Amanda and Penelope is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Trunk Slamchest.
Transcript:
Amanda doesn’t have to breathe anymore. It took over a year for her to stop trying and even now her autonomic nervous system will just start inhaling on its own, without her noticing until Simon, her partner in crime, starts laughing. When this happens, she pulls out her vape pen and takes a drag. Might as well. She does feel the smoke even though it won’t wake or calm her as it once did. She goes through a lot of vape pens. They get crusty.
Her throat is dry most of the time, except after she’s had a cocktail or another drink and she loves having another drink. She used to drink regularly at Wildrose until she stopped getting older and just before they started noticing. But, damn, she wants Penelope to notice.
Penelope had always been a huge piece of shit to Amanda, talking down whatever cracked-ass leathers Amanda wore and stealing her dates. Penelope was an old school Seattle dyke, old enough to remember 1980s Q patrol in Capitol Hill, and any bitches starting something on her turf better pay her respect first. Amanda never did. She moved in from St. Paul and starting dating girls and taking bouncer gigs like she’d always been there. She couldn’t take Penelope’s whole “bow down before me and then we’ll talk” schtick.
The bartenders hated when the two were at Wildrose the same night, sending hate-drinks to each other, some watered down Natty Light to Amanda and some shit-ass sour to Penelope. The bartenders would have cut them off if they hadn’t tipped so well and kept their fights to the street. It got to the point, Amanda would just nod to Penelope and they’d drop whatever they were doing. It was on.
Amanda always had a temper. Her family could go fuck itself and thank the gods most of them were dead by this point. As the decades passed, Penelope stopped coming out so often. She mostly stays at home with her cats and her partner Lou-Anne. Amanda still catches glimpses of her in the front yard, staring down the college kids, the young queers, and the puppies like something somewhere broke. Amanda sees her at the Safeway sometimes, hunting for Gatorade bottles and supermarket cookies. Amanda stays back, wandering around a corner or putting a KN95 mask over her face, as if she could catch COVID anymore. As if she needs to ever exhale. (Curse her ancient reptile brain.)
One night, Amanda finds an old photo of herself and Penelope at an early 2000s Trans Day of Remembrance gathering. Under which was a discussion from Penelope taking credit for organizing the whole thing. Bitch didn’t organize shit. She’s taking over real history now.
Amanda rides the Link over to Cap Hill and wanders out in the dead of night, past midnight when the bars are starting to trickle their clients out. Up Republican Street and over 14th, Amanda finds Penelope’s house. A little gingerbread cottage surrounded by apartments. One of Penelope’s cats stares out the window. Amanda looks right back at the cat. Go get your mom. The cat jumps off the sill, fluffy white tail streaking the darkened glass. And Amanda waits, unsure she can even talk to cats now.
She hopes Penelope will come to the window. She wants so badly for Penelope to see her, not having aged a day since the early 2000s. She wants Penelope to stare and let the horrible truth set in. That perhaps Penelope shouldn’t be trying to rewrite history when history itself can come knocking and exhale a breath of smoke.
Of course, after that, Amanda would just leave, with Penelope wondering if she had seen a ghost, or a dream, or a warning, or a cancer, or the end of the fucking world. That would be great. That would be the best fucking night for Amanda. She takes out her vape, sucks a deep, unnecessary breath in, and waits.
-END-
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