Tempered Magazine December 2013 // January 2014 // Issue 01 | Page 39

queer performance. And people
like Anahita’s sister who were busy
creating post-modern bohemia by
drinking a lot in order to forget that
they’d gone to Catholic school and
gotten expensive bachelors degrees
and were incurably straight and
woefully suburban frequented her
performances and declared them
perfection.
“None of the men I fuck know about
her.” She said that too, but after a
few glasses of wine and when she
was sure her mother could not hear
her. “I fuck a lot of men. And not one
of them knows. It’s killing me. We
can talk about art and philosophy
and whatever. Jesus, they put
their dicks in me. The guy I would
normally see today asked where I
would be; I told him I had a fucking
dentist’s appointment.”
“Did Anahita have crushes on boys?”
One night, I cried for her virginity.
Long, wracking sobs because no
one had ever loved my best friend
as I knew she deserved to be loved.
For the pain without the pleasure.

For her wry smile when I walked into
the room on the day that all of her
hair was gone and she said, “Now
I’ll never get a date.” Because she
was a girl who loved Gilmore Girls
and the color pink and jellybeans and
rock music and I was becoming a
woman who loved men and intimacy
and orgasms.
When something in my bag
accidentally presses the number
three, I get my phone out to check
the time and my breath catches
when I see “Anahita, [phone]”
illuminated on the screen. Once
I pressed send. I was waiting for
the voicemail, waiting for her voice
to come through space in a tinny
recording and tell me she wasn’t
available right now. But it just rang
and rang and rang and rang.

Performer stands, picks up dish of
jellybeans, and walks off of the stage
slowly and intentionally, dropping
jellybeans on the ground in their
wake, like Hansel and Gretel leaving
a trail of crumbs behind them.

39