I Am Them
The day starts at 11:36 AM. That’s when the bus pulls around to the stop across my street. I always wake up at 11:20 AM so I have an extra sixteen minutes to study my people. It’s Wednesday; I’ve been three people so far this week. Every morning, just like the one before, I take my binoculars that live on my bedside table and I study each person before they board the metro. When I find a subject that I feel has potential, I start to create them. I create their life and their family, their routines and their secrets, their homes, their hopes, their pets and of course their inner most thoughts. I then challenge myself to conform to the living person I have created in my mind, while also remembering who I saw at the bus stop on the other side of the street. I become them, so that I can forget me.

When I begin to transform my inner self to the person that I have chosen outside, I feel comfort. It’s the same kind of comfort that I could imagine it being like to have your mother hold you. This is the closest I’ve ever come to knowing the luxury of that kind of love. The random selection of people that I choose to become each day brings me a sense of purpose and I realize that as I become them I can strip away any sense of me; any sense of what my life actually is, and just be them.

Yesterday was one of the best. I chose to become Charlotte. I don’t know what her real name is, but as she stood across the street at 11:23 AM holding her blue pen, I knew her name was Charlotte and I wanted to be her. Charlotte liked thinking angels were real but she didn’t believe they could fly. She spent her life wishing she could hear the sound of happiness. She only hugged her mother because her husband said it was the right thing to do. She longed to sleep in her own bed, the one with green and orange pillows. She worked at a factory that processed fish food. She went to the gym to have quality time with herself and she ate Cheetos every Monday. She smiled awkwardly in pictures because she thought it made her look unique.

Charlotte was one of my favorites, and I’ve often thought about repeating her, but that’s against the rules. When I choose girls, which I often do, its more enthralling, but harder to pull off. There’s something about getting into a woman’s brain that inspires me to continue this obsession. It’s not an easy task to hide a female character from anyone though. A wig and makeup don’t exactly look normal, on a guy, to most people. It’s okay, I don’t see anyone much anyways, but if my mother decides to come home I have to ruin the character and take off the safety shield. I have to be the raw me for the ten minutes she comes into my room. That’s the worst thing ever. I hate being the real me, especially when the real me has to deal with mother using her words like daggers.

I can hear my mother’s troll feet clonking in the kitchen so I decide to choose a man subject today, just in case mother decides to bother me with her angry fists against my door, or her spitting words all over my floor. I can hide a man character much easier from her. When mother decides it’s time for her to charge at me, I use my characters as a force field. She can’t get to me when I’m them, she’s not even real when I’m them. It is surprisingly foggy today. I have to use my sleeve to wipe away the sweat on the window. I reach over and grab my precious binoculars. I feel like a soldier sent for the mission of safety.

There have been days where I sit in my room and cry for hours because there was no one at the bus stop that morning. This has only happened twice and it’s a horrible, disgusting feeling of loneliness. I don’t like thinking about those days, or the days before I realized I could be other people. I don’t remember what I used to do with my days before I did this. They go black in my mind, like a huge black hole that can’t be filled with anything but the love of strangers.

As I look outside I see a new face, a man I have not yet encountered through the plastic eyes of my binoculars. He is wearing a yellow sweater and blue corduroys. He looks young, younger than me, about sixteen. I immediately know today will be an easy day. I won’t have to choose between anyone, the man across the street is who I will be today, and that’s final. After about eleven minutes of studying his every move and inflections, I set my binoculars down. A smile creeps across my face as I shut my eyes and imagine whom he could and would be to me.

Nicholas: He was known as the boy who never smoked. He would play with fire but he had never learned how to light a match. His parents worked at the deserted shopping mall. His name was Nicholas, but only he knew that. He would take stray dogs into high school parties and feed them potato chips. He only kissed girls he knew and his favorite color was lemon. He was Nicholas. He was happy.

I liked Nicholas; he would suit me perfectly for today. I wanted to become Nicholas as quickly as I could because mother’s drunken screams were traveling fast towards my hallway. I knew what was coming; a sea of insults, demands and utter chaos. I searched for a yellow sweater in my closet and became angry at the fact that I didn’t own one. Without this yellow sweater I would never pull of Nicholas correctly. Occasionally it happens that I don’t own a right color or pattern and when this happens it makes it hard for my brain to transform. I felt a familiar rush of heat go to my head and warned myself to calm down. My fists clenched and I knew that I would soon be unable to control my anger. To stop myself I squeezed my eyes shut and imagined Nicholas’s face and body in a different colored sweater. I owned blue. Nicholas might like blue. But what if he didn’t! Complications like this made my head spin in different directions.

Slow deep breaths came to me as an element of surprise. My body figured it was time to calm down, so I stared at my closet for a long while and realized Nicholas would wear green long before he would wear blue. I slipped on the green textured sweater and my body began to cool down. I felt half of Nicholas already and I loved it. Being him was great. Being anyone was great. I slipped on Nicholas type pants and started my daily routine.

First, and always first, I comb my hair, or wig, and brush my teeth. Nicholas used gel. I could tell because my mind told me that he smelled like “Sebastian Liquid Steel,” a hair gel only the nice places have. I know this because when I was younger my father used it. My father was classy and used to take me to get haircuts. I sometimes thought about becoming him, but I wouldn’t know how to become a dead person. I decided Nicholas was the kind of guy who kept to himself so I didn’t speak for the rest of the day. The silence was nice. Of course, it was silent. When I’m not me I can’t hear mother. It’s beautiful.

I sat on the floor and taught myself how to play chess; Nicholas loves chess I know he does. The sun started to pour out onto my bed and I realized that it was time for Nicholas to eat dinner. Mother was asleep in the living room when I stepped into the kitchen. Good, Nicholas lives alone so I’m glad mother isn’t awake to bother us. Nicholas is the kind of boy who eats meat with every meal so I swiftly grabbed salami slices from the refrigerator and a pack of donut holes. The meal of champions as Nicholas would slyly remark. It felt good to be Nicholas; he was calm, cool and collected and entirely lost. Hours continued to pass by and it was time for Nicholas to go away so that I could sleep in my own self. I slowly washed his hair out with my hands and hung up the green sweater. Its always emotional to say goodbye to the one piece of comfort that keeps me safe through the day, but I always look forward to the morning to see who else I’m going to encounter.

It was 11:35 AM Thursday morning. I shut my eyes tight to create the life for the girl I had just seen at the bus stop. As I do, I hear mothers footsteps creep into my hallway. “You worthless piece of crap, get me my Klonopin!” I hear her yell. My teeth clenched until it was painful to rub them together.
Jenavive: Every morning when she woke up she would drink a cup of purified water mixed with raspberry juice and sharpen the knives on her wall.
“You’re eighteen years old you s***bag get a f****** life or clean up this God damned house!” mother screeched. My eyes squeezed tighter and I felt the rush of blood flow through my head.
Jenavive: She took in stray cats so that she could use their skin as lampshades. She hated people that screamed and knew what she was capable of.
“You fat f*** get out of your room and be more like your father! Bring me a glass of vodka and don’t forget the ice cubes. DO YOU HEAR ME?!” I hear mother’s footsteps become closer. My breathing got deeper and I fought the urge to scream out.
Jenavive: She sat in the dark at night and stared at her brick wall. She hated people the way children hate monsters. In the evening she found it relaxing to flicker her dining room lights on and off twenty-eight times. She knew who was next. She wanted to feel pain the way the girl in her basement did. Yet, she didn’t know how to feel. She liked It that way.
I hear mother right at my door. Yes, I was going to be Jenavive today. Jenavive would know what to do with mother. Jenavive would be perfect.