by Jenny Fran Davis
I'm interested in gossip as essay and essay as gossip, in speculation as a sort of femme accounting and narrativizing.
There are a few things I need in here and almost nothing I want. This world introduces itself in twos. Real wasabi. Irish oatmeal. Balsamic thyme. Lemon curd. Hulier et vinaigrier. Kale chips. Veggie sticks. Malt vinegar. Aiiiisle two! Canyon cut. Punjab eggplant. Full-fat coconut milk, twelve ounces, lasts six days when I’m the only one spooning it into my coffee. Aisle two? Near East. Field Day. Sweets & Beets. ExCUSE me. A mother and daughter step around the bread slicer, the girl’s face dented and vaguely Appalachian. Excuse me? Sparkling grapefruit. Spectacular kola. Lady fingers. Go raw. A pair of friends trying to find raisins passes again and again down aisle four, laughing at each other. I practice a mild expression in my eyes, how my mouth might turn when I see you again. Soft baked. Classic crème. APPROVED snack. Pot pie? Looks boooooomb. Klean Kanteen. Blissful agave. Turkish blend. Get cheese? No, meat. No meat. Nutritional yeast. My heartbeat makes my whole chest a drill. Loofah sponge. Oregon chai. Chai rooibos. Fair trade. A new toothbrush with a plastic hood, because my neurotic friend has told me that the forceful spray of flush toilets sends shit flying into exposed bristles. A new thing of hand soap that smells unlike the last one we had together. You are traveling, traveling, your body hurtling through space and time. Matcha love. Got it. A woman and her friend lean against the bulk bin of millet. We’re getting two new sprinklers, she says, because the minute Monty puts his paw on them, water starts spraying everywhere. Bulk etiquette: no grazing—no shaking—bag it—tag it—prevent spillage. I feel diffusive, like a conduit, like a pipe under construction. Like you can see the desire radiating off me in sheets, I desire what I have always desired, which is to be relieved of my performance, to be broken, to be penetrated, burnt, maimed, tamed beyond and into myself. Jam in glass to go with the bread. I carry a basket because pushing a cart requires coordination I don’t have. Ear candles. Ear candles! Mineral bath. A classmate in a mini skirt that has crept up her ass, her boyfriend hung up on the price of vegan cheese. How much? Foam bath. Two lesbians at the deli counter. What does epistemology mean again? Asks one. Ways of knowing, says the other. A compact square of Mexican chocolate cake for us to unwrap at midnight, the oily saran pulled from the surface like sunburned skin. A man holds open a paper bag and waits while his girlfriend feeds some bread through the slicer. Together they shove the efficient strips into a bag. Now wine, she commands. Dark twist. Endangered species. White honey. Where is—? Quinoa burgers. Body odor. Beer brands: sheer madness—big eye—gold coin—satin solitude. A woman and her friend leave the bulk bins of millet. The Greek philosopher Zeno had, as I once learned and think about often, a paradox called the Paradox of the Grain of Millet. A single grain of millet falls silently, he said, but a thousand grains of millet make a sound when they fall. Hence a thousand nothings become something, an absurd conclusion. I am afraid I won’t recognize you, what if you have found somebody else while I’ve been away at school. Slivered almonds. One bag, two overflowing scoops. Bag it. Tag it? Two hands, one motion. The bag of almonds fits in the outside pocket of my purse, bulges out. A woman with a long grey braid down her back at the register. Kind eyes, boxy thumbs. Member number? No, no. I pay for the things in my basket. The woman does not see the bag of almonds in my purse. Really they are mine now. I walk outside so easily. There is no climax. There is no one to stop me. My bag is full, there is the busy street to run across when there are no cars coming, there is the pink sublet where I sleep in someone else’s bed.
In one of my favorite essays, “The Glass Essay,” Anne Carson classifies Emily Brontë—according to Brontë’s own misspelling—as a “whacher.” It’s a word I didn’t know I needed, a word distinct enough from “watcher” to mean not just witness, but also mediator. Whaching does something to experience rather than faithfully represent it. I’m drawn to essays that whach instead of just watch, writing that intervenes by skewing, doubting, and reworking facts. I like essays that wobble between fiction and nonfiction and those that cultivate doubt. I’m interested in rendering not just what happened, but the feeling of what happened—what reads as true—and in representing dreams, delusions, and fantasies. I'm interested in gossip as essay and essay as gossip, in speculation as a sort of femme accounting and narrativizing.
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Jenny Fran Davis is an MFA candidate at the University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. The winner of the 2019 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award in nonfiction, her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Los Angeles Review of Books and Washington Square Review. She's at work on a novel about femme performance and identity.