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She was standing in the middle of the crowd. I looked at her once, and then I kept staring. I tried to see the other eyes in the room, green eyes, brown and blue, but I kept looking back at her. I looked, and she looked, and I moved toward her holding a plastic ring above her crooked fingers and hand. I thought, Somehow, I’ve conjured her. Or perhaps she’s conjured me.

Then I saw one of her eyes was brown and her other eye was green, like a wild animal.

So look into these eyes, and you’ll see what I saw that night.

I pushed the plastic ring on her finger and the strange eyes shined.

I saw the future.

***

For a long time after we met, Julia and I used to fight. We talked every day on the phone, and then a few months later we met again in New York. The day before I got there, Julia ran into some guy she used to know who I called Hairy Ass. Hairy Ass asked Julia if she wanted to hang out, and Julia told Hairy Ass she had a boyfriend now.

That night we were standing in a department store in Brooklyn because Julia wanted to buy some new clothes for me, and I kept joking about her boyfriend. “He’s not my boyfriend,” she kept insisting.

I admitted I was insecure about her having sex with someone who was better-looking than me.

Julia said, “He isn’t that much better looking than you, Scott. And besides, he’s hairy.” That’s when I started calling him Hairy Ass. I told Julia she could tell me the truth and I wouldn’t be mad. Even if Hairy Ass was the best. Julia said that spot was reserved for this gay friend she used to hook up with in San Diego. But as soon as she said it, my feelings were hurt.

I said, “Why are you even telling me this?”

Julia said because I asked. I told her it wasn’t easy knowing I was only second best.

Julia paused for a long time, and then she said, “Why do you assume you’re second?”

This was Julia’s sense of humor. We stood in line at the store, and I decided to drop the whole Hairy Ass topic. We were supposed to see some of Julia’s friends anyway, and so I decided to relax. We stood in line, and Julia held up the pants and shirt she was going to buy me. She told me they would look better than my ripped pants and red polo.

I kept wondering why she wanted to buy me clothes. Did she think I dressed like a hick?

But then I started getting paranoid and thought, Maybe she’s trying to change me? Maybe she wants me to dress like Hairy Ass?

I didn’t say anything about Hairy Ass now. We just watched the line get shorter.

I looked down at Julia’s phone, and the screen lit up. I joked, “Is that your boyfriend again?”

But then I saw Julia trying to click off the message quick.

It was a guy’s name, and the text said, “Dave and Busters?”

She quickly put her phone away and said “No, that’s not him. It’s just an AA friend.”

I asked her what the text meant, and Julia said she had no idea. He must have been texting someone else.

I imagined “Dave and Busters” was the code name for some impractical sexual position it took them months to perfect.

For instance, “Do you want to do it ‘Dave and Busters’ style tonight?”

Julia stopped. “He’s just a friend of mine from AA.”

I played it cool, but then I said, “You never hooked up with him?”

Now Julia nodded no.

She was quiet for a second, and then she said, “I mean we have in the past, but we’re just friends now.”

So the fight started. I got mad and said, “It’s funny how you say ‘friends’ when it’s some guy you fucked.”

People in line at the H&M kept looking back at us.

I told her it was fine. I didn’t even know why we were together sometimes.

Julia rolled her eyes and snapped, “Oh God, Scott. Let’s not immediately go there.”

I told Julia to fuck off, and then I walked out of the store and waited for her on the sidewalk.

I watched Julia pay for my shirt and pay for my pants too.

She walked outside and shouted, “Fucking dick.”

I saw the shopping bag swing back and forth in her hand, and I said, “I’m not the one who has some dude texting me.”

Julia told me she didn’t tell me because she knew I’d flip out.

Then she whipped the shopping bag around and slapped it against my chest. I threw my arms up awkwardly and caught the plastic bag.

Julia said, “Well here’s your stupid fucking clothes, asshole.”

I told her she was the asshole, and then I whispered at the clothes, “I think you just want me to dress like Hairy Ass.”

I started talking shit about her old boyfriend who was in a semifamous Brooklyn band and wore a goatee. “Guess you’d like me better if I glued some pubes to my face and pretended to like banjo music.”

Julia walked toward me and ripped the plastic bag out of my hand.

She said, “Fine. If you don’t like the clothes I bought for you, then who gives a fuck? I just wasted a bunch of money over nothing.”

I watched Julia turn the bag upside down and dump the clothes out on the street. I watched the shirt and pants poof out like parachutes before they dropped down and landed in a little clothes pile on the sidewalk. People walked by and looked at us all weird. Then Julia took off walking as fast as she could.

I tried following her, but then I stopped. The people on the sidewalk kept walking by and watching us. I finally bent over and picked up the clothes and stuffed them inside the bag. I tried to run and catch up with Julia, but she was so fast. I watched her turn into a dot and disappear down the subway steps below.

I texted, “Thanks for leaving me with no idea of where you are.”

The phone lit up and Julia texted back, “Thanks for being a dick.”

I texted, “Would you at least come back so I can apologize? I’m sorry.”

I sat on the sidewalk, and a few minutes later, I saw Julia walking back up the street. She was wearing her furry white coat and smoking cigarettes. Her mascara was running down her cheeks in little tributaries. She finally sat and smoked. I looked at her long crooked fingers and smelled her smell. And it was something we didn’t know. How we were drawn together by things we didn’t even understand, like smells.

I tried calming her, but Julia still seemed pissed. I said I was sorry and I totally overreacted. I don’t know why I got so jealous.

Then Julia said, “This is so fucking stupid.”

She jerked all the way across the sidewalk and walked closer to the street, where the traffic ripped by like tiny dots. I felt nervous because Julia had just been released from the mental hospital a few months before. She flicked her cigarette into the street. Then I stood up and tried to grab her by the wrist, but she was already at the edge. Julia’s eyes looked like they looked a long time ago when her brain was sick. And there was a part of this maniac still alive on the city sidewalk now.

She whispered, “I might as well do it.”

The cars kept passing, and she rushed toward them like she was going to run into the traffic.

I grabbed her arm and screamed, “Stop.”

She spun around and shouted, “Get the fuck off of me, freak.”

She shouted at the people passing by, “What the fuck are you looking at, freaks?”

I told her, “I’m sorry.”

I told her it was all my fault, and I hugged her and told her it was okay. We moved away from the traffic and sat back down with my shopping bag, and Julia whispered, “Why is life so hard?”

I told her I didn’t know. I told her we just got into a stupid fight.

Then I held her and said, “Only the dead don’t fight. You should have seen people’s faces when you acted like you were going to walk into traffic.”

Now we laughed, and I thanked her for getting me some clothes. We sat quietly together, and I looked at the bag of stuff she bought me. And it was unbelievable. Someone had bought these clothes because she loved me.

Now the fight ended, and Julia explained she wasn’t trying to make me look like Hairy Ass, and I said, “I just got jealous and stupid. Let’s just go see your friends like we planned.”

We hugged and kissed, and it was all done. We started to walk toward the subway and we went underground. The warm air whooshed up, and I told Julia I was sorry again. Then together we stopped at the turnstiles, and people rushed around us. Julia reached into her purse and pulled out the MetroCard we shared. She swiped the card through the turnstile, and I waited for her to pass it back, but then I saw everything had changed, because Julia kept walking. She never passed the MetroCard back, and I was still stuck behind the turnstile.

She didn’t even turn around.

I shouted, “Julia? Where the fuck are you going?”

Julia finally turned and flipped me off.

She screamed, “Fuck you, Scott.”

I told her, “What the fuck? I thought we made up?”

Then I watched her disappear, and I saw she was trying to teach me something.

I thought the fight was over, but the fight was never over. The fight had just begun, and so I felt like some dead body on a great battlefield from long ago, and I had learned that Julia, like some mysterious general, was most dangerous in retreat. And I was her defeated.

***

But then Julia talked me into going to AA. Back home in West Virginia, we decided to go to a meeting together. I drove to a local church, and we sat in the parking lot before it started and watched people go inside. Julia said a meeting in West Virginia looked like a good place to score. She started to tell me how she got sober a few years before, and the things she used to do when she was high. She talked about how she used to harass dudes with fake pickup lines at bars.

She’d walk up to a guy and shout, “HEY! Are you from Arizona?”

When the confused man said no, Julia would shout, “Well that’s too bad because my pussy is as dry and dusty as the desert.”

I laughed, and then Julia told me about her ex-boyfriends who were dead, and then we went inside and sat down.

It was almost time for the meeting to start, so Julia asked if I felt comfortable enough to share tonight, but I told her I didn’t know. I’d been to this meeting a few times without her, and I always kept my mouth shut. I looked around and saw old-timers drinking coffee and a nervous guy looking for someone to sign his court-mandated form.

Now the meeting started, and we listened. They repeated the serenity prayer and made announcements and read from the Big Book. I noticed there was a chubby guy sitting across from Julia who kept staring at her. He had a strange look to his eyes, and I saw Julia shift in her seat, uncomfortably.

The guy kept staring, and I heard Julia say loud enough for people to hear, “What are you looking at? Quit staring?”

The man kept looking, and Julia leaned over and whispered, “What’s wrong with that guy? Is he fucking blind or something?”

I shushed her and shook my head yes and pointed to his cane. He was 100 percent blind. Julia felt so embarrassed and wanted to apologize, but by then people had started to share. I hoped I could keep quiet as usual, but then Julia nudged me. She told me to go ahead. I raised my hand, and the faces in the room turned toward me.

I said, “I’m Scott, and I’m an alcoholic.”

The room responded, “Hello, Scott.”

I told them about the year before when I bought a ticket to see Gian in New York. I showed up drunk at the airport and realized I’d accidentally booked my flight from Charleston, South Carolina, instead of Charleston, West Virginia, and I wasn’t even in the right state to take my flight. I was such a drunk I couldn’t even book a plane ticket right. The room laughed, and Julia squeezed my hand. The blind man thanked me for sharing, and I looked at Julia, and she smiled. I still wanted to live.

***

That night, we went back to my apartment, and Julia gave me a stick-and-poke tattoo. She told me she was proud of me for speaking at the meeting. I nervously told her she could put the tattoo on the inside of my upper arm. So I sat and imagined what she would write there. Julia sharpened the paper clip and burned it bright with a lighter. Then she dipped it in the ink.

A few weeks before, she’d gone out with friends in New York, and they decided to get new tattoos.

She asked me in a text, “What should I get?”

I jokingly texted her, “My initials.”

We weren’t even together yet, but a few minutes later, she sent me a picture of a pyramid on her arm and beneath it were the letters SM. I’d only known Julia for a few months, so I was shocked.

I thought, This woman’s nuts.

But somehow, she’d voodooed herself to love me too.

Now I turned my face, and Julia stabbed my arm. The fat part was tender, and she poked and pierced the skin. Blood bubbled to the surface, and she kept poking until it was done. And when I finally looked down, I saw the two letters I now wear on my skin. I saw her initials like upside down fishhooks. JJ.

And it was true.

I had desecrated my flesh for someone now. And if you ever discover my body one day and have to identify it, this tattoo will tell you who I was.

***

Julia and I still fought all the time, but a few months later, we got married in California and she moved all the way to West Virginia. We started our new life. I felt worried at first because I wondered if Julia was bored, but then one day we were on the couch watching television and Julia kept looking at her phone. She always looked at her phone when we watched something together. I was worried she regretted moving to West Virginia and marrying me, but I didn’t say anything.

I said my positive affirmations, like “I’m having fun watching television.”

And usually Julia said, “Well good. I’m having fun too.”

But this time Julia didn’t say anything. She just looked at her phone and laughed at something she saw on social media.

I knew my positive affirmations could be awkward, especially since I’d said “I’m having fun” just a few minutes before. One time I freaked Gian out doing this and he said, “Will you please quit doing that? It’s weird.”

He signed off emails now making fun of me, “I’m having fun, love Gian.”

So I didn’t say “I’m having fun” again, and by that point Julia realized I said something.

She looked up and said, “Oh yes, that’s great baby, I’m having fun too.”

I tried talking to her. I pushed pause and said, “You’re not getting bored are you? I mean we’ve barely been fighting.”

But Julia said she was glad we didn’t fight anymore.

I told Julia it was tragic, though, because her greatest talent was socially unacceptable. I’d never met someone who could fight like her.

I told her if we were fighting, and she was losing on a macro level, she’d simply shrink the battlefield and attack on a micro level. Suddenly she’d change tactics and make the fight about a single word I’d said. If she was losing there, she’d just change the entire fight topic and attack from a position of strength.

I said, “It’s like watching an artist.”

Julia said it was embarrassing, but I told her it was good to fight and get the bad feelings out and come to a resolution to be better and move on. Julia laughed, and I told her I wanted her to know that if she ever got bored, she could just tell me. And if she wasn’t happy, she could tell me that too.

Then I whispered my positive affirmations and told her I was having fun, but it didn’t help this time.

I felt awful.

Julia asked if I wanted to hold a crystal, and I snapped, “No, I don’t want to hold a fucking rock. How in the fuck is holding a rock going to help me?”

Julia told me I’d been doing good going to therapy and AA recently, and there was no use wondering whether she loved me or not. Because she did, and there wasn’t any reason to be in a bad mood.

I couldn’t stop worrying though. That evening, we drove back from the fast-food drive-through, and we didn’t even talk. Julia sat in the passenger seat texting her friends, and she let out a little laugh, and that pissed me off even more. Julia looked up and said her friends wondered how she lived in West Virginia without a Whole Foods.

I thought, I wonder if Julia wants to move back to California because they have Whole Foods.

I kept my mouth shut and smelled the fast food. Then we passed a coffee shop and Julia asked when we got our first Starbucks.

I told her, “I think it was around 2004 or something.”

Julia acted like this was the craziest thing she’d ever heard.

She said, “Wait? You didn’t get a Starbucks until 2004?”

I started getting mad now, and I snapped.

I said, “Why is it so weird we didn’t have a Starbucks until ten years ago? I guess people go to the Arctic now and bitch about not having some stupid-ass store when there’s a goddamn polar bear standing right in front of them.”

Julia said she didn’t know what I was talking about.

I screamed, “Polar bears!”

Julia said I was acting crazy.

I told her I was sorry I didn’t come from some shitty golf course–looking place like San Diego.

Then I started shouting, ”You get on a plane to San Diego and it’s nothing but a bunch of country club people in board shorts and flip-flops eating Mediterranean chicken salads.”

I saw Julia’s face flash with anger, and she shouted back, “Well at least it’s not a flight to West Virginia.” She said, “You get on a flight to West Virginia and all the seat belts are stretched out from the fatties, and there’s ranch dressing stains in the seats.”

Then she went, “Nut, nut, nut.” “Nut, nut, nut” was what Julia always said when she wanted to make fun of my accent. This is what she thought I sounded like. I told her I didn’t make fun of her friends for sounding like fucking Valley girls.

Julia shouted, “Shut the fuck up. I don’t know why you’re picking a fight over nothing.”

She turned the radio up and said, “Seriously.”

I turned the volume down, and she turned the volume up. I turned the volume down, and Julia turned it up. I turned it down, and this went on for a few more minutes until Julia laughed. Julia used to make fun of me for still listening to CDs. Now she put a CD in the CD player, and I ejected it. She put another CD in, and I ejected that one too. She put the same CD back in again, and so I rolled the window down and threw the CDs out the window. Julia tried it again, but I threw this CD out the window like a frisbee too. I didn’t give a fuck. I pulled up in front of our apartment and parked the car.

I shouted, “All you fucking people talking about progressive politics but living in segregated neighborhoods. All these poor people in West Virginia might hate one another, but at least we live together.”

Julia shouted something else about how I was crazy. Then she got out of the car and walked to the apartment door. I turned the car off and hurried behind her. She unlocked the door and slammed it in my face.

I shouted, “Funny how rich-ass Californians seem completely oblivious that the people serving them ‘authentic’ tacos don’t have great 401ks. You fucking conquistadors.”

Julia told me to shut the fuck up and leave her alone. She walked to the empty laundry room she used as her writing space.

I thought, Uh oh. She’s probably going to leave me now.

So I tried to apologize.

Julia came out and took her chili from the fast-food bag and snuck back into the laundry room to eat.

I stood next to the laundry room and said, “I’m sorry, Julia. I think I’m just hungry.”

Julia shut the door in my face and screamed, “Well, you can eat alone, asshole.”

I knocked on the door and tried to apologize.

Then Julia shouted, “You can’t just say whatever you want and then expect the fight to be over. So go away.”

I heard the doorknob click, and Julia locked the door. I told her at least I’m not the one locking doors.

Julia said, “Oh, good one, Scott.”

Then she mocked me again: “Nut, nut, nut.”

I lost my temper and went crazy. I pulled my leg back and kicked the door with my big boot. The doorframe cracked and the cheap plastic door swung open.

Julia screamed, “What the fuck is wrong with you? At least you’ll have something to talk about when you go to therapy this week.”

I said, “At least I go to therapy.”

But then she turned and, for a second, I thought we were finally going to make up. She was smiling, but then she reached down and picked up the bowl of fast-food chili. She held the fast-food chili up high in the air and poured it all over my head. I stood silent and felt the chili drips dribble down my hair and start falling on my shoulders in little chili raindrops.

I started to sob. “You don’t even love me.”

Then Julia laughed and rushed right past me and started to run up the stairs.

I turned and followed her, and she screamed, “I fucking hate you.”

I screamed, “Well, I hate you too.”

I watched her bare feet go bump bump up the stairs, and I followed behind her. I walked all the way up covered in chili, and she ran into the bathroom and flipped on the lights. I moved toward the door, and she tried to slam the door shut, but my leg was in the way. She pushed all her weight against the door and trapped my knee until the shin skin started to rub off.

I screamed, “Julia stop. My leg is stuck.”

She kept pushing all her weight against the door, but then she let go and walked to the corner of the bathroom with her back turned toward me.

I said, “Julia, why don’t we go into separate rooms, because we don’t even know what we’re fighting about anymore?”

But then Julia swung toward me and reacted like someone with PTSD.

I saw her foot shoot forward.

She kicked so hard I buckled over. It was a ninja kick to the gut.

I crumpled to the ground and Julia stepped over me. I lay all curled up on the floor, and I told myself, “Don’t panic. You just got the wind knocked out of you.”

Then I heard Julia come back again, and she fell to the floor and cried. She said she didn’t know what happened. She thought she was still traumatized from a crazy ex-boyfriend. She bent down and kissed my face, and I put my arms around her, and I held her and said, “I’m sorry.” Then I kissed her again, and I laughed. Julia said she was sorry, and I said I was sorry too, but I wasn’t mad anymore. For her ninja kick had brought something back to my heart. She kicked me so hard I could finally see.

***

So Julia, if you are reading this far into the future, and I am gone, know that I will find you in this other world. One day I will come, and it’ll be just like when we were first married and poor. And it’ll be just like long ago, when we were both young, and we’ll still be alive somehow, full of life. And we will …

FIGHT!

 

Scott McClanahan is the author of Crapalachia, The Sarah Book, and FIGHTS! (forthcoming from Rose Books in 2026). He lives in West Virginia. This essay is an adapted excerpt from FIGHTS!