Anais Yossarian

fiction

JANIE JONES

Her eyes on fire with an inner glow—filled with passion, filled with joy. It was a Thursday evening. Her lips betraying the tinges of a happy twist—a smirk of a smile, a smile of subtlety. A Thursday evening in early December. Pasty patches of blue and white paint in her pulled-back hair—smeared unwittingly, left indifferently. It had been about a month. Wisps from a messy bun dancing off the back of her head—left and right, back and forth—with every satisfied step. Four weeks to be precise. A black t-shirt—old and worn, smeared and speckled with paint, a hole or two here and there. Twenty-seven days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-seven minutes to be exact. Blue jeans—with a similarly spattered discoloration, and holes quite a bit bigger.

Breviloquent and blunt: Janie was a mess.

Real Wild Child (Wild One)

Iggy Pop

Or at least everyone at the record store thought so.

Still, most of her co-workers did like her—at least a little bit. But even that was becoming harder. She had already lost a few fans for good—she hadn’t noticed. She hadn’t noticed much lately—not at work, anyhow—and the strain of these unrequited friendships had finally started to take its toll on most of the people at Amoebic Records.

Janie was a mess—but she didn’t care. She hadn’t even noticed at first. People kept alluding to it, though—a comment here, an observation there—and so eventually she tried to take a step back to see if she could see what they were seeing.

She couldn’t.

She tried. She did take that step back. She did look herself over. She did catalogue every detail. But she didn’t see what they saw.

She did see a mess. Messy hair. Messy clothes. Paint on just about everything most days. She understood what they saw. But she didn’t see it the same way. They saw a beautiful young woman who had let herself go. What she saw, though, was the person she had always wanted to be. They saw a twenty-five-year-old who had lost her way. She saw a girl skipping down the path leading her to her ideal. They saw an arrogant person. She saw someone happy. They saw someone distant. She saw someone focused. They saw someone cold. Whereas she saw someone overcome by inspiration and desire. They saw someone rude. Where she just saw an unavoidable indifference. They saw villainy. Where she saw virtue. They saw a tragedy. She saw a triumph. They saw a travesty of something once so promising and brilliant. She saw her very own reflection smiling right back at her. They didn’t like what they saw—not one bit. She fucking loved it.

Blunt and breviloquent: Janie was a bitch.

If You Don’t Like It… (Get the Fuck Out)

Spindrift

Or at least most of the other employees at Amoebic were starting to think so.

It was an odd situation—quite a few of them still liked her and liked her quite a bit, but they no longer knew why. She wasn’t fun like she used to be. She didn’t laugh as much. Shit, she didn’t laugh at all anymore. She hardly even smiled. And when she did, it was always to herself—and usually when she was by herself too. She didn’t crack jokes. She didn’t make fun. She didn’t ask, question, or inquire. It had been weeks since she had last initiated a conversation.

Janie was a bitch—but she didn’t care. She hadn’t even noticed at first. People kept demanding things from her, though—attention, camaraderie, empathy—all things she couldn’t give. Unable or even just unwilling, even when she realized explicitly what was wanted of her, why it was wanted, and what exactly it hoped to accomplish, they were things she couldn’t bring herself to give.

She did see why she might—and even ought to—be seen as a bitch. Uncaring. Uninterested. Both described her to a T. But, with the utmost of utter unsympathy, this only brought a smile to her face. And boy! was it one hell of a grin of a smile. They saw a smug little arrogant cunt. Where she saw happiness, she saw greatness, she saw pride. They saw a smug little arrogant cunt. Whereas she just saw one great big wonderful thumbs-up. They hated what they saw: an embarrassment, a disappointment, a revilement. She fucking loved it.

Janie saw herself as a bitch. She saw herself as a cunt. She saw herself as an unfriendly bitch of a cunt. But she saw herself with the biggest smile of contentment attainable. She looked at herself, and fell in love. Conceited. Narcissistic. Again to a T. She was immersed neck-deep in the explosive egotisticism of an intensifyingly recursive self-appreciation. Plain and simple: she fucking loved herself.

Now, Janie hadn’t always been such a bitch. She hadn’t always been such a mess. At one point in time things had been so very, very different.

She had been the center of attention. And when she wasn’t around, she’d been the center of conversation. People had liked her, and had liked being around her. They’d liked talking to her, liked talking about her, liked thinking about her. Up until somewhat recently, Janie had been the most popular employee at Amoebic.

Can’t Stand Me Now

The Libertines

It wasn’t until she was 19 that Janie had really for the first time in her life started thinking. It wasn’t an immediate thing. It was gradual. You couldn’t draw a line—one side before, one side after. It was a process.

She could recall sitting on the floor outside in the hallway before a sociology class, her notebook open in her lap, scribbling what she thought to be a proper schedule for members of Congress—much less free time, much more work was the gist of it.

She remembered writing down the sentence: No one has any right to discriminate against anyone for any reason. And she remembered how angry she had felt and with what massive and tremendous indignation she had filled when she had thought of someone contravening this tenet that she had so passionately just written in her notebook. It was so simple, so obvious, so right—how could anyone possibly think they had any right to violate it?

She was on her way. She was thinking.

But she wasn’t done.

Those early thoughts were to be just a stepping stone. Bigger. Better. The things to come would prove to be of much more weight. Integrity establishing itself as an integral ingredient.

The impetus to the early thoughts had been her own—that was true. She wasn’t taking a political-science class, it wasn’t an election year, all politicians could have been shirking and shucking their constituents six ways from Sunday and Janie wouldn’t have known or cared. The motivation had been her own—certainly. But the content and conclusions drawn hadn’t been.

She had been thinking—but only what she’d been taught to think. A lower-middle-class upbringing, but bourgeois all the same.

It wasn’t until she started from scratch. Or very near to it. Not necessarily ignoring the things she’d been taught, just not letting norms and rote dominate her opinions.

Clean!

It wasn’t until she started looking at things from a fresh perspective that she would consider herself to be thinking—really thinking!

It was an indeterminate process.

Little steps here and there.

But Janie knew she was well on her way when for the first time, from her own lips, fell the sentence: No one has any right to STOP anyone from discriminating against anyone for any reason. She knew she was onto something when for the first time, despite how irately and tremendously the actual implementation sickened her, she heard herself say with every ounce of honesty and conviction she possessed: Everyone has every right to discriminate against anyone for any reason.

Against the Nature

Gogol Bordello

It wasn’t until she was 19 that Janie had really for the first time in her life started thinking. Before that, she’d always looked at the notion of maturity with a sidelong snicker of skepticism. When she was 19, though, the thinking began.

She started thinking for herself, started thinking for real.

And it wasn’t long at all before the change was irrefutable. Janie wasn’t a girl, she was a woman. No longer a child, she was an adult. She wasn’t who she’d been before. And that it had taken her so long to reach this point—to reach this definitive milestone—she found unfortunate, hapless, almost unbelievable. It really was so simple.

Commonsensical.

She was thinking without prejudice, without influence. She didn’t care what other people thought about her anymore. She had a firm grasp on what she thought was right. And if she found herself uncertain, she sat down and figured it out. She felt there was no dilemma she couldn’t work out, no situation she couldn’t handle. And yet, despite all her aplomb and the fierceness of her logical convictions, she did occasionally slip up and had, at times past, found herself neck-deep in the care and concern for how she was seen in someone else’s eyes.

Do You Love Me?

The Heartbreakers

The first time Janie saw Jared was at one of the live shows that were periodically held at Amoebic. Late 20s, tall, trim, remarkably handsome. He was with some of her co-workers, and she figured he was just someone’s friend, since she’d worked there for six months at that point and had never seen him before. She masturbated to him that night.

Three months later, when she found out he actually worked there too, she masturbated to him again, this time imagining the two of them going at it at work one night and him taking her from behind in the employee bathroom.

From others she learned that he was a writer. And soon she was masturbating to the thought of him fucking her as Hemingway, Thompson, Kerouac, Joyce, Lawrence, Wallace.

When she’d been there for about a year, Jared’s schedule changed and the two of them started working together three nights a week—Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. It was their conversations, their playfulness, their flirting that opened her up at work. It was her interactions with him that led her to start interacting with the others there. She started looking forward to work, to working with him, to spending time with him. Whereas previously she had always only seen work as a necessary evil, a means to an end, and had certainly never given much thought to the people she worked with.

Janie started falling for Jared.

Little by little she fell into the habit of worrying about how she looked, trying not to look too bad, trying to look good, looking downright adorable with a punk-rock flare. A few perfectly placed streaks of blue in her otherwise jet-black hair. Bandanas. Tank tops. Tube tops. Tight pants. Short shorts. Miniskirts. Leggings. Knee highs. Leather. Denim. Plaid. Stripes. All always above a pair of checkered Vans.

It wasn’t long before Janie was the belle of the store.

And to most at Amoebic—Janie included—Jared seemed her likely beau. Her co-workers would often bring him up when they were talking to her. Little things. Nothing overt. It was just that for some reason when talking to her they often found themselves thinking of him.

Janie remembered the night when Jared asked her if she was seeing anyone, asked if she had a boyfriend. She remembered how surprised he had been when she told him No. And how eagerly, almost nervously, she had awaited his reply when she then asked him the same…. No girlfriend either.

She asked if she could read some of his writing. He brought her a few stories; she really liked them. They seemed to be semi-autobiographical, about a man, Jay, working at a music store, Imperial Music. They were very sexually explicit and portrayed “Jay” as the debaucherous sexual aggressor; Janie liked them very much.

She masturbated to herself as each of the women in his stories—every single woman, every single intercourse, every single story. She masturbated to herself as the characters in his past, but also one in his future. She masturbated to him writing about the wild sexual feats that seemed just around the corner. He would fuck her, fuck her over and over, and then write about it in all its lusty realism. She masturbated to the thought of reading what he would write about the mess of sex they were going to have—rampant and brutal, bestial even. She masturbated to him to excess, to the point where every painting she painted became only a footnote to their grand love story. The Painter. The Author. The Affair. One for the ages. They were going to leave a scar on the world the likes of which hadn’t been seen in centuries.

But as time went on, as the weeks passed, as Tuesday nights, Wednesday nights, Thursday nights flew by, nothing ever happened. Jared never made a move; he never went beyond mere flirtation. And although Janie was thus left with the reasonable assumption that he wasn’t really interested in her, still the hunger she felt to feel his lips on her lips, his sex in her sex, ate away at her.

The Dirty Glass

Dropkick Murphys

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