Free Republic of Dirt by Susan Juby

I first got to Woefield, I had a food gut. Now I’m like Axl Rose in his prime. Or Keith Richards at his lowest point.
    The drama teacher had obviously noticed that I was looking good when she saw me walking my bike past the school, and our exchanges had gotten progressively more suggestive.
    I’d just about decided that I would allow the drama teacher to ravage me in some out-of-the-way location and assured myself that it didn’t count in not having a relationship in the first year of sobriety because
(a)
it would just be sex and
(b)
it would be like taking care of unfinished business.
    I’d nearly reached Sara’s school when the drama teacher sent me a sext. Only it wasn’t a picture of her. It was a picture of a flower. A really explicit flower, like something Georgia O’Keeffe might do for
Hustler
magazine. I was just like, holy shit. This is going to be so hot. I texted her that I’d meet her anywhere. Anytime.
    That’s when she dropped the bomb.
    I cannot wait to finish what we started.
    I texted back with shaking hand that I felt exactly the same.
    The only thing is that I can’t feel completely comfortable and uninhibited until my bed has been treated.
    Naturally, I was like, “Treated? What do you mean treated?” I was thinking gonorrhea or crabs, which would not have been a deterrent to me. At all. But no. It was worse than that.
    Something’s been biting me. At night.
    At the risk of sounding like a Marc Maron podcast, I was like WTF? I stopped dead on the side of the road and texted her the all-important question:
    Are you saying you have bugs? Like, in your bed?
    The second I typed the words, I could feel myself getting itchy.
    I’m not sure. I need someone to look for me.
    I might not have been worried by the thought that she had STDs, but the news that she might have bedbugs just about derailed me. I develop new phobias with alarming ease.
    You should call a pest control company. Just in case.
    Now my hands were shaking out of fear.
    Bev: You’re probably right.
    Me: Definitely call a pest company.
    Bev: That’s very expensive.
    Me: But worth it.
    By this time, I’d reached the school ground. It had become abundantly clear that our physical thing was not going to happen unless I determined whether she had some sort of heinous infestation. It was also clear that if she did, she expected me to deal with it.
    She was too embarrassed to call a pest company but she was not too embarrassed to tell me.
    Great.
    Even though the drama teacher had turned me into an agoraphobic for several years and stopped me graduating high school, this seemed like a new low in our relationship.
    By the time I sat on the swing, me and the drama teacher were full-on text fighting, which is a quiet but terrible thing. Those little keyboards seem to amplify messages somehow and make them sound worse than they would if they were shouted from a red face.
    I felt the agony of being placed in a terrible
Sophie’s Choice
type scenario, if
Sophie’s Choice
involved risking getting bedbugs in order to finally get laid or not doing that. On second thought, maybe the bedbug/sex choice was less tough than deciding which of your children you’ll hand over to the Nazis. Yes, that was probably an insensitive comparison.
    I texted her back to tell her that I was concerned about getting involved too directly with her pest situation because it might activate my phobias, which are legion. She wrote me back that her biggest turn-on is bravery. I wrote her back that it hadn’t turned her on when I bared my soul and my underpants for her at the school premiere of
Jesus Christ Superstar
and was pummeled by some jocks and nearly assaulted by her husband. (Extra-Poignant Background Information: I brought a ghetto blaster on stage with me and played Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” in a move meant to echo Lloyd Dobler’s iconic scene in
Say Anything
. Only I didn’t just play the song. I played it and
sang along
. Drunkenly. In front of a high