I was home for Christmas for the last two weeks and saw many people who knew me as a teenager but have since only known my Instagram version. At a reunion party, I met a girl who was a fellow ‘outcast’ in my high school. We have both changed substantially since. We both used to be emo/goth in high school. She had waist-long straight black hair and piercings and would wear all-black. Now she’s upgraded to platinum blonde, wears blue eye contacts, has a nose job, fillers and (I think) a boob job and wears tight-fitting dresses. She used to go to punk clubs and listen to heavy metal; now, she tells me she likes to go to multi-course dinners with her boyfriend.
I was happy to see her and was flattered that she followed my online presence closely. She said I was her only friend from high school there. I nodded, but we were no such thing. She seemed uncomfortable in the crowded bar. Her self-consciousness reminded me of me in a previous version of myself. Her gaze pinponked across the narrow walls of the abandoned warehouse, and every time her stare crashed on a man, she’d ask me, ‘Who is he?’ ‘ What do you think he does?’ ‘Do you think he’s any good?’. Any good? What do you mean?
