Note: This piece was originally published in Luna Luna Magazine in 2015, but is no longer on the site due to a domain change. I felt I needed to revisit it. All names are fictionalized.

Men in New York City accost you in Union Square. They breach your critical distance to ask you your name. When you tell them, they ask if it’s Italian, despite your translucent skin and summer blonde hair. They ask you to coffee, you tell them you have a boyfriend. They have more respect for your boyfriend than they could for your no. They name themselves the Big Bad Wolf and you their Little Red when it’s dark in Washington Square. They breathe your air and brush your skin. They reach for you with dirty fingers from the doorways to unnamed buildings. The words they throw at you are the over-sweet of rotting fruit. You learn to look straight ahead. You stop saying “Fuck you,” stop blushing.

The recorded music kids linger in your room until one in the morning. Their stories are competition. They speak too loudly for the last word to be said. They cover the beds, the desks, the school-cafeteria-tiled floor. They trip on your computer cord, they don’t bother to gather the papers they knock off your desk. You watch them become a conglomerate mass of bodies. David strokes Alyssa’s thigh as they post pictures on Instagram of their respective significant others. She whispers in his ear, and they disappear. Hannah and Hanna use their lips to kiss Jacob then flirt with Chris. In the lounge, ten fingers is used to categorize: slut or prude, criminal or boring. Truth or dare is sexual confessions or kiss, so you sit in the corner with your boyfriend in your laptop screen. You look at the gash on his calf and the bottlecaps in his eyes and you hate everyone around you.

You wear sheer stockings and black pumps to your studio. The stockings stop mid thigh, showing the bruises on your legs your skirt fails to hide. When you slink out of the room, you hear Alex tell everyone how hot you look. You smirk and feel the onset of nausea. Chloe is allowed to sleep around. She’s French. Her hickeys are jewelry, her menthol cigarettes a fashion statement. Andrew loves Christine, but loves attention more. Emily the virgin had sex with her last boyfriend, but decided not to count it. Sawyer chases, Grant writes poetry, Sergei’s eyes are fixed on your chest. Colleen is having an affair with her wrestling coach. Her tournaments are for staying up all night with her thirty-year-old love. They talk, and then they don’t. The Columbia grad student she meets thinks that she’s twenty. You write letters in class, instead of taking notes.

On the plane home, you write in your new journal. Katherine told you to be honest, so you rip yourself apart. You tear out the entry, because with each reading you want to run farther away from the writer. You wish you cared that you’ll never see your summer friends again. You wish you could cry like Lindsey and Ana when you left. You wish you looked as beautiful crying. You pout, because you’re coming home early and he’s coming home late. You yell, because your mother leaves you in the airport without saying goodbye. You weep on the train at SeaTac. You don’t see her for another five months. You set your suitcase down in your un-airconditioned attic, take out your Polaroids, and wish they matched your summer.