* — May 29, 2021
Projection

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Jackie’s vagina projects films. All you need is a white sheet or screen. She discovers this as a teen and she and her two only friends set up on weekend nights and laugh to Groucho Marx or The Three Stooges because it is old school and not because they find it funny. Old things are funny because none of us are the same anymore.

She isn’t sure how her vagina choses the films, but it seems completely out of her hands. While lying back, she clenches her fists and stretches her fingertips in hopes of having some sway over her private parts, but they have a mind of their own. It/she/the/her vagina, has a mind of her/its own.

Jackie often falls asleep, as it hurts her neck to crane to the right angle to indulge in the movies. Her friends laugh and laugh, and at first offer a pillow, but then just fall entranced into whatever they are watching.

In college, this anatomical anomaly wins all the icebreaker games. Jackie uses it to get friends, which is not intentional, but Jackie does not mind. She has so many friends. It is so unlike high school and so she revels in it. Smiling wide, saying yes, she’d love to come to their party, when most of the time she would rather order pizza in and watch Fleabag, something her vagina cannot do.

She is invited to all the frat houses. She doesn’t even have to remove her shirt. There they watch movies based on comics – super-heroes and mutants. It is loud, all that bashing and smashing and explosions. Jackie is the coolest, they say. High-five her when they see her on campus.

They forever pester her legs wide for their entertainment.

One night in the hallway of the dorm, under a broken light, the gray carpet rough under her feet, she is stopped. A band she likes is playing at the Union that night. She had told her friends she would see them there. But instead she is in the quiet dorm watching shadows on the skin of her hands change as the figure in front of her looms, sways.

“We want to watch a movie.” There is a paperback copy of Twilight against the wall. Someone has lost their entertainment. She will take it, she thinks, and indulge in some tawdry supernatural romance. Maybe ditch the show at the Union.

“Not tonight,” she says, noticing that it is not just one guy, but several, in a procession in the narrow hallway. They all look the same. A repeating sequence.

“Don’t be a party pooper.”

“Rent one. I’m sure one of you has Netflix,” she says.

“It’s not the same.”

“Bullshit.” She stares at the apple on the Twilight cover.

“Nah,” they say. Grab her body, shove her into the elevator, carry her out the front door and tell the dorm guard she’s wasted. They laugh and the guard laughs and it seems everyone is having a great time.

They tighten their grip as they relay Jackie down the street, passing her from one guy to another. They smell of musk and beer and sing Call Me Maybe. She had loved that song when she was younger and it sounded all wrong out of their sour mouths. She wants to yell out, wants to say help and stop and all the things she had been told to say but how can she say these things if they don’t speak the same language?

Instead, she says “hey guys, so what are we gonna watch?” And they loosen their sweaty-fingered vises, but do not let go.

In the frat house, they tie her down, and as she squirms, the film wobbles as if a sheet is being shaken out, perhaps by a woman who had done the washing and is now folding the clean and lilac scented sheets.

The movie is a comedy. Here is the synopsis: A man bumbles through dating, at once romancing a woman and then talking to his buddies about how frigid she is in bed. In the end, he buys her flowers, she bats her very long eyelashes, and a montage of wedding photos ensue.

Jackie’s head hurts and the boys are pounding red cups. Except they are not boys but men in boys’ costume. She tries to parse French conjugations as they watch.

je suis

tu es

il/elle est

nous sommes

vous êtes

ils/elles sont

Jackie changes verbs.

je prends

tu prends

il/elle prend

nous prenons

vous prenez

ils/elles prennent

Everyone in the room erupts into seething laughter. She changes again.

je donne

tu donnes

il/elle donne

nous donnons

vous donnez

ils/elles donnent

She gives up and her heart sends herself up near the ceiling. She refuses to look down upon her prone body. They used to smoke here, she thinks, a faded khaki ring on the wall eight feet up. A light fixture with four out of five bulbs burnt out. Cobwebs like ladies’ hosiery are draped on the crystal pendants, dull with dust. It must’ve been pretty once. She flicks a finger at one of the drops, wanting to make music, but this version of herself is insubstantial, powerless.

The movie ends. In the middle of the credits, there is one more scene. Two toddlers, diaper-less with marker Jackson Pollacked on their bodies, run around while the man drinks beer with his friends and they laugh and laugh and laugh. The woman is nowhere to be seen.

Jackie whispers, Je vais.

The boys sit back and pop open another can of beer. The smell of yeast and sweat fills Jackie’s nostrils. She clenches her eyes and her fists and her kegels and the credits of the film sputter like an old-fashioned projector, used up, spent. Groans. Swears. Go, you are useless now, they say, squeezing the empty cans in their greasy fists.

Outside in the air, she hurries away from the frat house, a little sore, alone. The smell in the air is the wet soil smell of rain – petrichor. The smell of life and earthworms and tree bark. Three blocks away, the rain begins as a mist. Four blocks away it escalates to a fat cleansing deluge. Eight blocks away, she realizes she isn’t walking toward her dorm. Ten blocks away she thinks to check her phone, if there are messages from her friends. Realizes the phone is back in her dorm room. Twelve blocks away she decides she’s just going to keep on walking, see where she ends up.
 

Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 9. View full issue & more.
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Jennifer Fliss (she/her) is a Seattle-based writer whose writing has appeared in F(r)iction, The Rumpus, The Washington Post, and elsewhere, including the 2019 Best Short Fiction anthology. She can be found on Twitter at @writesforlife or via her website, www.jenniferflisscreative.com.