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Trashley: Part Eleven
Diane Sawyer
I’d shown Ashley the type of Alaskan adventure people dream about, and she seemed to dismiss it as dull and uninteresting. As if touring a permafrost tunnel, finding gold nuggets, and unearthing wooly mammoth bones were just a regular Tuesday. I was also constantly dancing around Ashley’s temper so she wouldn’t violently erupt around my family. I had no idea what would set her off, only that her latest tantrum had started when I offered to Venmo her for an Apple Watch charger. She reacted how a toddler would react if you wouldn’t let them play with a butcher knife.
Ashley also had an elitist attitude and strong feelings about money, class, and wealth that I found disturbing. She’d told me Venmo was for poor people, which made me want to rush to a Hammam and get my entire body exfoliated to scrub her gross comment off me. Sorry, not everyone has money falling out of their Nintendo case, or drives a Tesla Model X. Maybe punch a waiter in the face while you’re at it. The more time I spent with Ashley, the more I realized she had three modes: victim, villain, or hero.
We had two days left in Alaska, and I continued to play the role of the happy girlfriend in front of my…