He stopped and put his hand on my shoulder and said that we both knew I could pull any ass I wanted to and that didn’t all men love me and I rolled my eyes and nodded my head to the side as if to say, haven’t we been over this, and he said, “Your ass,” and I said, “Yes,” and then, “I’ve looked, okay,” he says, “We’ve all looked,” he really starts to get flashy now; rhetorical. “Every man and woman has looked at your ass. We all know it. Every boss. Every friend.” Another friend of mine was there, too cheering and yelling in agreement and laughed and wondered how I accomplished this, knowing I had to have created most of it myself because isn’t that where all the mythology is born anyway? We went outside to smoke a cigarette and I was glad to be wearing a loose-fitting skirt.
Minutes later we came back in and he told me he wanted to do a project with me. Why me I said, and told him I never finish things or do things, only talk about them, so he should choose someone else.
“Look,” he said very gravely, as if he was about to tell me a big secret, “You’re the smartest girl I know.”
I sat up straight and laughed. It felt like such a concession. “But not the smartest person!” He looked at me as if I should know better, and I pressed, “Why do you need a girl, anyway?” and he looked at me again and he said, “Don’t make me say it,” and I said what and he said, “Don’t make me say it!” “Say what?” I said and,
“You are better than all of them,” he said, “And you know it.”
I waved my hand away and drank from my beer and shook my head.
He looked at me in the eyes and I still haven’t pinned down what flows between us. “Hell, you’re better than me!” he yelled through the noise. I sat quietly, hunched close to him in chairs facing each other and stared into the knees of the people standing all around us. “Come on,” he said, “you know that. You have to know that.”
“Well,” I said, and I didn’t normally think like that but if a man is going to ask me if I think I am better than him then I already am. And so, “Yes,” I managed and looked away. I dared myself not to take it back.
One time someone I was sleeping with asked me if I thought of myself as smart first, or cute. Smart, I said immediately and he was surprised. I writhed around his bedroom floor in white lace underwear, flipped over on my stomach with my dress hiked up around my waist. He has not lived with me in this body (only buried himself inside it on occasion).
“What about you?” I asked. “Smart,” he said, “of course.” “Well!” I said, thinking, why shouldn’t I? and he said, “Well, you are pretty damn cute.” I squirmed more for him and was blushing and angry.
Don’t you know, I want to say to them, don’t you know I know these things without you telling me first?
It seems to me that men rank you and pit themselves against you and wonder who is better and declare you the smartest or most beautiful and meanwhile we worry for them and wish revelations upon them and hope they will love us because could they, really, if they knew the truth? That we are smart without them and beautiful without them telling us so, and that deep down, in most cases, we know we are better?
