prose by Katyanna Sciorra
He was a real americano. Blonde hair, blue eyes, well built, played on a couple of sports teams, you know the kind, I’m sure. A true image of all-American virility.
I was about the opposite. Un-American. Desperately looking for a way to fit in.
We sat next to each other during a free period.
“Crap. Forgot the math homework. Did you do it?” he asked me, like it just popped into his head. I could tell he knew he was going to copy my answers since the homework was assigned.
“Yea. Lemme get it,” I complied. I hadn’t really cared. Well more like, I hadn’t really cared if I cared. I just did it.
“Some of the answers may be wrong. I didn’t really know what I was doing.” I was confident in my answers. I just didn’t want to look like it. Boys don’t really like that. I don’t know why I lied, honestly; he wouldn’t have cared or noticed either way.
I handed him the homework. As he took it from me, I noticed he had black nail polish on. He had always been an edgier kid, you know. Or pretended he was. Acted out in little rebellions against his parents: listened to rock music, disagreed with their conservative views. I guess the nail polish was just the next advancement in this stupid artificial rebellion of his. That was why I liked him, I guess. The whole edgy thing was appealing to me. And the whole not-being-a-racist-conservative like the rest of the people here thing. Looking back at it, he was all talk.
He’s just like all the rest of them. He doesn’t care about girls like me.
“Black nail polish, really?” I observed. Was that mean? Crap.
I used to hate every word that came out of my mouth. I wanted him to like me so bad. I wanted him to like me the way he likes the white girls.
“Yeah. My dad got super mad,” he boasted. He always showed off his acts of rebellion.
He wants me to notice. He wants me to like him, I thought.
He never really wanted me to like him. He wanted a girl like me to like him. It could have been anyone.
“I’m impressed.” I wasn’t impressed. I convinced myself I was because everything he did was amazing and incredible: he was the perfect all-American boy.
“Impressed? What are you impressed for; it’s really not that big of a deal.”
Hate when he plays humble like this. He’s so arrogant. Won’t say anything, though.
“I just never saw you as someone who would wear nail polish, you know.”
“What? Why? You know I’m against all that toxic masculinity stuff.”
Give me a break.
“Give me a break.” Uh oh. Didn’t mean to say that out loud.
“What? I’m being honest. I’m, like, a really feminist dude,” he said.
He literally mansplains Radiohead lyrics to me regularly. He doesn’t care about feminism. He thinks it makes him look cool.
“Is that so?” Was that mean? Don’t care anymore. He’s being annoying.
“Yeah, of course it is.”
I scoffed.
“Why are you drilling me?” He was angry. How dare a dumb little girl disagree with him. “I thought girls like you liked this type of stuff.”
Girls like me?
“What exactly does that mean?”
“You know, like, edgy Asian girls like you.”
Do you know when people say things that echo through you? Things that bounce back and forth in your brain, bending and stretching and tumbling around. Things that make you shake. Things that make your tongue itch, not that you don’t know what to say, but you don’t know where to start. When people say barely anything, but really, they say everything.
This was one of those things.
The world could have ended right there.
Suddenly, I was transported to one of those mirror mazes. Like the ones in carnivals.
I looked at myself. On my shirt there was a name tag.
HELLO! My name is:
Asian Girl
I tried to peel it off, but it wouldn't budge.
“No, no, that’s not my name no, no, no,” I started whimpering like a baby.
I stumbled through the mirrors, confused and lost. Sweating. Crying. Tugging at the name tag.
That’s not my name. That’s not my name. No, no, no.
I finally found the end of the maze. It was a door with a sign on it.
Girls Like You
I opened the door up to a casino. It was full of women. Asian women. Wearing Party City “Sexy Geisha” costumes. Serving martinis to the greasy white men wearing business suits. They looked unhappy.
I heard one man say, “These oriental women are so gorgeous, and they have the--”
I’m gonna be sick.
I looked down at myself and saw the ugly Party City getup and a dragon tattoo on my thigh. I looked around and saw all the men staring. Looking me up and down. Grunting and grinning. I felt violated and exploited. All I could do was cry.
“Hello? You there?” he said. I came back to earth. “You spaced out there for a second.” He laughed like nothing mattered. Nothing really did matter to him. He didn’t have a care in the world.
“What’s wrong with you?” I said, not knowing what else I could possibly say to describe everything going through my brain.
“What? What did I do?” he said.
He really is clueless. He doesn’t understand.
“You know, those flannel shirts don’t make you look like Kurt Cobain. They make you look like a redneck,” I said.
“What…” he said, confused.
I was so angry, I got up from the table and didn’t speak to him again.
The next day he was back to sitting at a table with some white girls, black nail polish rubbed off.