To: condorboy
Date: Sunday, September 4—11:28 PM
Subject: Re: Popsicle sticks
Dear Connor,
I don’t know how to react to Nice. It makes me uncomfortable. Remember how I’d always pretend-strangle you this summer every time you complimented my drawings or told me my hair looked nice? Well, I kind of want to punch you in the face right now.
In response, I’d like to point out that it doesn’t take a whole lot to impress little kids. I mean, why do you think they’re always wandering off with molesters? All I had to do was wave my arms around and try to be more interesting than stabbing a kid with scissors. It’s not rocket science.
But thank you, I guess. Is that what I’m supposed to say to a compliment? I wouldn’t know, since I receive them so infrequently. Not that I’m fishing right now. I’m not, so don’t try any of your little tricks to boost my self-confidence. You have an unfair advantage, being raised by a therapist. You know all these secret ways to get people to tell you things and bare their souls. Me, I learned nothing of substance from my Neanderthal father and Executive mother. But I guess my family’s not completely useless—I did learn how to argue from my sister and how to lie from my brother. I should probably send them thank-you cards.
Trevor’s band is playing at Chop Suey tonight, so I must be off to make myself beautiful. It’s hard work being such a jet-setter. My dear sister, Gennifer-with-a-G, the self-proclaimed Queen of the Aging Lesbian Hipsters, always tells me our generation is doing it all wrong, that we’re all about manufactured style and lack any real originality or substance, like she’s automatically superior because she was old enough to remember the day Kurt Cobain killed himself. So I say, “What, like it’s cool to still be driving Mom’s old hand-me-down Volvo and shopping at thrift stores when you’re almost forty?” Then she’s like, “I’m thirty-six!” and I have to remind her that’s twice as old as me, and then she stomps away with her shitty nonprofit job and two useless masters degrees to go home and listen to her records and read her comic books and reminisce about the days when being poor and overeducated was cool. Except she’s not poor anymore, because her wife, Karen, makes a ton of money and they live in a fancy condo downtown. So now I guess she’s just a hypocrite like everyone else I know.
I should try to be nicer, shouldn’t I?
Yours in eternal bitchitude,
Isabel