The Club

by Ellery Lloyd

In some respects it was a mistake, as a woman especially, to be really efficient over a long period of time. Because if you made things seem easy, and people had no experience of things not running smoothly, it came to seem that anybody could do it.

We all have versions of ourselves we can bear to look at, versions we prepare for the world’s consumption, that we hope will make ourselves loved, allow us to be forgiven. Versions of our real selves that allow us to live with the things we have done.

People who did the most terrible things told themselves whatever they needed to tell themselves to carry on living their lives as before.

“I guess what we hadn’t reckoned with was that when you give people a mask, that’s when they show you what they really are.”