I’m Not Like Other Girls, I’m So Much Worse

The summer between sophomore and junior year, I found myself in Darian’s empty, furniture-less house. I lay beside him in the dark on the scratchy white carpet, flat cardboard boxes littering the floor. Everything smelled vaguely of mothballs and sawdust.  

“You’re not like other girls,” he said. 

Because of complications in the womb, my right hand was amputated shortly after birth and my left was severely underdeveloped and weak. Feeling special and different in a good way was new to me as a physically disabled teenager. In fact, it was the most exciting moment of my life thus far.

Darian was a year older, a TA in my eleventh-grade history class. He had graduated three weeks prior. He was short and wore glasses, was in debate club and wanted to be a politician. He liked arguing and had a sort of authority that my not-fully-developed brain found exciting. 

He’d picked me up that night in his 1996 maroon Chevrolet Beretta with the car seats pushed way back. I kept my back upright to avoid laying down while he drove. The car smelled like black ice—a smell that I still associate with nervousness and dry fingerings. Kings of Leon played while Darian drove us to the house his family was moving out of, talking about how crazy it was that he was my TA before, and now I was here, in his filthy car.

We walked inside, using the flashlight on his phone to illuminate the pitch-black house. His parents had moved into a smaller house in anticipation of him moving out of the suburbs to a semi-prestigious university on the other side of the state. 

“Wanna smoke?” Darian asked, raising his eyebrows. 

“Sure,” I tried to say coolly. I’d only smoked weed once before this, with my next door neighbor, Nicole, a shy girl three grades above me. We’d gotten boba tea and pulled into the back of an empty church parking lot. Her car smelled like patchouli and she played Fleetwood Mac, the smoke drifting in the sunlight while Stevie Nicks belted the comforting songs of my childhood. I sunk back in the seat and laughed, happy knowing my house was only a mile away from the parking lot.

Darian lit the blunt, expertly turning it in his thick fingers as the end turned red. He inhaled deeply, smoke billowing out of his nostrils and rising up in hazy clouds. He passed it to me and I grabbed it shakily, unsure of how to make my small, shriveled hand with its stubby fingers look effortlessly cool and natural. I breathed in, careful not to inhale too much, afraid of coughing in front of him. The thick smoke hit the back of my throat and I released it immediately. An unimpressive puff expelled from my open mouth.  

My chest was on fire and I cleared my throat to keep from having a coughing fit. My eyes watered, and I felt the hot blunt start to burn the top of my middle finger’s skin. I mumbled to him to grab it but in my haste to let go, dropped the blunt, and watched it fall in slow motion onto the carpet below.

“Shit!” I yelled, picking up the blunt as fast as I could, ignoring the ember searing my thumb. “Sorry,” I said, carefully passing it back to him. I wiped the ash that had fallen on the white carpet, making a dusty gray spot, and covered it with my foot. 

“At least they already bought the house from my parents,” Darian offered and I smiled, trying to stifle a cough that was fighting to escape. “This is crazy. I never thought I’d be here. With you,” he said, rolling onto his back in the carpet. 

I followed, looking up at the popcorn ceiling that was beginning to swirl in patterns, like ants following a trail of breadcrumbs. I was really high. It was not like it had been in the car with Nicole—all earthy scents and my mother’s music. I was alone in this empty house with a dude I barely knew. My mom was far away, working the closing shift at the coffee shop.  

I started concentrating on counting, trying to ignore the cough wanting to explode from my chest. I ran my tongue over newly freed teeth. They felt like marshmallows after the two long years in braces. I touched every tooth with the tip of my tongue, counting and recounting to make sure there were still twenty four.

Darian turned toward me. “Hey,” he said. He smiled before closing his eyes and grabbing the back of my head, pulling me into his face.  

His lips were soft, wet, and hot. His mouth tasted like cheeseburger and mint. I wanted to vomit. 

He pulled me on top of him and led my small hand to the waistband of his pants. I fumbled with his belt, pushing and pulling it, but my weak hand couldn’t make the buckle come undone.  

“Do you want help?” he asked with a smile, but I could feel my face turning red. 

He pulled down his own pants and I started to grab him, fondling him the way I’d seen girls do it in videos. But I was awkward, insecure. The girls in the videos didn’t look like me and there was no “How To” on giving a hand job when your hand is barely considered a hand. My mouth was too dry from smoking. I tried to spit, but nothing came out and I rolled off Darian, too embarrassed to know what to do next. 

He turned and faced me, pulling me into his embrace. I immediately covered my arms, hoping that if I hid my disability he would forget and I’d be as beautiful as the girls that he deserved. I felt his hands move under my shirt, fumbling with the clasp of my bra, twisting and pulling at the band until it popped. 

He grabbed my breast like he was catching a basketball, and squeezed it in his hand. 

“Your boobs look like perfect little pizzas,” Darian laughed. “With one pepperoni each.” 

“What the fuck?” I asked. I laughed and pulled back from his clammy body. 

His phone vibrated loudly beside him, lighting the silhouettes of our awkward half-naked teenage bodies. Darian looked at the phone and jumped up before answering, “What’s up, Mom?”

I watched him pace in his white t-shirt, long enough to cover his bare upper thighs. He looked like a little kid getting up in the middle of the night from a nightmare. Darian’s mom had been locked out of their new house and Darian was the only one who was around with keys. 

“Sorry, I know this was a weird way to end things,” he offered. 

I shook my head. “It’s okay!” I said. And then we got dressed in silence, each searching for our discarded clothing in the dark, empty living room. 

He drove me home, loud rock music filling the awkward quiet, both of us unsure as to how to bounce back from the hasty end to the night. 

As I opened his door and offered my arm in a side hug, Darian said, “Thanks again for being so cool about this. You really are a different type of girl.” 

By now, I’ve heard one iteration or another of this phrase more times than I can remember: You’re hot for having one hand. I can’t believe a disabled person got me hard. You’re beautiful to me—suck my dick? But that night, after I’d seen a penis for the first time and felt the limitations of my body in a sexual sense, I took it as a compliment. I am easy-breezy. I go with the flow. I’m not like those other girls with standards. I’m not as attractive, so I will accept less. 

When Darian approached my house, he turned off his lights and parked on the street outside my next door neighbor’s house, so that no one would see me leave his car. I wasn’t like the other girls, who he would walk to the door, and give a romantic kiss goodbye. He didn’t wait to see if I got in safely or send a goodnight text. We never talked again.

***

Spring of my junior year, I had PE first period, which, thinking back, is sadistic to do to already incredibly self-conscious teenagers. I chose the gym class, “Personal Sports,” that year because the only thing more embarrassing for a disabled teenager than losing every sports game is losing every sports game for your team. 

That morning, like every other, I had my mom put my hair in a tight ponytail, or French braid, something that wouldn’t come undone during gym. Having only one underdeveloped, weak hand made daily tasks like these harder. I hadn’t yet figured out how to do my hair myself. 

So, when I inevitably ran out of time to shower before next period, and to avoid exposing my strange and awkward body to the other girls in my gym class, I took out my sweaty hair and combed it with a brush I kept in my backpack because the locks on the gym lockers were too difficult for me to use. I swiped my underarms with deodorant three times and spritzed myself with Victoria’s Secret body spray before leaving. 

I didn’t know any of the girls in my gym class, so I sat my stuff on the bench closest to the exit, quietly slipping in and out of my no-tie shoes and avoiding eye contact with any of the other girls in various states of undress beside me. They talked about boys in the other gym class while poking and pulling on their skin, complaining about their perfect bodies together. I sat cross-armed and looked in the distance at nothing in particular, waiting for the call to exit the locker room and empty out into the basketball court. 

Today was hell on earth. Square dancing with the boys’ gym class. 

Sometimes, I could get my mom to call the school and ask for me not to participate in the things they hadn’t accounted for me not being able to do. Like rope-climbing, where I was assigned to fold and sort the old netted jerseys used for team sports by myself in the empty locker room instead. Or keyboarding, where I essentially spent the semester playing online poker on a corner computer in the lab and brooding to Death Cab for Cutie. Or art class, where a whole two weeks had been dedicated to drawing our opposite hand for the still life final and my teacher was too embarrassed to change the assignment for me. I got an A for the project and spent two weeks during class rinsing out paint brushes in the art studio down the hall. 

But I had forgotten that this week we’d be dancing, and I didn’t have an excuse already planned. I guess dancing is technically considered an “individual sport,” after all. 

The boys stood in a scattered clump and the girls stood nearby, listening to both gym teachers call names from their list to form groups of four boys and four girls. My face felt red and hot; my stomach was twisted in knots and I thought I might pass out. Throughout my life kids had always been afraid to hold my arms, afraid that they might catch whatever disease made me look like this, and so I had been conditioned to hide them away and avoid contact whenever possible. I knew to not try to touch anyone unless they touched me first, if they made it clear that they weren’t afraid of my body. 

I stood in the middle of the gym floor—last used for a basketball game the weekend before and soon to be turned into a dance floor with streamers and balloons and prom gowns—watching each girl from my gym class’s name be called until I was the only one left. 

“Alright,” Coach Gotten said quietly to me, “You’ll be with the boys remaining, as well as Mr. Shiu’s class.”  

The two boys left, standing on the other side of the gym, had been sent to out-of-school suspension and were the suspects behind our school’s lockdown the fall prior. They wore long trench coats and had seemingly never brushed their teeth. One had a stringy, long rattail protruding from the base of his skull and the other had a constant Kool-Aid mustache hovering above his top lip. The rest of the kids to make up our square dancing group were girls and boys from Mr. Shiu’s class, who had varying levels of cognitive disabilities, many of whom needed individualized para’s to help them throughout their daily activities. 

This is how much of my growing up was. Teachers were unsure whether to classify me as ‘disabled’ or ‘non-disabled,’ so I fell somewhere in between, a space that hadn’t been allotted for my existence or abilities. I was often left alone, as it was with art class or keyboarding. But now, it felt like a punch to the gut. My gym teachers knew that none of my peers would want to hold my small, deformed arms with theirs, so I was moved to a group who was silent and silenced, and I followed suit. 

Looking back, I cringe at the ableism I felt—Hey, I’m not as disabled as them. I felt hurt and my pride was damaged. I had tried to hide my disability the best I could—I had a group of friends, made honor roll, proved my worth. I tried to keep my disability as a random addition to who I was as a person, but it became apparent that no matter what I did, I’d still be seen as only disabled. I was mad at my teachers’ behavior toward me while doing the same to other disabled students. I’ve grappled with the fact that my internalized ableism had been the reason for my shame to be seen as one of them. 

Our group, the lepers of first period PE, followed along to the music the best we could, with many of the group oscillating between smiles and frantic yells, giving themselves to the rhythm which their flailing limbs led. I avoided touch as much as I could, for my sake and theirs. The boys’ hands were sticky, clammy, hot and cold. I shuddered away from their touch as they grazed my body. They smelled bad and I wanted to hide in shame; everyone was staring at me, confirming the fears I suspected, that everyone was always thinking about me. Molly, look at her, that pathetic freak. 

After an excruciating forty-five minutes, the coaches called us into a steamy huddle in the middle of the room, saying how they knew today could be awkward, but they were proud of us for trying our best, and dismissed us early. 

In the locker room, the majority of the girls were already changed and were now wandering back into the gym to wait until the bell rang. I was curled into myself on the concrete bench, changing as if I’d been constricted to a small box, hoping to hide every inch of my grotesque body from accidentally being viewed.

“Do you have any body spray?” asked Kelsey, a cheerleader who I never had a class with before. 

I didn’t answer, assuming she wasn’t talking to me because she’d never talked to me before. The popular girls catered seemingly everything in their lives to be what the boys wanted. They tied their shirts in perfect balls around their waists, leaning back in front of the boys, exposing thin lines of perfectly tanned stomachs underneath. I didn’t know if they’d ever had an original thought, or thought of anything other than their junior varsity crushes and reality TV. I knew that they’d go on to have the best days of their lives at a state school in the middle of expansive cornfields and get engaged to frat boys before college graduation. Looking back, I was probably jealous that their lives seemed so effortless.

I finished pulling my t-shirt over my bra when a girl’s voice said, “Hey Molly, do you have any spray? I smell like shit.” 

“Oh, I didn’t realize you were talking to me. Sorry, yeah.” I said, meekly, and hunched over, looking through my bag. I didn’t know they even knew my name. I handed her the small purple bottle once I found it, making sure our hands wouldn’t accidentally touch, or that I wouldn’t do something stupid, like drop it on the gym’s gross floor. 

“Do you care if I use it too?” asked her friend Bailey, who was also on the cheerleading squad and won homecoming queen that past September. 

“Yeah, for sure,” I answered as I took my hair out of its pony, hoping it looked effortless and cool when it fell to my shoulders. 

The two finished spritzing each other and themselves before handing it back to me. I turned to grab the bottle behind me and heard Kelsey say, “Oh shit, Molly! Your hair is fucked, what happened?” 

Instinctively, I went to touch the back of my head where I felt a hard, sticky sucker tangled in my hair. I tried pulling it out quickly to save myself further embarrassment, but my scalp screamed in pain as the fine hairs clung to the syrupy surface. I couldn’t be sure if it had happened by accident or done purposely by someone trying to make their friend laugh. In middle school, notes with words like ‘gimpy’ or ‘stumpy’ would get stuck to my back, left there for half of the school day. 

I turned and looked at them with my eyes wide, unsure of what to do. These weren’t girls who could be trusted; they looked and sounded like the ones who had made my life miserable since puberty. I felt my face getting hotter. 

Bailey looked at me, her brow scrunched, “It’s okay. It’s happened to me before—an accident in the bleachers. I think I can get it out.” 

“Can you tell Coach what’s going on? That we’ll be a minute?” Bailey jutted her chin toward the coach’s office door.  

Coach Gotten came out less than a minute later with her arms crossed, looking down at my hair with a frown. “Alright, you’ll have to go to the nurse’s office for this.” 

Surprisingly, Kelsey spoke up in my defense. “No, we can’t make her walk through the halls with her hair looking like this during passing period. We can get it out, just give us like five minutes.” 

Coach raised her eyebrows at us. “Okay, let me know when you’re done and if you can’t get it out, let me know and I’ll take her to the nurse.” I noticed she hadn’t addressed me; instead she talked to them as if they were my newfound caretakers. 

“And we need a late excuse from you for our next class!” Bailey added as she dug in her locker for a brush. Coach Gotten nodded as she walked away. 

“Okay, this might be awkward, but lean as far into the sink as you can,” Bailey instructed while Kelsey held the rest of my hair in her hands. Bailey held the strands with the sucker under the stream of water for about half a minute before instructing me to follow her back to the locker room bench. 

I turned away as they stood behind me, carefully pulling the wet strands away, until finally freeing the red candy from the grip of my fine, tangled hair. 

“We can’t leave your hair like this. It’s a hot mess,” Kelsey said, and we all laughed. 

“Do you have an extra hair tie?” Bailey asked. I shook my head but offered up the one that had been used for my sucker ponytail. 

“I have an extra one, let me look!” Kelsey went off toward her gym locker. 

“I think French braids would be cute. What do you think?” Bailey asked me. 

“Yeah, thanks so much. My hair is so gross,” I said with a shy chuckle. 

“No,” Bailey laughed. “Just a little sticky.” 

I sat on the bench while they hovered over me, each taking half of my hair and expertly weaving it into a precise braid on either side of my head, lightly scratching my scalp with their long, manicured nails.  

“Aww looks so cute!” they both squealed when it was finished. 

“Thanks so much you guys, that was so sweet,” I said.  

I walked out of the locker room with them, catching myself in the mirror and thinking, Wow, that looks nice. 

In the days after, we talked more in the locker room and Kelsey walked laps with me around the outdoor track when the gym teacher hadn’t thought of an alternative way for me to ride bikes with the rest of the class. Kelsey’s period cramps hurt too bad, but Coach wouldn’t let her go to the nurse’s office, telling her to not be such a sissy and walk it off. 

“Talking shit with you and walking instead of riding a bike in that herd? Honestly no comparison. This is obviously the better of the two options,” Kelsey said as we wound around the turn of the track, laughing.  

We remained friends in gym class the rest of the semester, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sit with them at lunch or say hi to them in the halls. They showed me a small, meaningful act of kindness, but I knew this was a temporary exception to the rule, rather than the way life would be for me during high school. It wasn’t until much later that my friendship with other women would become such a central part of my existence. 

*** 

Five years later, I moved to California and worked as a hostess at a hip, late-night pizza and cocktail spot in San Francisco. I started a few weeks after a tough breakup with my first real boyfriend. I dyed my hair blonde and wore tight-fitting black clothes. I was less afraid of letting people see me, now daring them to look.  

Everyone at the pizza place felt so much cooler than me. They had facial piercings and silly tattoos. We snuck little shooters of tequila in our to-go coffee cups during our shifts and they invited me out after work for drinks and gossip. It felt good to finally be on the inside of something when I’d always been on the outside looking in. 

I was wiping down the front windows and bar top before the doors unlocked and a wave of people filled the sleek, dark bar. “I love that pose, you look like a model for Abercrombie,” Nico, the head bartender, said to me from behind the bar.  

“Abercrombie?” I teased back, “more like Vogue, bitch.” We laughed.  

Nico was fifteen years older than me. He had dark hair that was going a little gray on the sides. He surfed and knew everything there was to know about alcohol. He charmed guests with his stories of travel. When he talked, people paid attention; they felt lucky to be talking to him. He was the coolest person I’d ever met. 

“Hey, you never come out with me. Want to get a drink tonight?” Nico asked while shining the glasses behind the bar. 

“Sure, just let me know!” I said, trying not to seem so surprised or excited.

The shift came and went like every night—crazy, exciting, busy, loud. I ended my shift smelling like pizza dough and sweat, with a hundred bucks in my pocket. 

“Are you going?” Nico asked as I was clocking out. 

“Yeah, they cut me a little early.” 

“I just got cut too,” Nico said, touching the small of my back as he grabbed some rolled napkins on the other side of me. “Wait like five minutes for me downstairs and let’s grab a drink.” 

I nodded and headed downstairs, nervously checking my phone, trying my hardest to keep my foot from tapping and my heart from beating outside of my chest. 

Nico peeked through the office door, “You ready? Follow me.” 

We walked together down Valencia St. for eight blocks, talking about how I ended up in San Francisco while still slowly working on my undergrad in community college and how much I hated living in Los Angeles. 

“So, you broke up with your boyfriend and moved here?” 

“Yeah, pretty much,” I responded coolly. The initial adrenaline was wearing off as we walked together in the breeze. 

“That’s good.” Nico pushed his shoulder into mine. “He sounds like a loser.” 

I laughed, hoping my cheeks weren’t turning noticeably red. 

We walked into the dim, cash-only bar. The bouncer checked our IDs and told us to hold out our hand for the stamp. I held out my left hand and he said, “Hold out your right.” 

I offered my right, hand-less arm. He looked up at me sheepishly then hastily stamped my small left hand, leaving smeared ink in its wake. “You’re good, go on in.” I shrugged my shoulders at Nico—it’s just something that happens. 

Nico ordered us two shots of tequila and two beers, refusing to let me pitch in. He held his shot in the air, waiting for me to follow suit. I awkwardly held mine, noticing how big and tan his hand looked in comparison. Our glasses clinked and we shouted, “Salud!” together. 

I followed him past the DJ and into a corner booth that was illuminated by the bright flecks of light from a disco ball above.  

“So, can I ask what happened?” Nico asked, looking down at the lime he squeezed into the can of beer. 

“With my perfect tits or my hand?” I asked with a grin, hoping to relieve some of the awkwardness from the inevitable question. He laughed and shook his head. “Well, when I was in the womb, my mom lost a lot of amniotic fluid. It’s kind of complicated, but my circulation got cut off. So they had to do an emergency amputation after I was born.” 

“Oh damn, I’m sorry,” Nico said, looking for the right words. “So it’s not a genetic thing?” 

“Nope. Just a one-in-a-million type thing. And I’m just the unlucky one-in-a-million.” 

He took my face in his hands and said, “I’m sorry if that was rude.” 

“No, I’m not ashamed or shy anymore,” I said, hoping that if I said the words enough times they would come true. “It’s all good. Shit happens.” 

Nico breathed in deeply, “Well you’re hot as fuck, if that helps.”  

I chuckled, a sigh of relief between the two of us. 

Eventually, the lights turned up and the bartenders shouted last call, everyone seemingly naked and exposed under the new harsh light. 

We walked out of the bar together, his arm around my lower back as we neared a dark alley. There, Nico turned and kissed me. His breath was tequila and made me drunk. He scooped me up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, my deformed arms around his neck. 

When we stopped kissing, I jumped back down to earth. “What the fuck?” I laughed. “I was really not expecting that.” 

“I have to get going soon. It’s late,” Nico said with his chin resting on the top of my head. “Can I wait here while you call your car?” 

“Sure,” I said, trying not to give away that my phone was about to jump out of my hand. 

As we waited in the graffiti-covered alley, a drunk man came up to us asking for change for the bus. Nico shooed him away. “This is my wife,” he said. “We’re on our honeymoon, can’t you tell?” His words slurred together as he laughed and kissed my forehead, pulling me in closer. 

The next day, I looked him up on Facebook and saw his profile photo. He wore a navy suit and held hands with a bride. They were laughing, bubbles floating in front of them as they walked in a chair-lined, green pasture. 

The next night, my coworkers and I went to get drinks after work. As nonchalantly as I could, I asked my coworker, “So, Nico’s married, right?” 

“Yeah,” Adriana responded, not taking her eyes off the dart board as she aimed. “Her name is Melanie. I think they got married a little over a year ago maybe? I’ve only met her a few times.” 

She handed me the darts and I took aim.

I’d known something was off. It was too good to be true. Men don’t like me unless there’s some type of a catch. He never wore a wedding ring at work, and I hadn’t seen any discernible tan lines on his finger. It’s fine, though, I thought. I’m not looking for anything serious. I’m young. The city is still new. We can just have fun. Why would a man like him be interested in an awkward, disabled girl like me? 

Nico continued asking me to get drinks after work. Sometimes it was with coworkers and he wouldn’t directly talk to me or sit near me. Sometimes it was just us, together, and he’d bury his face into the small of my neck. 

We then began sleeping together. Nico would come over to my house after his shift or when he was out drunk. I wanted to look carefree and unattached, so I never pressed for details. I never asked how he was able to get away with being at my house so late at night, or if I was one of many women he was sleeping with behind his wife’s back. 

One night, around 3 a.m., about a month after we began the affair, he leaned into my naked body as we lay in bed and told me, “Marriage is so hard. I don’t recommend it if you can help it.” I didn’t know how to respond, or if he even wanted me to. I pulled him closer, giving him a light squeeze. I guess this was his way of finally telling me the truth. I felt a pang in my side when I thought of the picture of them; she was so beautiful in the white dress. 

A week later, I got drunk by myself after work. I was at home sipping whiskey and watching a movie about war late into the night, when Nico surprised me with a phone call, saying he was outside my door. He came in and sat on the couch, and I crawled on top of him, straddling his muscular body. I kissed his neck. “If I was your wife, I’d appreciate you. I’d wake you up every day with a blowjob and breakfast,” I said, laughing into his neck. He pulled away, his mouth in a tight line.  

“What? I was kidding!” I said, playfully hitting him. I was more drunk than I thought. Looking back, my mind was still developing. I was only twenty-one years old; I thought he deserved better, that his wife clearly didn’t appreciate how cool and smart and interesting he was. I suddenly became conscious of how young and stupid and immature I must seem. He pushed me onto the couch, kneeling above me, unbuckling his belt. 

After three months of Nico sending me songs that reminded him of me during the day and late night texts begging me to let him come over after the bars had closed, I walked into work to see a giant white sheet cake and an opened card that said, “We’ll miss you!” 

“Who died?” I asked my coworkers who were huddled around the center table. 

“Nico’s leaving,” my boss answered. “He’s got a big boy job as a brand rep now.” 

“Oh nice,” I tried to say nonchalantly, my mouth feeling suddenly dry. 

After Nico’s last shift, he didn’t go out with coworkers to celebrate, citing an early-morning training for his new job. He stopped texting me daily and, eventually, altogether. He offered me as little information about his departure as he’d offered me about his marriage. 

Still, he was important to me, whether my immature mind wanted to accept it or not. He had helped me to feel desired, cool and confident. He was someone I’d never imagined would even look my way. Being chosen by Nico made me feel powerful and beautiful, like the women I had grown up envying. I had changed so much during the months we shared and I was hurt that he could just stop us so suddenly. 

Near the end of summer, I got drunk one night with a bunch of coworkers. It was one of those uncharacteristically warm nights in San Francisco, just after a rain when the humidity hadn’t yet left the air, and the weather had our whole group feeling extra grateful we’d gotten cut early. We went from bar to bar, saying hello to old friends and the regulars, getting shots of mezcal for free and tipping generously. I lost count of the drinks I had, exchanging slurred numbers with a friendly barback I’d never met, winking at him to text me as I stumbled out of the bar. 

“Nico!” I heard my coworker Kaylee yell, waving to the two figures walking toward us. 

For the first time in months, I saw Nico again in person. I don’t know why I was surprised that he looked the same. He was holding hands with a petite woman wearing a bright pink dress. I recognized her as the bride from the photo I saw online. Both of them were wearing wedding rings. 

“I’m going to call my Uber I think,” I said softly, hoping no one would notice my sudden absence. 

In the darkness, with the mist and my scrambled and drunk brain, I missed the curb of the sidewalk and tripped, landing face down in the street. 

Everyone turned and looked. Two of my friends ran to me, each grabbing one of my arms and sitting me down on the sidewalk. 

“It’s fine guys, I’m just super embarrassed,” I slurred, trying to get off the ground so I could start walking home and away from everyone’s eyes.  

I felt a warm liquid run down my neck and my chin started to sting. 

Melanie shouted and pointed, “I think we need to get her some help. She may have a concussion!” 

Nico threw a glance my way and I wanted to die. I had never felt so pathetic. All of my allure was gone. Here I was, a drunk disabled girl with a bloody chin. 

Melanie called an ambulance even though my friends begged her not to. I didn’t have insurance. I couldn’t bear to look at or talk to her or Nico, who was now on the outskirts of the group, looking at his phone. 

The last time I saw him, I was getting strapped into an ambulance bed with a huge bandage on my face. Cynically, I thought, Aren’t you lucky to have chosen her over me? 

Part of me wanted to tell her about the affair, even if it was just to get the attention off my embarrassing injury. But I didn’t, and Nico knew I wouldn’t. I’m not like other girls. I will suffer this moment of humiliation to protect this man. And in some ways, to protect myself. And in another, to protect his sweet wife, who stayed behind to make sure I would be taken care of. 

Melanie sat with me until the ambulance pulled away, holding my hand and assuring me everything would be okay. Through the window, I watched her lean on Nico, getting smaller and smaller until they disappeared altogether. 

***

Two years later, I was surrounded by friends, wearing a teal jumpsuit and celebrating my graduation from UCLA on the rooftop of the W hotel. I had spent so long avoiding the camaraderie of women, afraid they’d never view me as one of their own, but in my early twenties, I began tearing down the oppressive walls of men’s opinions—with the support of other women. I filled my adult life with amazing women that became my family, my support system, my everything. 

On the roof, a DJ was spinning records and beautiful people surrounded the pool’s glassy water. My best friend, Olivia, walked with me to get a cocktail and I pretended not to notice the crowd’s eyes following us. 

“It’s crazy you’re finally done!” Olivia said. 

“Hallelujah. Where’s my shot?” I asked. 

A man from the other side of Olivia came between us. “What’re you celebrating tonight?” he asked, licking his lips as he waited for Olivia’s response. 

“Well, my beautiful friend over here is graduating!” Olivia said, motioning to me. 

“So what is your name?” he pressed, ignoring her answer. 

“You know what, we could use some shots,” Olivia answered. She smiled without showing her teeth.  

He seemed to shake himself out of his laser focus, looking around for the bartender, “Yeah, good idea. What do you want?” 

I interjected, “Patrón. Chilled.” 

He looked back at Olivia, incredulous. She nodded, “Same.”  

The man ordered two shots of chilled Patrón for us and a shot of well whiskey for himself. 

“To you, beautiful!” He hoisted a glass in Olivia’s direction. 

“To us!” Olivia said, looking at me. Our glasses clinked and we shot back the clear liquid. 

“Thanks so much for your service, my man,” Olivia said as she quickly led us away from our new sponsor. 

“And thank you for your cervix,” I joked to Olivia under my breath. 

“Can I get your number?” he shouted to us, and I looked over my shoulder, shrugging a response on her behalf. 

We ran into the restroom, where a crowd of girls tended to their hair and scream into each other’s ears in front of a big mirror. I went to pull up my jumpsuit in the stall, but the back zipper was stuck, leaving me half naked. My short arms were unable to reach the back, my stubby fingers grasping for the small, impossible zipper. 

“Olivia?” I shouted, repeating her name again without a response. I raised my voice, unlocking the stall door. “Okay this is really weird, but can someone zip up the back of this jumpsuit for me?” I called on my drunken sisters in this desperate moment. 

“What’s up, girl. Is the door unlocked?” I heard a stranger from outside say. 

“Yeah, I’ll come out, can y’all block me?” A choir of slurred voices assured me yes. 

I backed into the washroom, with my butt crack and lower back exposed.  

A flock of women complimenting my jumpsuit forming around me, creating a commotion. I felt their pointed, manicured fingernails on my back, zipping up the suit, then fixing my hair, twirling it expertly so that it fell into ringlets on my shoulders. 

“You look beautiful, babe,” one said. She looked at me through the mirror, puckering her lips as she applied gloss. 

“Thank you!” I said. They chomped bubblegum and straightened out the hems of their skirts, complimenting each other incessantly and laughing ferociously as I left the bathroom. 

I joined Olivia and the other women on the dancefloor, all swaying hips and sparkles. The hair on the back of my head stuck to my sweaty neck as we belted out song lyrics. I danced, shaking my body together with theirs, unafraid.  

“I’m so glad I’m here with you!” I said to everyone and no one in particular.