Shut My Eyes And Play Along

Glossy magazines litter the coffeetable, all of them plastered with promises of tips on how to be thin and beautiful and fake a way into someone’s affection. The pale yellow walls are adorned with all sorts of photos and knick-knacks promoting an appreciation of wine, sex, countries they've never been to, eras they've never lived in, etc. This is where it all happens, where they lay around in sweats rubbing lotion on their legs and warping each other’s minds, further reinforcing all of the manufactured wants and desires. This is where the little pigtailed girls with chipped teeth in faded family photos go to die. I gaze off at a Marilyn Monroe poster and wonder if they’ve ever stopped to think they’re idolizing the beauty of a woman who killed herself because she was only idolized for her beauty.

We watch the lives of others on T.V. – dating shows, entertainment news shows, romantic comedies – and I can’t help but think that the entire design of the apartment, every decoration, everything about the way these girls talk to each other and present themselves to each other, is an attempt to represent a lifestyle that they don’t possess. When I am alone with them, none of them speak the way they do here in the living room. They are putting on a show for their friends, for the people they live with, for anyone who may be watching. One can be truly content with themselves and their lives, so long as they don’t have to gaze at other people’s.

They take turns in the bathroom, preparing their war-paint for the evening’s battle, flicking their hair with their fingertips and staring at themselves far more intently and deeply than they ever will at the one they’re trying to look nice for. Text messages are sent to the friends they want to see, the ones they don’t want to see, the boys they want to meet at night’s end, the back-ups, the ones they don’t want to run into, their thumbs pecking away like the beak of a pigeon.

It always seems one of them has a pressing issue with a flavor-of-the-month tryst, and they talk about it coldly, candidly, as if they are in charge. The ‘boy’ in question is static – he merely wants to sleep with her, and deep down she knows that. He plays flirtation games and makes comments to act disinterested as he slowly reels her in. No more and no less. The complications she is asserting are in her own mind, created because we can only be passionate about that which we don’t possess. She is passionate about something inside of her, something she can’t quite reach, not the well-built boy who makes lame jokes.

As purses are collected and we gulp down the last drinks needed to get out there and take the stage, I can’t help but be impatient to escape from the madness of the living room and the bar. I want to get past the shows that tell us who we should want to be, the anticipation of something that isn’t coming because we won’t allow it, the yelling over the crowd, the flirtations, the lights being turned up at last call, the stop at the late night bagel joint and the idle chatter with the vanilla fraternity member one of her roommates has brought back while they chat in the bathroom. I want the comfort of her bedroom, where I can count her eyelashes as she sleeps and wonder if that was really her out there.