I Want To Have Sex

I don't remember when I changed, when the words finally left me. Even now, when the time has come to finally tell the tale, my own story eludes me. How do I describe the horror of ordinary life? How do I begin to explain the crushing but banal reality of change—of transition?

The story begins with a nine-year-old girl (nine year old? Maybe older, maybe younger), unremarkable in every way possible. Had she been any smarter, any prettier, had she possessed even a fraction of the charm and social awareness other children showed, her story might have followed a different route. That is not to say that the destination would have been different, but life is really more about the process, isn't it?

As it goes, she is called by her parents to meet a guest at their house—her father's friend, a geologist. He is smart, and as a girl with an inferiority complex and severe daddy issues, she wants to impress him. She isn't smart, and she isn't athletic. She reads, though. She has so many novels, they could be a table, a chair, and a sofa.

"That's great," the uncle tells her. "Kids these days rarely read. You should keep it up. I hope by the time we meet again, you'll have read at least a hundred more books."

She tells him she will. She does. Then she reads a hundred more. And then another, and some. It is an obsession. She cannot stop. Books are her choice of drugs. She takes them before a school morning. She'll take a whiff of an enchanting fairy tale at 3 am, under the covers with a flashlight. She'll even indulge at school when everyone is busy with their friends.

Like any sort of escapism, the poor girl will not realize this pretence of being smart, of reading a 600-page novel in one sitting, in a single night, is her way of dissociating. She should have friends at school. She should be able to talk to other kids her age without feeling like someone shoved a whole lemon down her throat, and now it's stuck, and she's turning purple and blue in front of everyone.

She is so utterly unremarkable in a world where everyone is unremarkable. All celebrities are like other celebrities, and all kids are like different fonts of the same script. They will all grow into adults, and then it won't matter if he was a football prodigy or if she was the science whiz. They'll both be stuck in a desk job and be nothing but their kids. And the girl might die that way too, but she probably won't. Because even in a sea of blue, her dark hues are always meant to stay beneath the surface, away from the sun eternal.

So what? She reads. That's one quality to her. She can argue over the best book boyfriend when she has to talk to other girls who also read. She'll get into classics someday as well, she tells herself. Modern literature isn't to be looked down upon, she consoles herself. She won't admit maybe she just doesn't like reading that much. She won't admit to the jealousy she feels toward her friend, who is the top of her class—who solves math and science like the girl could only ever dream of.

She reads, too—the friend does. She talks excitedly about the third novel in the latest series she's obsessed with. Then they'll get to class, and she'll also win over the teachers with her intelligence. Some people are just special. The girl is happy for her friend, who is destined to thrive no matter where she goes. Not the girl, though.

It gets tiring, to be reminded of one's mediocrity so much. But when every rounded corner of life shoves you just a little further off the ring, you learn to accept it, and write about it, and hope one day it won't sting as much.

What to say of the end? Maybe the heavens will decide to bless her with a glimmer of a miracle one day, and she'll discover the cure for cancer. Maybe a young, handsome millionaire will fall in love with her and she'll go off to live in a fancy mansion for the rest of her life.

For now, the story is underway. She is seventeen and cries every day thinking of the college entrance exams she'll have to take a year from now. She no longer reads because she's developed an immunity to that particular type of drug. She pretends, when her parents ask her about the dreams of publishing a book, that she's outgrown them. She pores over science textbooks all night and wakes up to find she'll never be as smart as her friend. She is waiting to die, though she doesn't want to die, and shouldn't want to die because everyone should have sex once before they die. She wants to have a boyfriend too, and a cute coffee date, and a movie date. She wants to know how she'll look in the wedding dress she saved on Pintrest.

No matter. When she stopped reading, she gave up everything else, and so, the rest of the story doesn't matter.