Kat George

Because our reality, right now, it’s just about falling in love. Let’s put the real stuff aside—the past, our insecurities, all the baggage we’ve imported from all our journeys—and let’s just be. This is our moment to be fanciful, and we might not get another one, at least not together. I don’t want to have to “deal” and “cope” and “work” yet.

Sometimes, when it’s raining, I think about you. I think about you all the way over there, with all that ocean and all those years between us. I think about if you’re doing well, what your bedroom looks like, if you enjoy your job. I think about the times when there wasn’t any ocean between us and my time was your time.

I am aware that a vast majority of people are both ashamed and embarrassed about farting, even though I’m not. I’m also aware that a vast majority of this vast majority are women, and moreover I am aware that most women only fart perfume and poop rainbows (everyone has to fart and poop OK, some girls just do it prettier).

I’m pretending that I don’t like you like that, and I bet you don’t even know. Why would you? I’ve put a lot of effort into this charade, and I’m pulling it off with such ease I’ve almost even convinced myself that I don’t like you like that. Sort of like that creepy thing people do when they’re sad and just smile anyway; eventually the smile becomes real, and the forced weirdness just fades away.

That’s the point where you really know, you really, really know, that you’ll be able to tell everything you need about a man’s feelings from the way he looks at you. It’s when you’ll stop demanding frivolous gestures and “I love you,” because on the rare occasion you notice him looking at you like that, you know it’s all you’ll ever need.

I remember when we met. We were 6 years old and climbing trees; we were 13 years old and discovering boys; we were 18 years old and starting university, we were 22 years old and falling in love for the first time: whenever, no matter, we were just kids then. We still are, but when we met your eyes were definitely sparkling; I know because that’s what I remember most about meeting you.

And I know, guy, that you don’t get your period (although sometimes you’re as annoyingly moody as if you did), so let me lay it down for you in a way you can understand. See, blood does not spray out of a woman’s vagina in a heavy stream when she’s got her period. Her vagina is not an open tap.

This is for you, little brother, on your 18^th birthday, and for all the other little brothers and sisters who are being asked by life to please leave childhood behind, thank you very much.

The woman who wont drive 45 minutes to the only open McDonalds in her town at 5am when her stomach threatens to suicide over an unrequited love affair with a cheeseburger is not to be trusted. Having the willpower to overcome her instincts would make her a formidable opponent in both war and sex games.

Would it be better, if I could tell you how I really feel? If the next time your eyes met mine in the half darkness of a moodily lit bar, their reflection glowing in the whiskey inhabiting the glass between your fingers, I just said, “I want you to be mine”? Would it make me feel better, then, to have you reach your fingers across the table between us, and interlace them with mine while you gave me your response?

Don’t get me wrong—I think you’re great. I like to eat dinner across from you, quickly glancing down at the fork idly fondling my food when you catch my eye. I like the coy smiles that pass between us, and the way that once we’re both drunk you become brave enough to hold my hand, and I become excited enough to hold it back…

You know the drill. You meet; you fall in ‘like’. Maybe you develop a romantic history (drunk sex, a date, a dance floor pash), or maybe you just admire them from afar. You feel like if they were a pop star you’d put a poster of their face on your wall and blow it kisses before you fell asleep to dream about them all night. If you were in high school you’d write their name on all your folders and do love equations with both your names.

Not only were the external stimuli I was exposed to promoting an “ideal” body image, they were also promoting a sense that unless I fit that particular ideal, I should be morbidly dissatisfied. And I was; for no particular reason other than I felt some sort of social pressure to find ways to hate myself, which, needless to say, is absolutely ridiculous.

While they have common characteristics—a lone, often single humanoid in the company of a couple (and sometimes a really super cute, tiny little puppy the couple just added to the fold) with whom they are not sexually or romantically involved—third wheels come in many shapes and sizes, and often serve quite a functional purpose for said couple.

I’m not convinced first time sex needs to be this bad for women, or bad at all for that matter. All it takes is a ‘can do’ attitude, a little bit of bravado, and Bob’s your uncle—you’ll be having great sex before you know it.

I know you probably think I’m some kind of uniquely filthy, completely nasty woman, but I’m not. Just because I like picking the wax out of my ears and rolling it into little balls, or because I spend an equal amount of time picking my nose and hoping that a little hair will come out attached to the snot.

I really do love surrounding myself with boys, and I’ve always had a lot of close straight male friends. And my boys—the boys I’ve climbed trees with, played video games with, burped the alphabet with—have given all the other boys a lot to live up to. This is what those wonderful, disgusting, can’t-live-with-em-can’t-live-without-em fellas have taught me about boys.

Once I wrote this list I realized I’d missed a lot of amazing Bruce movies—Twelve Monkeys, Mercury Rising, The Jackal, Hudson Hawk, Blind Date, Striking Distance, The Whole Nine Yards—and I almost hate myself a little bit for not being more discriminating with my choices. But then I asked myself, WWBD?