Happy Hour

by Marlowe Granados

“It must be so interesting to wake up every morning and decide who you’re going to be.”

Maybe the best people to know are the types who are bad at making friends, and from what I have seen, those people are usually writers, academics, or critics. They seem keen to alienate, and I think this is the type to truly give Gala and me the education we need.

Being a young girl is always a cute trick. It leaves nothing to be desired and it is easy. I feel as though becoming a woman is like a long tradition of going through things and coming out strong, but I am tired and weary!

You know, I hadn’t expected that he had taken a liking to me. I didn’t think I had that part of my personality on.

“You’ll never know how to navigate the world, or yourself, because you’ve always been taken care of.” I told her the way she fed on affirmation was boring and said, “You’ll never get interesting that way. Don’t kid yourself.” If you can’t contribute something to the room, much less the world, why come in the first place?

don’t know why I’ve always liked brutes. They drink too much for lack of the right language to express themselves. Sometimes they’re too scared to express anything at all, but it’s never obvious. They appear coarse, aloof, absolutely taciturn. They have always been my weakness. I really yearn for it. The mind reels with all the possibilities of what they might feel or think about you. Usually it is nothing like what you expect and much less complex than the thoughts you generously assign to them.

“We couldn’t offer each other anything, and that’s why it was a Romance.”

It’s much easier to seem silly and light than to be the sum of your experiences.

They are always trying to recreate those feelings, that mystique. It always ends up cheap, garish, and the worst crime of all, inauthentic. How can anything be true if it’s all an impersonation?

These two were know-it-alls who knew very little.

The feelings on the tip of my tongue have no shape; they’re listless, always trying to sneak up in a moment of poignancy. Sometimes what I want to say is “I want you to be mine!” Sometimes it is “I feel trapped!” Sometimes it is “I resigned myself to a fate I thought I wanted, but now I don’t!”

My urgency is what gives me character. I am always rushing in and out of doors. To think everything is available to you each day is foolish.

You’ll find her reassuringly expensive and successfully cute.

“Why are people always shouting at you?” I blew on my wounds. “Because they think they can.” If only I could remind the general public that just because I can take it does not mean it is right.

dilettante.

It’s funny how children can still go on even after their parents have died. You’d think it was only polite for someone who gave you entrance to the world to see you through it.

Whenever I catch people on the empathetic end of a night of drinking, they look at me and say, “I don’t know how you do it.” I am not strong! I want to tell them. I am simply enduring. Mothers hug me with an intuition of what I lack, and I am thankful for that. I love them for it.

I’m lucky because moment to moment I do not feel the sum of my experiences. I work hard to keep it that way because if I did, I would never do anything. I’d never go anywhere. Resilience is key. It would be nice if whenever someone said, “I love you,” it meant, “Everything will be fine.” It’s all reassurance anyway.

Criticizing a vulnerable target isn’t impressive to me. Snark requires zero grace or generosity.

To write is a task that feels like it is forcibly propelling you forward.

I suppose to savour is to hold something in your mouth for more than a moment, to linger and draw out its details. Sometimes you are far too hungry to wait, and things get lost. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that I write things into remembrance. I like to linger long enough to name pleasurable things and seek out more.