Chapter 21
MY BIG FAT HAIRY BEAVER
Cricket
I don’t know if I’ve ever been as angry as I am right now.
I’m sure I’ve wanted to be, but I’ve never let myself feel it.
So here?
Down in the cellar with the barrels of wine that have been aging since Pip’s husband died?
With all of my clothes off and my phone aimed at my vagina?
Yeah.
Yeah, I’m angry.
But I’m also weirdly… free?
Uninhibited and snarky and furious and free.
“So this is what you all want,” I say as I bend over and record the thick hairy mess that I’ve let grow wild while I’ve been here.
I spread my legs wider and get the camera right up in there, showing off my labia too.
“You want to see the Cheeky Beaver’s beaver.
Well. This one’s the one and only. The original. ”
I’m sweating despite the chilly temperatures, but I’m doing it.
I’m recording myself naked.
With my phone in airplane mode.
And I’ll likely get a new phone instead of ever turning this one off of airplane mode.
But maybe I’ll start my own GrippaBeav channel.
And maybe I’ll sue the shameless opportunist who’s using my video to make themselves money off of the worst moment of my life.
Maybe I’ll completely destroy them.
I shouldn’t have, but I looked it up.
I looked up the videos that some asshole is making about me.
Watched my own vagina dance and sing to songs that are clear AI rip-offs of Waverly Sweet and Bro Code songs.
Made myself feel violated all over again.
But this is my body.
And I shouldn’t be ashamed of it.
“Bagock!” The Cluckinator says.
She followed me here, and she’s helping me be brave.
She’s naked.
I can be naked too.
Here. In a technically public space.
I can’t do this in my room.
I have to be bolder than that.
“Look, I can make my beaver talk too. Without AI’s assistance.
” I grab my labia with my free hand and manipulate it so that it’s moving on camera as I make up a fake voice.
“Hellllooooo, I’m Cricket’s beaver, live and in person, and I want to tell all of you cunt-muffins to go fuck yourselves with a rusty mouse statue. ”
This is—helping?
I’m not usually a call-people-cunt-muffins kind of person, but this is cathartic.
And honestly?
I need to say it.
I’ve wanted to say it, but now, I need to say it.
“Cluck cluck cluck BAGOCK!” The Cluckinator says.
“Want to see my boobs too?” I shimmy my beav for the camera, then move the camera up to my chest. “Look. There’s my nipple. And here’s my other nipple. And oooooh, scandal. There’s a hair growing out of my nipple too. Bad modern woman. So bad. Having hair.”
I bounce, making my breasts and the camera jiggle, and despite all of the rage simmering beneath my skin, I start to smile at the ridiculousness of what I’m doing.
“Is this what you want? You want some booby too? How about you, bassfisher857? Do your friends and family and coworkers know that you told me to go kill myself?”
Some people.
The more I talk, the madder I get.
And the madder I get, the more I talk, calling out all of the people who flooded my work email with hate letters and the people in the comment sections of the most popular reposts of my live video that I couldn’t get taken down everywhere.
Also, the madder I get, the more agitated The Cluckinator gets.
I hope all of her clucks are her shouting out at whoever was so bad in her life that she had to run away from them.
My dam has burst, and all of the things I’ve held back—not just in the past month, but all of my life—come pouring out of me.
“And you,” I yell at the camera. “My family. Not a single damn one of you has asked me how I am. Not a fucking one. It’s all about your own reputations and how my sisters would never and that I should grow up and that I’ve never done a single good thing in my life and that I don’t deserve to be loved. ”
That one—that one breaks me.
But for the first time since I got here, I’m not mad at myself.
I’m furious with the world.
If Pip had had my job fifty-something years ago, if she’d been through this same thing, there wouldn’t have been an internet for everyone to share her most mortifying moment.
And the rage I feel at my own family—family should be about love and acceptance and forgiveness, not shame and guilt and control.
For the first time in my life, I’m saying it out loud.
Baring my soul the way I’ve bared my skin.
“Why’s my beaver so terrible, Aurora? You’re a fucking doctor. You’ve studied anatomy. You should know we all have beavers. We’re all born through a beaver.”
My voice echoes in the underground chamber while the barrels in the industrial racks watch.
The Cluckinator bagocks like she just laid an egg.
“And Belle. You made me a punching bag growing up, always blaming me for taking your role as the baby, as if that was my choice. And you still fucking do it. And Dad. Joke’s on you, you fucking wine snob.
I’m living my best life in a winery—a full damn winery, not just that cellar you’re always bragging about—with people who are kind and compassionate and the kind of family you’ll never be to me. ”
I spin, holding the phone away from me to best get as much of my naked body as possible in the frame while also capturing the rows of dusty wine barrels running the length of this room and my chicken doing her chicken waddle as she turns with me.
Tears are dripping down my face, but god, it feels so good to finally say it out loud.
I don’t want to be a victim.
I don’t want to blame my problems on other people.
But I am who I am—I am how I am—because of the lessons that were ingrained in me as a child.
The lessons that I’m too much trouble and not enough accomplishment. That I’m in the way. That I take too much space.
That I’m a burden.
“You’re all no better than the people telling me to stick a hot poker up my vagina and that they want to smack my ass and that I need to find God, who, news flash, gave me my beaver,” I shriek at the camera.
I wonder if I’ll ever have the courage to say these things to their faces.
But I don’t think I need to.
This—this isn’t for them.
It’s for me.
It’s for me to fully name how I’ve felt so that I can let it go and move on.
“And you know what I wish?” I yell as I complete my circle. “I wish—oh my god, what the fuck are you doing here?”
Heath’s gaping at me from one end of the cellar.
Mouth ajar.
Eyes wide.
One foot in front of the other like he froze mid-step while walking around the rows of barrels.
He’s near the door, and I’m at least ten barrel-widths away from him.
“Sorry,” he croaks out. “Sorry. Came here to think.”
He doesn’t move.
“How much did you hear?”
I’m still shrieking.
Not because I’m embarrassed.
More because this is for me.
For me and The Cluckinator, who’s flapping her wings madly at him.
This is for us.
Not for him.
“Just—just walked in,” he says. “Swear to god. Just got here. Heard you shouting and I thought—I thought something was wrong.”
“Oh my god, is Lav with you?”
“No. No, she’s—she’s in town. And she doesn’t come here. She doesn’t know it exists. The secret door—yeah. No.”
That, at least, is a relief.
She sees and hears things here, but I don’t want her to see and hear things from me.
Not yet.
Not when I’m this livid.
“Are you…are you on a phone call? Or live-streaming?” he asks.
The Cluckinator squawks like it’s a stupid question, which it is.
“No.” I stop recording and stand there glaring at him, everything hanging out. “We’re in a basement without cell signal or internet, and I’m having self-therapy, okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Face your fears. That’s—that’s good.”
“Duh.”
“Is it working?”
My nipples pucker, and I suddenly understand why Pip walks around naked all of the time.
If I can stand here, with my nipples puckering at the sound of a man’s voice, and not shrink, not shirk, not hide, then I can do fucking anything.
I square my shoulders. “It’s starting to.”
“Are those—are all of those things actual emails you got? The things about God and—pokers and smacking?”
I’m breathing heavily, but I hold eye contact with him and tell him the ugly truth. “That’s just the start of the hate mail.”
“That—that’s far worse than the worst of what we had.”
“People are meaner now.”
“Fuck.”
“Mabel says the meanest are probably bots, but I think she said that to make me feel better.”
“That—that makes sense. Lots of bots.”
“Do you mind?” I gesture to my phone. Then to my chicken. Then to my phone again.
“I—yeah. Yes. No. I don’t mind. You can—yes. You can get back to it.”
“Not likely. Now the mood’s passing.” I huff as the lingering rage fades.
Just seeing Heath—after the initial surprise—this is also helping.
Yes, I have a massive crush on him, but also, he’s been my friend.
More family than my own family.
He makes me feel safe.
Even here, where I’m naked and yelling at my phone like I’ve lost my damn mind.
He blinks.
Visibly swallows.
But he doesn’t leave.
And I don’t tell him to.
I suddenly don’t want him to leave.
And when he looks down at my body, then back up at my eyes, his cheeks going a little red, yes.
Yes, I do, in fact, know the next thing I want to do to work out the lingering anger over what the internet has done to me and the lack of support I’ve gotten from my family.
“We, ah, have to quit running into each other naked,” he says.
“Do we? Maybe I want to be a nudist like Pip. Maybe I’ll walk around like this all the time because everyone in the world’s already seen it, so why not?
Maybe I’ll start my own news channel and do a lifestyle segment on nudity.
Or on surviving hate mail. Or on people who compensate for their lack of personality and intelligence by being trolls on the internet. ”
The Cluckinator clucks in agreement.
Or possibly like she approves of me being snarky to Heath.
Or maybe she’s actually a bad influence and she wants me to do all of those things.
“Mabel trolls trolls in her spare time,” Heath blurts.
“Good. Good. I hope she makes them cry.”