Content Warning: This piece contains extremely graphic depictions of sexual violence. Please take care when reading.

Call me Zipper. Everyone does. My Wisconsin driver’s license…which I don’t really need anymore, since I totaled my Prius, but still carry just in case I’m ever carded, even though that doesn’t really happen anymore, which pisses me the fuck off, since I could name like ten of my girlfriends right off who’re older than me and still get carded…says ZIPINSKI TIFFANY A, but I haven’t looked like a Tiffany since I was 3. And the A’s for Amber, which doesn’t fit any better. So fuck what my mom wanted to call me—in fact, fuck everything about that bitch, she left me and my dad when I was 8 and she took the DVD player. I’m Zipper, and I am a lot—both physically, and personalitically. (Is that a word?) Six foot one and 295 (give or take) pounds of attitude, opinions, and just overall, overwhelming slambangin’ness. (Is that—never mind. If I say it, it’s a word.) I haven’t met a guy yet who could handle me—which is totally fine, since I’ve got a congenitally deficient tolerance for their whiny-ass insecurities and cockswinging bullshit.

…Which does not, mind you, mean I lack and all interest in the species. Which is why I’m like, “What? Why?” when Sierra says we’re not inviting Zach.

“Looking at me like I’m some homeless bitch pissing on your doorstep is not an answer, Si-err-a. Is Zach, like, canceled or something? When you say we’re not inviting him, d’you mean just to this? Or, like, to anything, ever?”

It finally seems to dawn on her that even I can’t be this callous. “Wait. Did you even hear what he did to Brooke?”

“Sorry, I’ve been writing. I haven’t been online.”

The truth is, I’ve spent the better part of the last 72 hours barking down the sewer and crawling around on my floor in epic pursuit of some malicious small goblin who hid all my warm fuzzy socks and hit me over the head with an Acme mallet ten times xir own size. Courtesy of the bottle of absinthe I snagged on a whim—thinking, La Belle Époque! La fée verte! Ooh la la!—and managed to dilute with enough water and sugar to keep from barfing right then. (Half an hour after I dreamswayingly set it among my collection of prettiest empties? That’s another story.) But I like to think everyone’s entitled to their truth.

Sierra doesn’t say a word, just hands me her phone.

“Whoa.” I scroll through the first mile of outraged and supportive comments. “I knew there was something janky about him!”

“Well, if you did, you could’ve fucking said something. Because no one else did. He seemed like one of the good ones.”

I want to ask her how many times she thinks she can say one of the good ones ironically before she becomes an unironic bigot. But I bite my tongue. Sierra’s actually the person who got me in with the YouTubers—she’s got this makeup and skincare channel that peaked at just over a million subscribers when she was 17, and is only down to 840-some thousand now she’s about to graduate from UW, where I supplied her and her roommates with booze until she turned 21 this past fall. And I’m really hoping Cedric’s there at Jakeoff’s thing tonight. In fact, it probably wouldn’t be wise to pursue anything with Zach while things’re still up in the air with him—even though that heavy weight of dead ick in my stomach tries to tell me it’s happened again, like it fucking always does.

While Sierra scoops the whipped cream out of the bottom of her frappuccino with a disintegrating paper straw, I text Cedric again, even though I texted him right before I came in, with a gif of an adorable chubby cat making a hilarious face as it attempts to eat watermelon, and he hasn’t replied to that, either. Btw u going to jakes tonight?

But I delete it without sending. If it is happening again, it might be smarter not to warn him. Cedric’s just a wisp of a thing, who always uses this cartoon avatar in his videos, even though he’s adorbs; the top of his floofwavy red head doesn’t even come up to my chin. Once we got going, he must’ve looked like a fucking jockey on a thoroughbred. So I’m thinking if I can manage to get him alone off in a corner somewhere—against a wall, anything—I might be able to finally get some fucking answers.

“So you’re gonna be there by 8?” says Sierra, licking the last of her cream from her unsmudged, pearlescent upper lip. “Not 10, not 11, not 2 in the morning?”

I pretend to be shocked and insulted. “Of course!”

“And you’ll bring a bottle of something good? And you won’t drink two-thirds of it on your way?”

“(A), Yuppers, (B), do my best.” And I give her the finger, playfully, as I exit the coffee shop.

*

My favorite black vegan leather leggings cut into my stomach like a steel band. I tug my black thermal top and the magenta Rick and Morty tee I’ve got on over that down below the roll of awesomeness that burgeons over the top of them. Despite the evidence of my eyes, my brain knows for a fact I haven’t gained any weight since I bought them at Torrid. I was 295 the last time I weighed myself at Walmart (well, 298, but I like to round to the nearest 5, I’m OCD like that), and 295 I shall remain until I do so again, which isn’t gonna be anytime soon.

Just like I still think of my bank account as containing $28,083.17, even though I last checked that two—three? months ago. It’s what’s left of the settlement I got when my dad died, in a tanker-truck explosion on I-94. It happened at like 4 a.m. when no one else was on the road, the truck’s dashcam was destroyed, and the cops couldn’t say for sure who’d hit who. Both bodies were so burnt-up, there was no proving the PBR in my dad’s (who was into it wayyyy before it was cool) probably fueled the fire at least as much as whatever toxic shit was in the tanker.

But the truck driver was some old hag who’d been written up before for overusing oxies, so the chemical company offered me a six-figure shut-up-and-don’t-sue check. Which I jumped on, figuring I deserved it more than their climate-change-causing asses. It was enough to not only buy a brand-new, super-cute bright yellow Prius (RIP, Sunflower!), but to quit my shitty job at Chipotle and concentrate on my writing career for 5 years—6, even 7 if I was frugal. By the end of which I should be making, if not big bucks, at least a steady living at it.

It seemed like the best possible tribute to my dad, who was truly awesome—as funny and jokey and affectionate and forgiving as any kid could ask for. At least on Monday through Thursday evenings, after he got home from work and a few cans into a 12-pack. Friday night he’d hit the bars with his buddies, then crawl in about the time I was making myself pancakes and watching Saturday morning cartoons, collapse on the couch, and be hungover and hateful the rest of the weekend. But hey—he raised me, and that’s an accomplishment all by itself.

Now, though, getting toward the end of year 4, all I’ve managed to sell are a bunch of listicles at $25 a pop, and my one grand shining triumph, an essay which appeared on Slate.com, on the politics of hooking up as a fat chick, for which I was paid $300. And another agent just rejected my book proposal a few days ago. (Hence the emergency run to Trixie’s Liquors, and my ill-fated encounter with the absinthe.)

But I always try to live in the moment. And at the moment, it’s 8:47, and Trixie’s closes at 9.

In the depths of my floordrobe, I locate the elastic-waisted, Barbie-pink tutu I wore in Aubrey and Raegan’s burlesque show last summer, and pull it on over my leggings. Climate change or not, it’s still winter in Madison—the more layers, the better. (Until it’s time for someone to pull them off who’s forgotten his hands are his hands, and not mesmerizing alien organisms—but I’m always there to help.) I tug on my snow boots, zip up my pale pink puffer coat, lock my apartment, run down the stairs and up the street (who says fat girls can’t run?), grab and pay for a random candy-flavor Smirnoff in record time, then hit the door already running for the bus stop.

*

Jake, a.k.a. Jakeoff, lives in the basement of some aunt or uncle’s tremendous Tudor summer house on the southwest shore of Lake Mendota. It’s all concrete and disco-era orange linoleum, so with the threadbare Indian rugs all rolled to the walls, no one bothers taking their boots off. Waves of laughter slosh back and forth as people slip and slide in the puddles of melting slush.

When I slam through the outside door, there’s the usual deadpan chorus of, “Zipp-eeeeerrrr!” and “Holy flip, it’s the Zip!” and “Zipper’s here! The party’s officially begun!” I wave with the bottle of Smirnoff, then stand a minute below a heating vent, huffing against one numb, white hand, then the other. Does anyone even care that I tried so hard not to be late, I ran out without my scarf, hat, or mittens?

I set the bottle…minus the few sips required just to keep my blood from freezing solid on that goddamn bus…on the pingpong table with the rest, grab a single-serving Smirnoff Ice in one hand and a toilet-cleaner-blue Seagram’s Escape in the other, snap off one bottle cap, then the other with my front teeth (a superpower I inherited from my dad), and set out in search of Cedric.

There’s Jake, right where I guessed he’d be: over by the stairs, just wrapping up showing his latest video on the six-foot-wide projection screen. I’d fuck Jake in a hot second, except he doesn’t drink. His scarlet-streaked chestnut hair flops across his forehead as he takes an ironic bow, while the few people here who give a shit about his stupid videos clap. I clink my bottles together, grinning, even though I can see Cedric’s not with them.

Ethan stands up, slides his arm around Jake’s waist; Jake turns his head and smooches him. Someone’s already reloading the page; the game is for everyone to take a shot when it tops 5,000 more views. (Or is it 10,000 now?) Last one standing wins. But before I can even ask if it’s 5 or 10, and volunteer to drink on 5 even if everyone else does 10, Kyle…who I’d have to be drunker than I’ve ever fucking been to fuck, even assuming his dick hasn’t been fully absorbed by his crotch fat…yells, from the depths of the leather loveseat he occupies like Jabba’s throne, with giggling college-age monkey-lizards perched on the arms and back: “Get outta here, Zipper! No one wants to drink against you!”

I flip him off as best I can with both hands. “Just cause I drink like a—more like a man, than you!” Being a bigger girl does have its advantages. Those little Ugged-out, North-Faced, stick-figure clones are gonna be passed out in his lap after about five shots—which is probably exactly what he’s looking forward to. Fuckin’ pervophile.

Fueled by my established rhythm…swig of Ice, swig of blue stuff, swish-swish-swish before swallowing both…I peer through the densely swirling fruity smog of the vapers’ corner. Not that I expect Cedric to be there—but Aaron is, hawt as ever. Tall, thicc, burly dude, dark beard jutting in a bushy semicircle that snags his smoke like a thorny hedge as he dragons it out his nose…unibrow bristling beneath the cuff of his green and gold Packers beanie…rock-hard beer belly straining the zipper of his windbreaker…and, inside the baggy Carhartts beneath it, one seriously weird, skinny, bent, almost right-angled dick, with a bright red swollen head that seems to’ve been transplanted from a much bigger dick. (Funny, the details that stick with you, when you don’t remember what position(s) you used, or how many times you came, or whose shit that is all over your favorite rainbow unicorn dildo.)

Aaron’s throwing his head back, roaring at some lame joke. Then he sees me—goes quiet for a moment—raises his vape, and nods a curt hi.

I grin, salute him with my Ice, and go on my way, grateful we can at least exchange that much—that he didn’t disappear off the face of the fucking earth, like Steve, or Cameron, or the other Steve. But the fun, laid-back friendship we used to have, where we’d meet up Monday nights at that one sports bar by his place to split a pizza and a pitcher or three and maybe some shots of Jack, then stagger home at halftime to finish the game on his couch with a bowl of microwave nachos and a case of Stella between us, is dead forever. And all because (A), we decided to try a sports bar by my place for once, and (B) instead of Stella, I happened to have an almost-new bottle of tequila.

“Zipperrrrr! There you aaaaaare!” It’s Danielle, dressed, as always, to impress: fur-trimmed velvet Game of Thrones gown, 5-pound earrings like bejeweled daggers etching her bare, bony shoulders, and yet another flower crown (yes, in January).

I wanna tell her, Honey, it’s not a competition—you don’t have to fucking outdo us all to make us accept you as one of us. But I just yell, “Danieeeeeelllle!” and barrel through her constant crowd of admirers, male, female, and other.

It’s no wonder, really. Bitch looks like some kinda Tolkien elf-lady. Almost as tall as me, but about the size of my left leg—all except her shoulders, which her new boobs more than counterbalance. I’m actually about 60% sure I fucked her, back when she was Daniel, and looked like a Tolkien elf-dude. (And drank a lot more.) Unfortunately, though, I don’t remember it. And fortunately, neither must she, because she’s still my fucking friend. (Well, obviously, not my fucking friend, but you know.)

We throw our arms around each other. Her mink eyelashes tangle in my windblown hair, and I feel the glitter from her cheekbone adhering to my face. “So how’ve you been, Zip?”

I say awesome, as always, and ask about Cedric, but she says she hasn’t seen him. Then rattles on for several minutes about the masked fundraiser ball she’s hosting at some club next month for her bottom surgery, which is all she really wanted to talk about. I smile and coo, swig and swish, while inside I’m all like: Bitch, you can have my fucking cunt if I can have your face and body.

“Am I a terrible, horrible person to be glad Zach already donated 50 bucks through the link on my channel? I know I should feel dirty now taking his money, but I refuse to.”

“Yeah,” I say, “too bad you can’t use it to get, like, the same operation done on him.”

For just an instant, Danielle’s long, lovely, sharp-boned face freezes in a look of shock and hurt. Then she opens her mouth, flings back her long, long, liquid-caramel hair, and laughs like a horse. “Oh, Zip! You are just. Too. Much.”

I grin, knock back the last of my blue stuff. “So I’ve heard.”

No sooner do I escape her swarm of sycophants, than Raegan— overflowing a duct-taped beanbag chair, still wearing a typical pair of probably 7 or 8XL Adventure Time scrub pants—motions me over. And she’s got Chase there, his Domino’s visor jammed over his freshly dyed aquamarine cherub-halo, holding her drink and plate—so if I try to run off, she’ll just send him to chase (lol) me down.

Sighing, swiping an almost-full beer someone left unattended on a stack of boxes, I go over and waste five more minutes while she squees over my tutu and talks about putting together another burlesque show this summer. Can she add me to the Facebook group for rehearsals? Awesome! Even though Aubrey will probably still be recovering from her knee surgery, she’ll still want to help direct and promote it. “It just sucks we’ll need a new cameraperson. I don’t think anyone’ll want to take their clothes off around Zach, like, ever again.”

The whole time I’m thinking how unfair it is that Raegan’s about my same mass, compressed almost a foot shorter, yet she’s somehow got a cute boyfriend and a cute girlfriend. Not that I’m interested in any long-term relationships, but, you know. I used to tell myself they were obviously both just with her for her sweet R.N. salary, and they probably sat up secretly fucking and shushing each other on the couch while, in the other room, she cratered the bed alone. Until the party where the girlfriend, Emma, leaned her curly Shirley Temple head dizzily on my shoulder, and confessed…in response to my tragic tales of great white dicks harpooned, and then lost…that she’d never actually touched one, nor had any desire to—she’s a gold star lesbian, a Kinsey 6. I was just like, “Too bad I’m not,” shrugged away and let her ragdoll on the bathroom floor.

Finally, when Chase goes to get Raegan another of Ethan’s homemade vegan triple-chocolate M&M brownies, I make my getaway. I swoop by the pingpong table, where I listen for maybe a minute to a couple people talking about this freaking virus in China. Apparently the government is forcing people to wear face masks, arresting them if they leave their apartments. And some woman just tested positive in Chicago. Seeing that no one seems to be drinking my marshmallow Smirnoff, I rescue it on my way to explore the darker, quieter recesses of the basement.

I’m sweating inside my coat, so when I stumble across a pile of them, like a den of multicolored, hibernating carebears, I shrug it off. Nearby, her Ugged feet dangling like a child’s two feet off the concrete floor, Brooke sits on a massive chest freezer, surrounded by a tight circle of comforters and supporters: vehement male agreement-murmurers, platonic female back-rubbers. I’m not surprised. Brooke’s like this teeny brunette Tinkerbell who just loves to flaunt the fact that she still looks cute and girly with hair cut like a second-grade boy’s. She’s sniffling adorably, dabbing a crushed kleenex at her mascara-trickling doe eyes. “I mean, yeah, I know, I know…but I just, I still can’t see how Zach could do something like that to me. I, I, I thought we were friends!”

“Well, that fuckin’ dickbutt’s got no friends anymore,” I proclaim, joining the circle just long enough to scan it for a red, floofwavy head at about the level of my boobs.

Brooke slides down off the freezer. My arms just open automatically. She nestles her heart-shaped, tear-streaked little face on my left boob, right on Rick’s spiky, irascible sneer. I hook my hand (Smirnoff sloshing) behind her head, pat her back with my forearm.

“Aww, Zipper, I knew you’d make me feel better. You give the best hugs.”

Sigh. If only I was a lesbian.

As I continue on my quest, I hear a self-righteous voice—Nate’s, I think—behind me say, “I still think you should call the cops.”

And Brooke goes, “No, no way. They’d—it’d just be—I mean, I was drunk, too—my mom would—”

Sierra: “Dude! We’ve been over this. It’s up to her. No one is obligated—”

Someone else: “Well, I’m gonna do my next video about him. I don’t think it’s, like, defamation if I just use his screen name—”

I finally find Cedric the last place I look: in Jake’s bedroom, checking out his aquarium with some people. One of them’s Jared, who takes Ashlyn’s arm and slinks out. (She gives me an evil look; I just smile zanily, like, Whaaaa?) That weird quiet girl (Katie? Kelsey?) goes with them, with a little soft-eyed glance over her shoulder like she hopes Cedric will follow. He tries to—but I block him, leaning across the doorway.

“Whoa!” I say, grinning down, like I just bumped into him by chance. “Look who’s been avoiding me!”

“Oh!” he exclaims, like he didn’t even see me till this instant. “Ahhh…hello, Zipper. I’ve been meaning to, to call you, or…something…”

“Bro. You didn’t even reply to my fucking texts!”

“Well, ahhhhh, you see, it’s just that…” Even stammering and blushing guiltily…shit, especially stammering and blushing guiltily…he’s so damn cute I wanna use him as a buttplug. Cedric’s this little British pixie stick who teaches graphic design and animation at the UW art school, and also criticizes obscure straight-to-video and Soviet kids’ movies in his guise as Cedric the Hedgehog. No one’d ever guess he’s got a surprise grower resembling a third, significantly less pale leg—even if he was so drunk it just hung to his knees like a caveman’s club, prior to fumbling insertion. “It’s just…I’ve been so terribly busy with all m-m-my classes, and department m-meetings, and so on. Plus I’ve been working very hard on my videos…I’ve not been avoiding you, I swear—”

“All right! I get it!” I fling my arms out. Cedric flinches—for a second I almost think he’s gonna try and duck under my armpit, and run. “I’m fat! I’m a fuckin’ moped—fun as hell to ride, but you don’t wanna be seen on it!”

“No, nooooo, it’s not—”

“But dude! You’re acting like I’m gonna handcuff you to myself and force you to buy me candlelight dinners! I just wanna be friends! Like before! I send you a funny cat video, you send me one of a pangolin or some shit. That’s all I want—fact, I’m pretty sure I told you that’s all I want. That, and maybe a quick dose of the D a couple times a year.”

The whole time I’m talking, his big gray eyes keep darting over at Jake’s bed, then away again. If Jake’s fucking cat wasn’t sprawled across it, watching us like some fluffy orange degenerate, I might just—grrrrrr.

“I prob’ly didn’t tell you, cause I didn’t think you’d give a shit, but I got a really brutal rejection on—on—I think the Tuesday after the party.”

“I’m sor—”

“It would’ve been really nice to have a friend at a time like that. What I wanna know is, why the fuck can’t friends just fuck if they feel like it, and, and stay friends? Why do guys always have to make things all weird when it comes to sex?”

“Ahhh—that is—well, now, Zip—” Cedric swallows in a seeming effort to lower the quavery pitch of his voice. “I, I can’t exactly speak for all men—”

“Then maybe try not acting like all men!” I pant, wipe my mouth on my sleeve. “Sorry. Sorry. It’s just, you’re not the first guy I thought was my friend, who’s fucking ghosted me after we got drunk and did it.” I count them off on my fingers. “There was Cameron. Then Jared. Magic the Gathering Steve. Sound-guy Steve. Brett.” I shift the bottle to my other hand. “Aaron. And now you.”

“Honest to God, Zip.” His voice is barely a whisper. “I, I didn’t even—I mean, when I got out of the car, I thought we were at my place.”

Probably because I told him we were. Then I slid right out after him, and grinningly waved Jake and Ethan on their way. But c’mon—it’s not like I couldn’t tell he wanted it. The way he got halfway through his second beer, at that crazy Mario Kart party at Tyler and Taylor’s, and his little accent lost all its poshness, and he kept yelling, “Oi! Comin’ right up yer arse, Princess!”—his puttery little Toad-mobile all over the road. Then, when Jake—eternal teetotaler that he is—offered rides home, he scrambled at the chance. And he sat on my lap, in the jam-packed back of Jake’s purple Jeep, and practically fell asleep, with my boob as a pillow. I mean—come on.

“I’d had far too much to drink—I’m a lightweight, I know it—and those jello shots Tay made were just— I’m, I’m not trying to excuse myself, merely explain— I didn’t even realize, until— And then— Oh, God, I don’t even remember…” He sniffles. His eyes are all silvery with tears. “I am so—beyond sorry if, if, if you feel…disrespected, in any way…”

He’s got it so totally backward, he might as well be shitting out his mouth. “I don’t feel disrespected by the sex.” I smack the bottom of the bottle, with a slosh, into my palm. “I’m not one of these pwissy widdle girls who, who’s like that. I wanted it, you wanted it, it’s cool. I feel. Disrespected by you just—like—dumping me, afterward, as a friend. I just wanna sit down, and talk it through, and try and figure out why this keeps fucking happening to me.”

“All right. All right, we can talk.” He’s nodding like a bobblehead of himself. “We’ll go get coffee, and—we’ll talk. Just—”

“Awww, Cedric! Thaaaanks!” I smother him in a grateful bear hug. A little marshmallow vodka soaks into his hair. “You’re the only person who can help me. No one else’s ever even wanted to talk about it.”

“Just let me go fetch my coat, would you?”

He starts to duck under my arm. “I’ll go with you,” I say. “I left mine in the same pile.”

“I, ahhh, didn’t leave it there. I left it—upstairs.”

Huh? Upstairs is supposed to be off-limits to everyone but Jake and Ethan, who vacuum and dust now and then. I go and get my coat. Then I wait by the bottom of the stairs, fortifying myself with restrained sips for the tough conversation ahead. As Cedric doesn’t reappear…and doesn’t reappear…and doesn’t fucking reappear, the sips get bigger. Finally I’m forced to go around all over again, asking people if they’ve seen him—“We were just talking!”

“Who?” says Ethan. “Cedric? Oh. He just told Jake he had to go.”

“Fucking fuck!” The bottle slips from my hand. Smashes. While everyone’s all freaking out about towels and dustpans, I go back to the pingpong table and try to grab another. I’m not even picky—I’ll take the pink fucking Boone’s Farm some cheapass brought. But fucking Sierra spreads her arms out and, like, blocks me—like I couldn’t just punt her scrawny ass through the drywall if I decided to. “Zipper! Hey! Whoa! Sorry, but—some of us think you’ve had enough.”

“Yeah, Zip…” It’s Taylor, ganging up with her. “Maybe…give it a rest? Just till you calm down a little?”

I fling her arm off mine. She almost falls on her barely existent ass, except Tyler…lurking behind her for protection, like I’m some big, threatening—man…catches her.

“Zip!” cries Sierra. “Come on—this isn’t you—”

“I can’t buh-buh-believe you’re treating me like this!” I snuffle, willing tears to well from my eyes, thinking: I’m huge, I’m fat, I’m hideous, no one likes me, no one wants to fuck me, even my mom didn’t love me. “It’s almost the anniversary of when my duh-dad died, and I can’t—I just, fucking, can’t—”

“Awwww, Zip…” But her baby-smooth forehead furrows in confusion. “You told me he died on Valentine’s Day.”

“He did. Ruined it for me for-fucking-ever.”

“But that’s, like, a month from now.”

“It’s this whole, fucking time of year that’s hard! You know that!”

“I know. I know. Here, why don’t you come sit down—we can just hang out, and if you need to talk—you, you don’t need to drink to—”

“Fuck you! You don’t know what I need!” The fuck does she know, all blonde and skinny and pretty and young? I pick up the red cup she put down on the edge of the table, and—turning my back, daring her or anyone to try and grab it off me—I barge my way to the door that comes out beneath the back deck.

Sipping Sierra’s weaksauce rum and Coke, trying to make it last, I stumble past huge arrogant houses hidden back amid naked, shivering trees, the wind off the echoing black nothing of the lake whooshing between them to chap my hands and face. It doesn’t last; nothing does. I throw the red cup into a plough-churned snowbank. A cop car prowls around the corner ahead, making sure no one’s breaking in to threaten the richie-bitches, snug in their golden-windowed richie-bitch castles. I sit down and rest behind some recycling bins until it passes. There’s a fifth of Johnnie Black!—but it’s empty. I smash it in the driveway, flip a stiff-fingered double bird at the stone lions judging me.

The letters on the street signs’re all swimming around, like they do, but I happen on one that seems to lead back toward the campus area. Cedric lives near campus, doesn’t he? Fuckin’ should, he teaches there. Does he have a car? Don’t remember, if I ever knew. I hang in the folded-open doorway of a late bus, trying to shout over the two bitches behind me to ask the driver if he can radio the bus before him, or maybe the one before that, to see if a shrimpy, redheaded motherfucker with no balls got on. He tells me to get the fuck off his bus. I tell him to go fuck his mother. I stumble as the bitches shove rudely past me to board, and fall on my ass as the bus farts away.

My ass, fortunately, is not exactly unpadded—but damn, do I have to piss all’ve a sudden. I make it back between two buildings, to a parking spot someone shoveled out, and get my leggings and thong down around my knees. Ahhhhhhh! My bladder is a magic portal to a planet completely covered by an ocean of piss. Stinky snowsteam rises up around me like I’m squatting onstage with a fog machine.

At last the portal closes. When I try to stand up, I trip on my leggings and fall in my warm, cavernous hole. My ass was so cold, it actually feels good for a minute. But then I remember my coat, my tutu. Then even my piss-hole starts to get cold. So I scoot sideways and roll around a little, wiping my ass in the clean snow, and wrigglingly pull my thong and leggings up before struggling, with the aid of a nearby pickup truck, to my feet. The truck starts honking and flashing its lights. I flee the scene of my crime.

And goddammit, somehow I got all turned around! Nothing around here looks anything like the UW buildings. My vegan leather leggings are soaked through, and my legs feel like dragging slabs of ice—cumbersome, yet liable to shatter if I stumble. I can’t even feel my ears or nose anymore. I need a drink just to warm me the fuck up.

Which is why, when a blue neon Pabst sign shines at me from the darkened, smudgy mirror of a window that’s been half-replaced with plywood, I shoulder-block the blacked-out door and stagger inside, even though I can tell immediately that this is not a cool bar. It’s the kind of bar my dad would’ve drank in: sad abandoned pool table under a cockeyed fluorescent light; couple of homeless-looking old dudes on stools, dribbling piss-colored beer through their grizzled beards.

One of them looks up, like he’s about to greet me—then pulls the hood of his coat forward, hunching lower over his beer.

“Whoa! Hey, Zach!” I greet him before I remember he’s canceled.

He blinks—slow, like the clayey lids of his pale blue eyes weigh about 50 pounds each. “You sure you wanna talk to me? Like, you don’t feel unsafe?”

“Wha’the hell.” I shrug one shoulder, trying not to reel sideways. “Not like anyone I know’s gonna come in here’n see me.” Plus I blew the last of my cash on the Smirnoff, and this hole doesn’t appear to have an ATM. Under the circumstances I’d let fucking Hitler buy me a drink.

Zach orders two more beers. Then two more…then two more. I match him gulp for gulp—then, when we switch to well whiskey, shot for shot.

“You…you know what?” he drawls, steadying his elbow with his other hand while wagging his pointing finger at me like he’s just made a highly surprising discovery. “You’re cool, Zipper.”

“Hey, you too!” I feel the whiskey tugging the corners of my mouth earward in a vapid grin, like some giant clown who’s infiltrated a beauty pageant. This is always a bad point in my drunkenness, and can only be bypassed by drinking valiantly on. “I never b’leeved it,” I say, slamming another shot glass down next to Zach’s. “I mean, that you could ever, y’know. Rape anyone.”

Mistaaaaake! The R word just starts him affrontedly droning. I take the liberty of ordering two more beers on his tab…then two more. I imbibe them steadily, like an oral I.V. Liquidly insulating my brain from the gruff, slurry whine mosquitoing in and out of my ears.

Instead, I try to focus on my own problems. And am doing a pretty good job, until—with a shock like sometimes assaults you on edge of sleep—I feel like I’ve just been dropped into my precariously barstool-balanced body from about ten feet above. Because Zach’s alcohol saturation has rendered him telepathic, and he is echoing my. Own. Fucking. Thoughts back at me, except for some pronoun changes.

“I mean, she wanted it as much’s I did! We di’neven have to say it—it was, like, ovvious. And it was good! Like—not the best I’ve ever had, or anything, but—y’know, good. Okay, she regrets it, but how’zat my fault? Why can’t we juss forget about it, an’ juss be frenz again?”

A pair of creepy, heavy-lidded eyes meets mine—and I see myself, in the bleary mirror, through the rows of whiskey and vodka bottles, clearer than ever before.

“Iss like, rrrrrrgh! Why do girls always hafta go’n make things weird? Zit because you’re, like, show…slow…so-shuh-lized to be shamed of casual shecks?”

“Nah’ me.” I lean over, and rest my now-thawed fingers on the plump, hairy back of his hand. “I toe’ly feel you, man.”

Just a few more drinks, and we’re leaning this way and that, holding each other up, on our way out the door. My mouth’s going, spewing the same shit it always does: “Y’know this’s jus’ casual for me, right? I don’t wanna ’lay’ship…but I wanna stay friends, y’know? This doesn’t hafta, like, mean anything. All I want is, I don’t want shit to be all weird after…” But an icy wind snatches it straight from my mouth, like a frozen plume of word-vomit over a bridge rail…and Zach’s big warm bear-arm’s hugging me round the hips…and his hot, whiskey-tasting tongue’s stopping my mouth, devouring any more words that might wanna vomit out…

*

Then I black out. No worries; I’m as used to it as I am to falling asleep in my own bed, alone. (If not more…)

*

Then I’m on my knees, rocking back and forth in a matted sea of beige shag carpet full of crushed beer cans and toenail clippings, clasping my phone to my face like a dying kitten and sobbing: “Please come now…I nuh-nuh-need to go to pruh-prison…I told you, I raped someone! I raped lots of people! I’m a rapist!”

The fuck’m I…? I wipe my tears on my naked arm, and end the call as the little voice is saying: “Ma’am, an officer is on their way, can you just tell me—”

My phone dings with a comment on a post I don’t remember making. It’s Brooke:

My hero

And a little smiley with hearts for eyes.

Then, like a second later, Aubrey comments:

LOL your insane I love u!!!!

This reaction seems disproportionate to one of my typical drunken pussy pics—I mean, I think my pussy’s pretty damn heroic, but sad to say, I seem to be alone there. I scroll up, past accolade on accolade, full of wtfs and laughing and a few barfing smileys—past the counter showing more than 100 likes, when I’m usually lucky to get just couple—to see the post itself.

My jaw’s still hanging down between my boobs, when Jake comments:

Holy shit Zip. Is that for real? Not saying he didn’t deserve it but…

I’ve been growing gradually aware of a moist, manic huffing from the next room, like a T-Rex suffering an asthma attack. I’m hoping it actually is one, and not—and not—

That.

But some perversely curious part of me just has to see for itself. Has to see—as Jake says—if it’s for real.

Like a titanic toddler, I push myself to wide-spaced, unsteady feet. Gritty things stick to my knees, my thighs, but I’m not about to bend down to swipe them off. I totter past the ass-darkened powder-blue velour thrift-store couch, picking my tutu up off the arm of it, wringing it in my hands in front of my gut as I peer into the bedroom.

Yup.

It’s that.

Zach, naked, lying diagonally on his back across the same sheetless, sock-strewn bed as in the photo. Right wrist handcuffed to the black metal frame. (I recognize the pink iridescent cuffs; damn, I’d forgotten I had those in my purse.) Dick wilted in the crease of his belly and thigh; balls resting ignominiously on the bottom inch or two of the neon purple plastic pump bottle of lube protruding from his distended, bloody-eggplant asshole.

His head’s drooping sideways, eyes closed, tongue lolling out: apparently from the exertion of forcing his mouth clear of my ice-cream-cone-print thong, which lies damply wadded on the mattress in front of his face. But at the wincing hiss of my breath, he raises his head. Ice-blue madness glints in his exhaustion-ringed eyes. The cuff rattles violently against the bed. “Zipper, the fuck, you fuckin’—rrrrrrgh! Lemme go right the fuck now! I’ll fuckin’ kill your ass!”

I tilt my head, eyes narrowed, considering. Seeing as how I’ve pretty well killed his, that might be fair—but fuck fair, right? “Nope,” I say finally, “I don’t think I’m gonna do that.”

“Whuh…? You…you’ve got fuckin’ problems, bitch!”

“So do you.”

He thrashes, revealing a red-brown, period-like smear on the mattress—arching his back, and coming down on the bottle, which pushes it another inch in. His incoherent chain of curses dissolves in a long, shrill scream. Mouth twisted yeeeesh!ingly, I retreat, and sit naked within his double-cheeked PlayStation imprint on the couch. My phone dangles in my hand between my knees, its cheery intermittent dings ignored, while Zach’s whimpering gives way to deep, deliberate huffs, as he resigns himself to another long stretch of enduring his unremitting anal agony.

I wait…and wait. For what? Are the cops even coming? Did they get my location from my phone? And what’re they gonna do, when they get a load of what’s gasping and groaning on the bed in there? Sure, I can try to tell them why he deserves it…but what about me? What do I deserve?

Just asking myself the question makes my stomach feel even worse than it already does.

Okay. Okay. What can I fucking do about it? I could find the bathroom, lose a pound or two of puke that’d just slow me down otherwise…my body’s well-trained, it knows what kneeling before the throne means…and run. Run, now, before the fucking cops get here. (Are they coming? Are they coming?) Escape the consequences. But then, what kind of even bloodier mess might I find the next time I emerge from a blackout? How many friends am I gonna fucking lose?

…And what about when they all collectively decide to start treating what I do the same as if I did it with a dick?

I’ve gotta stop fucking drinking. It’s the only way.

But then I picture myself sitting in some lame circle of folding chairs, in some church basement, saying, “Hi, my name is Zipper, and I’m…COMPLETELY FUCKIN’ AWESOME!” Then getting up, grabbing all the donuts, and running the hell outta there.

Because, in the almost 4 years I haven’t had to work, my “making myself do shit that’s not fun and I don’t wanna” muscle’s atrophied to fucking nothing. The only way I’m ever gonna be able to stop drinking is…

Yeah. That.

*

I manage to find and pull on my leggings (minus my thong, which I don’t think I want back), thermal top, T-shirt, one of my socks, and my boots before the banging on the apartment door and the shouts of “Police! Open up!” begin. But instead of getting up to let them in, I just sit there, rocking slowly back and forth on the couch, hugging my coat like a big puffy pink security blanket. Even when the door ka-thuds with the impact of a beefy cop shoulder—and again, and again, with a cheap, splintering sound—I sit, and rock, and let them break it down. If I’m going to fucking prison, the least Zach deserves is to have to buy his landlord a new fucking door.

Boots shake the floor. Staring through the limp, pisspuky strings of my hair, I don’t look up from my toes: left set peeping just past the curve of my gut in my rainbow-striped toe sock, right set bare, overgrown, yellowish nails still wearing a few flakes of turquoise glitter polish.

A woman’s voice: “Hey there. Ma’am. Ma’am?” A hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Meanwhile the second pair of boots goes tromping into the bedroom. A shocked grunt becomes an awkward, incredulous chortle. “Trish! C’mere! You gotta see…”

The woman cop rushes to his side. There’s a second of stunned silence. Her hand muffles the briefest giggle, before her professionalism reasserts itself. “Sir? Hey, sir, are you…all right?”

In response, a renewed spate of thrashing and rattling, interspersed with panting, dry-mouthed curses: “You mother…fuckers! ’Snot…funny! Lemme go ri’the fucknow’rI’ll…” So at least I won’t be charged with murder.

I catch the cops’ murmured debate: “Should we, like…I dunno…take it out?” “Um. He’s probably gonna want to go to the hospital for that.”

Then the woman’s hand on my shoulder again. “Hey. Ma’am? D’you have any idea where the key is to those handcuffs?”

It’s probably back at my place, somewhere in the mess on or around my nightstand, or underneath my bed. But I just shake my head.

The cops make a couple of radio calls—for EMS, for another couple of cops who’ve apparently got a hacksaw. When the fuzzy radio voice asks what for, the man cop swallows another chortle and says, “You just gotta see it.”

A minute later, Zach’s hoarse demand: “Asshole, what’re you doing with your phone? ’Fyou put that on-fuckin’-line internet, I’ll fuckin’…”

Finally, the pressure inside me pushes my hands against my knees, my weight up off the couch. I stumble toward the woman cop, both hands held out for my own set of cuffs, which won’t even be pink and pretty.

Instead of clapping them on me, though, she reaches out and pats me on the wrist. “How’re you doing, sweetie?” She looks about my age, meaning she’s probably ten years older, although several inches shorter than me, and at least 100 pounds lighter. “You ready to talk about what happened? I, uhh, can’t promise you’ll have any success pressing charges, considering, um. If you think you might need counseling, though—”

I can actually feel my eyes getting big, round—faking innocence, in spite of myself. “Buh-but, I told you…I r-r-rrr…”

The cop squeezes my elbow, leans up…her gun and taser and radio and bullet-pouches and stark steel handcuffs all clanking and creaking on her belt…and whispers roughly in my ear: “D’you have any idea how many women I’ve seen who’ve been raped, who’re too scared and ashamed to even press charges?”

I think of Brooke, sniffling on top of the freezer: “No, no way. They’d—it’d just be—I mean, I was drunk, too—”

“Far’s I’m concerned,” she goes on, “every point for our side is a good thing.”

She’s still got to get my name, address and so on, just for paperwork purposes, though she assures me I’m not in any trouble. So while Zach’s still chokingly down his whimpers in the other room, and the man cop’s going, “Hang in there, buddy. Hey, if you don’t mind me asking, why’d you let her put those things on you in the first place? Sure, she’s a big girl, but you’re no 98-pound weakling yourself. Seems to me…”, I tell her: “It’s Tiffany. Amber. Zipinski.” And I spell it out for her. “But you can call me Zipper. Everyone does.”

She writes my info down, then pats me on the shoulder like a champion horse. “All right. Now you go on. Keep doing God’s work.”

I scoop my coat up off the floor and lurch out, past the door hanging off its hinges, to do just that.