IRIS

The city is so much easier when you’re with Kara. It’s like you want it to be. Like you’re watching a television show, ellipses between events. A never-ending daisy chain of A-plots and B-plots, recurring characters, running gags, free drugs, no rent, always shopping but never for groceries. Never having to think, everything falling into place. Learning, slowly, how to exist like nothing matters. Going to bed with her hands on your body, fade to black, winking at the audience. She’s obsessive, and she teaches you how to be the same way. There’s growing pains, things thrown and broken, flinches trained, insecurities induced. You don’t recognize yourself by the end of it, and you don’t want to: you’re everything you always thought you could never be. Beautiful, charming, funny, well-dressed, a keen eye and a sharp tongue. It’s for your own good. There’s no other way to survive in this city: it demands perfection. All your provincial, small-town attitudes are just grist for the Kara-mill. She sees a princess in you. You want to be her princess.