Trashley: Forty-Eight

Minnesota

I was excited to go to Minnesota, which is something I never thought I’d feel. I’d become friends with Ashley’s wife, Cecelia, and now Michelle (another of Ashley’s victims) and I were on our way to meet her in person. The middle of America sounded like a foreign country to me. Did they drive on the other side of the road there? I didn’t know what to expect. I pictured the Midwest as a flat expanse where everyone has a pet cow, and with an Applebees on every corner.

A woman I’d been on a few dates with dropped me off at the airport. I was gonna have to end things with her when I got back because she didn’t believe in air conditioning, and instead of having insurance, she bought doctor visits on Groupon. Plus, I was in my heartbreaker era. I had no intention of being serious with anyone after what I’d just been through with Ashley. The lesbians were not okay. Sometimes I thought it’d be safer to dig a hole in the ground and lay there until I died.

As I walked through LAX, I played my favorite airport game called “Guess where the plane is going based on how people are dressed at the gate.” I correctly guessed a flight to Honolulu, which was almost too easy with the Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops. Then I spotted a small herd of lesbians who were so granola it looked like they’d been raised by Mother Nature herself. Portland, baby. When I came upon a sea of green John Deere hats and flannel shirts, I knew I had found my flight. Most of the women had girl-next-door vibes. They were naturally beautiful as if they drank milk their entire lives. Young parents chased around their kids, and the amount of children outnumbered the adults. They could’ve overthrown the plane, staged a coup,  and diverted the flight to Orlando if their tiny brains were more developed.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now boarding flight sixty-three to Minneapolis St. Paul,” the gate agent announced.

A five-year-old boy whined to his parents ahead of me as we boarded the plane. They finally handed him a liter-sized bottle of Pepsi to shut him up, and he downed the entire thing in one gulp.

Fascinating.

When I got to my row, a woman in her late sixties or early forties smiled up at me. I could tell she was a talker, and while I usually love talking to people,, when I fly solo, all I want to do is be on my iPad, drink wine, and watch the interactive flight map.

“Hi, that’s me,” I said, pointing at the window seat.

She unbuckled and stood in the aisle to let me in, which is excellent airplane etiquette. Men usually want you to squeeze past like a fucking sardine. I had booked an emergency exit row seat in case I felt like I’d made a mistake and needed to leave. I searched through my bag for my airpods, hoping that when I put them on they’d be equivalent to a do not disturb sign hanging from a hotel room doorknob.

Story time.

“So, what brings you to Minnesota? Do you live there?” my seatmate asked right as I found them.

“Oh no, I live here. But I’m going to Minnesota to meet my ex-girlfriend’s wife and another woman that she catfished.”

“Oh, my. Your ex-girlfriend catfished someone?”

“Oh yeah, she catfished a lot of someones,” I said.

The lady sitting in front of me turned around and we made eye contact through the seat opening. Over the course of our three-and-a-half-hour flight, my entire row and the rows in front and behind me were captivated by my story. Even the flight attendants wanted to stop and listen. They pumped our section of the plane full of wine every time they came through with the beverage cart. By the time we landed in Minneapolis, I had eleven new friends. We all hugged goodbye at the baggage claim, and I ordered an Uber to take me to Cecelia’s house.

It was getting dark, so I couldn’t see what Minnesota really looked like. I knew there were ten thousand lakes, but I’d only counted four since we left the airport. The city lights faded behind us, and the landscape turned rural.

“Are you familiar with the spirit of Christ?” 

Awe, fuck. I looked at the map. We still had thirty minutes left before Cecelia’s house. I wished she lived next to the airport, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone unless it was an emergency.

My Uber driver looked back at me through the rear-view mirror, waiting for an answer.

“Yeah, he’s my homeboy,” I said.

I looked at my driver’s profile in the Uber app, he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old, which is a little too old to still be believing in God.

“Christ comes to me in all sorts of ways, usually when I’m driving or sleeping. Last night he told me I’d meet a believer,” he said.

I wanted to reply, “That’s an excellent story. You should tell that on The Moth,” instead, I said, “He really is everywhere. Sometimes, I leave cookies out for him before I go to sleep.”

If this guy knew how gay I was and all of the gay things I’ve done in my life, or even in the last twenty-four hours, he would’ve gone to hell by association. But no thank you, we don’t want straight white religious men hanging out in Hell with us dykes and queers, that would ruin the party.

We turned down a dirt road, it was completely dark out and there were no street lights. This was one of my biggest fears, being alone in the middle of nowhere with a jesus-freak. I had a plan for if he tried to convert me, I’d open the door and roll out while the car was still moving. And then I’d tweet about it because Twitter used to be fun back then.

We took a left and then a right, and an entire neighborhood appeared out of nowhere. We drove slowly, passing house after house. I rolled down the window. There were no shady criminals lurking around in the bushes, no helicopters hovering above with spotlights, I counted not even one piece of debris on the ground, and what was that noise? The sound of nothing? Incredible. This was how people lived in the land between New York City and Los Angeles. Someone should really make a documentary about this.

It was almost midnight by the time we pulled in front of Cecelia’s driveway. Her and Michelle were standing next to Michelle’s car. She had driven eight hours and pulled in right before me.

“God bless you. You were the believer in my dream, and may you be filled with love,” my driver said as he took my suitcase out of the trunk.

“Thanks, you too, my guy,” I said as I walked up the driveway.

There we all were. Three women who were brought together by an Ash-hole.

We all hugged as we greeted each other, as if the band was brought back together.

“The kids are sleeping upstairs,” Cecelia whispered.

We quietly brought our things into the house and Cecelia poured me a big old glass of red wine and we all took our seats in the living room and got to talking.

Good things happen when women talk, and I was mad at myself for ignoring Cecelia’s DM’s to me a year earlier. Being in the same room as her filled me with an overwhelming sense of guilt. I was on the wrong side of history like a fucking Trumper. I didn’t know how Ashley could do something so cruel. Cecelia was gentle, like a sika deer that bows to visitors in Japan. Ashley was a bully.

Ashley had moved back to Minnesota in the weeks leading up to our trip, and I hoped to never see her again.

“Ashley has three hours tomorrow with our daughter, and I was thinking we could go to the farmer’s market after she picks her up and we could walk around downtown and grab lunch by the water,” Cecelia said.

“I’m down for whatever you guys want to do. I’m breezy.” I said.

“Same,” said Michelle.

By two in the morning, we heard a small cry coming from upstairs.

Cecelia went up and returned with a groggy and smiling, happy baby. We took turns holding him until he went back to sleep. I’m sure he wondered where these late-night strangers came from. The fact that Ashley just left all of this behind was insane to me. Her life here was the opposite of her life in LA.

In Minnesota, she had a lovely house, a caring wife, and healthy and happy children. They lived in a safe neighborhood on a quiet street. She had a well-paid job, and they didn’t have financial problems. She was living what most people would consider the American Dream.

In LA, she threw money around like confetti, drove a Tesla, had a supportive girlfriend who never questioned her or made her pay rent, and lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the coolest neighborhood in Los Angeles. She took edibles all the time and had no reason to get up in the middle of the night to console a baby who couldn’t sleep. She didn’t change diapers, cook, clean up, or go to appointments. She had zero responsibility in her fake LA life.

I could’ve stayed up talking all night, but it was late. We kissed the baby goodnight and got ready for bed.

Michelle took the extra bedroom, and I slept on the couch in the basement. The basement looked just like it did the first time I Facetimed Ashley when she was pretending to be in Chicago working at Fermilab, but was really catfishing women from her basement in Minnesota. And now I was in the place where it all started, sleeping on a couch in the house she used to live in with Cecelia—the scene of the crime.

Everything was coming full circle.

By six in the morning, I heard the pitter-patter of feet scurrying around upstairs, along with a little voice saying, “Chase me! Chase me!” I slept for two more hours. Kids are insane. When I went upstairs, I realized Cecelia had never slept. She had already made the kids breakfast and was cleaning up after them. Michelle chased their daughter back and forth from the living room through the kitchen and dining room in an endless loop. The youngest crawled around the living room, holding onto a set of wooden blocks.

“How’d you sleep?” Cecelia asked.

“Great,” I said, “Did you sleep at all?”

“No, the kids have been up since five.”

I couldn’t have done it. Cecelia probably hadn’t slept in a year.

I poured coffee and went to the backyard with my journal. Before I sat down, I checked the grass for needles and broken glass. Cecelia’s backyard was nicer than any park in LA. I was starting to understand the appeal of living in the United States. I sat and wrote my morning pages.

Nice grass.

Michelle moved her car from the driveway so that Ashley wouldn’t know anyone was visiting when she came to pick up their daughter.

When Ashley pulled up, Michelle and I hid out in the laundry room, out of her eyesight.

“My Mom’s visiting just FYI, she wants to see the kids,” we overheard Ashley tell Cecelia.

Michelle and I locked eyes: two clowns for the price of one.

As much as I never wanted to see Ashley or her mother again, I also wanted them to know they wouldn’t get away with what they did. This time, Cecelia had an army behind her: a vengeful lesbian with a thirst for justice and nothing to lose and a Gemini who competed in marathons for fun. 

This bears repeating, but my god, Ashley was so incredibly stupid to fuck with Michelle. You fuck with a Gemini, and you make an enemy for life. Her other mistake was fucking with a writer. My hands should be classified as deadly weapons because I know how to put one word in front of the other, and that’s enough to topple a bitch off her pedestal.