{"id":13694,"date":"2017-04-05T00:01:45","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T05:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=13694"},"modified":"2017-04-05T00:29:46","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T05:29:46","slug":"she-went-as-a-cheetah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/13694","title":{"rendered":"She Went as a Cheetah"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You\u2019re sitting in your car in the driveway around back,<br \/>\non the phone with your dad<br \/>\nbecause the seventy dollars in cash<br \/>\nwasn\u2019t enough to cover the copay for PEP<br \/>\nand you need more money in your account<br \/>\nto pick up the remaining twenty-eight days<br \/>\nfrom the pharmacist who looked at your eyes<br \/>\nand pulled you aside to let you know she would break<br \/>\nthe rules and advance you two days\u2019 worth because<br \/>\n<em>timing is so important with this<\/em>.<br \/>\nYou hear yourself tell your dad you slept with a girl<br \/>\nlast night at a party and that only afterwards<br \/>\ndid she tell\u00a0you she may have been recently exposed<br \/>\nto HIV (you\u2019re careful to say <em>may have been<\/em>)<br \/>\nbut everything will for sure be fine\u2014it\u2019s just to be sure.<br \/>\nYour dad, in the gentle way he diverts the topic<br \/>\nwhen he\u2019s not quite sure what to say, asks<br \/>\nwhat she was dressed as for Halloween.<br \/>\nThe specificity of the question throws you,<br \/>\nas you haven\u2019t envisioned your lie beyond words alone.<br \/>\nAndr\u00e9s comes to mind first, disrobing the gold chains<br \/>\nfrom his Cambodian prince costume in your room,<br \/>\nbut you soon recall the girl in a cheetah print jumpsuit<br \/>\nyou two encountered on the way home,<br \/>\ncomplaining to anyone who would listen<br \/>\nabout how no one came to her party.<br \/>\n<em>Cheetah<\/em>, you say, and afterwards you imagine you hear<br \/>\nsimmering in your dad\u2019s nervous laugh<br \/>\nthe question he really has in mind.<br \/>\nThen you think about how you\u2019d slept with Andr\u00e9s before,<br \/>\nabout how you didn\u2019t expect him to want to top this time,<br \/>\nabout wanting your body to catch up to your mind already,<br \/>\nabout pain, and how it collects in jars made of silence.<br \/>\nYour dad says he\u2019ll transfer the money and that he loves you,<br \/>\nand you feel as though you\u2019re standing outside in the rain<br \/>\nlooking at a curly-haired boy sitting in his Ford Escape<br \/>\nwith headphones in\u2014talking, it seems, to himself.<\/p>\n<h6><a href=\"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/13494\">Evan Bauer<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You\u2019re sitting in your car in the driveway around back, on the phone with your dad because the seventy dollars in cash wasn\u2019t enough to cover the copay for PEP and you need more money in your account to pick up the remaining twenty-eight days from the pharmacist who looked at your eyes and pulled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":647,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[52],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-3yS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13694"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/647"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13694"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13720,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13694\/revisions\/13720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}