Roan2099

Girls like me don't get happy endings.
     I know what I am.
     .  I set boundaries between myself and my past, only to end up with a low-quality nightclub.  Even my excuse to work there is as bad as it can be: I work here to pay for college, get my technical degree from the most prestigious university in Montreal.  Although baffling, in the daytime: I'm just a student and at night a stripper!

     But the inevitable happens and collides with my life.  And now there's one woman who knows all of my characters: the quiet Alaskan student, anti-social, and cruel Heaven stripper.

      This woman is beautiful and complicated.  It comes from the other side of life, where this side does not want me and does not accept me.  But she does amaze me and her hot and warm hands on my skin make me feel things I gave up long ago.

     So what's the problem!

     The problem is, this woman is a teacher in my classic photography lessons at university!

Hard love to me

The second assistant to the associate to the program coordinator—whoever this girl might be—regards me, stunned, above her big square glasses.

I stand at the Academic Advising window, back straight, chin up. I'm aware of how my skinny neck sticks out of the collar of my oversize sweatshirt, of how red blotches cover my face, free of even a speck of makeup. Whenever I close my eyes it's like the inside of my eyelids turned to sandpaper. Every blink is slow and painful, scrape, scrape.

"But you can't drop out," she says dumbly.

"I considered it carefully, the implications and all," I say. "And I do want to drop out. Now give me whatever paper I need to sign and let's get it over with."

24