Waif

by Samantha Kolesnik

I call it “The Time Before Men,” a version of myself I can never get back. I guess, you could say, some might also call it Innocence.

People didn’t care about truth; they only cared about how the lie appeared.

The older I became, the more convinced I was that no one escaped this earth unscathed by human suffering.

I’m not sure how men thought women were supposed to react to pain because our tears seemed to send them into panic or rage. We would have been better as sponges . . . absorbent and

It was all transaction-based, each party, living in a solo fantasyland participated in by both parties sometimes by resignation and other times, culturally pressured obligation.

The world of men required certain sacrifices of me and I had simply tired of making them. It was high time for men to sacrifice for me. To give generously for my affection—to give of their bodies, not just of their wallets. Paying for dinner was easy. Paying with your flesh, as women had been expected to do since the dawn of time? That was hard.

If only they knew they were jealous over an imaginary friend: a marriage that slinks around on the internet but doesn’t exist elsewhere. It’s amazing how many imaginary people the web holds. I had a perverse thought that perhaps the internet was the greatest fiction our future alien conquerors would ever know from the human race.

What made a man? Hatred for women, perhaps. If not hatred . . . then apathy. Utilitarianism.

Thereisnothingicandototakethisawayandihateithateithateitandnoonewantstohearmetalkaboutitanymoreicryintoablackholeonlygirlslikemeknow. But oh I hated them, too. M-E-N. I hated the lot of them. And they were too stupid and too confident, too sure of themselves and their ugly penises to see it.