Person of Interest

By: Karima Chellouf (FYI there’s coarse language and also bleak morbid humour here: I’m leading with this as a courtesy and if people don’t like these things they can go fucking read something else LOLLLLL. Please keep this up as part of the writing, I love breaking the fourth wall) === I stopped and stared at a mannequin in the window of a shop, locally renowned for decades of vintage-inspired frilly femininity and closing early. “I would fucking kill it in that dress,” I thought, looking at the ruched, elasticized upper bodice and free-flowing A-line maxi skirt. The checkered white fabric with pink and green floral print caught my eye. The wind shifted, and my reflection in the glass stared back at me: a wavy ocean of untameable long black hair, encroaching upon thick-rimmed black glasses, black (vegan) leather jacket, black skinny jeans, black high-top Converse Chucks, black eyeliner. “It would show off your hourglass figure, but we both know the dress would collect dust in your closet.” Would it, though? I could be walking in the park on a sunny day, laughing and holding hands with my cinnamon roll of a golden-haired boy. Until the sand timer of his visa ends or he decides he doesn’t like me anymore. “But is that really you? Whose dream is it?” Summertime fun is like a myth to me. I don’t know her. An urban legend. I heard a friend of a friend had a good summer, once. And then I never saw them again. Cooking and baking in restaurants for the past 15 years doesn’t mean picnics and love, it means lineups of guests, broken air conditioners, de-icing fridges and unscrewing and vacuuming their back fan panels, emergency repairs, and sweating profusely while cooking over open fires or sweating profusely while trying to keep dough from misbehaving. Also, strawberries. Raindrops pattered on my shoulders, pulling me back into the current moment: a momentary lapse from doomscrolling in the tail end of Hitler Winter, and hurriedly walking down the street on a gloomy, cloudy day. In the eyes of my reflection, I see a thousand unlived summers. All the joy I never had and may never see. Would climate change please hurry the fuck up and kill us all? I hate vague, looming threats. Be specific and timely or move along, I have side quests to go on and things to put off doing. I’m a chef and also Arabic and also queer: “We’re all going to die, LOL” is a regular fucking day in the life. I’d probably feel worse if I had one. Don’t worry, “normal” strangers who are suddenly concerned, I’m not going to *do* anything. It’s against every fiber in my being to leave a mess for someone else to clean up. We’re just like this. If the sun fell on us, though (she won’t, that’s not how any of this works) I wouldn’t have to think about insufferable details that clutter the edges of my days like moths drawn to a lightbulb but are too cowardly to actually touch it: Do I even need pronouns? They’re a colonial construct. I hate explaining things to cis people. It’s like their ears are broken but they keep asking questions. Does being bi even matter? I have the potential to like people unless they’re annoying or bigots. The end. Is non-binary the most accurate label for me? I’m not particularly attached to it and if something better comes along, I’m ready to jump ship. What the fuck is gender even? Why do I feel like I am grasping for something that doesn’t even belong to me? I feel like I identify with an exploding star and also a black hole: two opposing forces, one tearing itself apart and expanding into infinity the other collapsing in on itself and consuming and destroying everything in its wake, leaving a void. The sheer force and difference between these two extremes feels like sometimes I’ll be pulled apart. All the space shows of our youths had favourite characters trying to avoid getting caught, dragged into a black hole and disappearing into who knows where. Sometimes we don’t want to be perceived. The world can be a hideous place when everyone has a keyboard at their fingertips and many fewer have a filter or any semblance of courtesy or good sense. When people say “I don’t know how to treat you” I respond with “like a person?” I wonder how hard it is for people to recognize basic humanity in others without needing them to fit into rigid standards, and then I remember that there’s maybe 5+ genocides happening just right now. My last employer laid me off in a shady way, during a time in the industry where nobody was hiring, which massively interrupted my finances, and drained my emergency funds. I was lucky to find opportunity within a month, and have been working full-time again. And I have been so careful about my spending. But by the day my first paycheck from the new job arrives (which is the day after my exorbitant rent, health benefit, and full credit card payments are due: I refuse to pay interest, and pay the entire balance every month) the dress will probably be sold out. By the time anyone reads this, it will be gone, like a flower that has lost all its remaining petals. Very Beauty And the Beast. Which one am I? Am I both? The store only picks up a few of each item and has continuously rotating stock, to manufacture urgency and incur regular visits from shoppers, fulfilling the capitalist prophecy of stereotyping women as shopaholic trad-wives. (Some imaginary shitty white man in a top hat somewhere is having a great time passing GO. Did you know that the game of Monopoly was stolen? And from a woman? Of fucking course it was.) But I am no woman. Maybe. It has now been a week since I started writing this piece. And the golden-haired boy is no longer holding my hand. I’m so passionate about my causes, he said. A closed fist catches no blessings, I heard somewhere once. It takes a certain amount of courage to be with a person like me. Must have this much bravery to ride. The brief flicker of another joy in summer, extinguished from my eyes, and running down my cheeks. Gone before the season even starts, like small, closed blossoms being stepped on. The dress is still in the window. I have a bank balance again. Upon closer examination, the dress isn’t as pretty as I remembered, and I don’t feel compelled to buy it anymore. This week’s forecast is all imminent rainy days. I go home every day, reading the news. The world needs brick throwers and garden planters and picnics, and I have time.