THE EMPATH V. NARCISSIST DISHWASHER CLEANSING CYCLE
by BRITTANY DEITCH
April 15 2025DL met SB at the peanut free table on the first day of elementary. They were both allergic to cashews, and this gave them a ton in common. If they'd eat one, their throats would swell up and they'd need Mrs. Wise to chew up their Lunchables pizza and spit it back into their mouths.
A mix of childhood friends and people who lived on the same floor during freshman year of college eventually join the two, synthesizing the male social equivalent of a cult. DL and SB, friends ever since™, leaders of the free world (of the Philadelphia white boys). They run together everyday and give each other genius pieces of life advice. They discuss allergen labels, girls, and where they shoot their loads. One time SB went to do it in a dirty sock and his penis broke out in hives because apparently it was made in a factory with nuts. They're roommates. SB once commented to me, two beers in at Dirty Frank's, I'm twirling my hair, that DL is super horny. Apparently if a guy gets angry when he exercises, that's what it means.
Before I could figure out which one of them I liked best, DL asked me on a date. I said yes. I was weary because SB was the bisexual one and DL had ended things with every girl he ever dated. But he got me sunflowers and then I got really confused, as if concussed with the pollen, and decided I would agree to anything.
I think we dated because he wanted to think harder and then he realized thinking harder was a lot so then he decided to stop. Being with him was like brain surgery after the last guy I was seeing. He was like my purgatory angel meant to baptize me clean from the narcissistic semen excess left inside from fucking my last boyfriend. We had evil sex— and my cat would burrow herself in the closet. Normally she was hanging out in the kitchen, searching underneath the dishwasher for mice. But when he was around she gave up her passion. Got depressed. All she could do was sleep in my bedroom closet underneath the pile of clothes I was meaning to post on Depop but ended up rotting there for 6 months, and were perfect for Bug. I couldn't take that away from her.
After the storm came to a calm (we broke up) she returned to her post and I'd always joke that Bug Is Looking For Danny Underneath The Dishwasher. I'd say this to DL and he'd crash out on the inside but the outside thought it was the funniest thing. After we broke up and I found his secret Substack, I was shocked!™ by the realization that all the things he said were okay, curiously never were. He referred to me by my initials and complained. My Fucking Annoying Bitch Girlfriend Keeps Wanting To Hangout With Me 🙄 he wrote, positive that he had done it this time. Made the art that he was put on this planet to make.
Whenever I was really trying to annoy him I'd poke at the agreeable "disposition" he held. How he always had somewhere to be because of it. I'd be like Let Me Guess, You Have To Pick Up Your Friend From The Airport— No, You're Hanging A TV? Oh, You're Getting A Couch Off Facebook Marketplace. Why Didn't You Just Say That? He couldn't ever slow down from this life style— one built off of satisfying people. He got tired of satisfying me though, I might've been the first person he ever decided to stop satisfying. I must be talented (I must be awful).
So now I'm alone. I've been eating microwave cooked potatoes because I read somewhere that bread is unhealthy for you again. I split them open and eat around the skin and try to do it before my roommate gets home because last time I was under-water (non-verbal with a sinking look in my eyes) she asked me what was wrong with me and I didn't feel like there was a right answer. I can never tell if my roommate is on coke or just weird. One of the things she said to me recently was that I inspired her to buy barrel jeans off Amazon. I don't know what that means. My ex boyfriend's roommate won't talk to me anymore now that we ended things. He was once in love with me. A while ago he let me explain to him why it's usually perverted when guys talk with one another about their sex lives (he asked a lot of questions, wanting to understand the most core why of the concept). He's perfect. A few weeks after this conversation and after I told DL it never felt like he tried to understand things the way SB did in that moment— the way he probed me for more, DL pretended to fuck me in front of him. What Do You Want Me To Do? Suck Your Dick? he asked. He got up on my lap and pretended to mount a penis that I don't have, and shifted up and down against my non-dick and I tried to push him off me. I think it turned the roommate on. I cried for 3 hours after, that it felt like he had assaulted me. But I wasn't sure that I actually meant it. We broke up 2 weeks later because he felt like he couldn't do anything right. A plane above our heads, drawing out big white, fluffy advertisement letters into the sky which announced that You Just Got Defense Mechanism'd! A metal claw emerging, making it's way down to grab him and pull him back into the supply. Like how they draw up dead bodies into helicopters sometimes, in movies. But He's Not A Narcissist, He's A Boy, I cry, and heaven fluctuates, clutching itself, interlacing with amazement, turns out and in, front side back and left side right and the inner is now the outer and it absorbs what's circulating in the sky. Retreating, in a way, on the notion that true love does conquer all, and we'd all finally get to head back home.
I never heard from him again. Tried sending him a letter at 2 am with Uber courier but it didn't do anything. I've been totally destroyed and would do anything to get DL back. We could've just worked through it though. We would've only loved each other more.
Last night I was at Pauly Gee's after Dirty Frank's after the house show at Prim's where I was totally out of it and felt like I could die. Some guy sitting at the bar looked familiar to me and I yelled over to him that he must've been in a movie (I was drunk, he wasn't cute, it had nothing to do with him, and he did ask for my number at the end of the interaction) and we ended up talking. I asked him to tell me something to help me stop hating my life right now (Can You Tell Me Something I Don't Know? I asked) and then he said It's Not Supposed To Be Easy. I rolled my eyes and said I Already Know That, Can You Give Me A Different One?
Brittany Deitch cohosts The Internet Is Dead Podcast, writes on Paste Magazine and Substack as theworstpersonintheworld, and speaking of the world— in the real one, she stopped caring about SB the minute she and DL started dating and also DL didn't do half this stuff. This was a think piece. And she knows it's your wildest fantasy. subscribe!