Excerpt
Daddy Issues
1I’m awakened by the sound of a man yelling, “F***!”
It’s a versatile word, so let me be more specific. It was not the f*** of someone having loud sex. I wouldn’t have minded that. Not that I’m some auditory Peeping Tom, but there’s something hot about a guy with a loud, deep voice losing control. Alas, this was the f*** of a man reacting to sudden physical pain. I know this from context clues, like the litany of curses uttered immediately afterward. The f*** is muffled by the wall, but loud enough that I jerk in fright like I’ve just been shoved off a cliff in a nightmare.
If I were still drawing comics, I’d add some extra consonants to the f***. F********!
Did you know comics have sound effects? It just requires a little imagination. The reader operates the little Foley artist in their brain and they’ll feel the right amount of dread or anticipation for the next page.
Thwip: Spider-Man’s web shoots out from his wrist. Fnap: the Joker snaps a playing card down on a table in front of Batman. Snikt: Wolverine unsheathes his adamantium claws. F********: a guy in the apartment next door to my bedroom wakes me up. You hear it now, right?
Correction: this isn’t my bedroom.
And it’s not my bed. I sleep on a daybed my roommate ordered on clearance from Wayfair when she got tired of me crashing on her couch.
Technically, my roommate is my mother.
The daybed fits a twin mattress meant for a child. I don’t take up much space, and God knows I’m not inviting anyone else in here. A larger bed wouldn’t leave enough room for my mom to spread out her yoga mat or set up her walking pad in front of her standing desk. This room was meant to be her office when she bought this place a few years ago. It was either downsizing or not wanting to stay in the house she shared with my dad for the first half of my life.
My dad had an eye for strange and unusual things—especially strange and unusual things that could be resold at a considerable profit margin on eBay. But sometimes things didn’t sell and our house would overflow with dusty curiosities: vintage arcade games, 1960s conch shell lamps, striped barbershop poles. I played in a Hamburglar jail in our backyard instead of a treehouse.
Everything was temporary. Any item was for sale for the right price. I learned not to get too attached. Things that were there in the morning while I ate my Cinnamon Toast Crunch would disappear by the time I got home from volleyball practice. Including my dad.
I was ten when he started taking long trips to “buy inventory.” When my parents divorced a year later, my mom and I stayed in the house. She wanted to preserve a sense of normalcy and stability, even though it must’ve been hellish to live in a home with so many reminders of a broken marriage. After I left for college, Mom sold it and bought this condo. It was supposed to be a place of her own—two bedrooms, one bathroom. The perfect size for one person. A fresh start.
And I invaded it.
So I’m not going to deny my mom those two extra feet of floor space, even if she practices yoga at a studio down the block and uses the treadmill at the gym downstairs.
For the five years that I’ve stayed (not lived—this is not living) in this room (not “Sam’s room,” but “the office”), I’ve never heard a peep from the neighbor. The owner was in her eighties and she went into an assisted living facility after the holidays. It’s been silent for the last five months.
This morning it sounds like there’s a construction project on the other side of the wall.
Today is Sunday, not that it matters. In my world, weekdays and weekends blur together.
Every night I set an alarm for 6:14 A.M., with additional alarms set to go off at 6:49 A.M. and 7:23 A.M.
I have never gotten out of bed at any of those times.
The alarms serve the singular purpose of alerting me to the fact that other people in the world are waking up, showering, banging on their kids’ doors, shoving untoasted Pop-Tarts into their mouths while grabbing their keys.
I am not doing any of those things.
These are shame alarms. Code Black sloth notifications.
My intentions are good. Every night, as I’m setting all those alarms, I visualize myself rising with the sun, showering immediately, putting on clothes that don’t involve elastic waistbands or drawstrings, and tidying up the office. That’s the best version of me. Sam Pulaski 1.0 exists in an alternate timeline, where the world didn’t collapse in 2020. She’s getting her PhD, doing research in Europe, presenting at conferences, having dramatic love affairs with men named Luca or Henri.
But at least hitting snooze eighteen times forces Sam Pulaski 2.0 into a sort of one-third consciousness, which is kind of like being awake. My brain is active enough to start worrying about all the shit I probably won’t get done today. And worrying about stuff is basically halfway to doing it.
Then, at 9:16 A.M., I masturbate.
It’s an odd time, I know. Wouldn’t be my first choice, but freeloaders can’t be choosers. The apartment is empty for about forty minutes when my mom goes downstairs to the gym. (Her fiancé, Perry, still goes into the office every day and doesn’t believe in the snooze button.)
It’s part of my routine, like a balanced breakfast. I’ve always been told that healthy, consistent habits are the key to making positive life changes.
Two and a half minutes later, I’m done. What can I say? The romance between my bullet vibe and me died a long time ago.
I check my email on my phone, silently praying to a god I only vaguely believe in that the number within the little red bubble is one digit higher than when I passed out last night. Maybe there’s some amazing opportunity being dropped into my lap. A fellowship I applied for last winter has taken another look at my CV and realized they made a horrible mistake? A friend of a family friend has a full-time opening at their foundation and wants to set up a call to discuss the assistant curator position?
After I check email and feel shitty for three minutes, I open my social media apps and feel shitty for twelve minutes. Doomscroll, doomscroll, doomscroll until I hear the front door open and I feel guilty and ashamed because I’m in bed while my mom has already left the apartment, done cardio, and is now getting ready to show a house to someone with a 401k.
Ten years ago, Mom quit the corporate IT job she hated and decided to sell real estate. It’s good to know that, contrary to what society wants us to believe, you don’t peak in your twenties. Jennifer Schuster (formerly Jennifer Pulaski) is proof that sometimes you peak at fifty-two, which means I have twenty-six whole years to get my shit together.
But how can I pretend to accomplish things with hammering and drilling a foot away from my head? I protest with my own onomatopoeia. Thwack thwack thwack—my open palm pounding against drywall—before venturing out of my hovel in search of coffee.
Weird how I always believe a giant cup of coffee will imbue me with motivation and a sense of purpose. Once I drink this magical beverage, I will have energy. I will cross items off the to-do list. I will turn the page on a new, productive chapter of my life.
But over the last fiveish years, I’ve consumed more than sixteen hundred cups of coffee and I’m still in the prologue. I do not begin my life; I merely continue existing.
“Hi, honey.” My mom still greets me with a full hug and a smile every morning, exactly the way she did when I came home for winter break during college. It preserves the illusion that I’m just here for a visit. A very long visit. “Sounds like we have a new neighbor,” she says, speaking extra loudly over the noise.
I move my head in vague recognition. I need my magical coffee elixir before I can engage in small talk. Perry’s dog, a slow-moving beagle mix improbably named Houdini, follows me into the kitchen to sniff my socks. Perry adopted him after watching one of those distressing Sarah McLachlan animal commercials during lockdown.
Perry and Houdini moved in about a year ago, which made my mom’s perfect-for-one condo feel even smaller. Not that I’m complaining. I’m the one who shouldn’t be here.
“Say, I heard from my friend Barbara Silverton yesterday.” Anytime my mom begins a sentence with Say, I brace myself for unsolicited advice. “She’d be a good contact for you. Do you think you’d want to email her? She’s some sort of dean now. Dean of faculty? I bet she could put you in touch with someone in the art history department. It’s a great school—one of the SUNYs.”
There aren’t any State University of New York schools that I’ve identified as a great fit for my area of study, but I remind myself that my mother is trying to help.
“That doesn’t mean they have a graduate program in my field, Mom,” I reply. “There aren’t that many tenured professors who focus on outsider art. And I haven’t seen Barbara in ten years. I don’t know what she could do.”
