Girl Upside Down

WHAT? – said the girl

The Girl is Born

The girl was dead. The girl is dead. Now, she was dead, lying in between the cars, hoping for a better dress, a better day, a better job, hoping she would not be too late. She wasn’t late. I don’t remember the girl’s name.  In fact, the girl was born without parents. I don’t know if she had a name. Nonetheless, the girl was walking down the street and her dress wasn’t proper. She wasn’t wearing the perfume mothers give daughters for Christmas. She didn’t even know what Christmas was.  A day, like any other, where many girls are raped. But this girl hasn’t been yet. She was actually thinking about her first time with her first boyfriend and how she missed feeling innocent again. It was too late for dreams because she had only three minutes to get  to work. She wasn’t a girl, she was a man, no, a dog, no, a man. No, she wasn’t a man because a man is a man and she was a girl. A man approached her and whispered if she wanted a taxi. But she was the man. She became a man because it would be easier this way. No, she wasn’t the man, even though sometimes she wished she was. She wanted to be the man, but she wasn’t. She tried to ignore the man, but there were many others like him, hoping to grab her attention and whispering if she wanted many things.  No, she didn’t want their things or anything. All she wanted was to get to work on time. No matter what she did, it was always too late for her. It had been like this since childhood, when she wouldn’t have time to say what she thought or when her questions were answered before she even asked. Or when her boyfriend was somebody else’s boyfriend before being hers. She was the last to understand the jokes and the last to leave the parties. “Get out of my way!,” the old lady said. And she thought old ladies needed to be helped, but this one didn’t… Better this way -  she wouldn’t waste time. And the girl kept running, trying not to be late once in her life. She was too late for classes and too late for the job she applied; she thought about changing her career, but it was too late. She wasn’t too old, but for all she had lived, being so late so many times was a little overwhelming.

            All the waiting-people in the office had managed to get there fifteen minutes early, which is not fair with people who are late, like the girl. Even if she got there on time, they would have been waiting her for fifteen minutes. But she didn’t have a boss anyway. She never even worked in an office. She didn’t know how to sight or punch properly. She never wanted a job because she wouldn’t get used to the talking hours.  Besides, she didn’t like paychecks or omelets.

            The girl had a dog, but the dog wasn’t there with her. The dog was always in her apartment waiting for, but she never had time for the dog. She thought about getting a boyfriend, so he could take care of the dog. But there was nobody to take care of her. The dog wanted to be taken care of -  would it rather be dead, for such an absence of an owner? The girl would - I don’t know about the dog. The question was still there and it was itching inside her head. Sometimes she would forget about it, but then she would remember more than anything and then she would forget it again. This girl thought many different things at many different times and she had been nothing and everything and because she did so many things, she was always too late for the last thing she was doing. She thought the world had more than twenty-four hours and the days, more than three-hundred-sixty-five. So, she kept running. And she was convinced she would live forever.      

Not anymore.

             But this was a day before she died and she didn’t know it. She was doing the same things she did every day. If she knew she was going to die, maybe she would have changed. Her skin was dying, whispering for a touch. But she wasn’t aware of it. She didn’t have time for it. She didn’t want to live - not that she wanted to die, but it’s just that she wasn’t passionate about her life. She didn’t mind being alive, it was ok. But it wasn’t anything special. She thought she was just one more nothing and that nobody would notice what happened to her if it wasn’t for this story.

The Death of the Girl

Then, the girl stopped. Stopped running and stopped being a girl altogether. And the boy kept walking down the street and he didn’t have to worry about being proper or dressing properly and he hated girls; he thought they were ugly and evil. But the boy was free because this is how boys are. And he could walk and talk and laugh and yell and hold the girls and force them to be with him and torture them until he gets tired and he doesn’t want to torture them anymore. He  never remembered he was a girl  before. He didn’t like being a girl, so he’d rather forget – forget about when he was just a girl and there was nothing he could do about it. Not many girls desire to be girls. Even if there is nothing you can do and nothing you want, being a boy is much better.

The boy went to the market and the girls where flirting with him, waiting for him to make a move. They didn’t whisper or tried to grab him by the arm. Girls just look. And wait. And these girls waited and every time he went to the market, they were there. He got their phone numbers, one girl at a time, and he would invite them to his house, one girl at a time.

            The first girl got there and he wouldn’t say a word. He opened the door and poured some wine in her glass. He was drinking whisky. They didn’t have any food and even though this was an invitation for dinner, he did not prepare the table. He started. “What are you doing?” she said and he said “Shut up!” and she did not show up to work.  The second girl came to his house to ask if he knew something about her friend because she had been missing for a day now. He did not answer her questions, though. He just said she was beautiful and she didn’t go to work the next day. She was screaming when he said “Let me show your friend.” And he put both of them lying side by side on the bed. 

They all worked together, so the owner of the supermarket cared more than anybody about them being missing.  Now, there were only two girls and one of his sons to help in the market. Finally, the guy went to the boy’s house but he didn’t answer the door. The boy was sleeping and he couldn’t remember what day of the week it was.  But the market-owner kept ringing the bell and the boy went to the door. The door was open and the man wouldn’t say why he was there. “I need my girls.”  This is the only time he wished he was a girl. But the man didn’t want to hear any jokes and he threatened to call the police. Silence. Silence. More silence. “Let them know they are fired!” The boy did not have any problems with that and he would give them the message. After a week, he started shopping at the market again and he flirted with the girls at the counter. He took the girls to his house as he had done with many of them - until they couldn’t handle it anymore. Then, he put all four girls lined up on his bed, kissed them good-night and slept.

He thought this would never happen, but there was a time the police came, but the police doesn’t ring the bell, they knock on doors and they knock very persistently and they put the door down and they saw the apartment empty. Except for a girl that was lying helpless naked on the floor. she was crying. she was shaking. she was asking for help. she was bleeding. The cops called an ambulance and put a white linen covering the girl. There was a rotten smell in the kitchen, but it wasn’t coming from the trash can that had been emptied every day. There was a strong smell of girls coming from all rooms, but they kept searching for clues and all they found was girls. Yes, there were girls everywhere lying naked on the floor, on the beds, on the bathroom. But these ones weren’t crying anymore. The only girl left asked them crying not to ask weeping many questions.  Every man feels pity for a girl crying and bleeding. It was the second time the boy wished he was a girl. Because nobody would blame a girl for what happened. And the boy decided to become a girl again. For the first time in his life, he liked being a naked girl, a girl who has no responsibilities, a girl who could never be guilty, girls who don’t have to do anything, but wait and cry and bleed. In the end, waiting to be touched was rather amusing more than having to touch the girls. The girl wasn’t bleeding anymore and she felt naked free and kept running naked down the streets. For the first time the girl had a naked smile on her face, and it wasn’t because she just had sex. It’s because she was a girl.

The Girl’s Resurrection

She could not forgive herself for what she had done and she could not forget she once was a boy.  One day, she decided to get a rope and put around her ceiling.

She didn’t want to hang herself, but in case she changed her mind, she would have everything set. She got a dry corn she used to take in long trips to sleep with. She didn’t have anybody, so it would take days or months or years, until somebody would break into her space.

No, in her case, it wouldn’t matter if she did it today or tomorrow. But everything was too complicated, she would have to write a letter to somebody. Isn’t it right to write letters before you die.

3/6/13.

I am sorry about committing this crime, but nobody will be able to punish me anyways – I’ve been punished already. I do not wish to die, but I would like to leave this letter of recommendation in case somebody finds me. I hope not to be successful because I enjoy living a little bit, but I always wanted to write one of these. By the way, I don’t think you are going to find this letter because I haven’t been visited in months, I don’t have a relationship and I have never met my parents. I don’t know who you are, but I wish to write a letter saying good bye.

(She though this is not good – but she kept going.)

I decided not to commit suicide because my suicide letter is not good. I do not know how to write properly, and the letter is not dramatic enough. Forgive me.

What do you think? It doesn’t matter what you think, because the girl thought a letter was mandatory. To whom would she address the letter? Nobody would care anyways, then she didn’t want to die anymore. She didn’t want to die anymore because there was nobody to read her letter. But also because she did not know how to write this type of letters. She had never written a letter before! She figured if she just waited on the bed, maybe she would die sometime and then she wouldn’t have to write any letters. She left the dry corn by her side, slept for two days straight, but she never died. Not this time. It’s not easy to die. Not easy to die at all. 

The girl kept running, not that she knew where she was going to, but there was no reason for stopping. She was hoping for a reason to stop.  She didn’t have much time left. Maybe twenty-four, twenty-four hours, maybe a little less. Twenty four hours - she had to decide what to do with each one of them: twenty four whole hours. She would never accomplish the many things she was planning. She wouldn’t exist anymore before she even got bold. But nobody likes getting bold anyway.  She didn’t know why she was running. She did not know if she was really running or if she just thought she was running. The fact is: she was running and she did not know why she was running or if she was running. But she was running, after all.

The Running of the Girl

She got to a point

where there was nowhere

to run, but

a rotten orange

and

a wall.

The girl couldn’t jump the wall, so she decided to live inside the orange. She passed her days in the orange, thinking about her life and all she had accomplished so far.

She imagined things.

But she didn’t move.

She didn’t remember what time it was when she decided to leave the orange. But it was late and there was nowhere to go.

Then, she decided to go nowhere, because even nowhere would be better than living in a rotten orange.

In nowhere, she found a bottle of vodka that was almost empty and she drank it all. She started smoking… she smoked a whole pack of cigarettes. She drank all bottles of vodka she could see and smell… she saw many bottles, but no people. It seemed nowhere was a place without people. 

She got addicted to nowhere and she couldn’t get out of there.

She forgot about her job, about being a boy, about running. She didn’t want to run anymore. And she didn’t know she had only a couple hours left.

She drank more and the hours were passing and she ceased to exist again. She just disappeared when the story ended and nobody ever heard of her again. She wanted to do many things and she had no time left. She kept running for a long time. Then she stopped. Then she stopped again. And the last time she stopped it was too late to get up. She didn’t become anything, she just disappeared and stopped running altogether. Now, she was dead, lying in between the cars, hoping for a better dress, a better day, a better job, hoping she would not be too late. She wasn’t late.  And her job was now just across the street.

The Girl Upside Down

“I want to live a life that is not right,” she said. With the couple hours she had left, she decided to live a life that wasn’t right. She wasn’t right. She had never been right anyway. She wasn’t right at all. She wanted to be even more not right! She wanted to live a life that wasn’t right!! She, the child, didn’t have a father, like always. Children never have fathers but they always have mothers. This one did not have a mother nor a father.

But the girl or the boy or the man or the woman saw a woman on the street and said we also want to be sellers!! But she didn’t have anything to sell, so she sold her shoes and her socks. But it wasn’t enough yet, so she sold her hair and her nails. And then she kept selling herself until she had no choice but to sell her lips and she did.

The first people who stopped for her were her parents, whom she had never met before. They stopped and asked the price.

“How much is it?”

She said there was no price or that it was cheap, and they didn’t drive away.

“There is no price or it is cheap.”

“We are not going to drive away!”

Her parents sat there looking at her lips and they wanted to see her naked, but she said all she had to sell was her lips or her shoes or her nails or her socks or her hair or her purse or her eyes or her neck or her forehead or her nose or anything else but she would never sell her nakedness. They were very drunk, so they would not remember anything the next day – it would be better in order not to deal with the sense of guilt toward such behavior.  Later in the evening the mother asked to choke her own child and then she wanted to watch the father choking her own child. But the girl said she would only sell her lips and nothing else, she just watched. WHAT? WHY? Didn’t they PAY her?

“We paid her, but she would sell her lips – only!”

“It’s ok, we can still have fun. Don’t complain so much, Charlie!”

They did pay her, but she would only sell her lips – nothing else.  Just her lips on her mouth, on her open mouth that was even more erotic than her nakedness after all. They weren’t satisfied, but they had to deal with it. They bought her lips and they were happy – very happy. Very very very happy. They were very happy that’s all. And they were satisfied and did not insist.

The Beginning of the Girl

The girl did not have a name and she did not have brothers or sisters. She lived in Uptown Manhattan and she had an apartment near Central Park. She enjoyed going to The Met and she had been to MOMA at least three times this week. By now, she still did not have a car, so she would run everywhere, anywhere she had to go. She had just graduated in Sociology and she had a job offer to work as an office girl for a big company near Central Park, where she had to go every day and it was perfect because the work was just across the street from her house. She had a boyfriend. Her parents lived in Boston and she would visit them every fifteen days. She was late now.

No, I can’t remember, her little apartment was in Staten Island, but she had to go to Manhattan every day. She wanted to get an apartment there – where? - near Central Park! She had dropped out of college and she had a job offer to work as an office girl for a big company near Central Park, where she had to go every day and then she dreamt about when her work would be across the street from her house. She had an ex-boyfriend, but not a current one. It was her first day at work and she was late because she missed the first ferry. She had to take the subway and then again, until she got to work. There was a noise in her bathtub this morning and nobody could tell where. Her toilet hadn’t been fixed yet. Her clothes were all over the floor and her books were unread. All her unheard cds were on the table. They had been there for days. The TV was turned on. Nobody was watching. The dishes were dirty and pilled up in the kitchen. She had no maids or family; she had nobody. She had some roommates, but these didn’t count. 

the beginning of the girl or the next day of the girl upside down

The girl woke up not knowing if she was a boy or he was a girl. But he/she knew they had grown up and that they - she/he smelled like something. Tonight is another night. Tonight he said :

“I want to go in there again,” and she said:

“No! Not this time. It’s not right.”

It’s not right? Was it right before then? Is it right right now? Would it be right some other day? Would it be right to be doing whatever they were doing??

“No, it’s not right,” she said.

And it wasn’t right. Because when a girl says something is not right it is really not right. It’s not right at all. If the girl says it.

But then it wasn’t a girl, it was a boy.

The boy woke up and said :

“I don’t want to go in there again, it’s not right.”

And she said, “Why is it not right if it was right before?”

The boy did not have an answer for that, but he just knew it wasn’t right and he didn’t want to do it again. Now, if the boy says it’s not right, we still don’t know if it’s right or not. Maybe there were other reasons for him saying that. Maybe he just had some ache somewhere. But if the girl says it, then it’s not right. If the girl says.

The girl had this life and she got tired of living a life that wasn’t right and she decided that living in a rotten orange was even better than living a life that wasn’t right.

In the Past Orange:

-The orange was a big font of pleasure for me. The pleasure I had inside the orange was like no other. I miss the rotten orange. I love the orange’s juices and the orange’s taste and the textures and the space. It was so tight. But I loved it anyway.

She thought the orange was very pleasant, but a bit lonely. So, she split herself into the girl and the boy inside her. The boy and the girl would exist for days and nights and days and nights and nights and nights and days. The girl was satisfied and she told the boy “I’m satisfied.” But the boy said he was the one satisfied and she could not exist anymore. So, she stopped existing. But the boy was lonely and he wanted the girl back.

The girl would never come. Don’t you see she ceased to exist, silly boy!

He threatened to kill her, to rape her, like he had done before, to beat her up. Obviously, she came back, because nobody wants to be killed, raped or beat up and as soon as she was back, he killed her, raped her and beat her up, so, she left again and she didn’t want to believe him anymore, but she always would because she was too afraid of him not to believe in what he said, but the boy and the girl inside the girl destroyed the girl and they stopped existing altogether and there was only air left. But there was still air. Only air, a clean, pure, nasty, dirty air!!

The boy and the girl and the man and the woman inside the girl were still trying to cross the street, when her time was up and they stopped existing altogether as if they were one only. But they were one only! And all these people inside the girl would not exist anymore because the girl stopped existing even before she realized she didn’t exist anymore. And then, she didn’t exist anymore.

The Explanation of the Girl

“There, a man! No, a girl! No, many, many taxis in the street. Beautiful taxis, beautiful streets. Trees everywhere. Fast, the girl. The girl, fast, fast, fast. Not enough, though. Slow. Slow or fast? Nobody around. She, in the door, in the building. Beautiful building. Beautiful girl. Beautiful, beautiful. But taxis, taxis, people, museums, trees. Stress. Stressed out. Who, you? No, her. Very very stressed out. Out and around. Tall and about. About what? Nobody. What? Nobody. You, me, he, she, it, we, you, they. Nobody, but they, but us, but me. Me and you – wonderful dream! Just dream, though. Who else in the dream? In the house, by the window, close to the living room, by the bathroom, close to the kitchen, far from my room. Close to our mom’s room. There, dad! What, dad? Mom? Mom and dad in a wonderful dream….dream of trees and leaves and summer, then winter. There, a wall, a tall, red, strong wall in between us. There, nothing! What? Nothing. You and nothing. You and nobody. No, you and I. No, you and nobody. Better. Better, then. There – faces. There, more faces. There, more and more faces. There, faces, many faces. Faces! Late, the clock, late, the job, late the dream. Death – not pleasant. Not pleasant at all. Then, vices, then, destruction. But what? Meaning? No meaning! Destruction, pleasure, death, violence. Everybody! Then, nobody. There, the end. Where? There. But then again. No end. What? No end!  Nobody. Noendnever. Nobodynoendnever. Never?  Some day but when? Nobody. Everybody!  Nobody, then, again. Not a single body – no body. Many bodies there. 11:07 PM. Keeps changing. There, a body, many bodies. The time. What time? The time of the death of the body of the girl and the boy and the woman and the man inside the girl. How? Why? When? Too many questions. Nobody. No questions. The end. But then again, the start. Non-stop-non-stop. Non-stop life, non-stop lies, non-stop temptations. Hell, heaven, no hopes. Death. Then, again, the start. The start of the girl. Who? The girl. Ah, the girl. Yes, the girl. Who? The start. Ok, the start. The start! What? The start or the end. The start. PERIOD.”