For Dagger A
His face is ravaged, he is so awkward, short-limbed. He hangs out on the periphery of my friends, too young to be interesting. I run with the smartest, craziest boys. I am feared for my wildness. I am reckless and tart.
By all reasoning, by high-school codification, he has no right to approach me. But there is noone else around, and I am looking at the ground in the Smoke Hole. So he approaches, uses a line I will later hear so many times. “Smile for me.” A blank look from me, turning hostile and he counters, “A dollar for a smile.”
School lunch is a dollar. A dollar that I don’t have, won’t have any time soon. And I am hungry. He gets my smile and my contempt. I get lunch, hard to choke down around my self-loathing.
posted by ttractor @ 5:31 PM
7 Comments:
Ah.
And I'm sure there's many more stories where that came from. I can think of a bunch but don't have the guts to write them down.
Incidentally, I read an interesting thread on another blog where the women were all saying, "yeah, I frickin' hate it when strange men tell me to smile." The men on the thread were all like, "what?" They weren't even aware of this phenomenon -- it doesn't happen to them and they don't see it happening to women.
I'm either smilier now or more intimidating, because I haven't had anyone tell me to smile in about fifteen years.
One of my neighbors said to me last year, when I passed him on the street (we pass each other walking along the street all the time), "I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but you smile so much that it bothers me." Or something like that--I realize now that I've forgotten what he said. Turns out that he wanted to believe that I couldn't possibly be as cheerful and well-rested as my smile seemed to suggest. Whereas I just tend to smile all the time. A parent said to me after our graduation ceremony last year, "You were the smiliest person in the procession." Ah. I try not to feel embarrassed; it feels as though one way to understand what they're saying is: "What is *wrong* with you?"
ttractor, I can close my eyes and almost see you then.
dagger, you should write them down...even if it's just for yourself at first. I am only just beginning to, but I see the importance of it now.
dagger, I had the shamelessness of the deeply shamed, if that makes sense. I bullied people with my shamelessness, shocked them defenseless, then took what I needed. Not pretty.
I am not that person anymore. Or at least, those are not my basic operating principles. That girl is inside me always, will always be a part of my continuum. I can't hate her, eradicate her, ignore her, because it is imponderable who I would be without her.
Dagger, Frou, I would like to hear your stories, too.
Oh, the "Smile!" thing. Gah, I still get it if I am walking around deep in thought, just when I least want a random interruption from some guy who wants some kind of gratification from me.
But I am much happier now than I have been in life in general. I smile, I can laugh like crazy (Dagger has heard me cackling) and sometimes I can achieve grace for a moment or two.
I think I'm trying to figure out how to give voice to those stories without the self-loathing. That's the part I am still wrestling with regarding the stories.
You have done well with that. What you said about that girl always being part of you, but there is a separation now for you. That is clear.
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