What brought me to Jannie’s house in the first place was Pete, her former husband, who also happened to be mine. When I heard through the gossip chain that Jannie had moved not only to the same state where I lived—but the same underexposed city—I knew that I would pry on the most well-behaved sweater I owned and blowout my hair and find her. I’d only seen photographs from my internet searches of her name. I’d never even entertained thoughts of meeting her, let alone any other selfie woman who had a sponsored face. When Pete stood limply in our kitchen and announced to me that he was in love with someone else—with the famed selfie woman of Safari Balm and Planetary Motors—we haven’t shared a cocktail or a real conversation since. I abandoned our marriage so quickly I forgot even to start a gossip chain about where I was going. But being forgotten was worth that I’d never run into Pete spanking Jannie over the kitchen table like he’d started doing nightly in my dreams.
I couldn’t have known she’d be so alluring and symmetrical in person. The way I’d stood on people’s porches my whole life and knocked and tried to act like I wasn’t fretfully waiting did not prepare me in the slightest to stand on Jannie’s porch that day and knock. If she recognized me from photos Pete must’ve kept in some cardboard box or chest, she didn’t say. She only invited me in like anyone with her aversion to sunlight would. I’d heard rumors about how selfie women had to over-care for their skin—how they couldn’t risk damaging what gave them such power. I suppose it was the only rumor that was true, though. Nothing else about her seemed to match what I’d been told.
“I suppose you want to photograph me,” was the first thing she said. Jannie waved her arm toward a white couch and told me to sit. I waited dizzily for her to return, repeatedly rolling my shoulders in a backward motion to act like I wasn’t nervous. The motion probably made me look like I was some kind of amateur swimmer or baton twirler warming up—and Jannie was probably watching me through some peephole wondering what I might do next. She reappeared with two empty coffee mugs and set them on the room’s table. I followed her lead and pretended to drink, until before long I could almost feel what wasn’t there. Something damp or watery seemed to be gliding down my throat. I closed my eyes and didn’t see any memory or any former husband who I didn’t want to remember. I felt nourished.
“We can use your phone if you want.” Jannie slid closer to me on the couch and leaned her head toward mine. Her hair was flat as a diving board and not at all teased into an eighties safari-tourist mashup like the gossip chain had said. Only when I realized she was more or less regular did I nearly lose the stamina to go through with it. And would Jannie know that I’d never taken a selfie before? Would my inexperience be obvious? I set down my coffee mug, knowing it was an amateur move to unburden one’s hands. I held my phone at what seemed like the proper angle and opened the camera. I had read that the button would be obvious—the one that turns your phone into a mirror. But when I didn’t immediately see it, I knew I’d have to back out or stall. I turned to Jannie and asked if this happened to her often.
“There’s a coward in all of us,” she replied.
Jannie didn’t turn to me when she spoke, simply kept her gaze fixed on my phone as if waiting to look at herself was a virtue she often practiced.
“You’re actually ending a dry spell for me. I’ve just resurrected into my fourth life.”
Then, as if she suddenly understood who I was and what I actually wanted, Jannie did look at me. “Are you?” she said. “Are you here to resurrect too?”
I wanted to undress her. She would’ve been so marvelous to touch in that moment, but also to continually touch in many future moments. Even if she was a selfie woman—the very kind of woman I’d for years avoided and abhorred—there was something so transparent in her essence that made me want to do more than photograph her. The very way Jannie waited to see herself in my phone made me burn hotter. I still wasn’t sure what she knew of me.
And even worse—when your planets aren’t aligned or you aren’t in your right life—sometimes the mouth doesn’t do what you want of it. “I’m so sorry,” I found myself saying, “but I can’t go through with this. Maybe some other time. I just can’t selfie right now. I’m sorry.” I didn’t even close the camera on my phone. I stood up quickly to dispel the warm glow of Jannie’s head leaning into my own. “I can still pay,” I said. And before she could stop me, I stuffed a handful of bills into my empty coffee mug and left.
That night I wasn’t delivered dreams of Pete spanking Jannie. Instead, I dreamed that I was in bed with Jannie and her patient face was studying me as if I was her mirror. I dreamed the same thing the next night and the next—Jannie and me talking so closely on her white couch our mouths simply couldn’t help but kiss in between words—and before a week was up, I had summoned my physical self to Jannie’s front door again. The whole time the mirror on my phone had been open, but I’d been too afraid to look.
Now that I was about to knock, I felt that I couldn’t return to Jannie’s couch with the mirror still vulnerable. I shook out my phone and opened the camera. But before I could close out the mirror, I saw myself outside of myself, the way you might catch your own goofy hat in one of those convex gas station mirrors and turn frightened at the person you’ve become. I panicked then, by which I mean I stuffed my phone into my pants pocket and walked home.
I was of course disappointed in myself. I was so regular I was consuming myself. I wanted to curl onto my own couch, with its brown faux leather cracking at the seams, and flatten my hair to a paper and sulk. I arrived home thinking of disappearing, only to find a package on my front porch. Seeing the package lying there and knowing what was inside was a power, a real power that only I—and whatever robot fulfilled my order—knew. It was a power that propelled me.
Inside, I shed the pants and shirt I was wearing before opening the box. I sucked in my body and stepped into the tiger-tard I’d become bold enough to order when the spanking dreams wouldn’t leave me. I pulled the tiger-tard’s straps as high as they would stretch over my shoulders before releasing. I wanted instantly to look in the mirror to see what had happened—how my ass looked, how my ass made my face look, etc.—but knew I couldn’t look. Not in the way I’d always done.
Back on Jannie’s front porch, I waited endlessly. It seemed as if she would never appear, and I would never feel the rush of looking that Jannie had all but promised me. When she at last opened the door, I was near depletion. Perhaps Jannie understood who I was then—or perhaps our former selves were of no matter. She had a tiny amount of pink lip gloss smeared on her cheek, as if she didn’t even think to use a mirror when no one was around. I imagined rubbing my finger along her face or licking off the color, but instead we only sat on her couch, as if the movement from the door to her couch was some dance or pole-vaulting routine we’d mastered together in another life. Jannie seemed to know why I was there—seemed to see the tiger-tard without even the need to stare at it—as if she’d watched me stretch the glamorous fabric over my body from some vantage point that only she could see from. It was this powerful looking that suddenly made her very irregular and slender and tall.
Jannie took my hand in her hand, and with her other hand pulled my phone from where I’d lodged it in the tiger-tard. She placed the phone in my palm and steadied my arm as we angled the phone into the proper position. Perhaps Jannie realized then that I couldn’t actually push any buttons—or perhaps she’d known all along. I watched as Jannie pushed the button that turned my phone into a mirror. I couldn’t believe that it was really me who appeared on the screen. I hardly recognized myself—the tiger-tard had turned me exotic.
I leaned my head into Jannie’s but stared into my own eyes, trying to see what others saw in them. The whole time we posed I wasn’t even thinking that I was somewhere else. I wasn’t even worried who would like my tiger-tard or who would think I belonged in the wild, a place where there wasn’t any selfie-ing or cocktails or hair dryers for any long overdue blowout. I was an animal on that couch. I wasn’t even waiting for my life to end or for anything, not even my aversion to myself, to look like anything. I wasn’t even someone else.
Jannie looked at me then in a mature way, as if she was about to kiss me or yell convincingly at me to leave. “Well,” she said, “how does it feel to be resurrected?” She pushed the camera button.
Her frankness was soothing. I understood then that she had distracted me enough to look natural in the frame. I immediately loved her.
“I suppose I feel better and worse,” I said. “Better because I didn’t think I had enough stamina to go through with it, meaning I didn’t think I could actually selfie. I’m not that kind of woman—or, at least, I didn’t think I was.”
“That’s a typical reaction for someone with your sun-kissed reflection,” Jannie said. “In what ways do you feel worse?”
“Well, I’m worse because I don’t know what to do next. I don’t know what to do now. I don’t know what comes after success.”
“But nobody knows that,” Jannie said. She stood up from the couch and lit a reverse candle dangling from the ceiling. Everyone I knew had reverse candles hanging from one ceiling or another for nearly every occasion.
Jannie handed me the candle lighter. “Do you want to light one for your experience today?” she asked.
“I only light reverse candles when my former husband comes to mind. I save them up on him.”
“Well, there you have it,” Jannie said. “You’re now a woman officially resurrected.” She glided out of the room before I could. I pulled out all the tens and twenties I had stuffed in the folds of the tiger-tard and scattered the money on the white couch in one wind-struck motion, as if I were a sorcerer possessed. The truth was Jannie was very good at what voodoo she did, and it was no longer a mystery why Pete left me when he did. There was a good chance I’d leave myself for Jannie too. I felt better. I suddenly knew what came next.
I knocked on Pete’s door for what seemed like a series of reverse moments. There weren’t enough candles to keep me there, really. I was halfway down the block when I heard him yelling after me.
“What the hell are you wearing?” Pete wanted to know.
As if the whole neighborhood couldn’t see the tiger-tard already. We were standing in the street, where a car should’ve been parked. We looked like amateurs or tourists.
“Listen, I’m not going through with this if you make me feel dumb,” I said. “My whole life people have made me feel dumb. You included. I want people to admire me instead. I want them to look into my eyes and see all the hardship I’ve been through and have some genuine affection for the person I’ve become.” I wheedled my phone from the tiger-tard and showed Pete the selfie. He stared long enough.
“Jannie,” Pete said. “How’s she doing these days?”
“Terrific,” I said. “Transcendent woman. I get it now. I get why you left.”
“Did she push the button?” Pete asked. “Or did you?”
“I want you to admire me, Pete. I don’t want you to make me feel dumb. I already said that.”
“Okay,” Pete said. “It doesn’t matter who pushed the button. What matters is that you went through with it. That, and your new attire.”
“Exactly,” I said. “You’re not as terrible as you used to be.”
“I’m sure Jannie was surprised to meet you,” Pete said.
I disregarded the whole debacle—in a flash, I washed the years away. I asked, “Are you surprised that I’m here?”
“You’ve never been one to disappoint,” Pete said. He glanced me over and nodded approvingly at the tiger-tard, as if he were a better mirror than I knew him to be. His face was as plain as butter next to a dull knife. I hadn’t realized how much I’d hurt him too. It was enough realization to make me do more of a hard thing.
“I want you to do something for me,” I said. “Something with me.”
“You’re contagious,” Pete said. “I can’t catch that desire again.”
I moved towards him slightly. I leaned in.
“If you try to selfie with me, I swear I’ll jump into the road,” Pete said. “Do you really want your former husband to jeopardize his life with you watching from the sidelines?”
I wanted to go through with it, but I didn’t know if I wanted to selfie to prove something to my former self or myself as I was now, an anti-cheerleader on the side of my former husband’s road. I was going to have to see myself clearer before I made any damaging moves.
“Okay,” I said. “You’re right. I’ve got to go anyway. I’m expecting a delivery.”
“You’re not so undone,” Pete was saying as I walked away. “The black stripes and gold really bring out your personality.”
That night I lied in bed awaiting what was coming my way. I knew my dreams would be delivered to me as they always were, full of confusion and unwanted motions. I tried not to think about Pete or Jannie or focus too visually on anything I’d done that day. I tried not to sabotage my dreams. But the day was full of an intensity I couldn’t escape. And when I’d nearly fallen asleep and edged upon the lucidity of my dreams, I knew I’d mixed up the real parts of my day that felt like a dream with the dreams themselves. I knew I’d wake up and not know the real from the surreal, the tangible from the chaff, etc., but I hoped more than anything that I could crawl back into reality. The trick, I knew, was in how you held your face, specifically your mouth, to look less like a mouth usually did. The trick was not to move any of your facial muscles and to stay as static as a huntress in the weeds.
When my dreams finally arrived, Pete appeared first, dressed in a jogging suit and sitting jovially at a patio table by himself. He smoked a pipe and had an enchanting accent of someone much more adventurous than the man I knew. I asked Pete if he’d give me a puff off the pipe, and he asked to borrow my wide-brimmed straw hat, but his whole body began to fade before we exchanged a thing.
With Pete gone, I walked into the house where Jannie was putting on a robust yoga demonstration or dance show. My straw hat had disappeared, and I asked Jannie if she liked my hair blown out. She didn’t have an answer for that, so I joined her dance, imitating the movements she made with my own flawed precision. We danced like this for some time, and she would occasionally say something smart like, “Your seventh life is the one to die for,” or “Don’t worry about watering the past—it will grow in time.” We kept dancing in such a preposterous way that I knew someone was already starting a gossip chain about us. We were the outrageous women people talked about! But, of course, when Jannie started disappearing too, I began to lose some steam.
I sat on the floor of my dream. The longer I sat, the deeper my body lodged into the dream. I was beginning to feel exhausted, truly undone like a loose thread on a spinning wheel. Soon I could hear someone knocking on the dream door, someone who’d heard through the gossip chain that something woozy and wild was going on with me.
“Do you want to be spanked?” the knocks were asking. “I’m here to give you what you truly desire.”
And I knew immediately that I did. I’d wanted to be spanked all along in a series of my own dreams starring myself. But before I could answer, I started disappearing along the same lines that Pete and Jannie had disappeared. Anxiety ballooned inside me as I went, filling me with doubt as my body faded away. But even as I vaporized, I could still hear someone knocking on the dream door.
“You can still have the things you want,” the knocks were saying.
There was only one way to sort out the impossible from the imaginable. I knew what motion I had to do. I knew with everyone vanished that I was myself in the dream. So I brought my nearly disappeared hand to my body’s forefront and quelled my fear of the dream disintegrating. And from the inside of my own desire, I clumsily opened the dream door.
