How to Be Made by Men, 1981 | Anne Falkowski
Become a teenage girl. Date a boy, too old for you, with a lion painted on the side of his van. Make sure the boy sells weed and is stoned all the time. Kneel in your denim mini skirt in the back of his van. Let the brown shag carpet snag your nylon-covered knees. In the haze of cigarette smoke and blunts, listen to Frank Zappa and pretend to like it. Really like it. Dinah Moe Hum. I don’t mind that she called me a bum, but I knew right away she was really gonna cum (so I got down to it). Have no preference for your own music. When asked what you want to listen to, say you don’t know. Keep it to yourself that you suspect the lyrics to Dinah Mo Hum are fake, nothing more than Frank’s fantasy. Know your preference for getting fucked up. Prefer booze. One hundred proof anything. The boy with the van has the same golden eyes and curly mane as the lion. Focus on the smoothness of the bottle in your hands, the warmth as Smirnoff glides down your throat and laps your belly. Feel the softening of your brain. Notice how weed makes your synapses think they’re fucking. Forget it’s cold outside and you should have worn a coat like your mother said. Convince yourself that Frank Zappa is a musical god. Music made for men by men. When the boy in the van with the lion painted on it gets on top, make sure to move in ways and make sounds in ways so he knows he did that thing, made you hum. When you get home, let yourself secretly in the door and sit in front of your mirror. The Bible says Eve was made from Adam’s rib. You don’t believe in God. You do believe in lions. They don’t chase their prey but wait for them. You wonder if they discard the weaker ones, the ones that stink like rotten meat, the ones that don’t make them hum. Now all your efforts will go into not being discarded. Sit in front of your mirror, glide a cotton ball soaked in baby oil over and under your eyelids. Watch the dark smudges come off. Accept you want to be made by men. Be pleased with what you see.
More about the author:
Anne Falkowski’s work is upcoming or has been published in Hippocampus, Pithead Chapel, The Rumpus, Solstice Review, Hunger Magazine, The Coachella Review, Change Seven, and others. She has been nominated multiple times for Best of the Net. In 2023, her writing placed in Solstice Fiction Literary Prize, Frank Demott Literary Prize., and Writers Digest Personal Essay Contest. In 2024, she placed first in the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize. website AnneFalkowski.net.