Tag: 2025

Today is my mom’s birthday. I am in charge of decorating the kitchen. Usually my mom decorates, especially since she has a particular way of having the kitchen—it is “her territory.” But since it’s her birthday, I’m not going to allow her to put up her own decorations.

I wait until she goes to take a shower to pull out some miniature “happy birthday” hanging signs to tape to the ceiling fan above the table. I consider putting multi-color confetti on the table and the island, but it would make too much of a mess at dinnertime. 

I pull out the banner to hang from the double windows. The banner comes out in two pieces, being ripped between the “I” and the “B.” I pause and stare at it. 

This banner has been in my family for years. I can’t pinpoint when we bought it; I think it might’ve been my mom’s birthday as a joke for her fiftieth milestone birthday. Dad put it up over the kitchen windows and Mom’s eyes shined when she saw it. She turned to the fridge before doing a double take back at the banner. 

“The ‘I’ and ‘B’ are in the wrong spots!” Mom exclaimed. 

Dad and I looked at the banner, and we laughed. We didn’t notice it. But we still kept it up during the celebrations. 

The next birthday was Jimmy’s. The banner was in the background of him blowing out his candles. Then it was Dad’s birthday. I struggled to put the banner up, nearly slipping from the chair I stood on. The banner stroked against my arm, as if trying to catch my fall. 

Finally, my birthday came around. The aroma of bacon and pancakes lured me downstairs in the early morning. I turn the corner into the kitchen, the banner already on the window as if to say, “good morning.” Later that night, I blew out my candles, and the banner moved with my breath. 

I know I can easily go buy another banner, but there will never be another one like this. The banner is purposely misspelled “HAPPY IBRTHDAY,” and other banners will be spelt correctly. But it will not be this banner. It hangs in the background as we gather in the kitchen. It’s a part of the family now and birthdays would be incomplete without it.

I grab the tape to conduct a medical operation. Sweat drips down my forehead. I bit my bottom lip. The rip of the tape is the right size to fit the incision. I inhale deeply and lower the tape to the surgical site. It is a success! The banner gets to continue living on, at least for another birthday. It shimmers in the background as my mom blows out her birthday candles.

The first girl in class to get her period was Marissa Goode. She was the tallest, the blondest, and the most voluptuous. The cartoon macaroni and cheese, with creepy blue eyes and a smirk, were misshaped by the giant bumps on her chest. This made the boys want to scratch and sniff her shirt even though she had worn and washed it so many times that it no longer smelled like Kraft mac n’ cheese and more like stale Snuggles laundry detergent. But this didn’t matter. At 8-years-old, no one knew anything about anything, but what everyone did know was that there were two truths: Marissa Goode was the first girl to have her period in the class, and if you didn’t have your period, you were not a woman yet and the boys didn’t like you.

In 7th grade history class, young men and women learn about the 17^th century. The textbooks are thick, and girls and boys flip through the pages in search of a picture of a person they didn’t think truly existed to draw a mustache on. One page in the book had a picture of the pear of anguish. The teacher explains that it was a tool used to torture women in Europe.

Mustached.

At 16, young women schedule their first gynecology appointment. A clear, plastic tool, something akin to the pear of anguish, sits on the metal tray adjacent to the Geri chair. The doctor tells girls there is no need for an appointment if you are not sexually active or 21. The ride home is long and shameful.

…

“Are we pregnant?”

The sun sets in the west, projecting sheets of gold through the bay windows, inviting unwanted hesitant glances and the lingering silence. A bench made entirely of African blackwood nuzzled into the outline of the windowsill like a puzzle piece. On top of the bench is a leather tufted cushion with buttons like the one Corduroy lost. The familiar fabric carries whispers of childhood, where a crested leather ottoman was a source of quiet temptation, guarded by a mother whose withering voice warned against careless play which leads to popped buttons and ruined stitches.

“Rosie?” The wall behind him is beautiful—difficult to look away from. Ornamental molding carved into the frames of the wall; its intricate swirls of leaves absorbing the fleeting light. Each arch and score became a refuge, a distraction from the weight of his words, the tension existing in every inescapable crevasse of this apartment. Beneath the surface, spores of fear multiply, blurring the room into a museum of unwanted realities. The protruding buttons of the cushion serve as a barrier against the stretched stitches in the silence between you and him.

In his hand, a white stick with a faded pink cross—the stick that was meant to stay in the trash, buried under multiple crumbled Kneexes used to wipe residues of vomit and tear stains—rests accusingly. A whisper escapes your lips, “I don’t know.” The stitches of your skirt are frayed like the skin on your thumbs that trace it reluctantly. He doesn’t say anything. Instead, his arms wrap around you, offering confusion and fear.

“This is wonderful, sweetheart.” His voice is thick with excitement and a future you never knew he wanted. The mention of children had never been, well, mentioned. Women had children. Girls had school to attend, pints of ice cream to eat, and bags of weed to smoke.

“What?” The word escapes in a sharp, incredulous breath.

“I’ve always wanted to start a family, why not now?” There is a wide smile on his face, offering unwarranted relief. “I mean, I know we’re still young and this is something we need to discuss more, but why not now?” You stare blankly at him, unsure if you are having a nightmare or if your nightmares have finally come to fruition. Either way, it was a nightmare.

“I’m 22 and we’re not even married and I don’t even have a job and I’m still in school—oh God! I’m still in school and everyone is going to see me fat and ugly and even more out of breath than usual. And what if my feet swell so badly I can’t wear my boots? Tucker, I just bought these boots. Look,” you gasp for air, dragging his hand to the shaft, “it’s real calfskin. Hermés.” The skin behind your lip is raw and tender with uneven indentations.

“Well, we could be married.”

Suddenly, the fear switches to anger. “Shut up.”

“Sorry.”

“This isn’t about being married or getting fat,” your voice is sharp and falsely sarcastic—the tone he adores because you never learned how to sound sincere, “I’m not ready to have a baby.” Silence.

“Well, sweets, it’s a little late for that, don’t you think so? Pull and pray can only take us so far for so long.” Tucker’s hands wrap firmly around yours as if it is an attempt to ground you. He lets out a quiet laugh, comforting you through humor. “I guess you have other options, but why use those options if we plan on starting a family one day? You’re already pregnant, let’s just go with this one.” For a second, you wonder if he’s dense. No, just dense right now. The idea of having a child because it’s convenient was not in your 2024 planner—it’s not in any of your future planners either.

“You aren’t listening. I’m not ready to be a mother.” You stare intensely into his eyes, squinting to stand your ground. Your fingers pick at the buttons on the bench, digging the curved edges of the button under your nail. “I’m barely a woman.” There it was; the impending doom that has haunted you all your life, though now it is no longer impending, just doom. In 8th grade, the health teacher made the class watch a video of a British woman giving birth. The cruel fluorescent lights, cold tiles, and unfamiliar faces of healthcare professionals surrounded her. Her hands gripped the bars of the hospital bed as she begged for her mother. At 13, you wondered who you would beg for. At 21, the thought sits behind Tucker, out of his sight, directly in yours.

“I want to say, ‘so you never want to have children?’ but I know that’s not what you need right now.” Tucker sucks his lips in, pressing them together. His pants are freshly pressed, stiffened by starch, with gentle notes of cherry blossom and citrus. “What do you mean you’re barely a woman?”

The sky is full of bright stars like the diamond earrings Tucker bought you last week after work. He rushed to a bar on Main Street where he found you and a tray of two dozen empty oyster shells. Oysters have babies by releasing their eggs to mix with dropped sperm from males. Oysters do not nurture; they do not become parents. “Sorry for being late, sweetheart. I’m glad you started without me.” He pulled out a velvet box from his breast pocket and said it was a “just ‘cause” gift. “Just ‘cause I love you and was thinking of you today.” Tucker would make a great dad. But that wasn’t what worried you.

While other 6-year-old girls shopped at Claire’s and ate heart shaped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, your mother bought you pantyhose from J. Crew and Mary Janes from Burberry. She had the chef prepare various French dishes. Escargot carefully lined your glass lunch box as the other children stared and whispered. Marissa Goode and Katie Wilson read sweet messages from their mothers while you unfolded stiff stationary from your father’s office.

Rosemary, finish your lunch and be good. Use the proper fork.

Three forks pressed for a decision to be made. Mother always tested you. She wanted you to be the best.

“Women get married, have babies, cook dinners for their husbands. I push our engagement off for a year, freak out about being pregnant, and order takeout. I have never been a girl, but I am most certainly not a woman. I’m the in-between—the bigger clump of cells existing in this liminal space.” Your hands move with your words, attempting to measure your existence. “It’s not that I can’t do the whole grow-and-push; it’s what comes after. The real growing.”

Tucker watches you with a cocktail of concern and understanding etched across his face. He relaxes his brows and offers a sympathetic smile. “Hey,” he rubs your arm, “you’re not in this alone. I’ll be right here, next to you.” Tears of truth well in your eyes as you wonder if being a mother will prove that you are no better than your own mother.

“Being a mother means being my mother; it means carrying on her lessons because they are all I know.”

“You’re not your mother.” His voice is still and stern.

“But how do you know that?” Your words are filled with a plea as if you’re looking for an answer that, deep down, you know doesn’t exist.

He takes a breath, “Because, You. Are. Not. Your. Mother.” He enunciates each word, giving them a weight too heavy to carry. “This baby,” he cups your cheek with one hand and rests the other on your stomach, “he or she will be so loved by you—that, I am certain of.” You’re unsure if it’s the thought of humanizing the clump of cells in your stomach or if the clump’s side effects are making you sick.

“But what if I can’t love our child? You make it look so easy, but if you asked me why I love you, I’d say because I do.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” He’s genuine in his confusion.

“It’s something a child would say because they haven’t learned enough words or can’t think that deeply yet.”

“I don’t think so. I think if you love me just because you do, then that’s enough. We don’t need answers to everything. Sometimes, things are the way they are because they just are. That doesn’t mean you love me less than I love you.” Tucker Whitlocke, the poet, the current something-between-fiancé-and-boyfriend, the soon-to-be dad.

…

The next week, Tucker holds your hand as you lay flat on a Geri chair. Residue of cold gel leaves a lubricated film on your stomach. Your focus splits between the metal tray beside you and Tucker’s relentlessly bouncing legs. His loose curls are now frizzy with stress. From your angle, you can see the plastic pear of anguish hiding under a blue sheet on the tray. You wonder if the doctor will use it to physically find the MIA baby. Several movies have taught you that contractions are when your vagina dilates. Or something like that. Would that mean the plastic penis is going to give you contractions? How wide can it manually get? Will the baby fall out? You squeeze Tucker’s hand, offering him reassurance. The baby is in there, you can feel it—you want to feel it. Feeling it means becoming a woman. Feeling it means finally having the opportunity to love like Tucker, to prove you are not your mother, to let the sun rise slowly and set softly, to be lost in the profound tenderness of your own.

The cup is small and, up to this point, you’ve never actually seen where urine comes from for girls. All you know is peeing in this cup means finding your baby—if there is one. You put the cup over the general area, sending a prayer that forgetting to roll your sleeves isn’t a big mistake, and another prayer that a little Rosie or Tucker is due in about 7 months. There were two truths, both of which you knew deep down in the place where people just know things—the gut, perhaps—that were not in the prayers.

…

The drive home is long and quiet. Your neck is stiff as though your body refuses to look to Tucker, afraid that disappointment exists in his gaze. He places his right hand on your thigh, dispelling your worries, as the other manages the wheel. In this silence, the air is heavy with bittersweet notes. You and Tucker grappled with the idea of parenthood fanning the flames of fear and hope, only to be extinguished when the fire became warm. Fucking oysters.

Phil and Tony are elephants. Their eyes are glossy brown beads, bulging from their big, blue heads. Their ears droop low, hanging near their knees. Do elephants have knees? I squint my eyes at their stubby legs, poking the wrinkles where their knees should be. It’s hard. I can’t get my finger under the folds, but I’m sure there’s something in there–a synovial joint for sure. Just then, he bends his legs, spilling some ash. Knees! Tony’s my favorite. My heart stops for a moment. Did I do my English homework? I check the “Homework” section in my Notes app. Nothing’s there. Must’ve done it earlier today. My heart resumes its contractions. Contractions? “God I hope I’m not pregnant.” I look up.

“We’re not doing this right now.” He flicks the lighter, waving the flame in front of my eyes.

“Tod, my lashes are on fire,” I whisper.

“That’s ok,” he says.

“Oh, ok.” My eyes return to Tony.

Anyway, Tony’s my favorite. Tony with his big blue ears, long trunk, three holes–plug one, fill one, suck one. Tony. Tony’s the baby. He’s new to this world, still smooth and fresh. His body is not yet dirtied by plants and flames. His bowl is not yet sticky from ash.

There’s also Phil. Phil the mighty. Phil the first. Phil the olive branch. Phil the veteran, the noble elder.

It was three weeks before Valentine’s Day when I found myself in a similar state, scrolling on Etsy. Is this even legal? Add to cart. Ship to school. No wait, home. Tod and I had been arguing over something I can’t quite remember. Something about his bed pickles addiction and how it needs to come to an end. Wait, no, switch that around. His panties have been in a twist over my bed pickles. Let me have my fun. I like eating pickles in bed.

Pickles in bed sound really good right now. I trail my eyes over to him. He’s playing tic-tac-toe on the wall. I reach into the fridge, grabbing the goods. I struggle to get onto our lofted bed. He instinctively reaches his hand out for me to grab, still focused on his game that’s now heated. I slowly hand him my pickle jar. He twists the lid off, eyes on the wall. “O in the top left corner. Bingo!” I stick a metal straw into the jar, sipping on the brine.

He turns to me, “off the bed.” Damn. Sore loser or still upset from last week’s bed pickle spill? The spill that resulted in an entire jar of Claussens’ brine soaking into the bedsheets at 2 a.m. I hop off the bed, leaving the pickles balancing on the mattress.

As I was saying, it was three weeks before Valentine’s Day when I ordered Phil as an olive branch. Branching out a gift of peace in the bed pickle dilemma. At the time, I figured he’d be in a different state, too burnt to know the difference between me, the bed, and the pickles. In retrospect, something that burns your soul could never quite be burnt out.

We take turns rapidly inhaling from Phil and Tony’s trunks. Tod holds Tony for me, his thumb on Tony’s butthole, his other hand burning the ground plant with a lighter that I accidentally stole, in a similar state once again, from CVS last semester. I watch as the plant burns deeper with each inhale. The ashes glow a sienna orange; the flame reflecting off my glazed eyes, almost as glossy as Tony’s. Tod places Phil and Tony near the edge of his mini fridge—the fridge that leaks when we use the freezer; the fridge that sits at the foot of the bed; the fridge that keeps yogurt at room temp; the fridge that we grind and pack on.

I attempt to climb the ladder of the bed but find myself stuck with one foot planted on the floor and the other stretched to the top of the mattress, something akin to a split. Tod exhales a cloud of smoke before effortlessly lifting me. I giggle at Phil’s smokey aura escaping from his holes. It’s almost as if we’re connecting with his burning soul, too burnt to burn us with every inhale. “Thanks, pal.” I let myself collapse, face-first onto the bed. I can feel my leg hit something hard followed by a shattering noise. Tod is silent. “What was that?” I ask, my face still burrowed into the comforter.

“It’s Phil and Tony. They’re not good,” Tod warns. I lift my body and turn towards Tod. I trace his eyes down to what I deem a murder scene. A variety of dark and light blue shards of glass scatter the floor. Their ashes are spread on the tiles. I stare at their dismembered bodies—the bodies that introduced us to different worlds, the bodies that held grams of indica, the bodies that sat atop the fridge together, a pair never separated. Tod picks up Phil’s trunk, still whole, from the floor. “They’re dead.” I look at the trunk, finding myself lost in the loss of Phil and Tony. But even more so, I think about all that Phil and Tony stood for–escapism, peace, and our burning desire to be burnt out of this life. I look back at the floor, their bodies crashed and ashes burned. My hair is wet. I turn my torso to see the jar of pickles lying on its side, absorbing into the sheets, dripping over Phil and Tony’s remains.

I laugh, “Pickled elephants.”

Zhuzhu (A), a Chinese entrepreneur, built a successful handbag business in Dubai, overcoming financial and market challenges through strategic partnerships with Chinese manufacturers. Her success enabled her to immigrate to the United States through the EB-5 investment program, where she pursued her long-held dream of a doctoral journey. Her transition from building a business in one of the world’s largest trade hubs to pursuing academics demonstrates resilience, adaptability, and a commitment to lifelong learning.

In this interview, Yinxia Yang (Q), an independent art critic and educator in the New York metropolitan area, who is currently a doctoral student in the Educational Leadership and Ed.D. Program at Monmouth University, speaks with Zhuzhu about her entrepreneurial journey, the challenges she faced, and the lessons she learned. Her story may offer valuable insights for aspiring Monmouth students as they navigate their paths to success.

Preparation Stage: Accumulating Experience and Funds

Q: Thank you for meeting with me. How and why did you start your lady bag business?

A: I cherished an entrepreneurial dream when I first set up in Dubai in 2003, but honestly, I had no idea where to start. I faced many serious challenges in a new land. To survive, I simply rented a bed space for myself because it was the cheapest way to settle down. To understand the Dubai market and find opportunities for my goal, I went to look for a sales job the next day to prepare for my business journey.

Fortunately, I soon landed a job as a salesperson in a Chinese operating lady bag company carrying on wholesale businesses with strong ties to suppliers in China. While working there, I seized the opportunity to communicate with clients, attentively listening to them talk about their markets and business stories. There is no doubt that more information suggests better decision-making. Through frequent conversations with customers, I began to ponder what type of business path would be a good fit for me and how I could watch out for any red flags to avoid if I started my own business. Day by day, I developed a better understanding of the lady bag market, such as where customers came from, what market demand for the products was, and how I should set up the right price for the market.

I think it is important to keep a clear mind about your goals all the time. About a year later, I began thinking about how to establish my own business in the handbag market. Since I did not have the financial ability to import goods directly from China, I came up with the idea of doing consignment sales as the first step of my business journey. The consignment sale is a trade agreement in which I, as the owner of the lady bags, the consignor, provided goods to a local retail store, the consignee, to sell, but the store had the right to return unsold bags to me. After communicating with local retail stores, I found out that the consignment business would work in the Dubai market because both the retail stores and I could minimize the risks of business costs. This win-win business cooperation expanded my business fast. I accumulated funds for my short-term goal one year after the consignment business.

The First Stage: Prioritizing Cost with Limited Funds

Q: How did you start working with manufacturers, and how did you choose them?

A: After making the initial profits from the consignment business, I opened a wholesale showroom in 2005. As luck would have it, a Chinese businessman was setting up a Chinese Commodity Wholesale Centre in Dubai with affordable business space for rent. As soon as I signed the contract with the Centre, I went to China, looking for manufacturing partners for my lady bag business because Chinese sourcing could offer me lower manufacturing costs and a high number of manufacturers to choose from.

Since I had been involved in the lady bag business in Dubai for a couple of years, these personal experiences gave me the advantage of where I could possibly find sourcing products in Chinese markets. I decided to choose China’s Baigou Bags and Cases Trading Market in Hubei Province, known as “the capital of luggage,” the world’s largest wholesale market strongly supported by numerous local manufacturers. In the minds of the bag traders, the Baigou Market is well-known for a wide variety of products with relatively low prices. As a small business owner, I thought this could be the right market for me to collaborate with.

Regarding choosing manufacturers, with a limited amount of funds the costs of the product were the top priority at the time when I started to step into the business field, even though the price was not everything. As mentioned previously, the Baigou Market offered me comparatively low prices, and it took me a whole week to familiarize myself with the wholesale market. When I obtained similar quotations from different manufacturers there, I compared the quality of the samples provided in their showrooms. After initially selecting some possible factories with which I might cooperate, I visited their production lines to check product quality. Manufacturers with relatively low quotations tend to be small-scale factories. Most manufacturers in Baigou County are family workshops with about a dozen workers. While China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001 was a landmark event, its market and structural adjustments would take time to perfect since China was emerging from an isolated country. All this suggests that in the Baigou Market, product quality and delivery dates may be hard to control, mainly because of family-style production. I was aware that a manufacturer was a key partner in my business. However, as the old proverb goes, “Man proposes, God disposes.” Considering everything, I decided that the Baigou Market’s small-scale manufacturing partners would work for my new wholesale business career despite uncertainty.

However, reliable manufacturers were not always easy to find. It took me at least one to two years to source suppliers from the Baigou Market. I first tried collaborating with five to six manufacturers, but some were just used as a backup. As time went by, I selected a few relatively reputable factories to work with. I understand that without manufacturing partners, I would have nothing to sell. Therefore, maintaining a great supplier relationship is necessary if you want to stay competitive. However, the business partnerships did not work as productively as expected for many reasons.

Q: What did you experience in the past two years, and why did you change partners?

A: As mentioned above, at the beginning of my business, prices were my primary concern, but I knew that low prices would give rise to implied uncertainty of product quality. I admit that the price advantage in Baigou brought me high profits. Still, low manufacturing and labour standards and unstable product quality made it hard for me to establish a stable sales network in Dubai, which negatively impacted my business development. If my customers were not satisfied with the product’s quality and were unsure when my goods would arrive in Dubai, I turned them away and would lose the market.

While I was frustrated about the less effective cooperation with manufacturers in Baigou in terms of non-conforming products and delayed delivery time, I am still grateful to those business partners who met my needs of low prices and low costs. After all, I financially benefited from this business, especially at my beginning stage. To make my business grow steadily, the collaboration setback in Baigou in two and a half years made me think about shifting my focus from low prices to product quality while still paying attention to the cost of goods, adjusting my priorities and strategies to adapt to the needs of my second stage of business, with my attention turning to another bag production base in Haining City, Zhejiang, an eastern coastal province of China.

The Second Stage: Prioritizing Quality While Considering Cost

Q: So, what happened to the second stage of running your business?

A: Finding suitable manufacturers can be daunting, particularly if your business is at an early stage. As Haining City (海宁市) is a very mature leather process base with high product quality in China, including handbag products, I just wanted to try it to see if there would be a place for my business. I spoke to several factory owners about product requirements, the quantity of each order, delivery time, etc., and finally reached a preliminary intent on cooperation. Although the cost was about 30% higher than that of the Baigou Market, the business idea of prioritizing quality products was worth pursuing, considering my customer empathy. For this reason, we started our partnership.

When the first goods I ordered from the Haining factory arrived on the scheduled delivery date in Dubai, I was genuinely amazed to find that the products met all of my specific requirements, including quality, material, accessories, size, packaging, and delivery date. In fairness, the quality of the products exceeded my expectations, which enabled me to charge and maintain higher prices for my items. Their professional production skills, quality, and process stability boosted my confidence in continuing to collaborate with Chinese manufacturers in the future.

The urgent issues of product quality were resolved. I gradually realized that most handbag factories in Haining functioned as a bag production base, simply focusing on processing orders for big brands. Unlike the Baigou Market, instead of providing clients with product samples and new designs in marketing, they accepted jobs with samples and materials supplied by clients. Unless my own company designed all of the new types of competitive handbags to meet the increasing consumer market demand for my business, I would continue to struggle in an unfavorable situation. Considering the survival and growth of my handbag company, I had to find my way out to adapt to my needs.

The Third Stage: Innovation, Transformation, and Development

Q: So how did you fight off the challenge?

A: Things did not turn out better until 2009, when I eventually established long-term collaborations in Guangzhou City (广州市) in southern China, where I began to think about the road leading to the sustainability and development of my company. While collaborating with the Haining factories, I noticed that they frequently mentioned a city—Guangzhou City. The repeated mention of the city made me want to visit Guangzhou to explore new markets.

I visited the Guangzhou Baiyun World Leather Trading Centre, which is at the forefront of high fashion worldwide and famous for its middle- and high-product-quality. It is a contemporary, international, large-scale handbag wholesale market with a business area of about 16,000 square meters. To my surprise, the bag designs there were so fashionable, and the materials were so novel that they caught my attention immediately. The market is considered a paradise for bags for numerous customers from all parts of the world. I spent two weeks moving around this market and talking with different suppliers, and I began to consider cooperating with Guangzhou manufacturers. Although my company had been growing little by little over the past four years, my products lacked their own characteristics. After working with Guangzhou manufacturers for a year, I completed the production transformation by creating innovative products in my own company to promote business growth.

Q: What is production transformation, and how did it benefit your company?

A: Production transformation refers to the process of converting materials into finished products with innovative ideas and unique styles. In my first five years, my products mainly focused on general handbags for daily use, and they carried no distinguishing features such as designs, materials, styles, and accessories in the Dubai market.

Although I had to be rational and practical after several years of business experiences in the real-world market, I am the kind of person with a mindset that actively seeks out change and learning rather than waiting to adapt to change. That mindset embraces critical thinking and continuous growth. For example, one day, when I accidentally found a new series of party bags in my business partner’s showrooms, I felt they were amazingly charming. Many trades may think that expansive party bags are usually used at a party, not for daily use. So, they are unwilling to choose it as their wholesale products. Party bags are also rarely seen in the Dubai market. Despite the concerns, I still thought that this could be a great idea for a new business since everybody loves pretty things.

From then on, I spent a lot of time in my showroom listening to customers’ suggestions and comments on party bags concerning size, color, fabrics, etc. Through interpersonal communication, I decided to combine the elements from an exquisite sense of the party bag and some practical functions of handbags. So that it would serve customers well everywhere, from the office cocktail party to everyday life.

By working closely with the Guangzhou factories, I turned my product idea into tangible goods. As expected, the sales of attractive and multifunctional party bags rapidly grew in Dubai. Since my company launched stable-quality, innovative bags, they quickly won a place in the Dubai bag business market. Simultaneously, I began cooperating with some well-known international chain companies, including City Centre Deira, Dubai Mall, Day to Day UAE, and Carrefour S. A., and my business was surprisingly moving forward.

Conclusion

Q: What is your business philosophy if you have one?

A: As a well-known Chinese proverb states, “a thousand-mile journey starts with a single step.” Since success is not an event but a process, in my own case, how to be the best version of myself matters! If I am not happy with who I am today, the best way forward is to start learning and working toward a better version of myself now.

Q: Thank you for sharing. Finally, what is your attitude toward your life?

A: Whether in business or academics, I think my goal is not to create a successful sample but to keep learning and strive to be the best version of myself!

“Number twenty-three. Manhattan and Boulevardier. Thirty seconds,” said the guy who was running that night’s game of Differences.

Bars have always hosted dart leagues, trivia nights, poetry slams, and other events to get people in on a slow night. But this bar hosted a game called Viva La Différence on Mondays at eight. Everybody just called it Differences. You got a sheet of paper with twenty-five lines on it to answer what the difference was between two words that were barked out. You had thirty seconds between the words, and a minute at the end to finalize your answers.

The prizes were small—often just a round or two at the bar, but the payout could go all the way up to a pair of movie tickets. You would think that there’s no possible way that a game which took about a half hour or so to play would draw in people, and keep them in the bar afterwards.

But you would think wrong.

Put this game in a bar on McDougal in the Village, and word nerds from all corners of Manhattan fill it up fast. These people have gigantic (some of them would say Brobdingnagian) vocabularies, and need to prove it. After the game was over, they stuck around for hours to argue etymology, origins, and derivations of the words that were used in that night’s game.

“A Boulevardier has Campari in it, along with the whiskey and sweet vermouth. Put it down,” Janice told me.

I dutifully wrote down the answer on the sheet.

“I still think you’re wrong on number three,” I whispered to her so no one else could hear. “A cuspidor is a type of spittoon, not the other way around.”

“It’s right.”

“Number twenty-four,” the emcee called out. “Midwife and doula. Thirty seconds.”

“I know this one,” I said. “A midwife is medically trained, a doula provides non-medical support and doesn’t deliver the baby.”

“Yep, write it down.”

Janice and I were set up by some mutual friends. We hit it off, and got exclusive in less than two weeks. She was getting her PhD in Linguistics at NYU while working for Harper & Row translating books, and I was doing my thing downtown. This was our fifth time at Differences but we never managed to crack the top five, much to her chagrin.

“Number twenty-five. Graveyard and cemetery.”

Groans came from every player, and mumbles abounded that the last set of words should at least provide some challenge.

— | —

“I’m sorry about the cuspidor answer,” Janice said to me outside the bar. It was the third time she apologized to me.

“We won. You should be excited. What’s to be sorry about? We got twenty-four out of twenty-five.”

“But we could have had a perfect score. And,” she emphasized by holding up her index finger, “more importantly, you’re never going to let me forget that you were right, and I was wrong.” She turned her hand toward me and pointed to my jacket pocket. “I saw you keep the answer sheet. You’re going to show our friends.”

She was right.

“I got an idea on how to make it up to you,” she said as she slipped her left hand into my right and tugged me down McDougal.

“It’s not necessary. We won the big prize—coupons for two hot dogs and two fruit drinks at Gray’s Papaya.” I took the vouchers out of my back pocket and fanned them for effect. “These babies must be worth six bucks.”

But Janice was determined to make it up to me, and laid out a plan.

“First, we’ll go to your place for a quickie. Then you can pack a bag for work tomorrow, and come back home with me for the night. Sound like an idea?”

“Will this quickie involve any manual or oral stimulation?”

She tried really hard to suppress a smile. “You do realize that I can always change my mind.”

I held up my arm. “Taxi!”

— | —

We had our own Gift of the Magi that Christmas. I bought Janice an antique delft spittoon, and she got me a hand-hammered copper cuspidor with a stamp that reads Grands Magasins Du Louvre, Paris.

Come April, they’ll be sitting on our mantel for thirty-five years, bookending that night’s framed scorecard, and our unused coupons.

When I say I can’t remember the day my mother died, what I mean is I can’t remember the date of my mother’s death. The day, I remember. I remember how bleak the sky looked when I finally got out of bed. I remember how quiet everything was. There were no traffic sounds. If you listened closely, you could hear the surf a block away. A lone gull was calling. There didn’t appear to be much of a breeze, unusual for the shore. There was grey light spilling into my bedroom. It was the kind of morning you knew that if you just went back to bed the day would just go on without you and you wouldn’t miss a thing. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had, would anything have changed? I was twelve, what did I know? 

The fact that there was light caused some alarm. I sat up straight, and fast. 

“It shouldn’t be this light,” I thought. “Dad’s gonna kill me. I’m gonna be late for school.” I closed my eyes and laid back down on the bed.

“I should go downstairs and see if he’s okay.” Instead, I laid there and pulled the covers up to my chin. It was warm and cozy in the bed. 

“He’s okay, nothing ever happens to him. Why should I get up if I don’t have to?” I thought. I decided to stay put until my father came up. He always came up to wake me for school. He would be along.

I rolled over, so my back was to the window and pulled the covers up a little bit more. Try as I might, I just couldn’t get back to sleep. Something was not right. It wasn’t the weather as it was always gray and gloomy in October. What could possibly have happened to keep my father from waking me up for school? I remembered the late-night phone call about the same time I heard my father’s footsteps on the stairs. I knew right then what the phone call was about. It took him forever to get to the top. His steps were slow, deliberate, heavy. The walk of a man who had no desire to reach the top. He didn’t have to come up and tell me. We had all been waiting for that call. We waited for that call every time Mom left. Mom had been away this time since July, three months. 

Mom had cancer. We used to tell people she had cancer-of-the-everything; it was easier than running down the list. She was diagnosed with breast cancer about the time I was born but it had spread to most of her body by the time of her passing. She tried to limit her hospital stays to the summer so she would be home during the school year, and we could bounce around between her sisters’ during the summer. In those days, children were not allowed in hospitals unless they were patients. Only once did we get to visit her there. Dad received special permission to bring us. I learned, years later, that it was thought Mom was not going to live through the week. 

I was about seven at the time. I remember the halls as long, white tunnels, lined with windowless doors. The air smelled of disinfectant and sickness. Unseen people could be heard moaning, crying, coughing, whispering. We passed people stumbling down the hall on crutches or being pushed in wheelchairs or beds. Conversations were hushed. It seemed like we walked down miles of hallways. You would get to the end of one, turn, walk some more. It took forever. 

Finally, we stopped at a door just like all the others we had passed. We were told to wait in the hall while Dad went into the room. I remember standing there, afraid to move, holding Bruce’s hand tight, and waiting. Eventually the door opened, and Dad told us to come in. The room was white, like the halls. The bed was just inside the door facing a wall with a window so Mom could look out. Next to the bed was a small table with a box of tissues and some wilted flowers in a vase. Mom’s head was turned towards the door, and we could see her smiling at us as we entered. Her smile filled the room. It had been some time since my brother and I had seen her. As a result, much to six-year-old Bruce’s chagrin, there was much hugging and kissing. All the while Dad stood in the background, a silent sentinel, watching. Today, looking back on this day, I don’t remember if he was smiling.

Everything seemed to be going well when suddenly Dad rushed us out of the room. Telling us again to wait in the hall, he quickly shut the door behind us. A nurse rushed past us into the room moments later. After some time had passed, Dad returned saying that Mom was tired from the visit, and we would have to leave. Once again, we traversed the labyrinth of white hallways back to the entrance and outside. At some point along the sidewalk, Dad stopped and pointed towards the building.

“Look up there,” he said. “Mommy is waiting to wave to you. You can see her, can’t you? There, on the third floor.” 

I never asked Bruce, but I didn’t see her. I just held onto Bruce with one hand and waved with the other. That seems like such a long time ago. So many things have happened since then. Mom came home and left, and came home and left so many times that it had just become part of our routine. How could we have known that this trip in July would be the last? 

I laid in my bed, covers pulled up almost over my head, facing the wall. I listened to Dad’s slow ascent. Part of me wanted to start crying, part of me desperately wanted to go back to sleep. Then, suddenly, I wanted him to get to the top. I wanted him to tap lightly on the door before opening it as he always did. I wanted this day to start, so it would end. I wanted everything to be normal again because I knew that everything was about to change. The anticipated rap on the door finally came followed by the door slowly opening and Dad stepping into the room. 

“Bobby, honey, wake up. I have something to tell you.” 

He spoke almost in a whisper. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought I heard fear in his voice. I rolled over to face him. He was bent, looking mostly at the floor, or maybe at his feet, or maybe some place a million miles away from there. He looked defeated. I had never seen him look like this before. He walked over and sat on the edge of my bed. Suddenly, I was scared. This could be worse than I thought.

“I suppose you heard the phone last night.”

There was a long pause. I wasn’t sure if this was a rhetorical question, or some sort of statement of fact. I didn’t say anything. 

“It was the hospital.” 

His voice was quieter than before. It was as if he was talking to himself, like I was not even there. 

“Your mother died last night.” 

There it was. The words I was always waiting to hear. Every time Mom left I expected to hear them. Now, here they were, and I didn’t know what to do. Should I say something? Should I tell my father I was sorry for his loss? That is what you say to someone, but I had just lost someone too. Should I hug my father, should I cry? I thought I should do something. Instead, I did nothing. I laid in my bed with the covers pulled up to my chin and did nothing. He didn’t say anything else, he just sat there. He wasn’t looking at me. After a few minutes he got up, turned, and walked to the door. He quietly closed the door behind him and went back down the stairs. 

I continued to lay there, thoughts jumbling in my mind. Someone should tell Bruce, I thought. I wondered if he had heard the phone. I wondered if he was lying in bed, pretending to be asleep just like me. I decided to let him sleep; it was not like the news was going to change. 

I don’t know how long it was before he wandered across the hall to my room and entered without a knock, as usual. 

“How come Dad never woke me up? Isn’t there school today?” He wanted to know. 

He was only ten at the time. With Mom being away so much and Dad working all the time, he frequently came to me for reassurance. Now I had to tell him that his mother was dead. 

“Sit down, we need to talk,” I said to him. I could see he was getting nervous. 

“Mom died last night.”

He just sat there, staring, saying nothing. At first, I wasn’t sure he had heard me. Even though we both knew it was going to happen, the finality was difficult to deal with. I felt so bad for him. I didn’t know what else to say so I told him everything would be alright. Eventually he got up and shuffled back to his room. He didn’t say anything to me, or anyone else, for the rest of the day. 

We had all known this day was coming, but now, suddenly, here it was. The three of us, in separate rooms, trying to cope with our new reality. Nothing had changed, but everything had changed. Mom wasn’t here yesterday, but she was somewhere. Today she wasn’t anywhere, yet she was everywhere. A phone call we had all been waiting for, yet were totally unprepared for. One short phone call changed all of our lives forever.

As a child I frequently spent my summer days in the backyard crouched above whatever ant colony had the misfortune of taking up residence in my path. I was like a small god deciding what chaos to inflict upon these tiny creatures with a flick of my chubby fingers.

On one occasion, I tipped my can of Coke over to create a biblical flood of bubbly proportions that blocked the path of foraging ants leaving their nest. I watched as ant after ant followed one another in a mindless conga line toward the caffeinated chaos. Their motions would grow erratic, tiny feet and antennae thrashing in confusion and fear. “What do we do? Danger! How do we get home now? Ah!” Eventually, one of them would be tempted by the sugary scents emanating from the drink and would try to sneak a taste––only to be swept away in the current. I would watch in quiet observation as that ant would be followed by the one behind it and the next and the next, all falling to temptation and making the same deadly mistake. Mindlessly they marched to do their doom.

I was endlessly fascinated by these tiny creatures and how they seemed to lack minds of their own. Where one ant marched the rest would follow because they didn’t know any better. It made them easy to manipulate and play whatever game I had in mind for them that day––it wasn’t always a Coke flood.

Once I dropped a massive slimy earthworm right at the entrance of their nest and watched as ants streamed out after one another to attack it. The worm had no chance as the ants swarmed and gnashed their imperceptible jaws against its soft flesh. They attacked like a mindless mob, fighting in unison and covering the writhing worm until it was nearly invisible beneath the mass of murderous ants. The attack only ceased when the worm grew still. The ants gradually dispersed with some remaining behind to carry their deceased foe into the nest. The next order was given to the mindless numbers and, as a unit, whatever ants remained hauled the worm’s fat body through the entrance of the nest. I imagined the ants having some great feast somewhere deep in their underground tunnels. Or maybe they would feed it to their queen. Whatever the case, they soon enough returned to their regularly scheduled duties. A new ant trail had already begun to trickle out of the nest, each ant steadily pattering after the last.

My strangest encounter with the ants had nothing to do with my divine intervention at all. There was one particularly windy day––my mother hadn’t let me outside for fear of a tree limb or something falling and squashing me––and when the sun rose the next day the backyard was a complete mess of strewn leaves and debris. The scent of an oncoming storm hung in the air on that overcast day. But, oblivious to the looming danger, I bumbled toward the most recent ant nest I had discovered.

Even from a distance I could see something strange: a dark circle on the ground some distance from the nest like a shadow cast from some invisible source. The closer I curiously came to the shape the more obvious it became that it wasn’t a shadow. It was alive, pulsating––no, swirling in a strange rhythm. A mass that rippled with mindless motion. I crouched closer, and to my surprise, the strange shape was composed entirely of ants following one another. Frantically, each ant chased after the ant in front of it forming a circular donut of doom running to nowhere.

I was mesmerized by their misfortune. Every so often an ant would stop in its tracks, exhausted or maybe dead, only to be trampled by the ants behind it. Sometimes an ant would stray a little further away from the circle, antennae searching wildly for a way out, only to return to their spiraling suffering. In their hivemind unity they were running themselves into oblivion. They knew no better than to follow one another into destruction.

After some time, I grew unnerved watching the ants kill themselves––somehow different than my own destruction of their kind. Frightened, I fled back inside to seek the guidance of my mother.

“There’s nothing you can do,” she told me, turning away just slightly from the television, “they don’t know any better.”

She was telling me something I already knew.

“They lost their little pheromone trail back to their nest or whatever,” my father chimed in, “it’s called an ant circle––no, spiral, that’s it. Ant death spiral. Won’t be long now before they all keel over.”

He leaned back in his recliner, not even turning as he addressed me. He only briefly looked away from the TV when my mother gave him a slap on the arm.

As my mother chastised my father for talking so callously to me, it was my turn to look at the TV and see what I was interrupting. Someone was speaking at a podium out to a crowd of people wearing some variation of red, white, and blue. From the high angle of the camera as it panned toward the people attending, they looked less like individuals and more like one large moving mass. As they hung on the words of the man at the podium, the crowd cheered and rippled like a wave.

I’m not crazy. Before I tell you people anything I need you to know that what I saw was real. It was not a trick of the light, sleep deprived mistake, or hallucination. And what happened was not my fault. I don’t belong in this hospital for insane freaks—I have a PhD, damn you! But I’m sure this is not helping my case. I know that I could make up what you want to hear and be discharged any day now, but someone needs to believe me because every single person on this forsaken rock of a planet will suffer if you don’t. This is not a psychiatric evaluation; this is my plea for you to listen.

I started working at the Yerkes Observatory when I was forty-five in the year 2000. The University of Chicago employed me as a professor for their astrophysics program and gave me free reign to use the telescope to conduct my own research. I liked the sound of Professor Adam Gardner and having access to technology like this was really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So needless to say, I quite liked the position, which is why I assure you I would never do something that would jeopardize my standing within the academic community.

I was in my fifth year of working at the observatory when things started to take a turn for the worse. I didn’t have any classes that night but I had come in to continue work of my own. The building was empty and silent as the grave, so much that I could hear the steady hum of the fluorescent lights as they switched on. The interior was a sterile white from ceiling to walls and the light’s reflection off them overwhelmed the senses. The floors were the same as those wiry brown carpets that you find in every cheap office building. I suppose the equipment in this building left little budget for interior design. I walked past the rows of vacant desks where most of my students sat during lectures while the rest slept through them.

I entered the adjoining observation building, comparatively a much nicer space with a nearly rustic feel owing to a large portion of the original brickwork remaining untouched. This was contrasted by the centerpiece of the observatory, the telescope, which was a product of only the latest and most-expensive technology scholars such as myself had to offer. My research revolved around stars, more specifically how their intense gravity warps light. It always felt strangely mystical when you looked through those lenses. It puts me in mind of that quote, Nietzsche I think, “If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” Maybe that’s a little dramatic, but it’s only my life’s work.

I had been focusing on a star named Rigel for a few weeks at the time. It’s the brightest star in the Orion constellation and rather large, making it the perfect candidate for my studies. Through the telescope, the star looked different, leaving me perplexed because stars don’t just randomly warp in a matter of days. I looked closer, discovering that it wasn’t the star itself that had changed but its light, as if something was blocking it, like sticking your hand in front of a flashlight. It was undeniable that something was obstructing one of the largest stars in the sky! I fumbled with my notebooks, rushing to document what I was seeing. By the time I looked back it had moved. Lo and behold, whatever this was slowly swayed side to side. Rigel was still just a speck even with the telescope and I watched as it flickered on and off.

Anxious tension settled in my chest while I tried to explain away what I was seeing. An asteroid belt? A rogue planet? An alien organism even crossed my mind. I went through every procedure to ensure that the lens was clean and accurate. All the while I kept glancing over my shoulder expecting someone to be there. I felt as if I was being watched. I felt invisible eyes boring into me from every corner of the room. Hell, I even glanced up at the ceiling because I swear to God that I thought something was there, and I became more entranced with this thing in the abyss of space.

I watched it until the sun crested the horizon and the pitch-darkness of night lit into the radiance of day. Though the night had faded, my nerves had not. Of course, I had just spent an entire night without sleep so I had thought of it as nothing more than a trick of the mind. I rubbed my eyes and hastily collected my things. Making my way out of the observatory, I encountered my teaching assistant, Evan. He was a short young man with long blonde hair and a knack for dressing just a little too formal for every class. In general, I liked him. He was smart, helpful, and not much mattered beyond that. His face contorted from confusion to concern in a way that made me keenly aware of how disheveled I must have appeared.

“Professor, are you alright? I won’t sugar coat it––your hair’s a bird nest,” Evan asked me like I was a crazy person. But allow me to reiterate––I am not crazy.

I answered with no small amount of pride and fervor, “Evan, I may have just made the biggest scientific discovery in mankind’s history, and I assure you it’s worth the bird’s nest.”

“Alright then,” Evan’s face lightened into an expression of curiosity, “well, um, maybe go take a nap and then come tell me about it.”

I laughed and I admit I probably sounded deranged. “You’ll see it in the news first!”

I walked out the door into the glaring morning light with a grin on my face. My excitement-fueled burst of energy did not last. The drive home was a struggle to stay awake and even the company of the bustling traffic did not stop the sensation that something was in my back seat boring its gaze through my skull. There was nothing when I looked into the mirror to check, so I did my best to simply ignore the feeling against my better judgement. By the time I pulled into my driveway the fear was overbearing as if I was being hunted. I had to consciously remind myself to breathe—my body would not allow it otherwise.

My home was nearly indistinguishable from my office. Both were littered with papers, old space memorabilia, and framed newspaper clippings of my own achievements, which paled in comparison to what I witnessed on that night. My bedroom, like the rest of my house and by extension my office, was barely fit for human habitation as it had become something of a secondary dwelling in favor of the observatory. Despite this, I laid down and gave my best attempt at sleep. I don’t know at what point I finally drifted off, but it felt as if it had been a long time of restless shifting and shuffling.

I suppose that’s not important. Not compared to what came next. 

I found myself in a particularly lucid dream. I felt unusually aware of this fact and of my surroundings. I was standing on a thin precipice of polished gray stone only about two shoulder lengths across at the peak. Only about a hundred yards in front of me was a magnificent and colossal star that shone bright blue light into the black abyss that surrounded me. The star before me was Rigel and I nearly wept before its glory. Had that been the only thing, I might’ve enjoyed this, but I was not so fortunate.

Soon enough, I felt a tremor rise though my thin stone platform as a shape rose from the chasm below. An arm, human-like, shot up from the depths and knocked me from my feet with the force of its movement. I just barely caught myself from slipping as the arm extended to blot out Rigel’s light. My heart sank in my chest as I watched it sway as if to wave at me, and I soon realized what I saw through the telescope. The impossibly-large figure continued its ascent upwards until before me was a humanoid silhouette. What I can only assume was its skin looked darker than the void and rippled like liquid. It was neither muscular nor gaunt and its neck lolled limply to the left. The head was featureless, bald, and devoid of all extremities. I was caught in a fit of hyperventilation, hoping for the moment when I would shoot up screaming in my bed, but the moment never came.

“I see you, Doctor,” the thing spoke in a thousand voices at once like an entire crowd coaxed into speaking in unison. The sound came not from the creature but from inside my own head as if my thoughts had run a mutiny against me.

My mind rang out in the pain of a thousand migraines, and I screamed out in vain, “Go away!”

“I watch you, Doctor.” A thousand voices rang out through my mind again at the whims of this… this thing.

I steeled enough bravery to ask, “What are you?”

I braced for its answer but it hardly did anything as the voices replied, “ I am The Watcher, Doctor…”

Some will, other than my own, compelled me to look up and to open my eyes. The head still hung limp to the side but it slowly opened its right and only eye. A perfectly-round and infinitely-bright eye with but a speck of black for a pupil. Staring into it, my mind was thrown into disarray, and within a fraction of a second I had been torn apart and put back together a thousand times without so much as a scratch on my body.

“…And I am watching you,” The creature spoke once more and I forced my head down again.

Though it seemed wildly out of place, I found my worn red stapler resting beside me. Without hesitation, I threw the clunky metal mass into the gaping eye before me. It collided, or I assume it did, because I woke in my bed with sweat soaking my shirt. I frantically looked around and noticed a small speck of blood on my pillow.

I drew every curtain, barricaded every door and I even stacked chairs high enough to cover the skylight in my living room. However, it did absolutely nothing to numb my fear and the feeling that I was under constant observation. Knowing that this thing, The Watcher or so it called itself, was out there with its eye fixed on me was greater than I could bear. Every time I shut my eyes to blink, I saw its figure and I was consumed by the thought that when I opened them again, I would be back on that infernal pillar staring at my doom, right in the eye. I couldn’t bear to leave my house and every time I so much as approached my door, I could feel The Watcher’s eye staring through me, my heart nearly seized in panic. I’m aware of how this makes me sound and that paranoia is a symptom of severe mental illness, but what I saw was real. I didn’t understand any of this and this is the reaction of a perfectly normal mind in totally insane circumstances! If you try to tell me you wouldn’t act the same, you are a dirty liar.

I didn’t do…much of anything for several weeks. Although The Watcher’s gaze was ever present, it did alleviate slightly around the fifth day and I was able to sleep with only normal nightmares to torment me. I had thought that maybe it had gotten whatever it wanted from me or perhaps I had become too boring to continuously observe. Either way, I had almost considered returning to work one day when I received a call informing me that if I didn’t show for my class tomorrow, I’d be out of a job. That is to say I didn’t have much of a choice regarding the events that followed.

When the day came to return to work, I found readjusting to normal life surprisingly easy, and The Watcher’s gaze didn’t cause me nearly as much discomfort as it did earlier. I hesitated to even admit it to myself, but I was feeling good. I stepped out into the morning sun feeling confident that I may finally be free of The Watcher. I got in my car and drove to work with the only thing to dread being how to make up for my class’s lost time. When I arrived, Evan was already preparing for the class. I quickly organized my notes and took note of the heavy red stapler that sat on my desk. I moved it a little bit closer to me just to be safe. We exchanged uneasy greetings; he was particularly concerned about my wellbeing, but I put on a good show of confidence.

The class proceeded as if nothing had happened. I apologized for my absence and resumed where we had left off. Just my luck that we happened to be covering stars. Maybe things would have turned out differently if we had just been a little further ahead. The migraines started when I had Evan start up the noisy projector and images of stars were illuminated on the wall behind me. As soon as the lights went off, I felt my hair stand up on the back of my neck and I started to sweat profusely under the stress. But what overshadowed it all was the paranoia. I was being watched. No longer just a feeling, I could swear The Watcher was in the room with me.

The final straw came when Evan changed the slide. Behind me now was a telescope image of Rigel with its blue light reflecting off the walls in a blinding glow. My mind erupted into a violent maelstrom of searing pain. I collapsed and pressed my eyes to shut it out. Suddenly, it was not the dingy brown carpet I felt on my skin but smooth, cold, alabaster stone. I willed my eyes to open and awoke in the same scene as my dream. Standing on a precipice of stone in front of the Rigel. I felt defeated tears run down my face when the abyssal arm reached out and blocked the stars’ light. I thought I was done, I thought I was free, and yet here I was in my own personal hell.

“I see you, Doctor,” The Watcher told me with its blank face in its thousand voices.

I only screamed in response to try and drown it out. I yelled until my voice gave out and I tasted blood from my throat.

“I watch you, Doctor,” That monstrosity repeated as I saw its single eye painstakingly peel itself open.

History repeated itself. My mind fractured into a thousand pieces under the psychic pressure of that alien horror. I recalled the previous dream and desperately searched for anything that could free me from its grasp. Through the agony, I found the stapler and rose to my feet. The watery skin was mere inches away from me and its colossal eye gazed through my soul. I slammed the heavy metal chunk of office supply into the eye again and again in futile fury. I don’t know how long I did that for, but it was all I could do.

“I will be watching, Doctor.” The thing spoke again. But its tone was different. It was…satisfied?

I blinked in surprise as I was released from the nightmare. I found myself in the classroom clutching the stapler standing over Evan, my hands and shirt drenched in blood. Evan was a gory mess laying still on the now-red carpet. Screaming students charged into the hall while I stood there in shock. I didn’t resist when the police came, and I said nothing to their inquiries. Weeks later, I stood trial in court for the second-degree murder of Evan Pierce. Pleading insanity was all I could do to avoid a life sentence. At least that way I stood a chance. I want to clarify some things. I am not a murderer. I am not insane and I do not belong here. Most importantly you have to believe me. You do, don’t you? Somebody has to. I can’t bear to live knowing that there’s something out there watching my every move. I am not crazy. I am forsaken.

I was severely dehydrated and in need of a real meal. I was living on apples I stole from the dining hall weeks beforehand and cookies I took impulsively from the dorm common rooms when I was overwhelmingly hungry. I didn’t want to let myself binge on the treats, but when my stomach was talking, it was hard to control, which is still an issue that haunts me. I was dehydrated because my dorm did not have a water fountain and I was not going to drink lukewarm water to quench my thirst. The only beverage I was consuming was black coffee from the coffee maker I had in my dorm room. I used Starbucks Sumatra with the bathroom tap water because it was going to boil anyway. I wasn’t living in poverty or hiding out, I just did not want to be seen by fellow students outside the classroom. They weren’t cruel; they were quite kind, but there was nothing beyond that. I wanted more than just small talk with people and that layer had yet to be discovered in my two-month-stay thus far. I hated small talk, I never had anything to say. The weather was cold and the dining hall food was terrible, what more could I say to people I barely knew?

Due to my mission of avoidance, I woke and worked at odd hours to still produce decent grades. I was up by 5 AM but went to sleep at 6 PM. After sleeping until midnight, I would do my homework and watch psychological thriller movies until I was too tired to keep my eyes open. The only interaction I had for almost twelve hours was with the housekeeper for my floor while I went to get tap water for my coffee. These hours were strict and I almost never saw any people on my floor.

After finishing homework from the night before, I prepared for my one cigarette a day and walked towards the town center. The town center consisted of office buildings, a hair salon, the college bookstore, some restaurants, a coffee shop, a tower movie theater, and a deli that I frequented to steal zero-calorie, flavored drinks. There was a tiny gazebo in front of the college bookstore where I hid in front of while facing the intersection across the street. As a result of hibernation, I would think the whole town was judging me for smoking a cigarette, but not a single person was looking my way. Facing the bookstore from the gazebo, Sufjan Stevens echoed through my wired earbuds. I pretended the music was uplifting. I have never liked upbeat and optimistic music. However, I have been told that constantly listening to sad music will just make me more depressed. I suppose I wanted to hate my life. I convinced myself that Sufjan Stevens’ album A Beginner’s Mind was an ode to my joyfulness. There I was, sitting on my knees, smoking a Marlboro Red, listening to “Olympus” by the king of darkness. 

Everyday was the same. For two weeks that semester I had been severely ill, hardly leaving my bed for four days. I sat in my room watching Black Swan on repeat while attempting to breathe through inflamed airways. In a strange way, I was grateful for that illness because I had an excuse for not leaving my room. I didn’t have to make a fake excuse to the people I barely knew that asked to hang out on social media. I hated Instagram and Snapchat for these reasons and wound up deleting them a few days into my forced seclusion that fall semester.

When I started to recover from the cold, I set out in search of ways to occupy myself. Having a cold that severe distracts me from any thoughts of the outside world and I have the ability to just sleep my pain away. I started seeing movies alone in the town center. For two hours I could at least try to think about something else. I saw French Dispatch by Wes Anderson five times.

My dehydration was catching up with me and I felt dizzy getting up from my bed, so I tried to avoid going to the bathroom as much as possible. I took a bite from a mushy apple on top of my desk and thought about texting my friend from home. I decided against it because she had asked for distance and I am too afraid of being a burden to people. The downfall of our friendship was an issue on my part since I hated being alive and she did not know how to help me anymore. I figured she was tired of my bullshit and moved on a long time beforehand. I knew she was done with our friendship but I still felt like there was some aspect to attach myself to. As much as I try not to believe in hope, I fall for its lies every time. Still a part of me believes we will be friends again one day, but then again, I don’t see an end to my unhappiness.

The disintegrating apple seemed to be enough for my limbs to hold me up for the morning. It was the most dreaded time of the semester: friends and family weekend. I had asked my family in passing to come; however I assumed the journey to be too arduous and would rather pass on the complaints from my siblings and father. Instead of joining in the festivities of the weekend, I decided my time would be best spent away from campus. I looked up the bus schedules from East Hastings to Southaven, scanning my screen for the most immediate escape. It was 10:21 AM, the nearest bus was already eight minutes away, so I threw on my Blundstones and left my dorm room with the television and fan on. As usual, the tennis channel was playing since there was 24-hour coverage of matches all over the world. I grabbed my busted, eight-year-old mucus green backpack from the corner, disregarding the fact that I should have emptied it from the day before of all of the books I had stolen from the library. I locked the door behind me and retreated from the hidden staircase at the end of the hallway in a sneaky rush. Locking my door became a habit after one of the other students on my floor began entering my room while I was not there to leave her food in my fridge. Most of my efforts in seclusion could be chalked right up to my fear of confrontation with this fellow student. I did not see her for the rest of the semester after she attempted several times to knock on my door while I pretended to be asleep.

After exiting the hidden staircase to the hilly landscape of East Hastings, I walked with the utmost intent of avoidance to the closest bus station. The station was simply a sign on the side of the road with no sidewalk attached, in between the brutalist architectural education building and the colossal structure of the biology labs. It was 10:26 AM. I had three minutes to spare, maybe more since the bus could almost be guaranteed to be late everyday.

Inside my pocket, I pulled out my wired earbuds and plugged them into my phone to lay a soundtrack to my day. I began to play a playlist, appropriately named after my favorite poem. The poem, written by my favorite poet, had been the reason I applied to the school I was at in the first place. There had to be a reason for the poet’s greatness and I was in search of it.

The bus had arrived one minute late full of international students on their way to Tinder dates and study sessions. I sat down at the nearest open seat to avoid interaction with anyone else. After passing the other stops on campus, the bus was on its way to the next college eight miles away. Watching the landscape of the rural countryside fade into suburban homes, I longed for any outlet to saltwater. There were vast expanses of dirt road and dairy farms but no sign of a sandy oasis in sight. The bus rode over potholes and shrank through the narrow, curvy roads into wooded sections and out through brown fields. Then there it was. The Connecticut River prevailed through the battle of push and pull on the hilly terrain and the bus drove over the body of water. As much as I wanted to feel the comfort of the Connecticut River flood into me, I couldn’t. There was nothing stopping me from enjoying the view, but there was a lack of ease. The river was still unknown to me, we had not grown together over time. I had only just met her and she was freshwater.

This was typically how my experience on the bus would go, shuffling in between the same songs and blending into the world outside the windows. When the bus arrived in Southaven, I got off at the first stop, knowing well that I still had a ten minute walk into the shopping center of the town. I figured I needed to get some more walking in to justify the apple I had before.

I had no plan or agenda, just a need to escape. I walked past several middle-aged women’s clothing stores and quirky cafes that offered the same drink options as most cafes. Once I reached the center of Southaven, marked by an old courthouse building turned into an Urban Outfitters, I made my way towards the first used bookstore in my path. The bookstore was off a downward sidewalk. Outside the storefront a bargain cart was unattended, and inside books were piled high from floor to ceiling. There was a singular table of new books that I scanned but lost interest in once I found nothing eye-catching. I became disinterested quickly, as if I could no longer form meanings in relation to words. These books stared me down from every vertical and horizontal surface, begging me to express any desire to move within them. I felt myself split in half, but the conscious part of my brain could not mend the gap. The other part of myself was trying desperately to unite again, to see those objects beyond their structure of phrases. But this side of me was submerged in carelessness, gasping for air and losing sight of their purpose as she could not convince the dominant part. There was no reason to grasp for straws when the opposing side had no interest in the argument being made. To comprehend those objects would mean to understand the value for me. My dominant part that smothered its counterpart to a lonely death had no significant attachment to the objects stacked from floor to ceiling.

Suddenly, a shattering sound ruptured my thoughts. I saw a wound bubbling with blood on the inside of my forearm. The rush of physical pain enthralled me and I searched for the culprit. As I raised my eyes from my arm to the broken glass that seemed to be radiating around me, I saw, just outside the storefront window, a figure in rags, bare feet invaded by the cracked skin of old age and hard wear. The figure was an older white man in tears. He dropped the rock of an attempted second hit and fell to his knees, dragging the cart of sale books down with him. 

His tears were those of exhaustion, without real reason. “I have nothing” he seemed to be murmuring behind the cascade of warped reflections. I stared at him as the chaos ensued around me. Employees calling the cops, customers running to the exit but avoiding any possibility of eye contact with the man, and people trying to keep away from the broken glass as if a physical wound would have damaged them more.

I kept staring. 

No part of me tried to understand why. What was stopping me from throwing the rock back at him, putting him out of his misery? Part of me wanted to drown this man as well, not maliciously, but as a favor. The blood began to tickle as it dribbled down my arm and onto the ground. The warm feeling of the fluid turned as cold as the New England breeze coming through the debris.

I wasn’t trying to understand the homeless man because I understood all too well.

What I couldn’t understand was why I felt nothing.