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I’m at KGB. Which I guess I often am. I’m on Aperol soda number two. Because I’m in a sailor top, someone asks me if I’m trying to cosplay Sailor Socialism. The conversation turns to the concept of the pick me woman. I sip harder. I like the airy sound the straw makes when there’s only ice left. It’s not easy to hear what the people on the opposite side of the table are saying. I want to banter. I don’t want to be left out. I joked earlier that if someone told a story about people I didn’t know that I needed a full background on each person in the story so I wouldn’t be left out. The room is packed around us. People are jealous we have a table. I know this because for the thirty minutes after we arrived I was jealous of everyone who had a table. There are somewhat famous faces coming in and out of the second floor bar. I clock a director and an alt lit author within a few minutes of each other.
The rain has just started outside, but people take their drinks out to the stoop anyways. Who would stop them? It’s Sunday night on a holiday weekend. Every table is covered in beer bottles. I arrange the bottles left behind at the table where we sit. I’m with three acquaintances that I hope by the end of the night I’ll be able to call my friends. They are all men.
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I walk past the Wall Street Sweetgreen on the way to the Governor’s Island Ferry for a poetry festival. From the window, I see a neon sign in the dining area that lists the four seasons. FALL is lit up. This validates my belief that the equinox doesn’t determine the start of autumn. As soon as I take a picture, a couple underneath the sign starts ravenously making out. The cartoonish timing is met with two living cartoons. One has pink hair and the other has green. Cosmo and Wanda. The likeness is uncanny. In the picture, you can definitely see them making out, which is fine. The thing about New York is there is no shortage of freaks that will end up in your pictures.
i realize the fact i’m taking this photo makes me look like the freak, not the people making out in a salad restaurant
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I talked to another friend a few months ago about pick mes. I think I remember she said she was sick of the term. Why someone shouldn’t be a pick me, we couldn’t figure out. Mostly the term reminds me of the embarrassment of being picked last for kickball during recess. Then I was definitely not a pick me. Another friend asks me to define the term when I bring it up. I use examples: Gone Girl, Jennifer Lawrence, “I get along better with guys than girls.” The last of which I’ve used to describe myself at times. Oh, he says, we don’t have those where I’m from.
I get into a different conversation about how there have been times I’ve had trouble figuring out whether I wanted to be with a man or wanted to be him. This is confusing because otherwise I don’t find myself questioning, or even really thinking about, my gender. I think it’s more about narcissism than it is about gender. Maybe if I could see myself in them I could see myself as worthy of attention.
Thanks for putting up with my strange male friends, a male friend texts me back after he leaves town. I have a soft spot for strange male friends, I respond.
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