My Last Innocent Year

by Daisy Alpert Florin

I felt detached from what had happened to me, Debra’s anger reminding me how I should be feeling, but didn’t. What was wrong with me, I wondered? Why didn’t I react to things the way other people did, in ways that were normal?

Something changed between us that day. I’d seen Debra at her worst, and I’ve found that is often what binds women together. Men admire each other when they are at their best, but women enjoy meeting each other in pits of despair.

as small and unimportant as I mostly felt, the egotism of youth hadn’t left me, and I placed myself firmly and squarely at the center of the universe.

Don’t believe men’s posturing, Isabel. We need women. Somewhere along the way the balance shifts and all these boys you pine for now become men who are very afraid of being alone.”

It made me feel bad, like I wasn’t prepared to give up everything for my art, which felt like the kind of thing a man could do more easily than a woman.