Beatriz Baptista > Recent Status Updates

“I used to think life was like a book: you turn the first page, and there's the next, and as you go on turning page after page, eventually you reach the last one. But life is nothing like a story in a book. There may be words, and the pages may be numbered, but there is no plot. There may be an ending, but there is no end.”

“I dutifully entered the strange small room dedicated to self-abuse: a place where hundreds of men had entered for no other purpose than to crank the shank, clean the rifle, jerk the gherkin, make the bald man cry, pound the flounder, sail the mayonnaise seas, wiggle the walrus, whitewash with Tom and Huck.”

“I used to see men friends, coworkers, strangers - giddy over these awful pretender women, and I'd want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has matched too many movies written by socially awkward men who'd like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them.”

“Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don't mind, I'm the Cool Girl. Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they're fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl.”

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don't they? She's a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers (..) while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot.”

“I've always been better than the Hopes, I was the one who made it. But I've always been jealous too, always - seven dead dancing princesses. They get to be perfect without even trying, without even facing one moment of existence, while I am stuck here on earth, and every day I must try, and every day is a chance to be less than perfect.”

BOY MEETS GIRL - FINALMENTE AMY UNHINGED

“He'd have to work to make me comfortable here, and he doesn't want to do that. He wants to enjoy himself.”

“A lot of people lacked that gift: knowing when to fuck off. People love talking, and I have never been a huge talker. I carry on an inner monologue, but the words often don't reach my lips. (…) My mom talked, my sister talked. I'd been raised to listen.”

“(…) I sometimes leave out details like that. It's more convenient for me. In truth, I wanted her to read my mind so I didn't have to stoop to the womanly art of articulation. I was sometimes as guilty of playing the figure-me-out game as Amy was. I've left that bit of information out, too.

I'm a big fan of the lie of omission.”

“Sometimes I feel like Nick has decided on a version of me that doesn't exist.”

“(…), and I saw her eyes go blank, and I got secretly furious, spent ten minutes just winding myself up - because at this point of our marriage, I was so used to being angry with her, it felt almost enjoyable, like gnawing on a cuticle: You know you should stop, that it doesn't really feel as good as you think, but you can't quit grinding away.”

“He promised to take care of me, and yet I feel afraid. I feel like something is going wrong, very wrong, and that it will get even worse. I don't feel like Nick's wife. I don't feel like a person at all (…). I am something to be tossed into a junkyard, thrown into the river, if necessary. I don't feel real anymore. I feel like I could disappear.”

“My husband is the most loyal man on the planet until he's not. I've seen his eyes literally turn a shade darker when he's felt betrayed by a friend, even a dear longtime friend, and then the friend is never mentioned again. He looked at me then like I was an object to be jettisoned if necessary. It actually chilled me, that look.”

‘Even I have to?' As if I am already being resistant. I feel a burst of anger that I swallow. (…) Of course that's what we have to do, and of course if he had presented the problem to me like I wasn't his enemy, that's what I would have said. But he came out of the door already treating me like a problem that needed to be dealt with.”

“‘Amy. Please.' He has that look, like I am being unreasonable, like he is so sure I am being unreasonable that I wonder if I am.”

“It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls.”

“I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script.”

“I hear his taxi-blurred voice, a voice that is already wet and lazy with booze, and I know I am going to be angry - that quick inhale, the lips going tight, the shoulders up, the I so don't want to be mad but I'm going to be feeling. Do men not know that feeling? You don't want to be mad, but you're obligated to be, almost.”