric couch, the back pillows wrinkled and collapsing like a pronated ankle. Pippa liked to stride around the apartment in her wet skin and sopping hair, leaving small puddles on the floor.
Pippa was just a roommate, but they had also shared bathwater and water glasses. At the time, she saw it as an effort to save money. They would take turns skipping a flush after going pee. They would take turns bringing home bath bombs from Lush. Intergalactic. Marshmallow World. Twilight. They would take turns spooning each other in bed, making out sometimes, and then not talking about it in the morning. The ring of glitter and highlighter pink in the tub a marker of the night before. She could search for the answers later.
when do you know your in an open relationship?
what makes someone codependent?
how do i stop ducking my roommate?
Pippa would come home late, smelling of a party or the grill where she worked, dropping her keys on the laminate floor as she wavered down the hallway and opened the door to her bedroom. Pippa would walk into the room like it belonged to her, and she would be waiting there for Pippa in the dark, frozen to one side of the mattress, longing to be thawed by warm limbs, wanting to lick the luster off Pippa’s skin, starving to know where Pippa had been without her. Pippa would crawl in next to her and press her racing heart into her back until she could breathe it in, until she was there. Their bodies tangled into one deeply social creature. The exchange of breath between friends, the orange light and the dark making everyone’s face look glossy and their teeth like luminescent fish, laughing at the right moments, all the heads bobbing to the music. All the primate brains. All the big primate brains.
It’s a tight knit group. You don’t like those kinds of things.
She thought of her primate brain, all squiggly and grey. She imagined finding the seam of her forehead with her fingers and pulling off the crown of her head, and then pulling out her brain and examining it in her hands. She imagined screaming at her tiny primate brain and throwing it at the wall with the bare hooks and watching it splatter. Her neurons sticking to the inside of the apartment like used confetti.
She told herself she wouldn’t miss the soggy pillows or feeling Pippa’s clipped toenails in the bath mat while brushing her teeth.
*
She closed the lid of her laptop. Her toes were sticky in her slippers, her body numb against the plastic kitchen chair. She watched the little white light on the laptop’s exterior fade from on to off, animating a breath.
She imagined the motherboard of the computer continuing to calculate in the dark. Plastic, metal, and wire dreaming over her data and digital movements, and storing them away somewhere in the big brain, just like when you encounter a social creature and spend time with them, and that moment is documented, saved somewhere else. And then they stop spending time with you, when really, you should’ve stopped spending time with them, and now all their life is happening without you, but still continuing on in the brains of the other social creatures they encounter, continuing on in the bubbles of the internet. And then you search through the bubbles when you’re bored, and you drown a bit. You scrub your brain for their old handle because you want to know if their primate brain is still growing. You want to know if they still exist, out there.
@pip_theprimate
@pipptheprimate
@pippa_theprimemate
No results found.
After Pippa moved out, she spent a night collecting the stray nails, placing them in her palm, and flushing them down the toilet. She couldn’t scrub away the traces of glitter caught in the grout of the bathroom tile.
We’re not meant to live together. I’m not trying to abandon you.
Tonight, she and the fly would watch a documentary on human evolution, and she would forget about the brain splatter. She would forget about her freezing limbs and the glitter stuck between the tiles. Slowly, the documentary would lull the fly and her to sleep, and then they would dream, and then they would wake up and forget their dreams. They would wake up to a balloon of panic pushing against their lungs. They would wake up together.
Note: The line “It turns out there’s a link between the size of a primate’s brain…” is from Zaria Gorvett’s article “How solitude and isolation can affect your social skills.”
Rachel Shabalin is the Arts Editor for filling Station. Her work has appeared in untethered, subTerrain, Dream Pop Journal, Antilang, Lida Literary, and Loft 112’s Tap Press Read Anthology. Her non-fiction was shortlisted for Room's CNF Contest in 2020. She is currently working on a short story collection in Mohkinstsis (Calgary, Alberta).
Image by Marc Sendra Martorell @marcsm
