The Welfare State

text by Juanjo Muñoz Knudsen
illustration by Ariel Bertarioni

Recently, one of my friends sat us all down to talk about men and whether we felt she had bad luck. She’s one of many, obviously, who ends up in situations that are a mix between Freud for TV and Latin American magical hyperrealism—there’s no other way to put it. She ends up with men who outwardly seem like adults, but on the inside are a mix of spoiled child and malicious spirit. But anyway, first let me describe her—Ari: she always wears dresses, made of colorful, light fabrics that flow when she runs by. She’s always on the move, but it never looks bad on her, and she’s not like those people whose energy makes you anxious. Ari is like watching a hummingbird. She goes from activity to activity, filling her week with knitting groups, menstrual workshops, listening circles. She’s working on her thesis paper about contemporary dance and jazz, teaches salsa and merengue for extra income, and works as a dental assistant at her sister’s clinic while finishing her degree. She does everything, which is why her situation seems so paradoxical to me: how can someone who does so much be attracted to someone who does nothing?

And well, before anyone says anything, I’ll say the obvious: yes, I’m in love with my friend. But then again, I’m in love with all my friends. They’re at the same time whole and still developing, their feelings bloom every day and reach me through our group chat with their deep and insightful everyday experiences. There’s not a single day where something simple—pouring a cup of coffee, finding a ladybug trapped in a glass, walking into the bathroom and realizing they’d left the light on—doesn’t change their perspective about their careers, the guilt they carry, the importance of a long-forgotten friendship, or how a dream reveals the connection between their mother and the anxiety that large bodies of water causes them, as one of them mentioned this morning, followed by stickers both melodramatic and tender.

When Ari told us they were sharing her car so it’d be easier for him to get to his concerts and hopefully get more paid gigs, because networking is really important when you’re a musician—you know. I just thought: Girl, open your eyes. But I stayed quiet, like the rest of us, smiling halfway and letting her talk. Let me be clear—we weren’t encouraging her, but we weren’t saying what we really thought either. Maybe because some of it sounded too familiar, and we’d feel hypocritical saying the same things that were said to us months or years ago and we didn’t listen. Or maybe we just couldn’t be 100% sure of what was going to happen to her. I knew, but out of shame and group pressure, I didn’t say anything.

That’s why in my most intimate circle—which is to say, the one I share with my Word document and the two or three books I’m reading—I started venting. Afraid of being a terrible friend, I started writing down what she told us. In the text I nickname her The Welfare State—you’ll get it—but it wasn’t to make fun of her. It was more like an echo of anger—at him, at them, at us. Because she was even buying him weed, since he has no money and gets stressed out, so she says this is a way she can help him. The guy doesn’t sweep, can’t cook, and when she’s not home he always orders delivery, so when she gets back, she even has to take out the trash because he’s gone off to see friends or rehearse with one of the three bands he’s in—although he’s only semi-regular in them, rotating every three or four months because they keep getting into fights. I asked her how he can afford delivery if he never has money. Ari, embarrassed, explained that he has a method. He orders bottled drinks with the food, and when it arrives, he complains and sends a picture of a different drink and asks for a refund. So if he ordered a Pepsi, he has a Fanta bottle ready to put next to the food, and so on and so on. He rotates them. “It’s actually pretty clever if you think about it,” Ari says. Girl. Open. Your. Eyes.

And the thing is, there’s nothing good to say about him—or at least that’s how we feel—when she puts in such effort to paint his little gestures as signs of intelligence or sincere affection. Recently, for her birthday, we went to the beach, just us girls. He sent her a totally bland text, and she started crying, saying how thoughtful and sensitive he was. She, who can cry as many times a day as needed and her eyes don’t even get red. Who can be in the sun for hours and never burn. Who knows how to shovel. Who knows how to fight. Who knows how to dance alone. Ari, who can do all the things none of her boyfriends have ever done for her. She does them for all of us. She even does them for all of them. Once she told me that during sleep paralysis, she prays. Who does that? No one. To say I’m in love with her is like saying I know her. Two phrases that spiral into each other endlessly. Infinitely approaching. I hope she reads this someday—not because I think there’s a romantic future between us (in fact, I know she’ll read this and already know that it’s always been this way)—but because people like her, women like her, need to know it. Need to be reminded. Need someone to speak aloud what we should all know.

In school, my friends and I used to play a game where the boys in our class were vampires. We’d avoid them, try not to make eye contact. It was a secret game—we whispered, we ran away. They thought we were scared or disgusted or both. Pretty much all we did was run and whisper. Sometimes when I open this document and think about what I want to write—about my friends and me—I’m afraid that’s still what we’re doing. Whispering. Running from one experience that’s not worth it to another that’s just the same.

I remember those recesses with warmth, a kind of unspoken sisterhood. It doesn’t feel like that anymore. We talk about what we go through, but it seems like no one says anything definitive, nothing to clarify or guide us. Sometimes I feel like we’re still playing, and no one told me. I’m scared by how badly I want to ask my friends if they also think the boys are vampires.

During those weeks of that doomed relationship, I had to pause my reflections on the welfare state, women, and men. One of our friends got into a terrible situation. Her book had just been published in another country and it caused a big stir. I remember the time we went to dinner, she invited us and said, “Girls, I have something very important to tell you.” She had won a poetry prize the year before and this was like the big leagues for her. I don’t really know how literature and publishing and being a writer works. I just gossip about my friends in my notes app and, if I’m feeling fancy, on Google Drive. That’s it. But we were all thrilled for her. Two of us even went with her to Mexico for the book launch. She had professional photos taken, got a bunch of new followers. She’d always been great at social media—she had the most followers, was the most photogenic, always knew how to shine. It came naturally. She’d been like that since college, and I bet even before. But in a country like this, where resentment and misogyny are Siamese twins, they discovered not one, not two, but five plagiarized poems. People started tagging her in posts and stories. That’s how we found out—she didn’t tell us. She didn’t answer her phone for hours. Of course, how do you tell your friends that? “I lied.” If only it were that simple.

The week it all exploded, we took turns sleeping at her place. She was wrecked. Couldn’t talk, just cried and ate ice cream. The night it was my turn to watch over her, we went for ice cream twice. I drove, bought it, she waited in the car wearing a hoodie, huge sunglasses, and a beret that just made her more noticeable. But no one could tell who was hiding under that outfit—only that it was someone who felt the need to put on a big drama. She still hasn’t recovered. We worry because she spirals into dark moods. She doesn’t post anymore and started seeing this awful ex again— one who didn’t use social media, disappeared for weeks, and then just say he forgot to pay for his phone. The guy works or lives at the beach, or both—I don’t know. Everything about him is so vague. She’s been going to see him every weekend, comes back tanned but somehow sadder. She’s hinted that things aren’t great. That he wants her to move in with him, but also kind of wants her to rent something so they can live together? I don’t know. She’s so close to showing up in this doc as Welfare State #2.

And well, dear diary, my own dramas are no smaller. Now I have to go see my brother once a week. Sometimes, if I can, I go two or three times. It’s a long trip to another province, and I have to work around his schedule. I don’t even see my parents—they’re part of the reason why I have to take care of him.

Last time I went, he asked if I had places I imagine. Scenes I’ve never lived in, from towns or rooms I visit only in my mind from time to time. He asked in one of those rare moments of connection we hadn’t had since we were kids—something we’ve started rediscovering now that he’s in treatment. He says this happens to him outside of drugs, that it’s something he’s experienced since childhood, long before the addictions, the disappearances, all the stuff that’s changed the lines on my face and the color of my hair. I listen but don’t reply. I don’t really understand what he means. He says he always thought it was something everyone did—having imaginary places, places he doesn’t remember designing, but whose details are always the same. That’s what makes him go back. I ask him what his imagined place is like, but he stays silent.

He says it changes things if it turns out that not everyone has this experience. That it’s not like dreaming—we all dream weird stuff, sure. But what about those intimate experiences that feel so common to us, yet barely happen to anyone else? That got me thinking—do my friends see each other the way I see them? Does anyone see me the way I see the people I love?

Usually, I just watch him do his thing. His room is small and gray. It makes me cold just thinking about it. But it also gives me peace—I guess that’s what they’re going for. From my apartment, I sometimes hear him. He asks me to call him and not talk—just listen to him moving things around, playing guitar (he’s learning). Sometimes we’re silent for so long, I almost forget someone is on the other end—that we’ve made a little portal to each other’s present. The silence holds until I hear him turn a page, or the chair creak as he shifts, or he starts crying. He says it makes him feel like I’m there with him. I don’t know why he feels that way. To me, it makes me feel more alone—like, unlike when we were kids, it’s impossible to truly feel the other.

Sometimes I leave feeling calm, sometimes worried. I drive back while the sun lowers, turning the sky orange over the highway—giving that affectionate warmth of late afternoon that’s always present around here. It should be sad that it feels like heading to the beach, even though I’m going back to the grind: answering emails, prepping for meaningless meetings lined up for the week. It should be sad to return home to pets I love who act like I’m a stranger, instead of heading out of town, away from traffic and streets. But it’s as if memory and future possibility join forces—I feel happy, wrapped in the beauty of the sky, in the warmth that reminds me of childhood beach trips (my brother and I chasing crabs at dusk, our parents halfway down the shore, making us feel safe despite the coming dark) or recent trips (with Ari, with Moni, with male friends who aren’t leeches that force me to be rude and call my girl friends Welfare State 1 and 2), where time feels different because of sea level. Or maybe it’s just that everything feels different outside the city. I wonder if we all notice that. That we can’t escape the fact that life gives us moments that make us feel grateful. That’s all we can ask for, I guess—not something to be grateful for, but the ability to remember what makes us feel gratitude.