pretending & vodka cranberries
by 21, i’d been drinking for years, but suddenly felt childish in the dim lights of the bars i could now get into. a vodka cranberry seemed like the drink you ordered when you did not know how to be an adult. how to wear sophistication like long lace gloves. red lipstick like a signature on purpose. too pink and prim and sweet. it mattered so much then. skipping through the becoming and arriving fully formed. to know how to kiss and fuck and hang the names of the right cocktails off your lips without any practice. i didn’t yet know about french 75s or how the word gimlet could be a sour candy sucked sweet against the right tongue. back then, outside the bar with the purple glow light that’s now closed, i handed my id to the doorman, who stood blocking the passage like a little god. he put it in his pocket. this isn’t you. get out of here. move along. my friends were inside, and i was standing in a skirt, glossed legs in the cold, trying to explain who i was. he must have seen a child, as so many did for so long. it would take me years to grow into my face. look like someone who could bear the weight of the world. in the same time, i’d realize, i didn’t like drinking all that much anymore. or being out past eleven. i’d learn how this world could crack you open with ache and all at once make you new. which is to say he saw what i didn’t yet know. that i was pretending. like a prophecy, the path unfolding before i was ready to walk. still i fought it. pulled out my credit cards, school id. look! look here! i exist. finally, he split from the doorway, anointed me myself. i was telling the truth. but i’ll never forget how he demanded i prove it. how i stood there. mouth open. hands rummaging through pockets, searching for a sign i was real.
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Haley DiRenzo is a Colorado writer and attorney specializing in eviction defense. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barely South Review, Thimble, and Bending Genres, among others, and has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @haleydirenzo
