Acceptable Catcalls

by Jamie Lauren Keiles

Hoooo boy,

You look like someone who really knows how to PROCESS things. I can tell you’ve been hitting the shrink lately because you look like you’ve been making progress on your historically fraught relationship with food! I’d like to get you and your doctor alone in a room and support you while you tell her why you think it’s time to decrease your dose of SSRIs. Mmmm, yeah, break me off a piece of that art you finally got around to creating despite your stressful and time-consuming 9-to-5. Why don’t we head to the bedroom where I can show you how to properly fold a fitted sheet? Or let me lay you down on the kitchen floor and reassure you that purchasing a Swiffer is not a sign that you are growing lax in the anti-capitalist political sensibility you championed during college? Shorty, I gotta ask, what are your preferred pronouns? You single? If so, I am glad you finally sorted out those co-dependency issues with your ex. Later tonight I wanna give you the pipe so you can finally get around to constructing that DIY shelving unit you pinned to your dream apartment mood board two years ago. You know what you look like you need? A reliable weed man who will show up to your apartment at the agreed-upon time and then leave immediately after the transaction is finished. Did you get hurt when you fell from heaven, because if so I will list you as a domestic partner on my health insurance so you can start freelancing full-time without being stressed about health-care coverage. I wanna get deep up inside you in a literal sense and confirm that all of your organs are functioning properly and that there is no need to maintain a consistent low-grade sense of alarm over the prospect that you might be dying of an undiagnosed illness. Can I buy you a drink? Of water, because I know how much you’ve been striving to drink at least two Nalgenes per day in hopes of improving your post-adolescent acne. Let me take you out sometime and tell you all about the ways I’m not going to touch you without asking and demand a story about what your tattoos mean and then argue with you when you say they don’t mean anything. “Smile! Ok, no don’t.” Hah, yeah, I love that obscure quote from Bring It On too. Okay now turn around. Yeaaaaah baby lemme get a good look at that ass before I retreat to the bunker with the other men and only emerge when called upon for mating purposes, not that you have to have kids or anything.

Photo by Kurt Bauschardt