Hairy Legs
by Emma Padure
Despite my hairy legs, my domineering personality, and the way I speak of men like I would rather they didn’t exist at all, I am actually pretty hateful towards my own sex as well; so in that sense, I really do value equality. I guess you could also accurately refer to me as a sexist; a downright evil human being, the villain of your miserable, unremarkable, boring little story. I don’t care. For you are but a crumb, and I am a crumb, and who in this sick world gives a damn about crumbs? Get over yourself. My hatred will change nothing.
When I get home, I scream into my pillow. If I don't, I’m afraid that all my anger will build up in the very core of my soul until I am even fatter and even uglier and I’ll have no choice but to explode in a symphony of great red gore all over my bedroom. Existence is humiliation. The fight between individuality and nothingness is rather suffocating. On one hand, I must receive attention, and on the other, if you dare to look at me I will go home and pray for your imminent death.
I don’t think that I’m unlovable, but I do not know if I am capable of loving anymore. Boys have never really fascinated me, as they are all fundamentally the same, and sameness is so common that choosing a boy to love is as exhilarating as choosing which slice of orange you should next put in your mouth. Really, the only thing I look for in a companion is attractiveness.
At the moment there is a boy in my grade who I would love to just stare at. He has long blond hair and striking blue eyes and a cute little nose that I want to lick up and down for no particular reason. When he speaks to me, I can feel my heart beating against my chest; he makes me rather miserable. I wish he would never speak to me again and just give me his face to hold in my possession to cherish and to polish until I am tired of his nose and I can release his face back to his body. That is the only kind thing a man can do for me. Submit completely.
I wonder if this beautiful little blond boy would still speak to me if he knew I had hairy legs and that if I didn’t shave my upper lip, I would eventually grow a moustache and that when I am naked and I look at myself in the mirror, I pinch my protruding stomach and wish that I could slice it off with a knife.
I will never be happy with who I am. Even if I know that beauty would simply take away from my intellect, I would rather be hot than smart. Being smart is actually more of a hindrance to happiness. So I am miserable because I am a genius. It’s tragic really, when you think about it, that if only I wasn’t so set on proving my superiority to everyone else, I might find myself smiling once in a while. I hate smiling. It makes me look positively deranged. Besides, what do I have to smile about?
There is no point to feminism; equality is not a thing that will ever be achieved. Humanity is like that. We weren’t built to respect one another; we just want to dominate everything and hopefully come out on top. Despite this, I still like talking about feminist issues, because it makes men uncomfortable, and this satisfies the part of me that needs to make other people upset in order to feel alive.
I don’t smoke weed because speaking to drug dealers is beneath me and I don’t drink because I do not like the taste. Instead, I get my highs from arguments. I look for them; actually, I’m pretty sure they’re my love language. I cannot love you if I do not hate you. The way I see it is that if I am willing to waste energy on screaming in your face, then you must be very important to me indeed.
A lot of men have wronged me in the past, back when I was stupid and actually fell in love with boys. Naturally I would take any of them back if they were to ask me for my forgiveness, because I have little self-respect and think that negative encounters teach us far more than positive ones. Without them I would be boring, so in a way I owe them for the person I am today. If your name is on my soul, then it is there forever, and though you might take your boyish grasp off of my heart, the imprint will forever remain, awaiting your return.
Here is a real-life interaction between a villainess (me) and an innocent (boy):
“Do you believe in souls?” (Asked by villainess.)
“I don’t know. I think we go somewhere after we die. Don’t know where though.” (Answered boy.)
“Obviously you don’t know. But what do you think?” (Annoyed.)
“Don’t know. Never thought about it.” (Stupid.)
Men have decided that they don’t need to perform a mating dance anymore. They just exist and think that it is enough. If I were having the same conversation with a bird of paradise in heat, this is how it would have gone:
“Do you believe in souls?”
“Oh, but of course! How can anyone be so dull as to truly believe that all there is to existence is flesh and bone? There must be something more, for the great complexities I feel cannot be described by mere science, but by the many lives I hold within myself, forever whispering abstract ideas of what it is to exist. When I look at you, I feel such a stirring that if I did not believe in souls, I would want to take a bite from your throat. I restrain myself based solely on the memory of the melodic voice you possessed in your past life, where we were surely lovers.”
“Take me. I’m yours.”
As you can see, it really isn’t that hard to fall in love. If I really wanted to, I could probably make my pretty little blond boy fall in love with me. That way, I’d be able to kiss his fingers and tell him how breathtakingly beautiful I find him and how even if we never spoke again, it would be alright, because I have made sure to imprint his face into my mind so deeply and fundamentally that I will carry his likeness in my heart until I fall into the earth and blackness consumes. I think that if he loved me hard enough, I would never die. I would crawl from my grave to soothe his tears, then I would kiss him until he grew sick of me, and hold him until he never wanted to be touched again. What has he done to deserve me? Some great feat of heroism, assuredly.
Perhaps, indeed, there is a softness in me. But how can one describe a softness that has not yet been properly appreciated? People must like my thorns more than my tenderness. There is no other explanation. The way I love must simply be wrong. A convenient discovery, considering that hating and loving are very similar and yet one is far easier than the other.
I loved a boy properly once. He was two years older and knew a lot about a great number of things. We met during summer camp, and bonded immediately because he accepted my intensity and I enjoyed listening to his ridiculous notions about God being within all of us. Lovely lovely boy. At night he liked to lay down in the grass and stare out into the night sky so he could point out all the constellations he knew the names of. In this way, he claimed ownership over the stars, and now when I think of darkness, I think only of his sweetness, and feel fondly towards the creatures that lie within it. He did not believe in technology, (something about the government, something about tracking) and so therefore didn’t own a phone.
I was constantly aware of the time limit of his appearance in my life. It is impossible to fight against time, and yet I wanted to try. The worst type of loss is the type that does not come from death. He lives, but he lives without me. He lives despite my absence. It is the greatest betrayal. I yearn to be loved so intensely that without me life isn't life at all. In the way that Heathcliff loved Cathy, even in death I will torment, my memory will be stronger than mortality.
“Will you miss me?”
“When?”
“What do you mean, when? When we leave this place. In a week. Will you miss me? Will you remember me?”
“Do we have to talk about this? It’s depressing.”
“You can’t run away from sadness. Life is full of it.”
“Of course, I’ll miss you. You’re my greatest friend. How about you? Will you miss me?”
“I will. You know I will. You’ve destroyed any chance I have of ever feeling satisfied again.”
“You’ve destroyed it for yourself. I’m just living, and you cannot fault me for that.”
“Oh, but I surely can.”
We looked at each other, and if I were less of a coward, I would have kissed him then. Perhaps if I had, I would still know him. Instead, I took his hand in my own and swiftly flipped it over, tracing the sketchings of his palm with my finger, lingering over his love line.
“What do you think of hairy legs?” I asked gravely, the importance of the question undoubtedly lost on him. If he answered correctly, I vowed I would not let go of his hand. I would take his love line and connect it to my own.
“Not a fan.” He laughed, and I laughed, and his hand dropped to the ground.