American Psycho/a

for boyfriend, oh my boyfriend, i love him but he loves someone else and oh how i longed for him and he ignored me and blahblah blahblahblah – god, how boring,

i must confess, it was i who fixed the silken leash around my neck, boyfriend, i who made a mental catalogue of your every desire and whim, do not wear that outfit again. wear a dress, a skirt or something. buy a razor and shave your legs. and high heels, you mention. you like high heels.

my art, it would give the meaning of our separateness value in a visual economy, our affair an interpersonal painting and my body its canvas. patrick asked me, was it all performance? if it was i lost control of it, some retro version of myself took the brush and started painting, turning, swimming around in circles until my mind was your colony and there i was, 22, celebrating my first career successes in the prison of a 19 year old, watching time draw black circles under my eyes.

lying in bed topless in white underwear, newly blonde hair cascading down my shoulders, shaven, mascara running as i read your favorite book and nourished myself through an IV connected to a tank of root beer. i could do nothing else. i had trouble sleeping. one night i awoke in a sweaty, sleepless delirium, grabbed my digital camera and took pictures of myself in front of the mirror, which i emailed to you immediately.

you know, you say, it’s possible to act differently from how one actually feels to get sex, guys. you exploited me in every way possible and when you got bored of it i begged you to do it some more. you were the american psycho and i, i was his girlfriend. though physically my girlfriend is appealing and i wouldn’t mind having sex with her body, the idea of treating her gently, of being a kind date, rubs me the wrong way.

i loved how you withheld attention, your hurling insults, how i’d exhausted myself into a state of anxious, sickening confusion until finally, usually half asleep, you’d draw me close to you, call me girlfriend, and softly touch my hair. your fingers made my body ecstatic, i’d nod, seeming lost in some kind of dream – but enjoying it, oblivious too it, too how you worked. and perhaps that was the point, incompletion encourages pursuit, and nothing rivals the pains and pleasures of infinite pursuit. your void of emotion could best conduct my excesses, and that was my desire, to run through overflowing regions, to cry, to sing, to forever reinvent the passionate carriages that would dip me in and out of the unknown, the convergence-rupture, “he loves me, he loves me not…”

there are no girls with good personalities, you all say in unison, laughing, giving each other high-five. a good personality, you begin, consists of a chick who has a little hard body and will satisfy all sexual demands without being to slutty about things and who will essentially keep her dumb fucking mouth shut.

i tattooed your name along my thigh, boyfriend.
“why boyfriend?” the tattoo artist asked, eyeing my thigh lustily as he worked.
“i am reclaiming that which has oppressed me.”

i learned to fight back. filled my super soaker 100xl with my tears and declared war on you; i would break into your house and cuddle you all night. i would tear up, rape, plagiarize and (re)order this text that guides your life.

you claimed you were dead inside, but i had lain my head across your chest, i had heard your heart beat above the whir of the air conditioning, the television; had felt your body heat through the high thread count sheets. i was drawn to you like a leech, the meaning of our difference was like a magnet to me, the secret missing value in the feminist narrative economy, o/a; one last war wound and finally, might the heart stand up to the head?

i want to come over, i’d say in a whiny, little-girl tone, i said this, over and over and over again, with my own voice or any electronic medium that could take the place of it…you ignored me. i kept my purse close to my body always, my whole nervous system attuned to the ring of Nokia, in a constant state of vigilant anticipation for the gentle vibration that would tap at my thigh lightly and confirm your presence, no matter where i went or what i was doing i was always, waiting…

good girl, you’d say before hanging up.

the further i slipped into this love trance the longer the line of good soldiers grew to pull me up out of its sick pit. men proposed to me on the street, choruses of whistles and “you have perfect legs” wafted out of passing cars, dinner dates flooded in from all media units. every time i turned my head there was another man kissing me on the cheek, waiting quietly for that glazed look to fade from my eyes, convinced that it was he - his sweetness and sincerity – that would finally slice through the silken tie that bound me to my oppressor. and yet i just went on, went on loving you, convinced that boyfriend, you and i were meant to heal each other, that we were opposite and equal products of the same powerful disease. that culture, capitalism and xenophobia had caused us each to act out in our own way, that the only way to get around the pain that caused you to act out at others and me to act out at myself was to share it, to speak it, to expose it.

there’s a whole range of behavior that can be expressed in a mannerly way. that’s what civilization is all about – doing it in a mannerly and not antagonistic way. i could dress up you or any pathetic action of my own real pretty in my head. all i remember from that night was the moment you picked me up and twirled me, i remembered it so hard i would lie in bed at night watching over and over the arch my glittery heels made in the night time as your arms whipped my body around in a circle i forgot you had texted me at three o’clock in the morning to pay for your gas riding home from katie's house, the nineteen year old you from the internet. i ran outside to greet you, bought you gas, and groceries, as you led me around the supermarket i asked you why you were so mean to girls, bought you vitamins, rubbed your back and asked you to call me mom. i searched your eyes for any sign of emotion, and when i didn’t find it, i finally understood. you were the kind of person that could have murdered a soul without flinching. it all came down to this: boyfriend you feel like shit but look great.

and then the next day when you texted, “skis! mommy get me skis! please mommy!” i wanted to buy them for you. if i had had the money i would have bought a pair of skis, a role of wrapping paper and a faux x-mas tree. i would have wrapped them up and come over to make you play x-mas morning. i would have done anything to get another hit of you, my boyfriend, my drug.

my last date with M, with misogyny, or perhaps better stated – masochism. i could have married you that night, would have gladly slipped into that fantasy world where i would wear a short violet apron and bake you lavender infused vegan chocolate chip cookies all day long, my razor taped to my fingers so that i might preemptively attack my body at the first sign of hair growth. i, feminism, would marry misogyny and have his babies – squads of blonde sixteen year olds with shaved pussies would parade out of my womb like clockwork each month at the end of my cycle.

because despite how successful, educated, and strong i had become, there will always be this part of me that longs to revert to that prison cell i perfected at the age of sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen; driving around in my white jeep listening to hip-hop and thinking about boyfriend, eating non-fat dairy dessert i would later puke up in a public restroom. you were proof eras could collapse together, synch up seamlessly above fallen time bridges and enable memory – that balm that could lock and unlock the heart. my career, my life – it were those such matters that terrified me. boyfriend, you were safe. we are strengthened by our weaknesses, our censures. by our lacerations.*

made me, truly, this is what made me,
break me, not a thing’s gonna break me.
that’s my past that made me hot.
here’s my lifelong anthem,
(boyfriend) can’t forget about you.


* elements in italics are taken from Brett Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho. french feminist theorist Helen Cixous penned the last quote and the last stanza comes from “Can’t Forget about You” by Nas.