Lips by Arielle Burgdorf
Photo by Elīna Arāja for Pexels
Jean stopped to inspect a cluster of yellowing books splayed out on a blanket. She bought a cheap copy of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Woman Destroyed. She’d read the stories before, and they were far from her favorites of de Beauvoir’s. She wanted it because the reprint cover was gorgeous. A pink background with a pair of floating lips smothered in green lipstick, smoking a cigarette. For 3€, she could own a little portable work of art and adore something just for the surface. When K. asked her why she bought it, she was embarrassed and didn’t mention the cover.
“I’m trying to read more fiction in translation,” she said.
He’d bought her a pair of silver earrings in the shape of snakes. They had little green stones embedded in them that were supposed to be scales.
“If you’re going to have hair that short, you might as well wear earrings,” he said. She put them on. She didn’t wear earrings, but she would wear these for a little while, to make him happy.
“I was right, they look great with your haircut,” K. said, claiming victory.
She liked that her short hair showed off her long neck and made her look androgynous. People said she resembled Jean Seberg in Saint Joan, but she wanted to look like Maria Falconetti in La passion de Jeanne d’Arc. Seberg’s beauty was distracting from the seriousness the role demanded. What Jean wanted above all, was to be taken seriously.
She’d had short hair her entire life. It saved a lot of money on shampoo and salons. She played the part of the gamine, maybe too much so. Imitating a man caused trouble. She remembered Patti Smith telling a story about running into Allen Ginsberg at a diner. He thought she was a young boy, flirting with her and offering to buy her a sandwich. When he realized he’d made a mistake, he was deeply offended.
“Can I still have the sandwich?” she dared to ask.
A man kissed Jean in a dark bar once, believing she was a man. When he felt one of her breasts, he yelled and shoved her, hard.
Can I still have the sandwich?
To Jean, it made no difference. She wasn’t a girl or a boy. She was a pair of lips, floating in the night.
Arielle Burgdorf
Arielle Burgdorf is a PhD student in Literature at UC Santa Cruz studying queer and feminist translation. They have work published in Tasteful Rude, Crab Fat Magazine, X-Ray Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Their chapbook, I Am An Unhappy Male Painter, was recently published by Greying Ghost Press.