self-invalidation and depression/anxiety, you make exceptions. She climbed up to the roof where everybody has been smoking all night. It was freezing. Like, too cold, the kind of cold where you can feel the rungs of the roof ladder through your mittens, but it felt good. Her whole face felt all rosy with wine.
She lit a cigarette and looked around. The city spread out in every direction, propping up the old moody and tragic and melodramatic mental self-portrait. Self-pity as respite from anxiety! Classy, Batman. Then Steph climbed up the ladder in this big, stupid knit hat, and it was a total first meeting from a Hugh Grant movie, like where Keira Knightley doesn’t like him at first. Except in her memory Maria’s not played by Hugh Grant, she’s played by, like, Milla Jovovich or somebody.
Except Milla’s kind of short, right? Maybe Maria is Keira Knightley and Steph is played by Milla Jovovich.
Steph didn’t even want to talk to Maria. She was drunk and she didn’t have a lighter but Maria didn’t want to light Steph’s cigarette for her because she thought that might be, like, patriarchal, somehow? Like that’s what a dude does and women don’t do that for each other. Who fuckin’ knows, it made sense at the time Maria handed Steph the lighter so Steph had to take off her mitten and the glove she was wearing under it to light her cigarette. To this day Steph gives Maria shit about that.
No! Steph’s not Milla Jovovich, she’s like Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club , when Emilio Estevez is like, What’s your drink, and she’s like, Vodka, and he’s like, How much, and she’s like, Tons. She totally entertained herself while she smoked that cigarette by being flirty and confrontational and kind of mean.
When Maria was done smoking, she went back down to the apartment and left Steph up on the roof by herself to finish her cigarette, and then they didn’t talk to each other for the rest of the night. Pretty inauspicious.
Plus, if Steph was Ally Sheedy, that made Maria the only other female character from the breakfast club: Molly Ringwald, the spoiled princess. It’s a little uncomfortable for Maria how true this is.
15.
In one of Michelle Tea’s books (maybe The Chelsea Whistle? ) she writes this thing about how coffee is the greatest thing in the world, it makes your eyes bug out, it makes you want to write and produce and create and it’s like speed except, something something, who can remember exact quotes. Maria’s like, I’ll get it tattooed on my forearm so I can remember it. The point is just, Michelle Tea nailed it like she nailed most other things: Maria’s on her third cup of coffee now and she is making Progress.
She needs to be single. It’s pretty obvious, right? When she’s having boring romantic predictable teenage emotions riding her bike around the city instead of being home with Steph, the reason she likes it so much is that she’s enjoying the tiniest little bit of freedom. She’s not in love with her bike because of the wind in her face, which chaps her lips, or because she can totally handle the difficulty of riding across bridges and in traffic wearing a long skirt. She’s in love with her bike because when she's on her bike, she’s not tied to anybody.
Further, she was dating somebody when she came out as trans. They broke up and then she was dating somebody else, and then they’d been broken up for a week when she started hanging out with Steph. She’s never been a single woman, she’s only been a woman in the context of relationships. Those relationships have been acting as cushions, as safety nets, enabling her not to have to figure out who she is, what she needs from her life. Anything.
And it’s not like Steph’s even stoked about this relationship any more. They still fuck, which is cool, but otherwise what do they do? They throw money they don’t have at brunches so they can feel coupley; they sleep in the same bed most nights. This is literally
She lit a cigarette and looked around. The city spread out in every direction, propping up the old moody and tragic and melodramatic mental self-portrait. Self-pity as respite from anxiety! Classy, Batman. Then Steph climbed up the ladder in this big, stupid knit hat, and it was a total first meeting from a Hugh Grant movie, like where Keira Knightley doesn’t like him at first. Except in her memory Maria’s not played by Hugh Grant, she’s played by, like, Milla Jovovich or somebody.
Except Milla’s kind of short, right? Maybe Maria is Keira Knightley and Steph is played by Milla Jovovich.
Steph didn’t even want to talk to Maria. She was drunk and she didn’t have a lighter but Maria didn’t want to light Steph’s cigarette for her because she thought that might be, like, patriarchal, somehow? Like that’s what a dude does and women don’t do that for each other. Who fuckin’ knows, it made sense at the time Maria handed Steph the lighter so Steph had to take off her mitten and the glove she was wearing under it to light her cigarette. To this day Steph gives Maria shit about that.
No! Steph’s not Milla Jovovich, she’s like Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club , when Emilio Estevez is like, What’s your drink, and she’s like, Vodka, and he’s like, How much, and she’s like, Tons. She totally entertained herself while she smoked that cigarette by being flirty and confrontational and kind of mean.
When Maria was done smoking, she went back down to the apartment and left Steph up on the roof by herself to finish her cigarette, and then they didn’t talk to each other for the rest of the night. Pretty inauspicious.
Plus, if Steph was Ally Sheedy, that made Maria the only other female character from the breakfast club: Molly Ringwald, the spoiled princess. It’s a little uncomfortable for Maria how true this is.
15.
In one of Michelle Tea’s books (maybe The Chelsea Whistle? ) she writes this thing about how coffee is the greatest thing in the world, it makes your eyes bug out, it makes you want to write and produce and create and it’s like speed except, something something, who can remember exact quotes. Maria’s like, I’ll get it tattooed on my forearm so I can remember it. The point is just, Michelle Tea nailed it like she nailed most other things: Maria’s on her third cup of coffee now and she is making Progress.
She needs to be single. It’s pretty obvious, right? When she’s having boring romantic predictable teenage emotions riding her bike around the city instead of being home with Steph, the reason she likes it so much is that she’s enjoying the tiniest little bit of freedom. She’s not in love with her bike because of the wind in her face, which chaps her lips, or because she can totally handle the difficulty of riding across bridges and in traffic wearing a long skirt. She’s in love with her bike because when she's on her bike, she’s not tied to anybody.
Further, she was dating somebody when she came out as trans. They broke up and then she was dating somebody else, and then they’d been broken up for a week when she started hanging out with Steph. She’s never been a single woman, she’s only been a woman in the context of relationships. Those relationships have been acting as cushions, as safety nets, enabling her not to have to figure out who she is, what she needs from her life. Anything.
And it’s not like Steph’s even stoked about this relationship any more. They still fuck, which is cool, but otherwise what do they do? They throw money they don’t have at brunches so they can feel coupley; they sleep in the same bed most nights. This is literally
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