The truck driver is Bulgarian. I am sitting on a bed made up of green sheets with daises on them. My brother is in the front seat looking at the map. I am in the back trying to look beautiful.
I am twenty-three years old and I have just learned that I am ugly. It is June and I am hitchhiking with my brother. It’s my first time hitchhiking. It’s my second time in Germany. It’s my first time being ugly. We are going from Linz, Germany to Vienna. The trucker has agreed to drive the entire rest of the way. I want to hug him.
Our Bulgarian trucker is smoking Russian cigarettes and keeps the radio on low.
I ask him if I can smoke. He’s enthusiastic that I’d like to smoke and shakes his pack of MOSKVAS towards me. But I have my own. I bought Bali Shag rolling tobacco in New York City minutes after I found out that I was ugly, while I was feeling sorry for myself. I have a demented view on smoking. I often think it’s going to give me something besides smelly fingers and a sore throat in the morning. I have this idea that a cigarette will give me profound thought, an exciting moment, a more memorable experience. I am hoping that this particular cigarette will give me the courage to ask my brother if I am ugly.
The day before I left for Europe I was at my lover’s apartment in the East Village. We’d met at a writing class a year prior when he’d had a live-in girlfriend. Since then, they’d broken up and he moved out. We were in love. Lucas had to leave for work in the morning and he left his keys with me. Unable to control myself, I did what I usually do when he leaves me there alone: smoke his pot and read his private journals. I read about his ex-girlfriends, his insecurities, his fears about life and descriptions of his love for me. He would not approve on any level, but that doesn’t stop me.
This time as I reached for his black Moleskin, something white fell out. A napkin with some writing on it. Inky blue pen. In the top left corner it said: Amazing girlfriend, ugly lover, still not happy.
I knew which one I was.
And now, in this foreign country, foreign truck, experience, I can only think about how I am ugly. And how it bothered me that it bothered me. I had grown up believing I was pretty. It was like finding out there is no Santa Claus. Like finding out you are not going to be a famous writer after all.
I know the Bulgarian truck driver and my brother are not thinking about the way I look. I know I look normal. Five foot three with dirty blond hair. My brother’s head is buried deep in the map to see which direction we should walk when we get dropped off in Vienna. And who knows what the trucker is thinking about: maybe his own ugly sister that he misses. Maybe that he needs gas or more cigarettes or a lover or a ham sandwich.
We arrive in Vienna. I have fallen asleep. My brother taps my ankle to wake me. I don’t want to wake up. I don’t want to ask my brother if I am ugly. I know he will laugh at me. I don’t want to hear laughter.
I thank the Bulgarian trucker and grab my backpack and my cardboard slabs with cities written on them for hitchhiking. LINZ, WIEN, BERLIN. I carefully avoid my reflection in the rear view mirror as I jump out of the truck.
Chloe Caldwell has been published or is forthcoming In Zygote, Gutter Eloquence and Gloom Cupboard. She is co-editor of Sleep. Snort. Fuck. and resides in Seattle, WA.