ST3.3 | "Be Your Own Boss"

PROMPT: March is in like a lion and out like a lamb, but this month at Stone’s Throw, we want to reverse it. Give us meek characters who find their fire by the end of the story. What happens when repression gives way to hedonism and rage? Or maybe your protagonist was already a secret badass, and just needed that nudge to show their true stripes? Maybe they go too far, and have to make sense of what they’ve done when they come back to their senses? Keep it within the usual RHP boundaries.

BE YOUR OWN BOSS

by Ad Schweiss

There’s a feeling your voice gives me, like I’m made of iron the way you must be. I want you to imagine a debt-free life. The way you say the words, like leading me through gunfire or to the top of a mountain. Every word you say, like a TED Talk on the edge of the world.

The thing about starting a business is that no one tells us what it means to give a hundred percent. For some people it means graduate school or an MBA. But for me—my truth—maybe giving one hundred percent means finding your address with an online background check and driving all night to meet you.

I replay one of your Instagram posts over and over: you say the words I had to spend money to make money. It’s the way your voice slips the heroine mask and you almost sob. In that video you talked about starting a business the way other women talk about unmedicated childbirth. There’s a part in the video where the ring light flares the gloss on your lips to an electric white and your eyes mist while you speak like a storm cloud.

I want to lionize my sacrifices; I want to have frozen moments when I am knocked down and get up again; I want resilience that other women can drink up for themselves. I want to be an anthem the way you are for me, and the closeness of locked arms and knowing we are all in the same fight.

I bought my first vitamins from you—the second most-expensive package you call ‘Fempire’—almost as an afterthought. And then right after that I went out and found the nicest lipstick in CVS. Matching the rose of your lips in my own face, because I never found a better way to hold on to the drive you’ve given me.

Now I carry your vitamins in my car wherever I go, which you said to do in one of your videos; so heavy they make it hard to brake on the highway. I brought them with me to meet you.

I watched you leave your house just now with a trash bag, padding on your toes, the ground stinging your feet like someone walking on Legos. I know what that feels like—to do mundane things for your family in bare feet—except your ordinary movements are pumped full of grace and my husband looks at my body like a chore. I look at your muscles, like some lean jungle animal built for survival: a predator. And if I had legs like yours, I would feel wild and unexpressed emotions. I just know I would.

I want to leave behind the drudge of my family’s garbage, or have those humdrum moments infused with your sense of purpose until my heart beats something high-octane and I can drive away the cold fog of my mornings.

I’ve been watching you for a while now. It takes guts to take the first step. That’s what you said in another one of your videos, and I had to watch it three times to find my nerve. But it takes guts to take that final step, too—getting too near you feels dirty, like touching an exhibit at a museum and all I wanted to say to you this morning was: I want the secrets to selling, and to growing my business. I want you to share your spark.

Because I’d only worked with you through your online video series, I know that I’m not exactly getting the real thing; the real you. At home I would think to myself: maybe your essence online is one-hundredth of what it is in real life. Just being in your presence now—standing here with you—I know how true that was; how right I was and that means something about the connection we have. I can see in your eyes—your real, in-person eyes—the grit and energy that makes you a source of power for other women. I want to be your right-hand woman and I’m sorry that me saying so is scary to you, but you should have put the phone down when I asked.

You don’t need to call the police.

One of the things you always talk about is not surrendering to No. You talk in your videos about how, as women, we’re made to cheer for so many people from the sidelines: husbands and children and people at work. Your neon-pink lips that form the ooo when you ask What about you stirred something wild in my guts, and there’s a courage in me that caught fire when I heard you tell me not to take no for an answer.

Leaving your garage would absolutely be taking no for an answer and I am not taking no for an answer and I need you to calm down. Do you even understand how many vitamins I need to sell? My husband says they’re going to repossess our truck.

In my wildest fantasies you were going to say: I think we have so much to learn from each other. You promised me ‘24-hour executive support’ when I became one of your Personal Growth Executives and then when you blocked me on Instagram it felt like sitting alone in high school. So now you need to close the garage door because you’re being loud which is unprofessional of you. And whether it’s fair or not I feel trapped by the memory of the way I told my husband I have to spend money to make money, the words dribbling out like water from broken plumbing with no pressure, like I couldn’t believe in myself with his eyes on mine, not even for a moment. I have so many questions:

Does your husband ever look at you like you’re less than him? Who handles the finances in your house? How much did you risk to become your own boss? What was the darkest time? Was it worse than what I’m doing right now?

I wouldn’t have to point it at you if you just listened to me.

Are your kids well-behaved? How do you have the time to exercise? Do you feel like you made it? I think you do—or you should, if you don’t. Your garage is bigger than my whole house.

If we sat down together in an interview, or if you let me inside your home just now and we talked over coffee, I think the questions I would ask you would show you how much our souls are paired together; how we’re navigating the same constellation of emotions and we’re like sisters on the ocean of our shared hearts.

Do you ever feel like you’re on my side of the same ugly mirror, looking at a better woman on the other side who can afford nice salads for lunch, whose kids are good at sports? Do you ever feel bad about your neck? How can I find a diamond in the center of my gut that my husband can’t take from me, no matter how I look on the outside?

Where can I sell sixteen hundred bottles of vitamins before the 24th?

There’s an itch down the center of my spine just from looking at you, nagging at places I can’t dig from outside: I want your phone number, and to get calls from you just to check in. I want us to drop off our kids at the same school at the same time and to go for walks afterward. And even if I had those things—even if I stood on the same peak as you and saw the world from your high country—I think what I want is to pull out everything under my skin so you can fix me from the inside out.

Don’t think I won’t do it, you bitch.

I came all this way for you.

AD Schweiss (on BlueSky @adschw.bsky.social; on Twitter / X @adschweiss) worked as a prosecutor in California for 14 years, with the majority of his time spent handling crimes of intimate partner violence. His short fiction has appeared in RHP Press, Shotgun Honey, BULL, and a few other places. He currently resides in Spokane with his troublesome wife, his troublesome kids, and a well-behaved dog.