A Girl Like You
Words by Kerry Graham.
“The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a type of female character depicted as vivacious and appealingly quirky whose main purpose within the narrative is to inspire a greater appreciation for life in a male protagonist.’’
She’s strange and childlike - but in a sexy way - how does that work? You tell me, mister. You’re the one convinced that you’ve just met the love of all your lives. She’s your spiritual awakening, she’s your favourite song, she’s everything you’ve been searching for - she’s -she’s…standing right across the room in this dingy dive bar, trying to order a drink. The music seems to pause as you make eye contact. You’ll make your way across the room in a hurry, maintaining the aforementioned eye contact as you open your mouth and ask smoothly, like Casanova reborn (you think) -
‘What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?’
‘Waiting for you’
- she’ll reply with a twinkle in her eye and you’ll do everything in your power not to propose on the spot. Here we go. She’ll scribble her Instagram username on a bar mat in pink sharpie, and you’ll attempt to wait the usual 3 days before sliding into those DMs. You make it to hour 19.
You might meet in a cute kitsch café under your suggestion, somewhere she’ll look right at home. She’ll order something simple, not wanting to overshadow your overly complex coffee order. She may try a sip of your complicated drink and sigh an exaggerated noise of pleasure. What’s funny is that she used to come here with her ex and he used to order the exact same thing as you, but you don’t need to know that. You begin to talk, and hardly take a breath. It’s crazy how you guys seem to agree on everything!
She’s willing to listen to your endless musings on Marxism, or Late-Stage Capitalism, or how your band just hasn’t had a big break yet, but you can feel it coming! Her hair is green or pink or a chestnut brown, maybe she has a fringe, maybe not. Maybe she gets one halfway through your dalliance and you’ve got to reboot your brain when she walks through the door at 11pm on a Tuesday night because who knew a covered forehead could look so sinful?
Maybe she says she has no tattoos, but you know there’s one hidden somewhere, if only she’d let you explore her body in daylight. Sometimes you zone out when she’s talking, or hear soft music even. Once, it sounded like The Smiths were playing as she waxed lyrical about her crystal collection. (She spoke for 3 minutes before you cut her off with your own personal anecdote, but it’s weird because you don’t exactly remember that part).
You once wonder why she never talks about herself, and ask a series of short questions, which glean even shorter answers -
‘’Where did you grow up?’’
‘Oh, here, there, everywhere’
- What’s crazy is that she grew up in Suburbia, just a few miles from where you did. It’s almost like she’s a real person, but you don’t need to know that.
‘What’s your family like?’
‘They’re fine…I don’t really want to get into it’
- She has two sisters and a brother, her parents are still together and every year they take a cruise, where she sheds her pretentious skin, swaps it for a floral sundress and goes back to being Catherine. Not Cat, or Cathy, or any number of the nicknames she introduced herself as.
‘What’s your romantic history like?’
- She’s dated more than you have, and she’ll list off a couple of generic male names, and maybe one female one just to keep things spicy. She’ll be talking about a girl who was her first kiss at summer camp, but once again you don’t exactly need to know that.
After that brief Q and A session, you won’t ask again. You’re satisfied with the mystery, and she knows your type. The type that likes to fill in the blanks with their own idea of what a woman might be.
You see each other regularly, and she begins staying over at yours. You will find her tattoo, a small butterfly on her hip -
‘From my crazier days’
- She’ll blush and laugh, and you hope against hope that her crazier days aren’t over yet.
A girl with higher standards might have requested a drawer at your place to keep her stuff in, but she knows better than to have requests. She carries her purple rucksack everywhere, just in case she’ll be spending the night. You get to tell her that she doesn’t need makeup, that she’s beautiful without it, safe in the knowledge that she’d never walk out the door without her porcelain mask.
What you don’t know is that she pays good money for semi-permanent makeup and that the eyebrows you see are not the ones that she was born with. How would you ever know that, though? With a pragmatic mother and no sisters, you’ve never really seen the feminine process up close. She asks one day, giggling, if you’d let her do your makeup.
You relent, because you’re such a good b̶o̶y̶f̶r̶i̶e̶n̶d̶ person. She says you look sexy with black eyeshadow on, and you wonder if stage makeup would be a good creative direction for the band. You ask the guys and they say no, but you keep one of her travel sized palettes hidden in your underwear drawer, just in case.
As she gets to know you, more and more, you begin to have a greater appreciation for life. Maybe this means that you’re in love? Flowers smell more fragrant, the sky is bluer, your eyes sparkle and you smile every day -
‘It’s sickening’
- One of the guys remarks at practise one day, but you don’t care. Nobody has ever felt a love quite like this, you’re sure of it. Forget Twilight, and Titanic, this is the real deal.
Then, one night, you check your phone and there’s a missed call from her. You think little of it. When you check your voicemail inbox, it’s empty. You’ll return home, expecting her to call over later, but there’ll be a letter tied with thick red ribbon by the door.
She needs to get away, or this is all too much, or maybe an ex is back on the scene and she’s still in love with him. Maybe it’s a family emergency, maybe she’s just sick of you.
Does it matter what the letter says? No.
What will matter is that she’s gone. She left you, like those women always do.
Suddenly the sparkle in your eyes dims. The world returns to black and white. You trudge around, dragging your feet, feigning a heart attack every time you spot a woman who looks a little like her. Your bandmates lose their patience with you, but you don’t care. All that remains of your love is an eyeshadow palette that you don’t have the heart to throw out -
‘Because she left…and she took my heart with her’
- You’ll mumble to no-one, manly tears streaking your rugged face.
Months later, maybe close to a year on, you’ll be dragging yourself out of your emotional K-Hole, when a whirlwind with lilac hair arrives on your doorstep. You let her in. She tells you that she’s been in Japan or Australia or Germany, getting away from it all. She was scared, she wasn’t ready for you but she’s back now. You crumble for a split second, ready to welcome her back with open arms (and an open mouth) then stand your ground, resolute in your self-respect -
‘I’m not doing this again’
- She’s confused, because when she saw you last, you didn’t have anything remotely close to a backbone. Then she realises you’ve changed, and that her job is done.
She’ll kiss you on the cheek, wish you the best for the future and be gone as suddenly as she arrived. You’ll hesitate, wondering if you should go after her, then decide against it. That chapter of your life is over. You’re done with women like her. You’re only dating nursing students named Mairead or Laura from now on. Wife material.
A week or so later, it’s entirely unclear, your band finally has a show in the old dive bar where this all began. You play your heart out, and falter for only a moment when you think you see a flash of lilac hair in the crowd. You stare for a second - or ten - and see that it’s not her. You’re almost disappointed. You really thought she’d come, even though you’re done with her and told her as much. Still, why didn’t she pick up on your subtle subtweets?
You amble over to the bar. An unfamiliar girl with an icy blonde bob stands beside you, attempting to get the attention of the bar staff. She’s shorter than Cathy, dusted with freckles, pink powdered cheeks.
She tilts her chin up and makes pointed eye contact. You look down at her and smile.
‘What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?’
Kerry hails not from Kerry, but from Donegal. Following a BA in Classics and English at NUI Galway, she went on to graduate from an MA in Writing in 2019. Her areas of interest include comedy, contemporary life, sexuality and gender. When she’s not writing, sleeping or trying to compose the perfect viral tweet, she can be found over-watering her plants, attempting telepathic communication with her twin sister or listening to early 2000s emo music. A firm believer in aliens, she hopes they believe in her too. Her work has been featured in ROPES, The Galway Review and local newspapers.
