Day 102 - Ohio Story

Ohio Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Ohio rolled her sleeves down to cover the scars on her left forearm. She meant to have a tattoo on her left arm by now, but it hadn’t happened yet. She had gotten work done on the right, but tips had been bad and she didn’t have money after her last roommate fell through and she had to move unexpectedly. The left arm would have to wait. Until then the unsightly reminder of a better forgotten wayward youth was best left out of sight and momentarily forgotten.

Usually she had long glove arm warmers and evening gloves and a whole variety of forearm accessories. That morning she had worm gloves made out of a pair of checked wool socks, but it was summer and the day had turned muggy and hot and she didn’t feel like wearing something that was going to make her arms sweat so much. She hated the summer. She hated when it got hot. She hated wearing revealing clothes that exposed her body and revealed wounds she did not want revealed. She was going to move to Seattle someday. It was cold in Seattle. And rainy. That’s what everyone said. She could wear long sleeve shirts and jackets and no one would think any different of her. That was the plan anyway. She hadn’t made it there yet, but that was the plan.

Ohio currently lived in St. Louis, but she had originally hailed from Ohio.  Ohio from Ohio. It sounded idiotic when she had to tell people that. No one ever believed it was true either, or they thought it was a fake name or a really bad joke. It was a bad name and her parents must have had a really terrible sense of humor or were just totally out of touch with reality and had no idea what they were saddling their daughter with. She thought about changing her name when she turned eighteen, but once she was out of Ohio, having the name Ohio didn’t seem so bad after all. When she met new people it just sounded like an unimaginative nickname, but still it was kind of cute.

Ohio had been in college in Northern Indiana and one day she just had enough so she hitchhiked her way south, first to Louisville and then to Memphis. She lived near Beale Street for a little over a year and was truly happy for most of it. She liked to sip whiskey at a bar named without a hint of irony The Speakeasy.  She made friends easily and usually got to drink for free because the bartenders liked her smile, cute demeanor and foul vocabulary.

She was too young to be in bars and nightclubs, but she never had any trouble getting in. It probably helped that women seldom got carded at the same rate men did. It also probably helped that she could sway her hips and wear the hell out of a dress. Not some slutty little black dress like the night club cliché variety, but a real dress that went to the floor and didn’t show skin and yet still managed to fit properly and reveal a feminine sexuality. She had no need for women that just slutted it up and showed more skin, as if that was the only way to get noticed and feel sexual self esteem. And of course there was also the fact that she hated her skin and all the things she had done to damage herself.  But it was easier to just think she was doing something better than other women, rather than worry about all her worries and insecurities and deficiencies.

In St. Louis, Ohio went to Six Flags for the first time. She had been to Cedar Point and King’s Island in Ohio, but never to Six Flags. It hardly made any sense, but that was the way it went. She loved roller coasters because they scared her half to death. It was a rush and it was unbridled fear, but it made her feel alive.

Ohio thought about her arms and the tattoo she would get – a leviathan possibly, or perhaps an octopus. She wanted something large and something that would wrap around her arm like she was being taken over. She wanted to look at something on her and forget that it was part of her and for just a moment feel like she was bound and helpless to its power. She thought that would be alright – to get lost in something outside of herself. She was going to go out that night and get drunk. Beale Street had been more exciting, but St. Louis was new and new was always better. Every time there was a new in her life, it meant she had another chance to get it right.