Back to Base

Zoë-Eve Rhinehart
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read

I’m 24, why do I still feel 12?
Like I haven’t changed at all?
(Thank god I am still Myself . . . ?!)
(Thank god I can laugh at My Self.)

I’ve spent a lot of time molding myself into a Cool Woman who can play with the “Big Boys” and is a Charmer and a Brooding Independent all at once and I think I sort of succeeded in this this past year (except in the ways I didn’t because I enjoy people’s company now more than ever and I get restless . . . lonelier! faster than ever and I’ll admit I’m too languid to be alluring . . . and my endless ranting and raving when I’m excited can be a bore or maddening I’m sure) . . . but I wonder, Have I been too obvious? (And why am I self-conscious?) . . .
. . .
. . . I believed this Shape of Me was subtle when I brought it out anywhere that incessant song was playing and performed Cool Woman (eyes sliding across the bar, slicking over the room, shuttering from smize to cold stare, a gesture I’ll shamefully admit I’ve practiced) until a Big Boy told me in a friendly-wicked way, “I see you up there. You think you’re invisible, but I know what you’re doing.” . . .
. . .
. . . What am I doing? Right, “Cool,” “Brooding,” “Independent.” And as Isabelle Huppert says in Elle, “Shame isn’t a strong enough emotion to stop us doing anything at all.” So I tried to look coy, took a drag of my cigarette (thereby blowing my cover, though I can never remember what I’m covering), and shrugged off his comment . . .
. . .
. . . Maybe I’m not subtle, and maybe I didn’t succeed in shaping a coherent, convincing Self at all, but what’s clear is that as you get older you become more aware of your appearance and Posture (my back hurts all the time from trying to be Confident) and what people are thinking, how people are Buying and Selling, becomes clearer, so you’re coerced into doing certain things. And you become more concerned with asserting yourself. And maybe that’s “just me” — you can say otherwise, that you’re better than that . . . Well, I’d always wanted to make an Impression, be a Character . . .
. . .
. . . But with graduate school looming I’m suddenly ready to be a girl again. A schoolgirl, with schoolgirl aspirations, and a schoolgirl’s relationship to Patriarchal Power; I’ll eye it objectively, study it indifferently, and I’ll nurture my own, my own Power, my Girly Power that is straightforward — Anger and Ecstasy and raw Obsessions and tasting my own blood and making myself giggle in my bedroom, while I move to my favorite songs and croon along softly loudly softly making Magic incantations . . . while I read book after book after book, with records crackling in the background, and get flushed because I’ve read a really fascinating piece of text and I now get to mark it in my own language, with my favorite pen, with deep satisfaction . . .
. . .
. . . That’s about it, that’s all I really want to do with my Girly Power right now, and I’m excited to give up being a Metropolitan Female, la femme publique for a bit and go back to being a full-on bookworm, to experimenting with my tongue and dress, to getting turned on and driven to action only by my Ideas and Fantasies — by no one and no thing tangible on this Earth. I’ll be an untethered girl. Then I’ll return to the Scene and begin Building . . .
. . .
. . . I’ll be a Character when I’m dead and get made up over and over again.

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Creative nonfiction, EXTRApolations, and personal-critical essays on music, film, and emotion.

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