The Haunting of the Jalapeno Pepper

During my tenure as a former heterosexual, I considered myself an expert in men. I could drink my weight in IPA and discuss anything from analytical philosophy to 1930s car radiators. I even taught my ex how to “love himself again’ after he was rejected by the woman that he cheated on me with. While I genuinely liked some of the men I dated, sometimes, often in the mornings after leaving their apartments, I would suddenly wonder is this REALLY all there is?

And I realized that I never felt much of anything until one hot, dry day last summer. I biked down to the river to read Catcher in the Rye, smoke weed, and recall an incident in which an entire head of broccoli fell out of my mouth as I was talking to my professor four years ago. The look of shock and disgust on my professor’s face as we stared at the ejected vegetable burns itself further into my brain. I shudder and reach for my lighter.

Blue black clouds converge in the sky and a woman with cropped ice blond hair walking a muddy road bike asked if she could sit down on the bench next to me. A jolt of something runs through my body. I say yes, and she tells me her name is Emma. She’s a cyclist, an organic farmer, and the lead singer of a chamber punk band. With her boyfriend. Josh. But we spent the next six hours talking and eating over ripe melons under a tree while waiting out a thunderstorm. And after she gives me her number, she touches my wrist, and she says, let's talk again soon.

And fifteen and a half days later, she texts me and asks if I want to come over. I restrain myself from leaping into the air, and instead I take myself on a walk and give myself a little talk You just met her, you don’t even know if she’s queer, AND she has a boyfriend. Be chill. But four hours later as I’m waiting outside of her house, I find myself tying and untying my shoelaces. I pretend to check to see if my bike is locked, and just as I whip out my phone for a fake phone call, she opens the door...Her eyes are gold... We stare at each other for a moment.

Wazzup? I say, really casually. She pauses. It’s so good to see you. She lifts her arm. Is this meant to be a hug? Is she brushing back her hair? No, she’s opening the door for me to step through. As she offers me dandelion wine, I notice a large pile of jalapenos and eggplants sparkling with a coat of soil and sun on the counter. A sun damaged piano sits in a corner next to a harp and a bass guitar lurks in the shadows like a slouchy wooden ghoul.

We start talking. And time stops. The sun sinks its face behind the foothills and a pale pink moon rises above her garden. Five hours later, we are sitting on her bed, our knees are three inches apart, and she shows me the album that she just released. Harp music fills the air like thick sweet smoke, we’re laughing at something that I can’t remember, and the alc is hittin’ me, we start talking about writing and I think, fuck...are we are psychically linked or something? And she’s talking about writing the album and says, I was imagining an island where certain parts of myself were banished, but I was living on the mainland, and I guess I was trying to get those parts back. Is she saying she’s queer? Then she asks me, half jokingly what my type is. Emotionally unavailable men! I say. She laughs and my entire body relaxes. The room spins. I wish I was drunker or braver... And then I say, But lately, I’ve been feeling like it’s an act of self harm to become entangled in a dynamic, that is inherently just depressing and unfulfilling. Like, I am bi, but leaning towards homo, ya kno? No, she does not know, because she’s STRAIGHT!! I am such an idiot, this was a mistake.

I thought I was asexual, but I think I’m just gay, she blurts out. It’s as though she’s lit a match against my chest and held the flame to my ribs for a second too long. She says Josh and I have been working through our relationship issues by taking MDMA together, but...I don’t know, maybe it’s just- Maybe they will break up? Emma and I will move into an apartment in... Chicago together. Maybe with a cat? A long haired Himalyan cat! And- I want to say, I want to sit and talk with you forever and I-. Instead I drink more wine and say, Hmmm, that reminds me of what the Belgian psychoanalyst Esther Perel says about relationships: we now expect a single person to give us what a village used to provide... Why the fuck am I acting like her therapist? She looks away, Exactly, that’s why Josh and I have opened up our relationship. Is that why she invited me over? Is Josh hiding in the corner? Is she envisioning a kind of surprise menage a trois in which Josh and I rotate who gets to sleep next to her? I am barely competent enough to menage in a monogamous relationship.

Emma looks directly at me. I like you a lot. You have this well spoken, delicate energy that I just want to be around. You’re really beautiful, but you also...have walls up...but I really like you.

Delicate and well spoken my ass! Should I tell her that I wake up everyday and fight the urge to send an email rescheduling all meetings saying, “Hello! Any chance that we could postpone? I woke up with the urge to shotgun six White Claws, sprint five miles, and vomit until my throat bleeds, but instead I’ve spent the past several hours in an anxiety induced coma! So sorry for any inconvenience! Best, Hannah. She stares at me and rests her forearm on my shoulder. But I want to say I like you more than is emotionally convenient for me. I wish you could be the person you want me to be but, you will eventually realize that I am an impulsive mess with abandonment issues and crooked bottom teeth. And that will hurt in a way that I am not used to. The moment in which I could have been honest gets lost in the ether of sleep. In the morning, she gives me a jalapeno pepper from her garden. I hurry home and let it sleep, hidden in between the pages of Catcher In The Rye.

Weeks later, I peel its shriveled, rotting body from the pages. With the tips of my fingers, I place the puckered skeleton in a patch of sunlight on my window. I almost see a wrinkled smile in its ridges. Adrenaline shoots through my toes to my hairline, my heart starts to beat in my throat.

I call Emma.

Hannah Meyer is a playwright and freelance writer based in New York. She is a recipient of the 2021 Alexa Rose Grant. Her work is published in PULP Magazine, Points in Case, The Comedy Studies Journal (Taylor & Francis), and The Well Mannered Grump. She serves as a reader for Epiphany Magazine. Running, biking, and crying in public parks are some of her favorite things on this planet.