Writing excercises, pt 1
Loss
I never understand why my friends talk about losing their virginity the way that they do. They whisper, giggling behind cupped hands in the hallways. Their words are fumbling, too blunt, childish. Sometimes they recount, flushed and conspiratorial, the brief, awkward encounters that follow, as though five minutes behind the bleachers or in a forgotten closet during lunch is some grand sexual achievement. Experience, they call it. Whoop de doo.
“When are you going to lose your virginity?” they ask, invariably in a tone that precisely conveys their newfound superiority. When will I join their oh so exclusive club?
I shrug. I don’t want to lose my virginity.
I don’t want to surrender complacently to some sweaty-palmed jock who’ll fumble with my bra and grope my breasts and then brag about it so ten minutes later, the entire class knows. They snicker behind your back, and soon enough you'll hear easy and slut and you have to pretend it's a badge of honor or else you're frigid. A prude. You might as well have stayed a virgin.
No, I don’t want to lose my virginity at all.
I think that instead, I want to give it. A gift, not a defeat.
I want to present it to the boy who causes pink to flush across my cheeks when I think of his hands. I want to award it to the one who knows what a tongue is for and how to use it. I want to offer it to the guy who’ll look me in the eyes and know that it's because I want it.
Trust me, girls, when it happens, it won’t be a loss. And it sure as hell won’t be behind the bleachers.
Slighted – The Hunger Games
Steaming rolls spread with honeyed butters. Fragrant curried stews. Freshly-caught salmon with brown sugar glaze. Flatbreads oozing sweet cheese, topped with summer-ripe berries. Cake slices thicker than a handspan, dotted with cherries and drowning in gluttonous chocolate buttercream.
All these things I serve in silence. Course after course, I come and go, my prescence no more marked than a housefly’s. They always find their glasses full to brimming. No one looks up. No one would even know my name if they did. Just my title. Avox.
These children. Tributes. Exalted sacrifices, no more. They eat as though each meal will be their last, stuffing their mouths with bite after bite of the rich, unfamiliar fare. I know I should pity them. In a few short days, they will likely be dead. Skewered on lances, throats slit to macabre smiles, torn apart by beasts or drowned in floods or any number of conceivable demises, so long as they’re grisly and entertaining.
I should pity them. I know this. My life, mute and inconsequential, has nonetheless been spared.
And yet as I gaze at these children, all sunken eyes and hungry mouths, I feel the bitterness of envy swell up in me. It is a greedy jealousy I must bury beneath my silent servitude-- for these children have but days, not years, until merciful death grants them release.
Their deaths will be tragic, to be sure. But brief, and for a shining moment, even in death, someone will know that they existed. That they were here. That they were alive. All of Panem will gasp, or cheer, or shed tears as they draw their last breaths. Their lives will not go unremarked.
With every day that passes, I am erased. I begin to forget my own name. If an eye chances to fall upon me, I am nevertheless unseen. If I am beneath notice when I am standing right here, how will anyone will ever note when I am gone?
I step in, unobtrusively, to fill their glasses once more. Their conversation continues. No one looks up. No one ever looks up.
I never understand why my friends talk about losing their virginity the way that they do. They whisper, giggling behind cupped hands in the hallways. Their words are fumbling, too blunt, childish. Sometimes they recount, flushed and conspiratorial, the brief, awkward encounters that follow, as though five minutes behind the bleachers or in a forgotten closet during lunch is some grand sexual achievement. Experience, they call it. Whoop de doo.
“When are you going to lose your virginity?” they ask, invariably in a tone that precisely conveys their newfound superiority. When will I join their oh so exclusive club?
I shrug. I don’t want to lose my virginity.
I don’t want to surrender complacently to some sweaty-palmed jock who’ll fumble with my bra and grope my breasts and then brag about it so ten minutes later, the entire class knows. They snicker behind your back, and soon enough you'll hear easy and slut and you have to pretend it's a badge of honor or else you're frigid. A prude. You might as well have stayed a virgin.
No, I don’t want to lose my virginity at all.
I think that instead, I want to give it. A gift, not a defeat.
I want to present it to the boy who causes pink to flush across my cheeks when I think of his hands. I want to award it to the one who knows what a tongue is for and how to use it. I want to offer it to the guy who’ll look me in the eyes and know that it's because I want it.
Trust me, girls, when it happens, it won’t be a loss. And it sure as hell won’t be behind the bleachers.
Slighted – The Hunger Games
Steaming rolls spread with honeyed butters. Fragrant curried stews. Freshly-caught salmon with brown sugar glaze. Flatbreads oozing sweet cheese, topped with summer-ripe berries. Cake slices thicker than a handspan, dotted with cherries and drowning in gluttonous chocolate buttercream.
All these things I serve in silence. Course after course, I come and go, my prescence no more marked than a housefly’s. They always find their glasses full to brimming. No one looks up. No one would even know my name if they did. Just my title. Avox.
These children. Tributes. Exalted sacrifices, no more. They eat as though each meal will be their last, stuffing their mouths with bite after bite of the rich, unfamiliar fare. I know I should pity them. In a few short days, they will likely be dead. Skewered on lances, throats slit to macabre smiles, torn apart by beasts or drowned in floods or any number of conceivable demises, so long as they’re grisly and entertaining.
I should pity them. I know this. My life, mute and inconsequential, has nonetheless been spared.
And yet as I gaze at these children, all sunken eyes and hungry mouths, I feel the bitterness of envy swell up in me. It is a greedy jealousy I must bury beneath my silent servitude-- for these children have but days, not years, until merciful death grants them release.
Their deaths will be tragic, to be sure. But brief, and for a shining moment, even in death, someone will know that they existed. That they were here. That they were alive. All of Panem will gasp, or cheer, or shed tears as they draw their last breaths. Their lives will not go unremarked.
With every day that passes, I am erased. I begin to forget my own name. If an eye chances to fall upon me, I am nevertheless unseen. If I am beneath notice when I am standing right here, how will anyone will ever note when I am gone?
I step in, unobtrusively, to fill their glasses once more. Their conversation continues. No one looks up. No one ever looks up.