i suppose i owe you an apology, but it’s not a discrete you i owe the apology to. no, it’s a long list of ken dolls who were really people, but who i always saw as a pile of washcloths i could steal from under the sink to wipe the blood off my body and present it to the world again, clean and acceptable. i used them up until they were piling, stained with sweat and sacrament, then tossed them in the laundry, ignoring the grinding of blood and bone.
list of charges you could levy against me:
i never loved you,
you love me very much,
i told you i loved you a thousand times,
i left you in the cold when you were no longer useful to me, when i was realized how much being with you was hurting me, despite the fact that i pretended for the entirety of our relationship that it mattered to me,
when i got bored, i occasionally dug up the grave for entertainment.
the unfortunate thing is that on account of point 2 you will never believe point 1, and the world will keep spinning without your ever understanding why i so desperately need to apologize you, and you will spend the rest of your life angry and confused and disappointed with me for all the wrong reasons. i deserve the grudge but i think you ought to hold it for the right reasons, i can bear the brunt of hatred but it drives me crazy to be misunderstood, even though i’m too nervous to explain this to you. see, after the first boy i pulled this on i thought i was through with this tactic (yes, you, sorry about the blood), after the second boy i pulled this on i thought enough time had passed that surely someone must be onto me, and after the third sad schmuck i left in the dust i threw my hands up in despair and said: i’m too good of an actress.
so let this be my testament, my confession, a point of reference if anyone ever catches me digging my claws into some poor sucker’s neck again.
i water myself down like one of the drinks at this bar. you tell me your opinions on politics. on immigration and women’s bodies. on queerness, the thing caught in my throat, my denial of which i am trying to prove by being with you. and no matter what you say, i vow to myself that i will smile and nod and say: that’s exactly right! there’s no one else like you! and if my mouth betrays my mind and ends up mounting some foolish resistance, i choke my words back down. i concede the point.
question: what’s the function that most closely approximates love?
answer: a wedding.
a wedding right out of my parents’ dreams, a taffeta wedding dress spilling out on the front steps of the church, a man waiting at the end of the aisle. i think about a life relegated to the domesticity of dishwashers, a life at his beck and call, and i feel sick to my stomach. which is why i had to leave, i always leave. i leave because i’m afraid it’ll be real—in one case i left because it was real and i didn’t know what to do with that, but that wasn’t a boy so it isn’t the point—i leave because i can’t imagine a life outside of the one that my parents want for me. i’m not an engineer and i’m not a golden girl by any stretch of the imagination but i am, in their eyes, special and magic and untainted by the occasional leakage of my dreams.
sometimes i tell you about my dreams and i watch your eyes glaze over. you tell me i’ll get everything i want, but what i want most of all is to burn your touch off my body, your hands off my waist, replace my skin with a thousand acres that men have never touched. i shake my head free of fantasy, i drum my fingers on the bar, i say i want you. i try to believe it, and after so much practice, i’m a master at quieting the voices in my head.
i tell you that i think of you when i listen to music, and you smile. what i don’t say is that the music in question goes: all you’ll ever be is my eternal consolation prize.1 i don’t say a lot, i don’t show up, i pull wool over your eyes more often than i don’t. sorry, darling, just because you’re awful doesn’t give me the right to treat you as disposable. it’s important to treat people with dignity on principle, not because of who they are in practice.
here goes nothing: i’m sorry for your broken knees and the blood in your mouth and the thousand lovely things i told you that dissolved into nothing on my tongue. i’m sorry i used you as a washcloth, as a distraction, as a smokescreen you never agreed to being. i’m beginning to see the person behind the mask more clearly and i don’t like her as much as i thought i would. i’m sorry i pretended to be your salvation when i’m the place sailors go to drown. i’m sorry i can’t present you with a consistent enough sense of self to justify it. i’m sorry for a lot of things. i only have so many words to say them with.
list of charges i have to levy against you:
i never loved you,
you loved me very much,
every time you put your hands on me i felt like i wanted to die,
when you spoke to me i never thought you were interesting enough to keep talking to, and yet you kept speaking,
despite saying otherwise, you always thought you were smarter than me, but not smart enough to figure out how i feel about you,
honestly, you weren’t as funny as i always said, and, worse still,
you wanted to marry me, which proves you don’t understand me at all.
taylor swift, i hate it here.