Big Feels on Sleepovers and Perfect Girls

8.6

Listen to Big Feels on Spotify, bbs. <3

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Big Feels on Sleepovers and Perfect Girls:

I used to have sleepovers

at Laney’s house

We would wake 

groggy and giddy

She said:

You hugged me all night long

over instant oatmeal

microwaved to unearth 

colourful dinosaur eggs

In that moment

I wished to be prehistoric

a body disappeared

to time

Of course cuddling the pretty girl at the slumber party is queer coded, and a little neurodivergent coded too. Laney was the perfect girl. I was always trying to be, trying to have, the perfect girl. Laney was delicate and pretty, she had brand name clothes and smelled like Tide laundry detergent. To touch her felt impossible; to wake up and find out that I had wrapped my tiny girl body around hers — nothing can describe the acute horror I felt. I trained myself to sleep so still after that. 

I told this story to the girl I was seeing, the girl I still see sometimes (we pinky swore to always be happy when we see each other, no matter what happens). I told her this while laying in her bed, our legs and arms knit together, as close as two girls can get. It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyways): it’s a miracle to be so close in bed with a perfect girl. 

Every time we hooked up, I would have a moment of overwhelm at my luck. “Oh my god, you’re so sexy,” I say, her body like the pearled gates of heaven open before me. She laughs, “Why do you always say that?” Now I’m laughing too, “I’m just a nerd for your body, I can’t help it.” 

My bones whisper: Do you know how quiet we had to be? Do you know how stiff and still? Do you know what it is to try to control even your dreams so you don’t end up hugging the wrong girl at a slumber party?

Was it my old training that kept me up at night when she slept over? Was it instead, like my friend suggests, hesitantly, a sign? 

I went to Drumheller, “The Dinosaur Capital of the World!”, this summer. She and I had talked about going together before we started seeing less of each other, before we pinky swore to always be happy. I settled for sending a selfie from the badlands: the modern, passive, equivalent of a “Wish You Were Here” postcard.

I studied the selfie afterwards hoping she wouldn’t see the sadness fossilized inside me through the glint in my eyes.  

Last weekend, two of my friends and I ran away to a cabin at Greig Lake in northern Saskatchewan. We are connected by quietness and queerness. We are connected by our hearts that ache and our silly comebacks meant to divert attention. We hadn’t had a sleepover since before the Big Bang (aka. graduating university, getting married, coming out, moving countries). I slept on the couch, facing the window that looks out on the water. I woke up the first morning, crying: a little purge of feeling in a safe space (I try to let the tears flow when they come now; I try not to listen to the voice that says if the tears start they will never stop). We made food, pulled tarot cards and went for walks, sat on the porch swing together, played Boggle, and had quiet time where we journaled or napped or stared at the water. 

Saskatchewan is the land before time. I grew up finding fossils of mollusks and seashells in our garden bed. I remember thinking how strange that, born to another time, we would have been under water. Now to take a dip, we travel to prairie lakes, ice cold no matter what time of the year it is. 

At Greig Lake, we go swimming in the mornings, a shock to the system. I’ve been to this lake before, it feels sentient and wise. I think of how my mother used to explain the concept of “fearing God;” how it’s a reverence and awe that makes you careful what you promise. A pinky swear with god, or the water, should not be made lightly. The last time I was in this body of water, I was scared. I knew what it was asking me to do, to actually do it felt impossible. 

This time, I stand in the water a different person. The water has taken everything, I have given it. I have swallowed myself whole, then bobbed back up to the surface.  

Our last night of this three-day sleepover, we sit on the dock with glasses of wine. My friend says she feels small sitting against the waves. I am on the very end of the dock. I stretch my arms out wide, “I feel huge. I feel enormous. We are not small. We are ancient and vast.” I don’t want to disappear like dust. I cannot be drowned. I want to survive the Great Flood, a beast on a ship. I want to be so big 

and so close to another body 

so loud and so hungry 

so sexy 

so nerdy 

and so free. 

My friend asks if I am happy. I say yes (and not just because I pinky swore); and I am sad too, a little pissed off, very horny. I am all things, but mostly I am a perfect girl, if only perfectly returned to myself. 

Talk soon,

Natahna

The Recommends: To get an old fashioned hot water bottle for our chronic pain. That shit stays hot all night long! Also: all of Griff’s music.