A Packing List for the End of the World

FIRST AID KIT: When I was in elementary school in California, there were earthquake kits and drills that taught us to huddle beneath our tiny desks to protect ourselves from the falling rubble and debris—only a small sheet of wood to shield our small bodies from a crumbling ceiling and everything else that was toppling beyond it. Later, in Florida, there were hurricane kits. During a lonely year in Kansas, a tornado kit. Always preparing for a different disaster.

TENT: We have one from Target that fits us, our blow-up mattress, and Biscuit, snuggly but comfortably. It was only $29.99. A real deal. We probably can’t bring the blow-up mattress, though. It’s too heavy, and eventually we’ll run out of batteries for the pump. I’m assuming batteries are going to be hard to come by. That sucks because Ty has chronic back pain. That’s something you don’t see on The Walking Dead—herniated discs.

WATER: I don’t know how many times I’ve Googled, does seltzer hydrate you the same as regular water. Results are inconclusive.

BOOTS: It just seems like the most practical shoe choice. As a queer who has lived in the South, I have many pairs to choose from, though it’s tricky because my favorite pair technically belongs to Ty. We both wear a size 7. I bought them as a Christmas gift a few years back. They’ll probably want to wear them. I wonder how much longer Zappos will deliver.

PICTURES: When my Gung Gung died, we spent a whole night looking through old pictures, government documents, newspaper clippings. It was soon to be my uncle’s house and I was struck by how I still called it my Popo’s house, even though she had died over ten years before. My uncle made me promise that I wouldn’t take anything important because he wanted to keep all the family history together. I slipped photos of my great-grandparents, my Gung Gung’s parents, into my backpack, instead of allowing them to be forgotten in an unorganized box in the back of my dead Popo’s closet. I’ve never been very obedient. My great-grandparents stare blankly at the camera, the photograph cropped at their chests. They are the only photos I had ever seen of them. I kept them because I do not know how to pronounce their names.

BOBBY PINS: I’ll lose them all in the first week. They’ll keep the hair out of my face until then.

THE CATS: We have this debate almost every day. I just don’t believe cats are that domesticated. Oscar and Cleo will be better off without us than with us. Biscuit lives up to his name, a soft and loyal dog who cries with stuffed toys he holds in his mouth every time we leave the house. Ty is going to say that I only think this because I don’t like cats, that I favor Biscuit, but that’s not true. They’ve really grown on me.

STRAP-ON: My friend once told me about driving across the Canadian border with their partner. They had a bag full of sex toys in their trunk. When the Canadian border agents went through it, they opened up the bag and became so embarrassed by the sex toys that they just let my friends go through. I’d like to think that people still fuck in the apocalypse, that we’ll still fuck in the apocalypse. It could feel urgent and good. We don’t have to fear accidentally repopulating a dying planet.

I’d like to think that people still fuck in the apocalypse . . . We don’t have to fear accidentally repopulating a dying planet. 

MATCHES: I was never good at lighting fires, just slightly too timid around them. Never a Girl Scout, not even a Brownie.

SOCKS + UNDERWEAR: Days-of-the-week underwear was actually a practical idea when you think about it. I don’t think they make them anymore, so I took a black Sharpie and wrote Monday through Sunday on the back of seven plain white pairs. Tuesday was written in bubble letters, Wednesday in a delicate cursive for hump day. It will help me keep up with time. When it ends for good, I’ll want to know if it’s a Thursday.

CLOTHES: Not all the shirts can be crop tops.

KNIFE: What is it like ripping and tearing into flesh? Does each puncture feel like a loss or a gain? And will I be able to do it if the person looks like my mom or my cousin or the person who used to work at the movie theater and always gave me a student-priced ticket even though I was twenty-seven and had been rejected to every graduate program I applied to? If our survival is always at the expense of someone or something else is it even worth it?

ANTIDOTE: There isn’t one.

BUG SPRAY: In the summer, I play connect-the-dots with the bug bites on my legs. With a ballpoint pen, my bites become whales, water bursting through their blowholes, forests of coral, the ocean floor. As the days—no, hours—go on, the bites start to swell. The whales balloon into unidentifiable blobs and the waves of the ocean expand. I’m not supposed to itch, so I resort to slapping at the bites, scratching circles around their perimeters.

SNACKS: I had moved out to Florida only four years before. That summer, Ty flew out to California and helped me pack up my car; we drove to the Grand Canyon and then down south and then east. In a gas station in small-town Texas, I remember calling them by their name. I never call them by their name, but in that aisle full of pickle flavored chips and sunflower seeds, glass cases of Cheerwine—my favorites—there was an almost unnoticed beat, a small breath where I chose to not call them baby. Because I love them, I called them by their name in that gas station in small-town Texas because we are small, and the world is big and everything is bigger in Texas. I kept my hands in my back pocket so mine didn’t reach for theirs. I wanted to tangle fingers in their hair, draw shapes on their back. My hands wanted to call them baby. And even with my hands restrained and their name on my tongue, I could still feel the eyes of the men behind the counter on my skin because I think they could see my whole body call Ty baby and their whole body respond yes.

ROPE: One website had lists for small disasters and what they called Armageddon. The man—I’m assuming it was a man because masculinity asserts itself in the most obnoxious ways—suggested multiple types of rope for various purposes. He also suggested a knot-tying guide to help tie the rope for these various purposes. I went to Home Depot, a common ground for dykes and bigots alike, and bought the suggested rope. I also bought some houseplants because they were having an end-of-the-world sale and I couldn’t leave all of them to die; some Clorox wipes because we had run out a few weeks before and I used them to clean our bathroom sink; a pack of gum; and a coke, even though I had stopped drinking soda for health reasons, but why did it matter now. The line was long, wrapping itself around the store like a well-behaved and dying snake. My arms ached from the fullness of my purchases by the time I reached the washers and dryers, so I rested the rope on a washing machine for just a moment. When I finally reached checkout, I only had one small succulent and the coke in my hands. I paid for them— $5.99 after tax. It was only a few days later, after we abandoned our small brick house, that I remembered the rope—similarly abandoned on top of the washing machine. Now we would have to find something else to make traps or climb things or give up completely because sometimes your body can only take so much.

PILLOW, ONE FOR EACH OF US: We are both convinced that the other is a blanket hog. Each of us wakes up in the middle of the night playing a silent and sleepy game of tug-o-war. When we moved in together they claimed my favorite pillow, one that is so squishy that it fills itself between your arms and your face. After a few months, I tried to take it back. It’s mine, I said. But they pouted and insisted that it was theirs now, that they were bonded with the pillow. I relented. Now when I pack up our car, I pick that pillow for them and another one for me.

PLANT: We made space for the succulent on the dashboard of our car and when the sun hits it on our endless drives you can see it reach towards its rays. I’ve never been good at keeping plants alive, but this one feels more urgent. Biscuit wraps himself into a tight cinnamon roll in the back seat and Ty’s eyes still drift sweetly to me in forgetful moments. It almost feels like we’re driving through Texas again, though the roads are mostly abandoned and there’s nothing to put on the radio. It’s in these moments I force myself to remember that the car will run out of gas eventually, that I don’t know how much I can carry on my back. It’s heavy, this doubt and fear. Even the loss feels heavy as it carves out a space for itself inside each of my muscles; I can feel it in every move my body makes. I decide to put the plant in the ground the next time we stop, to insist that something I’ve loved will survive me.

I decide to put the plant in the ground the next time we stop, to insist that something I’ve loved will survive me.

FLASHLIGHT: The layers of darkness are what get to me, the way that it encloses around you as the sun sets, the movement from light blue to orange and pink and purple to a navy, dark like velvet, to black. Biscuit doesn’t like sleeping in the tent because he is also afraid of the dark. When we used to go camping, the tips of his ears would stay alert as he listened to the life rustle in the bushes. Before, it was usually armadillos, wild pigs, and other small critters. I’m not sure what Biscuit makes of undead rustling, of slightly dead rustling, of non-people who used to be people making their way through the forest as we huddle in our tent holding our breath.

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