Exciting Times

by Naoise Dolan

The less knowledge they professed, the more they knew and the higher their salary.

Julian assessed whether women made jokes, decided we did, and laughed.

I’d been sad in Dublin, decided it was Dublin’s fault, and thought Hong Kong would help.

a place neither of us had been, though I supposed that enhanced the poetry of it.

He liked hearing himself think aloud and I reasoned that I was profiting from it, that you never knew when you’d need facts so it was best to collect as many as you could.

wasn’t good at most things but I was good at men, and Julian was the richest man I’d ever been good at.

There was something Shakespearean about imperious men going down on you: the mighty have fallen.

Men were rarely true voyeurs. They wanted you to know they were there.

“I’m going to be me, but worse,”

The trouble with my body was that I had to carry it around with me.

I wondered if I could kiss him and be sarcastic about it, but felt the humor wouldn’t travel.

She said Instagram made her look at everything more closely. Whenever she felt sad, she had a wall of happy memories to look back on. “I know it’s all very silly,” she said, “but it’s fun.”

Edith and I said as much as we wanted to. When we were done, we changed the subject.

I enjoyed conversations where I wasn’t attempting to persuade anyone, where I just said precisely what I thought. I got tired of making myself acceptable.

Our walk started with ignoring everyone around us and ended with no one to ignore.

As Edith said, it fulfilled the functions of a B-movie and if you expected anything else then you’d missed the point.

Like much of Edith’s phrasing, this sounded slightly rehearsed, and I wondered if I gave her that same feeling of needing to prepare.

Now twenty-three was shaping up to be the first year of my life where the idea of someone noticing me didn’t fill me with abject horror. I supposed later was better than never.

Women took care of men and let them pretend we didn’t.