9 minute read
Being a Girl Alone Cam Vernali
BEING A GIRL ALONE
WORDS Cam Vernali PHOTOS Claire Moon
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I sit, I occupy my own space.
He starts off with a line about my hair: “Hey, I really like your hair there.”
I give a smile, a thanks, the standard procedure of being polite when I’m not in fear. My shoulders are already angled away from the guy when he continues.
“Are you Italian?” I only manage to get a brief stutter out before he goes on. “Yeah, I can tell you are by your hair.”
I don’t get it—what hair is considered Italian hair, anyway?—so I pause.
“Do you want to sit down?”
He seems friendly enough in offering, and though I would usually decline, I
sit in the green lawn chair beside him because it doesn’t feel too off with the vibe of the day. It’s just warm enough to encourage minimal movement and it’s a Saturday and it’s a fine time to sit.
He gives me a drawing of his Rastafarian beliefs, an organic avocado, some
mint tea, two small vials of sandalwood oil. It’s nice to talk with someone when it’s just an exchange of ideas and experiences, nothing more or less.
“Cam, Cam, we love Cam!” He reaches over and hugs me tightly in a full body embrace.
This is the first strike—his words haven’t referenced my appearance, but his actions are giving him away. Being alone and young doesn’t mean I’m malleable to physical interaction, though some people think so. Strike two comes when I realize that he’s speaking in third person about himself, which is…interesting.
“Do you do yoga? You must work out, look at how small you are!” His faux interest was paired with a quick but harsh pinch of my thigh.
And with that, my friend needs me to pick her up at the airport or my house has caught on fire or my mother wants me home for dinner in the Bay Area; the route I chose to go changes by day but in any case, I must go now.
Line 1: How old are you? You look like you could be anywhere between 16 and 24.
Me: I’m, uh—
Line 2: Don’t worry, that’s a good thing.
It’s not always as direct as that. Most of the time it’s in the subtle details; the change of tone, the eyebrow raise, the phrasing of sentences that shifts power away from me to them. It’s not difficult to recognize. I exist as a person, or I exist as a young and alone girl. It’s not mutually exclusive in theory, but I’ve found it ranges on a spectrum for some when they place “person” on one end and “young girl” on the other, like my personhood is some tug-of-war. Since my identity is shaped by both what I am and what others think I am, who decides what I become?
Red Baseball Cap: Hey, howya doing there, miss?
Red Baseball Cap: Hey, I’m talking to you right there! You’re really not gonna answer me like that? What kinda—
Red Baseball Cap: No manners!
Blue Hoodie:—and no respect for guys or nothing. They complain they want a gentlemen, and then they pull acts like this. Unbelievable man, the rudeness.
No one on the bus interrupts because it’s not worth it.
Though I’m not of one extreme or the other, the moments I do get to rest on one end of the spectrum is more comical than mildly terrifying. When I was in the middle of the crowd for a James Blake concert and on my way to the bar to get water, I rested against a pole and relaxed. I was zoning out into the lit crowd, when— “Are you looking for your parents?” She said it in the most genuine way a drunk person could express themselves, so I took no offense to it. I smiled and really, really hoped she wouldn’t repeat the question. That would give me relief from trying to prove that I wasn’t actually a pre-teen, despite my pre-teen appearance (it’s not a fun concept to dispute). She walked off, and besides being mildly embarrassed, I wasn’t bothered; it was funny, after all. Other people are always going to slightly miss the mark on who you are—it’s just the nature of how it turns out—but when it’s so far off, it’s humorous. It’s not hard to get separated from someone during a concert, but it took about 30 seconds of Jamie xx’s set at We only walked into the lifeless sandwich shop so that my friend could use the bathroom to adjust her contacts before the hour-fifteen bus home. When it’s the two of us, the employee behind the counter doesn’t even look our way; when I’m alone and waiting, he talks to me like it’s his last 10 minutes of existence.
“So, why are you out here? What have you done today?”
Nothing, I respond. We went to an apothecary on Haight and are going home soon.
“Where do you live? Do you smoke? Do you drink? Are you even old enough to drink? Are you going to a party tonight?”
I smile and nod but glance at the bathroom door every 5... 3? seconds. Gov Ball for me to lose my friend. It was a new personal record for me, I’m pretty sure. I was alone with a dead phone.
I was walking around with slightly rising anxiety, realizing it would be near impossible to find my friend quickly or easily. The oscillating specks of red light from the oversized stage lights moved next to me, calm in contrast to how I’m feeling.
I’m brainstorming my next move before I realize someone is talking about me right next to where I stand.
“Oh, is she lost? Are you freaking out right now? Why are you freaking the hell out?” A group of guys in their
“Are you going to a party later?”
It’s this relentless request of information that makes me want to crawl out of my skin. I can’t tell if giving away disjointed information about myself to round out his impression of me is worse than a factory-made stereotype of me. I say nothing. At least this way, I’m not feeding his illusion.
twenties are giving baby voices about
how “Scawy it is to be lost in the Big Apple.” A young girl alone is helpless, and while I’m not helpless most of time, they’ve hit upon one small fleck of truth and are running with it.
I’m focusing all my energy on following the red lights to distract myself from how hard I was biting my tongue. I usually wouldn’t even mind comments like these, but given the state of things, I’m more inclined to respond.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“I’m fine, thanks,” they mimicked before launching right back into their act.
I’m jealous of these red lights, I think to myself, I’m jealous because they can float between the leaves of the trees and the wall of this stage tent and I’m stuck here. There’s no use in responding with something either harsh or annoyed or charming to this man because it all hits a brick wall—red and stationary, red and non-moving.
I’ve been reduced to a caricature of myself and once I’m seen this way, I’m
replaced with a version of me I didn’t choose for myself. I am a light. I’m a light to these men but I start to feel dull when it becomes clear that I’m a light with no substance, no weight of my own to claim. I’m stuck in this situation and I zone out trying to find the red lights again, following their repetitive path like it will change anything.
Red flickering lights, young frightened girl; are they more than just a gleaming object to consume?
I don’t know how they piece together their version of me with their conception of a girl, of someone young, of someone in front of them with only the puzzle pieces at their feet. Using those stereotyped packaged ideas like scanning through a Where’s Waldo? picture and crossing out what doesn’t look the same, holding their train of thought when they come awfully close to it. Do they find it? I had a history of being terrible when it came to eye-spy games; I would never be able to find it and would say that I did, using the excuse of not wanting to spoil it for anyone else as a cover for my bluff. Can I call anyone out on their bluff when they assume my role as a young girl alone?
I hear a car honk behind me as I run across the intersection, but it’s mellow and soft, a gentle hello. I’m running through Paris to the Parc de Belleville, to see the sunset over the 20th arrondissement. The yellow light creeped into the apartment for just a moment before I had the impulse to see it at this windy, nearby park. I didn’t bring much of anything with me as I ran out and hoped that my memory to the park would serve me right.
Running through the cobbled streets and pale grey buildings, running and
not thinking about what or who, I’m running and I’m turning the corner before the park gates appear. The windows of houses masked themselves with a pink glow as I felt as temporary and omnipresent as the light itself.
As I was zig-zagging myself across the park, I feel present and not holding any weight of my own among the orange-tipped tree leaves. I sit at the top of the park on a ledge, alone, with others all around me in the same position. Being young and alone was freeing. It didn’t manifest itself into the familiar weight I had to shift and figure out where to place. I sat and watched the colors wind down to a soft glow, a cooling of myself before the walk back.
It was a very simple moment in time and led to no revelation about what my identity comprised of, because it removed myself entirely from the situation.
My identity had no factor in the moment, was under no scrutiny, no codes or cues that anyone could try to pick up on and interpret. I exist outside of the realm of others and myself, outside of anything.
I’m no more or less myself here than there.
