Girl Talk in Gaslamp

Mar 11

I find myself sitting on the curbside right outside a seedy bar – where the only redeeming quality is their lackadaisical approach towards obviously fake IDs – when an older girl tumbles out.

She throws me a smile like the feeling in your stomach when you look off a cliffside: A little crazed, a little indisposed. And she’s so happy to see me. The compliments just spill. She loves my lipstick, and my outfit is doing things for me, and what’s my name? She sits next to me and we’re the best of friends now, out on this curb.

I can tell by the way her eyes dart out of focus that she doesn’t really see me, but I’ve had just enough cheap vodka to dive into the feeling. We take turns drunkenly rambling until she asks me if I’ve got a man.

“Not into men lately,” I answer. She tells me how lucky I am.

“There’s this one guy…” She drags a manicured hand across her face, contorting her features into some melting shadow of herself looking out at the road. It’s just night dwellers and holes in the wall, but she takes it in like it’s beautiful. Streetlights do look like stars when they reflect off wet pavement.

“I thought he liked me. Well.. I still think he could. One day, it'll be better.”

“Better how?” I ask, more to say

something than because I actually care. This was a mistake, because her lip curls in this pathetic way and I’m watching a house burn.

“I don’t know,” she whispers. “However. Maybe I could be more than what I am. Like, to him.”

The reality of it all is so sad that I can’t drag the words out. Because I’d say shit like Men like bodies. Bodies are always bodies, they don’t change. They don’t get to be loved if they’re nice enough.

“Girl, you’re too good for him,” I say instead.

“I know. But not like I have anything else to do, might as well. And sex is fun.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, well, the experience is fun. The actual – like, it’s fine. I mean, I don’t get off, but what girl does? I never have, honestly, with any guy. That’s not why you do it though. You do it for the afterwards parts, and the before, and the closeness, y’know?”

I don’t know. “You’ve never finished?”

“Not really. I don’t even mind though, it feels the same I think.”

Guilt teases my ribcage. Audience member turned voyeur, I’m drinking in her confessions like holy water. Suddenly I don’t want her story. Not when she wouldn’t tell a stranger about it in the daylight. But I keep listening – is it martyrdom or selfishness? What’s the difference? How forgivable is it to do the right thing for the wrong reasons?

“I haven’t felt sexual since I lost my virginity,” she continues. “After that, it’s all… I never really feel it. I think my mind goes somewhere else. It’s fun, but when it actually happens I’m not really in my body. You ever get like that?”

This I understand, so I nod.

With nothing else to say, her head finds my shoulder. It’s heavy, bearing the weight of all the conversations I’ve had just like this one. Sober, drunk, young, grown-up – it doesn’t matter, we always need each other. Still, I’m tired of hearing heartbreak stories from all the girls I’ve ever loved – how scared they were when he wouldn’t get off of them. Or when they overheard the way he talks with his buddies. Or when he leaves and they feel so unclean after, self-soothing in a dark room. The smallness. The lack of power. It’s always there, waiting to come out between laughter and girl-talk.

I realize she’s dozing off, and that I’m grateful it’s me she found instead of someone else. So I hold her until her friends come.

Maya Lynch— March 11th, 2024