Faith Silbernagel
Negative Nancy, Pancake Pammy, Bitchy Brittney, and Eat Ass Edna. Why is it that men don’t have names like Bastard Brad, Crazy Connor, Fucked-up Frank, and Slutty Simon?
***
Four years of college and the same high school shit is happening. People are still fucking, my friends are still fake, and I’m still wearing stilettos—pretending that I’m one of those girls. A girl who has it all figured out—commanding, organized, the boss. My feet always hurt, and I’m constantly finding new calluses on them. I want you to find me—help me figure it out.
***
The reason why I wear stilettos everywhere I go, or wear dresses that flash everyone as I walk with my ass hanging halfway out. The reason why I plaster my makeup on me like a cheap whore on the back streets of Conway Avenue. The reason why I don’t go home to visit my parents in Michigan. The reason why I’m still fucking a man who doesn’t appreciate me.
I’ve been like this since middle school. Well, that’s when the whorish makeup started. My friend Rebecca introduced me to it. She said that I needed it because my blonde hair was too light, and I needed a little highlighter to attract the guys. I thought, What the hell?! But at the same time, Why the hell not?
She also thought that I needed a little more pep in my step because I was the quiet one.
“Everyone knows the quiet ones are the naughtiest at heart,” she told me.
“I’m not like that,” I said.
“Sure you are! Don’t lie, you little whore!” she laughed.
I wish I knew what she meant back then—I would’ve slapped that bitch.
As I moved up through middle school, I started wearing shorter skirts, even though I didn’t like the way they fit over my thighs. All the guys gawked at me like starving animals. One drooled like a lion who hadn’t been thrown a bone, and the others like hungry hyenas prowling the savanna. My boobs were pretty damn big, too, and the shirts I wore were skin-tight. What was the bullshit excuse Tanya told me? They needed to see that I was becoming a woman with curves—that I was looking for a man. I wish I didn’t attract that much attention, but Jessica said it was healthy to tease the boys a little bit—even some of the girls from time to time. If those bitches would have left me alone! I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be on this cold floor—dammit!
I entered high school—stilettos called my name. My first pair of feisty fuchsia pink pumps, so not quite stilettos yet, but close enough in ninth grade. Nonetheless, they pushed up my ass real nice, and Tyson couldn’t stop staring whenever I walked by. I remember my pumps plastered to my feet when we fucked in his car two weeks later. I didn’t wear them again, but I still have them. Size six, narrow.
Narrow. Just like when Jackie bought me my first pair of heeled boots, like standing on pencils for the tips—true stilettos. Those boots got my ass in a lot of trouble. Being in the back of Jackson’s car, and on Reese’s bedroom floor, in Carson’s favorite stall at Twisted Bar on 17th, and in the bed of Brandon’s truck. I wish I still had those boots to walk around and pretend that everything was okay, but here I am nestled on this fucking forsaken floor.
High school was a blur, and college was the damn same.
A year after college, I recognized you from middle school. So sad, so lonely. We talked together, walked together, and we ate the same foods. So similar, yet so far apart from each other. You—so innocent and trapped in your own mind—trying to find a way out for so long. Me—corrupted, poisoned, and screaming to find the key that would release you. It took me eleven years to finally accept you again—even the mirror reflected that.
The stilettos, makeup, short skirts, and cursing, all damn lies. We were sweet, quiet, and wished that we weren’t lying on the floor right now.
“I miss you. I miss being you,” I whispered.
Slowly I slid myself up to a sitting position against the wall, and crouched my knees toward my naked chest. You were me. The quiet girl from middle school that I submerged in the bathroom sink moments before—hoping to end it all—all the thoughts of what you considered “mistakes.”
“You’re right. I don’t want those things. I want to be you.”
As if you were never disconnected from me—my soul was whole—a hug from myself. To forgive myself. The mask melted off. Nae Nae was just a girl who fucked guys while wearing heels and skirts with her ass hanging out.
“I’m not Nae Nae. I’m Naelli.”
A smile rounded my face as I held myself a little longer.
***
From that day, we have been one—Naelli. No adjectives or defining features. Just Naelli.
Faith Silbernagel is an inspired writer from Colorado Springs, Colorado. She is finishing her bachelor’s degree in literary studies at Rocky Mountain College, where her memoir “A Body Never Forgets” was published in The Rocky Mountain Review. Faith continues to write in order to interact with the world around her, share life lessons, and pursue a career in editing.
The Rocky Mountain Review 