We sit on the toilet, our inside-pants around our ankles. We sprawl on IKEA couches covered in weighted blankets. We rot in our beds, having laid down for just a minute many minutes ago. Blue light reflects in our eyes. Our thumbs in constant motion, swiping up again and again. The thrum of the air conditioner plays in the background. Outside, cars honk at jaywalking pedestrians. Inside, a smoke detector beeps again, reminding us we better change that battery later.
We are bored and dissatisfied and we want something different. We have been let down. We believed if we just did what was expected of us, if we stayed nice, if we shrunk down, if we performed happiness, that happiness itself would find us. We would be content, finally. Now, we are wising up. It’s a rigged system, we tell each other. There’s another way, we say.
We look into the front-facing camera on our phones. We talk to our mirrored selves. We proclaim that there will be a vibe shift. There will be no more Hot Girls, Chill Girls, Not Like Other Girls Girls. We will have a new energy, what we dub B.R.E.- Big Rodent Energy. It is #ratgirlsummer, we say. We heart each other’s posts. We comment in all caps. We write YES. We write LOVE THIS SO MUCH. We write THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS.
We find each other.
We see clips of a rat carrying a giant slice of pizza down the subway stairs. We think how we could really go for a giant slice of pizza. We leave our homes, dressed to please ourselves. We wear shorts, some of us for the first time since childhood. Our thighs spill out. We feel the hot night air on our legs. Legs that are pale or hairy or dimpled. We are too skinny and too fat. We are wild and unwanted and beautiful. When we see each other on the streets, gulping hot cheese as we scamper by, we smile big toothy grins.
“Crush that slice!” we shout.
“Your hair is EVERYTHING!” we reply.
We find treasures on our excursions- shiny things, precious things. We collect them and bring them home to surround us. An incomplete inventory of our hoard is as follows: friendship bracelets, gel pens, trading cards of BTS members, water bottles, books, yarn, ipods, and earrings that dangle and sparkle. Some of us gather stuffed animals and pile them high on our beds. One of us has a penchant for outer space, spending hours each day in the sourcing and acquisition of cosmos-related paraphernalia. We are unapologetic in our enthusiasm for these things. There is no cringe in a #ratgirlsummer.
You scrunch up your faces and ask, “but why a rat?”
The girlies that get it get it and those of you that don’t, don’t. How could we explain that to have a #ratgirlsummer means to have freedom from caring how the world sees us and to do what we want to do, when we want to do it?
We quote Mary Oliver and say, “We choose to let the soft animal of our body love what it loves.”
“But a rat?” you ask again. “A filthy, disgusting rat?”
We stop talking. You prefer us as kittens or bunnies, to be held in your hands, petted, cooed over, and contained. There is no point in the explaining, we know. You are incapable of understanding. Only we can hold space for this.
We learn that a group of rats is called a mischief and we decide right then and there to host a mischief.
That night we light up the group chat. There are details to figure out, plans to make. Initially, there is division over where to hold it. We consider whether the venue ought to align with our values. Finding none that do, we focus on other matters. Margaritas, for example.
Let’s not forget the apps, we write.
We would NEVER, we reply.
We send images of rats in sunglasses. Rats on skateboards. Rats in tutus. We laugh react to each one.
YESSSS, we write. LET’S CAUSE MAYHEM.
We arrive as individuals still getting used to being part of a group, a collective, a community. In each other’s company we feel at ease and we think this is how we were meant to live- together, not alone. We are young and old, mostly female but not only. All are welcome, we say, being a rat girl is more about attitude than it is about gender. We dance and drink our margaritas. We gnaw loaded potato skins and we roar with laughter. The servers give us looks and sigh as they clear our dishes. We take turns connecting our phones to the bluetooth speaker, selecting songs that make us move, make us sing from our bellies. You poke your heads in the door to see who is causing this ruckus. You leave quickly upon seeing us intertwined and bound together, an undulating and ecstatic dancing mass. We are UNBOTHERED, we shout. We are happy, at last.
We make our way home, piled into taxis. We look out for each other. No rat girl left behind, we cry. Once home we don’t bother with changing out of our clothes. We make a nest of our covers and we fall asleep, quickly for once. It is a deep sleep.
As we awake in the morning from easy dreams we find ourselves transformed in our beds into gigantic rats. We look at the pink of our tails curled around our bodies, the tips reaching our faces. We are covered in brown fur, we stroke it with our fingertips. We giggle at our softness. We notice our thumbs are gone. We don’t miss them. We are not alarmed nor surprised by this change in our forms. We are not Gregor Samsa. We do not feel shame about who we are. We know we are us, made better.
We sit up and our whiskers tingle, keyed into the frequencies in the air. How delightful, we exclaim. The urge to move, to explore the world around us jolts us out of our beds, our rooms, our homes into the streets.
Our speed on all fours thrills us. Our fingertips make a map of where we go. There are new smells to take in all around us, the redolence of it all dancing in our nasal cavities. We are giddy with the possibility of what we can do.
It is early morning still and the streets are empty, save us. We converge on the manicured lawn of the park, like it was the plan all along. There are hundreds of us. We paw each other. We form wriggling piles of us. We squeak our greetings. We say look at us, look at what we can do. We say that’s amazing, we’re amazing.
Our field of vision is different now. Our eyes on the sides of our heads, we see so much more of the world around us. It’s blurry and yet we understand our position. It’s because we are prey animals, we remember. Humans and predators have forward facing eyes. We laugh because we’ve always felt like prey. Our eyes finally match up with our experiences. We scan our environment for threats.
That’s when we see you. All of you. Sneering. Pointing at us, saying to each other that something must be done.
Did you know we can squeeze through holes much smaller than our bodies, our ribs hinged loose at the spine? That we can climb the sides of buildings, scale fences, leap nine feet into the air? Or that we can fall from the tops of buildings and remain unhurt? That we are excellent swimmers? That we can chew through brick, through cement? Did you know that we can detect infinitesimal traces of poison?
We know all of this now. Because you couldn’t just let us be.
We are resilient, adaptable motherfuckers. We live and thrive everywhere. We will be here long after you are gone, long after you have destroyed each other. We will burrow down deep into the earth for as long as it takes. We are comfortable in darkness. When it’s safe to come into the light, we will claw our way out. We will feel the warmth of the sun on our bodies and we will continue on, together.