Free So Sad Today by Melissa Broder Page B

better than a bitterpussy or a salmonpussy? Also, I don’t think my pussy always tastes that pure. I washed hard for him. I washed every time.
    I feel bad that the younger person has stopped faving my tweets and didn’t “like” my Facebook post about going to a police brutality protest.
    I feel bad that I posted about the police brutality protest on Facebook in the first place. By posting about the police brutality protest, I thought I was spreading the word—but now I feel like I was commodifying something that is not mine, as a white woman, to commodify. I don’t want to appropriate anyone’s pain.
    I feel bad that I got kind of high on the vibes at the police brutality protest. Like, I cried and it felt cathartic, and it’s a catharsis that was not mine to have. Since I’m a white girl, the cops have never fucked with me. Is there a difference between being supportive of other people’s revolutions vs. turning something tragic into your own experience? I think there is.
    I feel bad that I brought a Prada bag to a police brutality protest.
    I feel bad that as a white girl I can go shopping in certain stores and won’t be eyed, bothered, humiliated,kicked out, unlawfully arrested, or shot, and that the same is true for me of pretty much all places, institutions, and public parks. That’s not true for all human beings.
    I feel bad about my struggle, because it is nothing compared to other people’s struggles and yet it still hurts.
    I feel bad about this essay.
    I feel bad about this book.

The Patron Saint of Nicotine Gum
    H ERE’S WHY I ’M AFRAID OF life after death: What if there is no nicotine gum?
    I must have access to my nicotine gum at all times. I kiss with the gum. I sleep with the gum. Anything you can do without the gum I must do with the gum. I am chewing the gum right now.
    I chew the gum, because I don’t trust the universe to fill me up on its own. I can’t count on the universe to sate my many holes: physical, emotional, spiritual. So I take matters into my own hands. I give myself little “doggy treats” for being alive. Each time I unwrap a new piece of nicotine gum and put it in my mouth (roughly every thirty minutes), I generate a sense of synthetic hope and potentiality. I am self-soothing. I am “being my own mommy.” I am saying,
Here you go, my darling.I know life hurts. I know reality is itchy. But open your mouth. A fresh chance at happiness has arrived!
    I’ve been chewing nicotine gum for twelve years. I haven’t had a cigarette in ten years. So you might say the gum works, except now I have a gum problem. I am so addicted to the gum that I have to order it from special “dealers” in bulk on eBay. I get gum on all the bedding. There are many reasons why I don’t think I will have children, but the necessity of getting off the gum during pregnancy is one of them. When it comes down to anything vs. the gum, I always choose the gum.
    Now let me just say, before we go any further, that if you’re thinking of using nicotine gum to quit smoking you should not let my experience scare you. I am the addict’s addict. Everything I touch turns to dopamine. I can even turn people into dopamine (ask me how!).
    My first cigarette was a Marlboro Red that I stole from my dad and smoked alone in front of my bedroom mirror. I felt a sudden coldness in my lungs, exhaled sexily, and then the room spun around. The vertigo scared me, as do all abrupt shifts in consciousness (I prefer a steady high). I was fourteen.
    My next cigarettes, at sixteen, were Marlboro Lights that I shared with a boyfriend under the stars. They were make-out cigarettes—cigarettes of romance, possibility, and freedom. I noticed that when I smoked I became less hungry, which I loved, because I really wanted to be skinny.
    Cigarettes soon became meal postponers, or—when paired with Diet Coke and Trident cinnamon gum—meal replacements. I quickly became a pack-a-day smoker, often two, and required a cigarette