My Superpower is Invisibility and It’s Saved Me From Many Bad Decisions
There are perks in being unnoticeable when you’ve got a shady AF past
I am standing in my bathroom with the bad boyfriend, and the shower is running. We are not about to have a sexy time in this steamy room but instead, he is whispering close to my ear that I had better not fuck this up for him.
His breath is hotter than the steam in the room, and yet it gives me shivers all over my body. He has done something illegal. Something bad. This is why he is “the bad boyfriend” and will forever remain that person in my head.
There is a weird van parked outside of our house. It’s been there all day, but I’ve been ignoring it because there are weird vans all over the place, so why should I worry over every one of them? The bad boyfriend is telling me that I’m so stupid for not realizing it sooner — the police are watching us.
I can’t help but think that my life has turned into a ridiculous b-grade movie shown on channel three at midnight. I want to tell him that he is overreacting, that there’s no way the unmarked van on the street outside is listening in on our conversations. That’s crazy talk. Cops don’t do that to people like us.
The problem is, people like me and people like him are very different. The distinct shape of this idea is beginning to form in my brain, but I can’t quite grasp it because, right now, as I stand in the bathroom, a fine layer of sweat forming on my brow, I am off my face on magic mushrooms.
Thirty minutes prior, I was dancing in the living room by myself to the Rocky Horror soundtrack. My cat Romeo was clutched tightly in my arms as I hollered “Sweet Transvestite” to an empty space. I am wearing fishnet stockings and dark black makeup around my eyes.
I like to get high on shrooms by myself because it helps me forget about the seriously sticky situation I’ve gotten myself into with the bad boyfriend. I need to leave him, but I am too afraid because he sometimes flies off the handle for no apparent reason.
So now, here in the bathroom, I nod my head and go along with his insane story. He has committed a crime. Nothing that involves hurting people, but it is a crime nonetheless. He tells me the crime happened months ago, and now the cops are hot on his heels. He thinks they are following him. I think he’s just paranoid.
Like I said, these things simply don’t happen to people like us.
As I pull this memory out of the deep reaches of my brain, I realize that what I was thinking at the time was that these things don’t happen to people like me.
From the age of 14, when I began hanging out with all the wrong people, I had incredible luck in never getting nailed down with any of the crimes that were going on around me. From holding up corner stores with water guns to borrowing random vehicles parked on the side of the road, I am not proud to say I was affiliated with way too many criminals. I am, however, proud to say that at least I didn’t actually commit any of these crimes — I was just the little weirdo on the far-off sidelines.
The number of times I was pulled into the cop shop for statements was in the double digits, and yet, nothing. Nothing devastating ever resulted from these occurrences. At least for me, it was always just an awkward chat while I held back nervous tears.
That must be why I was so blithe in the bathroom that day all those years ago. I was invincible when it came to getting caught. The countless times I ran face-first into an officer while walking around town, underage with open liquor or a joint hanging from my mouth, and all that resulted was a “go home, Lindsay,” is astounding now that I think back on it. I never spent a night in the drunk tank and have never received so much as a slap on the wrist for bad behaviour — even though the badness was right there, on my sleeve for all to see.
It’s because I’ve always been an invisible person.
I am a relatively small individual and, believe it or not, pretty timid in real life. I use humour as a defence mechanism for when I’m feeling out of place (which is basically all of the time), so usually, one can find me trying, desperately, to crack a joke to ease the situation I’m in.
People who are small, non-threatening, and easily peer pressured should, by in large, be feared beyond belief because of our innate ability to slip under everyone’s radar. However, that’s not how the world works, so for the majority of my life, I have waded through the waters of existence without anyone batting an eye in my general direction.
Maybe that’s why all of these bad boyfriends and crime-loving people were attracted to me in the first place. They knew on some subconscious level that being associated with me might make them less of a suspect by default.
Now in my present life, when people look at me, they don’t see what I see. They don’t see a writer with many weird and wonderful stories to tell. They don’t see a wannabe comedienne who’s got mad jokes that just won’t quit. They don’t see someone who lived a life, once upon a time, that was nothing like her current existence.
What they see is a mother. A housewife. A 30-something-year-old woman who is a little awkward in social situations but pretty dull in the grand scheme of things.
I think this is what people have always seen when they looked at me. Even when I was 16 and high on magic mushrooms while trying to convince the bad boyfriend that cops were not monitoring our house — everyone just saw a boring 30-something-year-old housewife.
“Hi Lindsay, it’s good to see you again,” Officer Harry says while I sit in a tiny room in the back of the police station.
“Hi, Harry!” I reply enthusiastically, even though I know I should call him by his last name because my dad would kill me if he knew I was being so disrespectful. My dad would kill me if he knew the cops were questioning me because of the nefarious people I was spending time with.
“Well, I brought you in today because I have a few questions about those guys you’ve been hanging around,” he says, keeping a calm air about him. Harry is one of the cool cops in town; everyone knows it. I am lucky that it’s Harry who is questioning me today.
“Okay, shoot,” I say, immediately regretting my choice of words.
“There’s a lot of pot moving in and out of that house. I want to know where it’s coming from.” Because Harry says pot instead of drugs or marijuana that confirms that he is one of the cool cops in town.
“Oh,” I reply, “that’s an easy one!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah! The Pot Fairy.”
“Pot Fairy? Really? Are we doing this?” He raises an eyebrow at me.
“Doing what? As far as I know, the Pot Fairy is providing loads of goods for the…reefing. Ha!”
“You and I both know that there is no such thing as the Pot Fairy.” Harry is getting agitated by my tomfoolery.
“What?!” I say in dismay, “What are you doing to me, Harry? Why are you crushing my dreams? Do you go around telling small children that Santa isn’t real too?”
He shakes his head, then places a kind hand on my shoulder as he gets up to leave the room. “Okay, Linds, go home. And I mean your real home with your mom and dad. Don’t go back to that house. You’re a good kid, and you don’t need to be mixed up with those losers.”
“Will do, my friend!” I say without having any intention to oblige.
This is often how these meetings would go. Someone I was affiliated with would do something terrible, and then a cop or person of authority would ask me a few questions about it; I’d play dumb and never hear anything else about it again.
Nothing ever came of the weird van incident — at least from what I know. The bad boyfriend went on to do more bad things. I managed to run away from the bad boyfriend while remaining invisible.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always dreamed of being famous. It’s one of those embarrassing goals because it seems shallow and superficial. I make jokes about my one-day fame the same way I joke about how old my vulva is looking these days — there’s so much truth buried deep in those yarns that they aren’t even funny anymore.
Only now, at 35 years old, do I understand why I’ve always dreamed of that sort of widespread recognition (in regards to fame, not my vulva — she’s already famous). It’s because then I might not be so invisible anymore. People might care about the things that I say. They might see through the cute exterior and understand that there is a real live interesting person underneath the humdrum exterior that seemed to get me out of so many pickles in my shady younger days.
Maybe fame would be fine for a hot minute, but as I write this story, the absolute truth of the matter is rearing its head from the corners of my words. It’s telling me that there is a superpower in being unnoticeable — a small yet genuine strength in walking through the world without anyone taking a second glance.
I’ve always been an invisible person, and for the majority of my life, it’s saved me from myself.