For Natalie

"I love how you can smack a girl's ass, but if I say that
I'm bisexual then you don't want to hear it."

Really it's more than that that's pissing me off; I can't
figure out my final project for art, after I thought I was
finally on to something-the professor decided to send us
guidelines two days before the preliminaries were due, and
the limitations just pulled the rug right from under my
feet.  I want to write for my story, but class-work comes
first: I need to finish reading Lessing's Marriages by
Saturday morning so that I can start working on the essay
that's due on Monday; hey, I've only got one hundred and
eighty pages to go.  My roommates make me feel like I don't
belong.  I don't have the luxuries that they do, I don't
have my rich parents' money to throw away on pot and alcohol
and shopping sprees and dinner at a restaurant twice a week,
or two meals each day at Toasties.  I don't buy chocolate
and furniture and lighting for the entire apartment because
I can't, I don't have the money.  I don't smoke pot or
ciggies because I like my lungs the way that they are and I
don't need another thing to become emotionally dependent on;
not because I'm a dork, or a loser, or a child.  I don't
have casual sex with a guy who will do the walk of shame in
the morning because I'm too insecure, because I'm too
dependent, because I'm not relationship material, whatever
that means-not because I hate guys or think that sex is
gross.  I don't smack a girl's ass, because I have too much
respect for her, and because I just don't smack people on
the ass.  ''I love how you can smack a girl's ass and feel
completely comfortable, totally entitled, but when I tell
you that I'm interested in women, too, not just men, then
I've done something wrong, and all you feel you have to say
is 'too much information,' all you feel you have to do is
laugh and run to your room where you won't catch my
disease.''  I love it how you smacked me, stepped on me,
clapped in my face real hard and swore at me, because I
didn't want to drink and you did and you thought that that
was simply unacceptable, and then came to apologize in the
morning when you were sober, told me you were so drunk, so
wasted last night, you didn't even remember-someone else had
to tell you what you did-and you expect me to say... what?
Sure, I understand?  You didn't mean it so I forgive you?
Like hell you didn't mean it!  You meant it so much you kept
it under till you were drunk enough, under the influence
enough, to not know that there are some things that are
other people's rights.  Like the right not to drink, the
right to not be straight and not hide it like a secret or
some very bad trait.  Like the right to think that you are a
homophobic, homo-social, sexually deprived, rampant,
self-entitled bitch who straddles another girl when she
hasn't had a guy in a real long time but is grossed out by
the notion of a bisexual roommate.  As if I would ever hit
on you!  You prick, you fucking self-entitled homophonic
skank-''a guy to look at my boobs, not my boots''-who would
ever want to hit on you?  Your tiny waist and fashionable
clothes can hide only so much of your character.  If there's
more to you that I just don't see, well, I find that hard to
believe.

If there's anything under that painted face of yours,
anything under those pink lingerie that you walk around the
apartment in as if you were allowed more self-expression and
freedom than others, at any and all times of the day, then I
have to say, it's probably as sickly-sweet as canned
cherries left for fifty years in the cellar, or that
flavored condom that you use.