The Empty Girl

I don’t really recall the exact moment when anger and spite grew and persisted within my chest. I felt those ugly feelings toward pretty much everyone and everything. At first, the ugliness within felt tame and almost dormant; but all too soon, the murky life teased and stoked them to fullness and to the surface – the destructive fire became impossible to extinguish.

 I remember my early school days, and I was a diligent student; I thoroughly did my homework, and in class, I was a ready participant. I also recall how the teachers, men and women alike, did not pay much attention to my efforts, and the praises and the awards always went to the boys. Those same teachers looked on the boys’ bravado with amusement and indulgence, whereas they frowned upon the jokes perpetrated by us girls. The early inequities began the process of inner rotting and poisoning.

At home, I lived a similar situation. My two younger brothers were allowed to get away with anything; they were forgiven everything. It was not the same for me. Our parents could not easily grant forgiveness to their girl’s acts of young rebellion. Be that as it may, I could not stop acting out and I couldn’t stop myself from seeking every morsel of freedom and every forbidden experience.

When I began to attend high school, I glimpsed a small flicker of hope and understanding; my Art professor encouraged her students, especially us girls, to research and study the imprints left by the historically famous women artists. After my long research, I realized that those important representatives of female high accomplishments were able to find work and recognition, because the men in their lives had helped them – their father, their husband, their brothers.

I concluded that, if a woman wishes to succeed in a society of men, she needs a man to open the door for her.

My survival instinct came to life, along with the taste of sour anger. I pushed away my mother, and I grew very close to my father, my brothers, and then to my male friends.

At University, where I kept studying Art History, my closest friends were all men. My life began to take very simple shapes and contours. I soon realized that men, of every age, are psychologically less complex and demanding than women, of any age. Boys need three things: to sleep, to eat, to fuck. The boys are not required to study as much as girls, because the system is always ready to award all of their minimal efforts. Their lives become even easier when they start working – they get paid much more than women, and they reach the higher levels in their fields without giving up anything in the process. Men like money because they can use it to attract women. The life of men is built around their constant want of women, but not all women.

Men don’t like women who are too smart.

Men don’t like women who possess more money than they have.

Men don’t like women who are too sensitive and too complex.

Men don’t like women who never laugh at their jokes. These jokes are mostly misogynistic, racist, or utterly stupid, and yet, men expect women to find them funny.

Men include me in their fold without much fuss, because they don’t perceive me as particularly ambitious, or brilliant, or talented. They don’t see these qualities in me, because I make sure they never do. My disguise works, also because I do not possess the sort of charm or beauty that men consider as menacing to their weak self-esteem; ugly men are insecure men.

I don’t mind hiding my true self; I’ve taught myself the art of becoming a white canvas. I am what men need me to be. I can be encouraging. I can act besotted and smitten. Upon request, I can be a sister, a friend, a lover, a girlfriend; I can even play the part of the ally against those sorts of women the boys usually hate. The source of this hate is the fact that women are finally, albeit slowly, conquering the world. But it is a slow process, and I lack patience and the required strength of character; I just can’t wait for equality to happen. Hence, I’m giving my loyalty to the wrong sex.

 In exchange for my loyalty, I’m getting to live the easy life. Thanks to the men in my life, I have an apartment, a decent job, all the lovers I want, and all the friends I need. Regardless, there persists inside of me a void I am utterly unable to dispel or fill. I did try. I tried everything. Nothing works, not for long. Over the years, this empty expanse has turned into a well of poison and into a self-destruct mechanism. To quench this dark need, to save my being from the constantly imminent explosion, I started looking for victims and targets for my anger and my spite.

For the last six years, I’ve been working as bartender in a bar called, ‘All they long, all night long’; the place stays open all day and all night and the patrons are of a large variety. Each one of them, especially the girls, I consider a potential target for my inner venom. Destruction is much simpler than creation; also, the kingdom of chaos is a very fun place to be.

But something unexpected recently happened. When I picked my latest victim, I didn’t expect to step into a battlefield of wills; and I did not expect to end up badly irrevocably wounded.

One of my colleagues was a young bartender named Eddy. He was a few years my junior. He wanted to become an actor. He was studying hard for his dream; he even had a mentor, a seasoned actress who believed in him and in his future. While working at the bar, he met a girl named Daisy, one of our most loyal patrons, and they fell in love. Daisy studied the Arts. She wanted to become a painter. They seemed perfectly matched – they were both future artists.

I hated them both, but in order to destroy what they had, I made myself pretend that I felt attracted to Eddy. I made sure our schedules matched, especially the night shift, so that I could ask him to walk me home late at night. Eddy was a gentle soul, so he always obliged. Seducing him was a very simple act; I was older and more experienced, after all, and I was a good player. I made sure everyone knew about our affair – our boss, the most loyal patrons, and our co-workers. All these people knew Daisy. She was their pretty and gentle dreamer. All these people were betraying her trust and her friendship. Eddy was betraying her heart. I was winning, big time.

But I was winning a battle. I was meant to lose the war because I didn’t take into account Eddy’s mentor and Daisy’s pride. The lady actor, his teacher, didn’t just believe in him; she loved him, and when he disappointed her, she faced him right away.

She showed up during one of our night shifts. I was flirting and Eddy was basking in the attention. The actress stepped into the bar and claimed my young lover’s attention. Then she proceeded to berate him, in front of everyone –  because he betrayed love and he was also betraying and neglecting his studies and his dreams. Then she left. This is not how I lost the war, however.

Daisy left town and went to study in another city. She disappeared from Eddy’s life, without any parting word and without any drama. I didn’t expect silence and absence to weight so much on someone’s soul. I didn’t expect Eddy to possess the true soul of a sensitive artist. He did and he left too, never to return. He left everyone behind, including me, to follow his love and his dreams.

I lost big time and learned a lesson that forced me to acknowledge my inner venomous darkness. Dreamers and artists, like Daisy and Eddy and his mentor, are creatures that have Learned how to fill the emptiness we all carry inside, with projects that have the energy and the potential to share reality into a place more welcoming and more comprehensible, not just for themselves, but also for everyone else. These dreamers stride down the pathways of life dressed in darkness and moonlight. These artists find each day a way to turn feelings and experiences, both positive and negative, into films, music, stories, paintings, and plays.

Eddy was attracted by the vulgarity and the illicit and forbidden aspects of our relationship, but he wasn’t like me; he chose to fill his own void not with poison, but with the artistic creation. Ultimately, he followed the path of the dreamers, and I could not stop him. I could not keep him by my side.    Now, I should find another victim. I should look for the next target. I’m afraid, however, that this time around, it won’t be enough