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9:04 p.m. - November 12, 2001
her secret
Her purse falls open one day and everything comes spilling out; lipsticks, mints, powder compact, checkbook, and a little blue bound book that she won�t let me retrieve for her. I shrug; hand her back the darker lipstick, and we carry on dancing. Her hips slide like silk underneath the soft cotton of her dress; I stare at them for a second, wishing I could move like that. I am too awkward; too tall. My own hipbones jut out like a pair of birds� wing joints. And as I realize this, smoothing my hands over them, boys flock to her, as they always do, slipping their strong hands around her, hoping to buy her a drink. They are too occupied with her to notice me, so when she hands me her purse, to keep it safe while she has a drink with one �suitor�, a small boned college student with baby-fine black hair, she doesn�t feel guilty. And I don�t feel guilty, either. All I feel is resentment; resentment that I�m not as good a dancer, that I am not as fluid, that I don�t have as nice of a car, even, and at this moment I am not sitting at a bar with a cute baby-faced college boy having a drink.
I take her purse and sit down at a table, pulling my coat around me; it�s cold by the windows, and I have no need to show off my dress anymore. Guys don�t come over to the food tables if they�re trying to meet women; they come over here when they�ve been rejected. Rejected men don�t try again. And rejected women are bitter. And so as the waitress pours me a glass of water, I reach into the chosen woman�s purse and bring out her little blue book, and then I open it up and begin to read.
At first I want to throw it across the room in absolute frustration. If I�m going to go to the trouble of snooping and invading someone�s privacy, then it had better damn well be something worth snooping in. And all I see is newspaper and magazine clippings taped haphazardly around, scattered, with a few scribbled words accompanying each clipping. At first I�m livid. I can still see her red cotton clad back across the room, along with the black leather clad back of the college boy. I�m holding this useless blue book full of useless newspaper clippings and I can�t even pretend I�m doing anything morally wrong by looking at it. I look at it anyway. And the more I look, the bigger a smile gets on my face that wasn�t even there before, because these are fashion magazine clippings; these are tips on how to pluck your eyebrows, tips on how to line your lips, how to meet Mr. Right, how to buy the right clothes, and it�s just so fucking funny I�m on the floor, howling with laughter, because THIS is her big secret? This is what she wouldn�t let me pick up? These tips? What does she think I�ll do, steal them?
And I look over at their backs again, at the curve of her college boy�s back, so curved and earnest, and the kind of woman he�ll end up with tonight. A woman who will give him nothing of substance. A woman who has no secrets in her purse, not even a diary, just this little box of beauty tips. A woman who is good on the dance floor and who knows how to apply her lipstick. It�s just so fucking funny. And I put her precious blue book back in her purse just in time; for in the next moment she�s walking over to me: �You can take the car, all right, because I�m going home with James..� and James is smiling in the way the boys do when they know they�re about to get laid, and she is turning to leave. And all of my resentment has evaporated and I am laughing into my glass of water because she isn�t perfection at all; she could crumble at any minute; and I won�t, and it�s just the funniest thing I�ve ever seen.

 

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