Megan Cannella: If It Plays in Peoria: A Glossary of Midwestern Survival

cw: drug use

asking, Bathroom?
        verb
        meaning I want to fuck
        meaning ya got any drugs
        meaning I need to cry
        meaning wanna go talk shit about this bitch
        meaning did ya see who just came in, don’t you dare fuck
        him again, you’re gonna fuck him again aren’t you
        meaning I miss you
        meaning this bar is too loud to miss you in
        meaning it’s too hard to be with you anywhere less public than this, so this is the
        only place I can be alone with you

opening a beer for someone without being asked
        verb
        meaning I see you
        meaning I hear you
        meaning I hurt you
        meaning I’m sorry
        meaning love me again
        meaning rot with me a while, won’t you

saying, Yeah…I know him
        verb
        meaning he was inside me earlier today
        meaning how do you know him
        meaning he’ll be cumming in me while we laugh about you
        meaning quit while you’re ahead
        meaning I already know your suffering while you don’t even see it coming

asking, Wanna go for a drive?
        verb
        meaning I want to make out with you
        meaning I have a wife at home so we can’t make out there
        meaning I have a boyfriend who hasn’t fucked me in two years because he thinks I’m a
        whore
        meaning I love you more than anything but the only place I understand intimacy is in
        these fields on the way to Kewanee

parking in a cornfield
        verb
        meaning is the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere with someone you barely
        know the safest place you’ve ever been
        meaning how sad for you
        meaning what are you outrunning
        meaning what happens when you are found

fucking in a car in a cornfield
        verb
        meaning this is fragile
        meaning you are fragile
        meaning I am fragile
        meaning too much space or light or air will break this, break us

being at the good Walmart before 6 am
        verb
       meaning you are drunk from the night before
       meaning there were less cops on the route here than on the route home
       meaning you’re sobering up
       meaning you’re buying things to keep from crying
       meaning you won’t leave til the Panera across the parking lot opens so you can sit naked
       in your bed eating a cheese danish before you pass out only to wake up with a hangover
       that only a three day bender can ease

saying, It’s good to see you
       verb
       meaning I knew I shouldn’t have come back to this bar
       meaning you’ll never see me again

saying, I miss you
       verb
       meaning loving you almost killed me
       meaning loving you is the thing I’ve done the longest
       meaning goddamn, we used to get good coke

saying, I used to date a lot of managers of strip clubs for a while
        verb
        meaning to have tried too much
        meaning to have cowered in ways that surprised you
        meaning to have smelled like fried food more frequently than is comfortable
        meaning to have once been a different kind of optimist
        meaning you used to get great coke
        meaning you know how to be sad in a Miss Havisham kind of way