Looking At You, Looking At Me by Emma Eisler
In high school, my flirtations are riddled with small lies: Of course I’m from San Francisco, not the suburbs; fake names and alter egos when my best friend and I sneak onto the college campus at night. A friend reveals to me that an acquaintance in our English class has developed a crush on me. This same acquaintance has apparently also been secretly capturing photographs of me staring off into space, or of my hair falling into my eyes as I bend over a book. Although I am not really interested in this particular person, I become fascinated by the idea of these photographs. Do I look like myself? How do I shift and morph when captured through the lens of this adoration? I tell the friend, Well, I don’t mind. I want to be somebody’s dreamboat. I begin to imagine myself this way as I travel through the small movements of daily life; climbing into the shower, I turn my head to the mirror and observe the arch of my back; aboard the bus, I view myself through the eyes of the other passengers, scuffed boots and head against the window. Though externally I am shy, I desire more than anything to be watched—noticed. Until I am loved, I will be my own audience.
40 • zooming out
I fall in love with a friend I am too scared to touch. Instead, we talk. I ride the bus the wrong way just to spend a few moments longer with her, spinning tales of my future life as a famous and prolific writer, a confident and assured lover. Under her gaze, I become a braver, brighter version of myself; nude and running full tilt into the swell of the sea, dancing with wild joy on her roof. Once, she describes me as someone who changes the essence of the meadow merely by lying amongst its flowers. I clutch her vision of me to my chest. When she starts dating a boy in our class, I stand in the bathroom and watch myself cry. I cannot reconcile my own ugliness with the version of me she claims to love. I fall in love again while taking a year off between high school and college. He is older and unlike anyone I’ve ever met, a self-imposed vagabond. At a bonfire in a canyon, he runs his fingers through my hair and my breath catches. He reveals to me later that, looking back, he knew from the first moment he touched me that I would love sex. I become obsessed with this detail, with my body’s apparent receptiveness to pleasure. Nights in the desert under the wane of moonlight, I float up and watch him watching me. Silver streaks that travel my skin, my moans that mingle with the distant howl of coyotes. Of all the seasons, to him I am spring, and if I were a weather pattern, I’d be a flash flood. Driving back from Capitol Reef, I tell him: I want to love and be loved by many people, even if that comes with loss. He tells me later: I knew then what I was getting into—you’re a natural born heartbreaker. I formulate my sense of self around this vision; I am feral with desire; the desert pulses under my skin, and I can never be hurt or abandoned. Freshman year of college, I sleep with boys who are not interested in doing more than touching me. I dissolve under their hands, come apart into seafoam. One tells me, I feel like I’m going to hurt you. I shrink smaller and smaller against the sheets. How
