Things Have Gotten Weird

Friends fall out over how they each navigate this time of life, one capitalizing on it, selling products designed to ease the way we transition, ointments and salves

for our inner vixen. The other friend calls it a grift, veiled in the language of wellness when the same product can be purchased for a quarter of the price

over the counter at the drugstore. I speak for all of us, the one selling tells the other who resists, calls bullshit and waves the waiter over for another drink. We shouldn’t

be fighting, another friend says. Women should empower each other. I excuse myself, go to the restroom to text my husband: can you pick me up? things have gotten weird.

When he arrives, I tell him I’d need to work a second job to afford the means to empower myself the way some women do, gathering over signature cocktails and charcuterie.

Should I click on social media posts instead to validate our collective goals, buy the message others are selling, then the products, at a price point above our budget?

We are good friends, we support each other, after all. I mock, and these questions aren’t for my husband to answer. He’s still thinking about the very expensive lube I did not purchase

as I rage on about patriarchy, late-stage capitalism, ravenous algorithms, how hetero-normative relationship advice feeds into all of it. We agree that, yes, we are hungry, pull into a drive-through. We wipe the sauce

from our mouths as my husband brakes to avoid a coyote that lopes across the road, headlights gleaming in its eyes for a moment, the way we light our way in the dark reflected back at us.