By Andreana Joi Faucette

I meet my own voyeur, embrace her in my arms, and see that she looks just like me.

I birthed You in the first words I wrote in my childhood diary. In between lines of scribbled expletives and tear stains that never dried quite right, I told my story before anyone else could.

Throughout the years to come, I wove narratives of quotidian happenings into looping sagas that panned out over tens of pages, forming months-long epics about break-ups and make-ups, about falling in love and breaking hearts. I wrote my own story with the reverence that I offered only to gods, mythology, and lovers before I’d gotten the chance to know them.

I ignore the remnants of last night —  whispers of kisses from bodies without faces — around my eyes and at the corner of my lips as I sit myself up, propped against the pillows on the headboard of my bed. I want to close my eyes and fall back asleep, but I know You are waiting for me to rise, and have been waiting with bated breath and all night as I tossed and turned in my bed. So I rise.

I imagine myself to be a 1950s housewife, ever-so-ready to please You. I wake up an extra hour earlier in the morning to meticulously prod at my face, to curl my hair, to cover my blemishes, all so that I can wake up next to You with a smile and a steaming cup of coffee, and a “Good morning, my love.”

Instead, I rub my eyes, trying to get them to focus, but all I get are smudges of two-day-old mascara on my fingertips. I reach for my journal, feeling the ridges of gold embellishments embossed atop a web of multicolored whorls. It feels sacred — holy.

I offer You penance for my sins in blood-red ink on the lines of these blank pages.

I’m writing the next best holy book — my magnum opus — and it will be from Your point of view. I’m Your main character, the stunning star in this story that has spanned two decades.

So I offer a kind smile and a hypercurated morning routine to the audience inside of me.

When You look at me, do You see the whiteness of my teeth?

It’s courtesy of Crest-brand whitening strips, purchased for $4.99 at CVS — twice a week, worn all night. I have to keep myself in tip-top shape for You.

The home screen of my phone is empty — who is there to call? To text? So I watch myself there, in the mirror. Sat on the floor, I cross my hands over my legs. Eyes first, then eyebrows —  a thorough examination for each. They’re plucked, tweezed, then shaped. I swipe moisturizer, then sunscreen, over the plump mounds of my cheeks.

In between furious strokes of my toothbrush, I wonder if the love You have for me is unconditional.

My bottom left molars receive the brunt of my pondering force — over and over again. Baking-soda-and-charcoal toothpaste seep into the wounds I’m creating and re-opening in my gums. I spit out my toothpaste, and it’s pink with blood.

I’ve never been one to shirk away from blood and guts, from gore, but I avert my eyes from my own reflection. The irony tang in my mouth tastes distinctly of shame.

When was the last time I’d flossed?

I feel the castles of crafted confidence I’ve constructed within myself crumble.

I’m disgusting.

I wrap my arms around Your neck and throw myself into the space just above Your collarbones. Your form is hazy, a mirage at best and a hallucination at worst, but You’re all I have right now, and I’m terrified of You leaving. So I lean over, whisper into Your ear without ever opening my mouth.

Am I still sexy, fuckable, the-one-who-got-away?

I have to be sure.

Will You judge me once the water bottles in my bedroom form a backdrop of rolling hills?

It’s a reality I have no desire to immerse myself within. It drags me down, down, down, and threatens to throw me to the bottom of a six-foot-deep well that I have no chances of climbing up and out of. But I’ve got to keep myself up, up, up! So I shift my attention away from You. I contemplate something meaningless: clothes. I want to wear as little as possible, to show off the swells of my chest and make sure I have to tell every passerby that my eyes are up here. I’m shackled by laws of decency and norms of modesty that bear no importance to me.

There’s an open closet before me — mostly empty. The clothes overflow from the hamper in the corner of my room instead — foreboding, tall, staring at me like a volcano eager to erupt. I back away. There’s no need to feel right now.

Do You see me now? Is this the right thing to do? Am I Your twenty-something teenage dream?

I’m down again.

My therapist once told me that I struggled with being alone. Experience has told me I prefer sleeping in the arms of another — I’ll choose it over my own well-being. There’s no incentive for me to spend time with myself. I already know everything I’m thinking.

So she told me to make myself my best friend, and so I did, and then more. Whatever purpose You serve has morphed into something much more sinister.

I’d always assumed I was free from the male gaze. I started kicking guys in the balls when I was five, and never kissed or fucked or pretended to be interested in one. But You are beyond gender, beyond self, beyond sex.

I suppose, then, that I am not the man inside of myself: I am an altar awaiting an offering. I am a candle burning indefinitely, waiting for this version of me to throw her flowers.

I would fuck me.

As I face myself in the mirror, Your reflection behind me is hazy. Your hands rest on my throat like a possessive lover, attempting to persuade me to stay home with You.

I can’t stand being alone. When there’s no one to entertain me, I entertain myself. You do. I just wish You didn’t have to be so fucking possessive about it.

My hands are shaky as they draw brown lines atop my eyelids in the mirror. I know You protest, You take my hands in Yours and beg me to stay, stay, stay, to never leave because You wouldn’t ever leave me. You know the love I have for You is conditional – You’re only here when I need You. It’s a double standard.

So I take another shot and wince at the taste as the burning slides down my throat, but feeds the pit at the bottom of my stomach that stays dormant until nights like this. I smile at myself — I’m back. I’m ready to get going. The voyeur protests, but I do it, I do it, I do it.

I am the one who got away, the one who people can’t stop thinking about.

Turn around, I’m changing.

I watch You turn around to save my decency but I pretend I don’t see You turn back. I catch Your eyes looking over the small of my back — the brown of Your irises the same hue as my own. I slip on the most revealing thing I own, all to appease the voyeur inside of me. My self-worth rests on it.

The night passes by quickly. The alcohol dulls my senses and I don't need You for the confidence this time. It’s all me. I dance and know everyone’s watching me. They would fuck me because I would fuck me.

I don’t smoke normally but I’m chainsmoking now, not even tasting the tang of the tobacco but using the buzz it gives me as white noise to tune out my laughs and screams and yells. A $12 vodka-cran —  and the "could you make that with light ice please?” I shout over the music to the bartender —  give me an excuse to grind my hips into that nameless face behind me. I find the acceptance I crave in the feelings of strangers’ hands on my body, taking what will never be theirs.

We part ways and things go black.

–

It’s the end of the night — my words are no longer slurred but my mascara is smudged. I kiss myself in the mirror. I’m kissing You. I don’t have the luxury of an altered state of consciousness this time. There’s no orgasm to chase, no conquest to make, no girl to fall in love with the well-timed swivels of my hips. It’s just me, and You, and the silence.

But I am present, and I have to dance for You.

I put You to rest, writing to please You, and this time there’s no journal and pen. It’s just my thumbs typing slurred sentences into my notes app. It’s raw and free of the niceties, the winding paragraphs of penitent prose that You praise me for.

I know I'll look back in the morning and wonder what the hell I'm talking about, but for now it makes sense. The next entry in my book of life —  the final step in this endless waltz we’ve been dancing. It’s over, for now.

So I offer You a ballerina’s reverence, curtsying from side to side before closing the curtain. It’s just You and I, and in the darkness I remember how I hate to sleep alone. I reach out my hand to You —  an offer and a plea all at once.

It’s then — and only then — that I meet my own voyeur, embrace her in my arms, and see that she looks just like me. ■