This is What Happens When You Reread All Your Bret Easton Ellis Books

"I'm a good girl." I kept saying over and over as I laid in the bathtub staring at nothing in particular.

"I will always be the good girl."

I'm not like those girls you read about in books.

But I want to be.

Be like this girl right here. The one with my namesake who kind of sort knew that it was always going to be like that.

The utter and complete nihilism.

Behavior counteracting against the fundamental need for connection.

When we think that what we listen to and what we wear defines us.

Breaking everything in our paths through ambivalence.

Drinking, fucking.

Rock n' Roll.

And that time I walked through Koreatown at 3AM in a fur coat and nothing else with that boy from the Hamptons.

That doesn't count.

Or the night I passed out drunk alone on Venice Beach because I thought I didn't care.

That doesn't either.

Putting my hand on the thigh of a boy who didn't love me nor I he.

The dead body lying in the middle of Route 110 and my mind going blank.

Having had that affair with the almost married director when I was 20 years old doesn't matter.

None of it counts because I wasn't unabashedly unapologetic then.

They sound better on paper.

No midnight drives to Palm Springs. The wind blowing through my hair, you wearing your sunglasses, and the thought that nothing else mattered more than this.

No standing up above the city, looking down, the noises and colors blurring together and wrapping me up, firmly holding me into place.

No staying up until 5, no parties in the back room, no waking up next to that boy who I heard liked Janice from NYC but actually was dating someone named Lindsey and is in a post punk band that sounds not unlike Morrissey on speed.

Instead, I'll keep lying here in the tub, living vicariously through these characters, hoping that one day the romance of not caring will wear off.