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My Real Life Promising Young Woman
Rape killed the best woman I’ve ever known, so no. I’m still not over it.
My friend killed herself, and for the longest time I thought it was my fault.
That night, she was drinking. D was always drinking, by then. She drank during the day. She drank all night long. She drank and sometimes she popped pills, but why would I worry about that? She took pain medication for her back because of scoliosis when she was growing up. She had Sesame Street characters tattooed on her calves. I was in awe of her.
Everyone was in awe of D. In the film, everyone was in awe of Nina, the dead girl, the best friend who died off-screen. At least, that’s what her best friend thought. But everyone really was in awe of D. She was that kind of person.
D was the first fat woman I ever saw wear a bikini in public. We were at a beach, her and me and some other people from our house. I only had eyes for her. I always only had eyes for her.
I wasn’t in love with her, exactly. I wanted to be her. She’d read every book I could name that had anything to do with political activism or socialist organizing and she was a feminist and she wanted to burn the institutions of America to the ground and build something new and bold and fiery and beautiful and very, very alive…
