Listen for the Lie

by Amy Tintera

Dad’s so good at that Texas thing where you act polite to people’s face and then talk shit behind their back.

Mom missed her calling as a wedding planner. She would have been so good at projecting a happy image for one day.

Anger and alcohol coming together to make one very crimson man.

I’ve always admired the way kids unabashedly stare at you. They don’t care whether you’re uncomfortable. Kids have zero fucks to give about your feelings.

“They’re cute,” I lie (all kids look the same to me).

And people hate that quality in a young woman, don’t they? They don’t know what to do with a girl who isn’t looking for their approval. They feel like they have to bring her down a peg.

Some men, they’ve got to put on a show when they’re around women. It’s like they don’t actually know how to talk to us, so they choose over-the-top chivalry. “If I pull out her chair and make a big show of talking about how moms are heroes and women are actually the strong ones, they won’t notice that I don’t have any interest in listening to a single word that comes out of their mouths.”

What kind of twenty-two-year-old boy wants to get married these days anyway? We’re not Mormons, for Christ’s sake.

In the end, life is just sweatpants and children who resent you and all your choices. But no one wants to hear that.

And he started to slip, say things that he really meant after I’d known him a few years. Men can only hide it for so long, you know?

“Better to be interesting than likable, in my opinion.”