Reading The Dry Season at the DMV

on expiration dates, celibacy, and turning 44

Today is my birthday and my license is not technically expired even though the plastic one in my wallet says it is. Or maybe it expires tomorrow. I am 44 years old and still don’t understand if expiration dates mean this is the last day something is good, or… now it’s officially bad throw it away or get sick…

… which is sort of how birthdays have always felt to me. Like, should I eat it or throw it away? Will it make me sick?

“No way to know unless you take a bite and swallow.”

Speaking of which, yesterday I accidentally left half of my groceries in the car overnight. The fish, the milk, the frozen pizza… It was as if I meticulously chose the things that would spoil, bagged them together and then left them to thaw in the backseat of my car.

I tossed the groceries immediately, grieved for all that fish gone to waste, but I think the-me-of-the-past would have assumed that because everything was still cold, it was probably okay to eat.

Now I’m like FUCK THAT, NOT WORTH IT TO EVEN RISK. Maybe I should throw away the car, too.

***

I had been putting off the DMV for months, not that I need to explain. Deeemvee means procrastination in latin and the entire place is what happens when procrastinators stop being polite and start getting real. Because appointments are for people who can plan six months ahead of time or have a child who needs to take a driving test.

I love Melissa Febos and have read and adored everything she’s ever written. Abandon Me specifically, which I have read twice — once with Monica Danielle, with whom I would send and receive passages and also gifts inspired by her sapphic prose.

At the time, I was certain that Reading Abandon Me with Monica would be the turning point of my sexuality. That our affair would rewire me in such a way that men would become obsolete.

It turned out, sadly, that I was only a lesbian for her.