Summer 2007
Some Girl
He has the prettiest eyes,
curly black eyelashes that brush against any girl’s bare stomach. He
cries sometimes, at sad movies, and when some girl won’t believe
what he promises. He wears dark sweaters with thick stripes; it
makes him seem soft, like a stuffed animal. He plays the guitar
and he sings about his dad, who left him when he was four. He opens his
eyes wide and some girl thinks he needs her. He calls soulfully,
“Why won’t you come back, please?” Sometimes he drinks too much,
and ends up hiding in the bathroom for hours. He dates the same
girls I do. When he sees me at shows he smiles sadly because I
am, after all, just some girl, and I smile back—and for that moment,
but only that moment, I think about holding his pretty face in my hands
and kissing away his tears and touching the part of him that he sings
about, the part that is so sad. In smoky dark corners of trendy
nightclubs, the girls choose him over me. They say they want to hold
him and kiss away his tears. They say he’s a better girl than I
am.
Rebekah
Matthews grew up in
Indianapolis, graduated from Indiana University with a degree in
Communications and English, and currently lives and works in
Boston. She enjoys bad melodramas, strawberry margaritas, and
obsessively photographing her cat.
The inspiration for "Some Girl" comes
from Kathleen Hanna's cover of the Ben Lee song "I Wish I was Him."
Riot girl music has influenced the author's life not just musically but
also in terms of ideology and identity, especially gender-related.
"Some Girl" is an attempt to take the gender mix-up of Hanna's "I Wish
I was Him" one step further.