Romans – Greta Schledorn

May 7, 2025

I used to love a painter. He was a terrible man but he sold his paintings for a lot of money. He told me I should see a therapist because I couldn’t stop thinking about suicide. I thought hanging myself would be glamorous and I could use something pretty like a scarf or a shawl that was made of silk but a gun in my mouth would be faster and harder to fuck up and it felt more serious, like I really knew what I was doing and could commit to it, to the suicide. I fantasized about it the way people fantasize about sex or being famous. I wanted a release and a lot of attention. 

I told him he should see a therapist because he was insane and emotionally volatile and he had delusions of grandeur. He’d pace around his apartment with his hands in his hair while he tried to think of what to paint and he thought that his paintings would save the world somehow instead of being hung in a rich person’s apartment or left forever in a tiny gallery that everyone walked past.

For a long time, he refused to make anything that would make him money because he had money so he didn’t know what money meant. I was with him because I thought that I could steal from him. Not the money itself but the proximity to a class that I could never be a part of on my own. The ways of speaking and moving around a room. The money came to him by accident because of who he was and who he knew and what he looked like. He hardly had to try and his art was bad and people loved that about it.

He was with me because I made him feel like a better man than he was and because I fucked him two to three times per week. We’d go together to parties and shows and after the parties and the shows we’d go to the afters and do lines and lines of coke off the kitchen counters of people who we didn’t know and who we would never see again but who, for a moment in time, we claimed to love. We’d sit outside and smoke while the sun came up and we’d say how beautiful it looked, and sometimes it was beautiful and sometimes we did love each other but most of the time we were too idiotic.

We lived the lives we lived because other people lived the lives they lived. Everybody knew this. One afternoon I came home and my painter was lying on the floor facedown with his left cheek resting on one hand and his phone held up in the other. He was scrolling and scrolling, his brow furrowed, and his phone kept making little noises as new texts came in. I asked him what was wrong. He rolled over onto his back and he told me not to worry about it.

He said don’t worry about it sweetheart.
He said it’s just group chat shit.
I said what’s going on in the group chat.
He said you wouldn’t get it.
I said maybe I would get it, because I got a lot of things that I shouldn’t have had to get.
He said it’s James.
I said what about James.
He said they’re trying to Roman Polanski him.
I said in what way.
He said in the usual way.
I said who’s accusing him.
He said this girl.
He said she’s fuckin’ crazy.
I said what does she look like.

He handed me his phone and I scrolled through her profile, her selfies and her pictures of the sky and of her shoes.

I said she looks fuckin’ crazy.

She didn’t look crazy. If anything she just looked weak, like she didn’t have it in her to be crazy. She looked like she’d get Roman Polanski’d. 

I handed his phone back to him.
He said it’s over.
He said we’re cooked.
He said he’s never beating the allegations.
I said I’m pretty sure no one cares.

***

The boys believed in whatever they thought was the funniest thing to believe. I believed whatever they believed because I liked the boys and I wanted the boys to like me. Years ago, when I first moved into the apartment with the painter we threw a big party. I left the party for a moment to smoke alone on the patio and James came out and he sat beside me and he started to tell me things.

He said his mother left him when he was a child. I said that’s fucked. I was drunk, so I told him about my father, about his love and his violence and my own inability now to differentiate between the two, to see any sort of clear lines.

The summer I turned thirteen, my friends and I each stole a push-up bra from the Victoria’s Secret at the mall where we spent our time loitering and talking to boys. Mine was black with hot pink hearts and lace along the top. I wore it with a tight tank top low enough for the lace to show. One afternoon my father was supposed to drive me to my friend’s house but he stopped me when he saw me.

He said you look like a slut. 
He said you know what happens to sluts?
I looked at the floor and shook my head and tucked my hair behind my ear. 
He said you’ll find out if you keep dressing like that.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me back inside and said to put something respectable on. 

That same summer he bought me a surfboard and he taught me how to surf. One morning right after the sun came up we saw a trail of baby sea turtles struggling through the sand toward the ocean. One had flipped over onto its back, another seemed stuck in a strand of washed up seaweed. I wanted to help them, to pick them up and put them in the water but my father wouldn’t let me. I said what if they don’t make it? And he said then they don’t make it.  

I told James this story.
I said but then that’s what made it hard.
James said what did.
I said because it wasn’t really black and white.
He said yeah.
He said mine was black and white.

***

We went to a party later that night, after my painter got up from the floor. I said I didn’t really want to go. He said we had to go.

He said this is an important party. 
I said it’s an important party? 
He said yes, he said we have to meet this guy. 

The boys all did these grifts together that were related to their art and to crypto and to other things on the internet, and they had a lot of parties that were funded by their grifts and that helped them get more money to fund their new grifts down the line. 

I put a dress on over tights and a pair of Mary Janes. I felt like I looked too slutty. 

I said is this too slutty. 
And my painter said no.
He said it should be more slutty. 
I took off the tights and put on tall leather boots. 
He said yeah that’s hot.

The party was fun. Everybody seemed like they were having fun. Everybody looked very cool in their clothes. I ordered a vodka soda. I put more lipgloss on. I said hello to people I knew and I tried to talk to them but I couldn’t pay attention to what they were saying.

James came over to where I was standing by the bar and he asked if I could get some coke. I said if you give me the money, and he gave me the money. I texted snowflake emoji #1 and asked him to come thru to the address and eighteen minutes later he came thru.

I slid into the backseat on the driver’s side. Beside me was a booster seat, for a child. I asked the driver for a gram and he passed it to me. I counted out five twenties and handed them to him. I started to open the door and a car sped past with another one behind it. The driver looked at me through the rearview. He said be careful getting out, baby. He said these people don’t slow down for anybody. I waited for the string of cars to pass and then I thanked him and stepped out of the car and walked back to the party.

I smoked while I walked and I watched the sky. The sky was clear and the moon was just a sliver. I tried to take a picture of it but my camera couldn’t focus so it looked like nothing. A girl walked past me with a dog on a leash. She looked young, maybe twelve or thirteen. For a moment I felt concerned, like someone should be with her, looking after her, like she shouldn’t be out walking alone in the night. Then her dog started barking and she started watching TikToks loud on her phone while her dog sniffed the ground in front of me and blocked my path. She was annoying and her dog was annoying and her dog was ugly too.

I finished my cigarette and tossed it onto the street. Inside the party, James put his arm around me. He took the vial of coke and said thank god. He said you’re an angel.

***

After we talked that night on the patio he’d followed me into the kitchen. He said I’m gonna make you a real drink. He mixed vodka and some kind of juice in a mug and stirred it with a fork and then he tried to kiss me. He took my hand and placed it on his cock over his jeans. The jeans were Acne. He said rub it, and he twisted his fingers into my hair and pulled.

***

James took the vial of coke back to the booth where the boys were sitting and talking and doing business, or whatever it was that they did, and he sat down with them, and they laughed and laughed and laughed and they got more money.