Untitled – Katie Haley

October 5, 2025

I’m sitting across from someone who doesn’t know I asked for it. Doesn’t know it was a year ago when the thing that happens to young women in after school specials happened to me. Doesn’t know any of it. Doesn’t know I shaved my asshole, wore the tighest skirt I own, followed him up to the roof and got wet. Anyway, the person I’m sitting across from doesn’t know this about me and instead knows I have a brother, three roommates, and an occasionally active Hinge profile. I know the person across from me has two sisters, divorced parents, and a car they are borrowing from their stepdad.

We drink long necked bottles of beer and watch the bartender take shots with the regulars. I ask what kind of animal is on their ring. They say a bear. I say it looks more like a baboon. They take it off to look at it under the light. Brow furrowed and fingers tracing the metal.

“I think you’re right.”

They put it back on and proceeded to tell me they got it in Thailand last summer. Where they spent two months hiking and partying.

Having sunk my beer I make a trip to the bathroom. I’m wet. My piss is clear and so is the discharge wiped off by the toilet paper. Before last year getting wet felt like my body and I were holding hands like two kids fresh off deciding to be best friends. All earnest with sweaty palms. After, though, wetness is one of my grievances with this body. I look at it with disgust and wonder what I wouldn’t get wet for.

Back at the table they hum to the melody of the Lou Reed song playing on the speakers and ask if the bathroom was messy. I say no ‘cept for the trash can in the corner overflowing with tissue. He stands up to go and I’m left ripping the label off my beer. First from the right corner then down to the left. Once I have the strip in my hands I fold it and twist it into a long narrow piece. I tie it in a bow and place it on my lap. Further twisting the ends. When they come back they’re ready for a second beer, I am too. We sip them and keep talking. Mostly about his job with a moving company that keeps him on long drives to other states most of the week. We talk about my work, writing on my laptop in empty parking lots before my shift at the coffee shop.

I won’t mention it, the thing that happened last year, but I’ll think about it all night long.