By Casey Jo
Lily was the first person I know to make money selling dirty underwear to strangers on Craigslist. She had social anxiety and would get diarrhea pangs around men she was attracted to. (To be clear, she was not selling underwear that had been crapped in.) She once told me that she loved the author Dean Koontz, not so much for his stories, but because she found holding Dean Koontz novels to be calming. “I keep a box of them upstairs,” she confessed. “And when I’m nervous I just visit the box.” So whenever I picture Lily, she’s doing one of these three activities: bolting for the bathroom, stuffing her underwear into envelopes, or stroking Dean Koontz paperbacks in a congested attic.
Lily is about as nondescript of a person as I am: brown hair, Midwestern vibes, a fade into the crowd look. We used to work together in the operating room. Lily once curated a Van Halen playlist for her favorite surgeon and we spent an entire two hour knee replacement touring the David Lee Roth era. She included the “Eruption” guitar solo, which I remember hearing as the patient was waking up from surgery. Lily said if she ever came out of anesthesia to “Eruption” she’d probably have an orgasm.
Lily and her ex-husband wore luchador masks when they had sex and gave the stink bugs that plagued their home human names. They had a roommate, John, that Lily ‘inherited’ after the divorce. I have no idea where or when John came into the picture, or why he ended up living with a married couple. He was just always there. Lily left the hospital a few years back, taking the life we all relished hearing about with her. I think when you’re surrounded by the strangeness of seeing limbs amputated and skulls cut open on the regular, you crave wild stories from everyday life in order to balance the scales. I don’t know. I’ve always appreciated Lily for being an N-of-1, a true original.
On the 4th of July, the 250th anniversary of America’s independence, a co-worker and I decide to check in with Lily to see how life is going. We’re at the hospital but all is quiet: shootings and stabbings and hands blown off by firecrackers have yet to trickle in. Somehow our conversation turns to selling feet pics, which naturally segues into conversations about Lily. My co-worker pulls up Lily’s number, dials, places the phone on speaker. We lean forward in anticipation when we hear her pick up.
“You guys, I’m about to sell a pair of period underwear in exchange for the repair of my fence,” she responds when asked about feet pics. We screech with giddy laughter. God we’ve missed Lily.
“Wait, so what would the price tag on that be? You know, in cash,” I ask.
“Two grand!”
More howling from us. Good for Lily.
It turns out the buyer/repair person isn’t a random contractor, but actually Lily’s roommate, John. So not as impressive, but still. That’s two grand she doesn’t have to pay. Lily tells us she’s been promising John this underwear for various yard maintenance for awhile now. Of course we’re curious how it came to be that John was interested in Lily’s period underwear instead of cash in the first place.
And Lily lays it on us. She says that back in October, she thinks John went through an episode of ‘spiritual psychosis.’ Became convinced that Lily was God. Begged Lily for her hand in marriage.
“He said that Mary is God and all women are God and period blood is sacred,” she tells us.
If this were anyone else in my life, I would be seriously alarmed. I cannot emphasize enough that for Lily (and John) this sounds like an ordinary Saturday. John was always into the more bizarre ends of the metaphysical spectrum, and because of her social anxiety, Lily was always game for staying home and indulging him. Lily says that John wanted to wear the underwear while making repairs on the fence, so she told him that was all he could wear. John expressed worries about someone seeing him pants-less and calling the police, but Lily told him not to worry, it will look like he’s wearing a Speedo, and it’s hot out, so people should understand. Lily could be joking or serious or both. We never knew which half of her stories were true.
While this ridiculous conversation carries on, the orthopedic trauma team places a nail in someone’s shattered hip and the stroke team attempts to repair an aneurysm in someone’s brain. Outside the hospital, dad’s grill hot dogs and kids itch for sunset, when they can careen through fiercely manicured lawns with sparklers in hand. And somewhere in the greater metro area, Lily tries to convince John to fix the fence in her period stained underwear. My country ’tis of thee.
Lily tells us that John considers them ‘spiritually married.’ She jokes that she’s not sure if she can get ‘spiritually divorced’ or how many times she can get spiritually married. I want to know more, like whether or not the spiritual marriage had to be consecrated in some manner, and whether or not there was some kind of ceremony, or, and most importantly, if at any point Lily thought John should receive professional help. Unfortunately, I don’t get a chance to ask because the trauma pager beeps and buzzes, a patient en route to the emergency department with some kind of thoracic injury.
“Lily we have to go, there’s a red level!” we say.
She tells us that she misses us, promises to keep us posted on life. “It’s been pretty interesting, being God!” she says before ending the conversation and texting a picture of John, who at least appears to be very happy with life.
Lily’s experience as God is a different version of God than the role we’re used to playing, saving people’s life and limb. Agape seems to be the closest definition of John’s ‘love’ toward Lily, the unconditional love of man for God, though there’s a highly questionable mental health component to that. I can only imagine the interactions taking place on the regular between Lily and her roommate/ spiritual husband/ humble acolyte. Her life has always been a trip.
The thoracic injury gets downgraded from a red-level to blue-level to not much at all, meaning we will not be playing God today. Red to blue to white. Red, white and blue. Under the Declaration of Independence all Americans are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Even if that means selling used underwear, or buying it, or being the people that delight in hearing about these transgressive transactions. I love that in this country, Lily can shove a sweaty thong into a bubble mailer and ship it through the U.S. Postal Service, a proud Forever stamp ferrying the nondescript parcel from sea to shining sea.
Casey Jo talks with a lot of potential deities. Find some of her recent words in Hobart, HAD, trampset, JMWW, The Bulb Region and more, and at caseyjo.carrd.co