THIRTY SOMETHING — LEE MATALONE
/We buy lattes with oat milk, organic orange juices, four dollar fizzy waters, we buy pastries with pecan and almond paste smushed into the centers, we buy margaritas after happy hour, though we planned on happy hour, we buy nachos covered with pork and pineapple and we layer the chips with more green and red hot sauce, each bite a statement of our bad bitchness, we buy platform Crocs doused in glitter and those little adornments we stick in the holes of the plastic shoes, dice and bags of money and a rose and a gummy bear, we buy more plastic shoes of differing colors, we go and try on the racy clothes in the ‘hoe store’ and we take pictures of our tits pressed into latex and spandex and our stomachs rushing out, we do not post these photos, we do not send these photos to anyone, we save them for ourselves, for later at night when we are alone in our beds thinking about how he should be so sad for his loss, for the hot shit he’s missing out on, about how he fucked up, about how when he drop kicked her onto the floor like in a movie, like in Mortal Kombat or one of those other Hollywood Blockbusters with all the lights and oil rubbed on muscles to make violence celebrity, and she thought she was going to die, how he was going to maybe kill her, how it was okay to fuck him now because she knew who he really was and she was in control now, bad bitchness, cheers, we do not buy the hoe clothes, we buy dog food, we buy parts for our cars that are fifteen and twenty years old (the cars, not the parts), we buy more lattes, we buy salads that cost $14 though they only take three minutes to eat, we pay for rent (“buy” seems like the wrong word, we are not buying houses, that’s for damn sure), we buy the good dog food, because the dogs we shouldn’t skimp on, they are the thing we should we really spend our money on, we do not buy the $250 dress, we buy the $150 sunglasses (on sale from $500, we must celebrate), we set out to buy date clothes, we do not buy date clothes, we do not buy houses, we do not buy Botox or fillers, we do not buy baby food or baby clothes, though the women our age are doing both (Botox and baby shit), we buy, we buy, we buy, we do not buy, we save, a little, just enough for a rainy day, but it is hurricane season and it is raining every day, every day, but at least the Crocs are good in the rain, our feet will get wet but we will see it coming and we will be prepared, we know what we are doing, we are not twenty-two anymore, thank god, cheers.
Lee Matalone is the author of the novel HOME MAKING (Harper Perennial 2020), which was published to acclaim from the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and others. Weike Wang called the novel 'An intricate exploration of family and home, of mother and child, of friends, of women and written with both precision and style' and Scott McClanahan called it 'the debut novel of the year.' Her work has been featured in Lit Hub, Electric Lit, The Rumpus, Denver Quarterly, Hobart, The Offing and more. Recently, ter story, “Loved Things” was on the Wigleaf Top 50, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Best Small Fictions anthology for 2021.
