Free Binary Star by Sarah Gerard Page A

chew a stick of Orbit.
    Returning to the classroom, my mentor comments that I look ill, and tells me to leave for the day and rest.
    I want to be envied.
    I want to give out advice.
    I want to have so many things to say, suddenly there is a book of them.
    I want to look at the sky and understand.
    I want to feel small.
    But important.
    Massive.
    But beautiful.
    I want men to think I’m beautiful. I want at least one to want to touch me as soon as he wakes. I want him to kiss my eyelids.
    I want to have an affair that keeps me up at night.
    I want it to leave secret marks on my arms and legs.
    I want us only to see each other.
    I want not to feel alone when I’m alone. I want other bodies in my apartment. They should be young and beautiful like me, so I can belong among them.
    When someone is having a party, I want to be invited. I want to come late and bring beer, expensive beer like Space Barley, and I want every person at the party to be grateful.
    I want that party to be held in my honor.
    I want to want to see other people.
    I want to enjoy a birthday.
    My twenty-ninth birthday.
    When I die, I want to have been on the covers of magazines like Vogue and Esquire. I want to have my own sex tape. I want there to be a star named after me.
    I want to be Paris Hilton six years ago.
    I want to have taken pictures with telescopes. I want someone to think I’m smart.
    I want to want that all the time. I want not to forget I want that.
    I want not to want what I think I want. I want not to want what I want.
    I don’t want to smoke.
    I’m tired.
    I want to sleep.
    I’m afraid.
    I want to be able to sleep in my car in a parking lot before class.
    When I lie down, I want to feel something other than fear.
    I want to intimidate people.
    I want to go out to restaurants and order too much and drink Dom Pérignon and not feel sick with myself.
    I want to say I’ve enjoyed something and really mean it, and I want that thing to be unconventional.
    I want to be unique. I want to have thigh gap.
    I want to see myself on television. I want other people to say they’ve seen me on television.
    When I’m on television, I want my body to look damn good.
    I want never to see a scale again.
    I need to be protected.
    I want to go whole days without looking in the mirror.
    I want not to own a mirror.
    I want to try on clothes at Macy’s, and see myself in three mirrors at once, and look good from every angle.
    I want to wear something and feel it against my skin and then forget that it’s there.
    I want to feel sexy.
    I want to go to the beach.
    I want to look good naked. I want to be in Playboy. I want a man to touch me without me asking him to.
    I want to swim in a hotel pool, lie out by a hotel pool.
    I want to climb into a Jacuzzi with other people and not stare at all of them.
    I want them to stare at me.
    I want to go back to North Dakota and lie in the middle of the road on top of a mountain.
    I want to see all the stars at once.
    I want someone to see me doing it. I also want to be alone.
    I’m never alone.
    I want someone I don’t know to tell me I’m pretty.
    And I want to believe them.
    I want to get fan mail.
    I want to tell people what brand of clothes I’m wearing.
    When I do something well, I want to know it before someone tells me. When they tell me, I want to feel proud.
    I want to feel anything deeply.
    I want to know what I’m feeling.
    Then I want to be coy and not tell people about it.
    I want them to ask. I want them to insist.
    I want to feel like I’ve done something useful today.
    Like I should go home and rest and wake up in the morning.
    Feeling refreshed.
    I want to wake at a reasonable hour and feel okay with that.
    I want to see the sunrise after walking around a city all night.
    I want to take a shower without seeing myself from the doorway.
    Without having to look down.
    I want to look forward.
    Into the camera.
    I want my selfies to get a thousand likes each.
    I want to be in an Herbal Essences