text: # The Depth of Flesh By Chandler Morrison &#x200B; You’re supposed to smile. You know this, but you can’t. You can’t smile. Even as you look out at the cheering mass of your classmates, you just can’t smile. You’re drowning in the applause. When you’re presented with the shimmering crown and the long silver scepter, you’re not breathing. You wonder if your face is turning blue. You wonder if it’s a shade that will clash badly with your dress. The boy next to you, the boy you hate...*he’s* smiling. His face, sculpted so expertly in its angles and lines, is swallowed up by his grin. His teeth are like milk sugar, his lips like strawberry lemonade. Applause, so much applause, coated and peppered with smiles and cheers. You force yourself to breathe. Your breath comes out in a harsh wheeze that’s mercifully drowned out by the clamorous cacophony. You try to smile. You fail. You try to wave, but you fail at that, too. You can’t move. You don’t want to be here. You never wanted any of this. Earlier this evening, you stood before the mirror, and it told you that you are the fairest of all. It was telling the truth. You know this, and you hate it. You hate the mirror for saying it. You hate it because it’s true. As you curled your hair and painted rouge your pursed lips, you knew what was going to happen. They would announce your names, and April Diver and Jake Barnaby would take the stage. You knew he would smile. You knew you wouldn’t. You wanted to cry, so you took a Valium because you didn’t want to ruin your makeup. You went downstairs and sat on the couch, taking care not to wrinkle your dress. You lit a cigarette, and the whisper of your exhalation was the only sound in the house. No one, save for the mirror, was there to tell you how pretty you looked. No one was there to see you off. Your mother wasn’t there to blot her teary eyes and say that she can’t believe you’re all grown up. Your father wasn’t there to hug you and kiss your forehead with lips parted in a melancholic smile. Your brother wasn’t there to make an amicably sarcastic remark. No one was there. No one ever is. You are alone. No matter where you are, no matter who’s present or who isn’t, you are shackled to solitude. Jake arrived in his shining silver Mercedes. You jumped at the sound of the doorbell, and then crushed your cigarette out in the heart-shaped ashtray on the coffee table. Your hand was shaking. You did not want to do this, but free will is a lie. When you opened the door, he leaned in to kiss you, but you tilted your head to prevent your lips from locking. His mouth lightly brushed your cheek. “I forgot the corsage,” he’d said, looking down at his gleaming shoes. “I knew that you would.” You raised your hand to show him the flower on your wrist. It was black. It was dead. You hadn’t refrigerated it, and you lied to yourself and pretended it was by accident. He opened the car door for you, and you hated him for it. You wished he wouldn’t do things like that. You wished he wouldn’t do anything at all. You drove in silence. No conversation, no music. You knew he wanted to say something, say anything, but he knew better. His one saving grace. He always knew better. You were swarmed with compliments upon your arrival. All of the girls clustered around you like head lice. They said all of the things they were supposed to say. No one commented on the dead flower. All of the boys averted their eyes because they knew they weren’t supposed to look. Inside, you drank the obligatory punch. Danced the obligatory dances. The Valium made everything hazy enough for you to do all of this without having to think too much about how horrible it was. And then, of course, the announcement. And here you are. Platinum crown upon your platinum hair. Scepter in your limp hand. The applause is apocalyptic. When it’s finally over, you stand smoking in the parking lot, leaning against Jake’s car and staring forlornly at the starless sky. You wish the blackness would swoop down and smother you in its nothingness. You look around at all of the laughing young couples sweeping the parking lot, clambering into cars that will take them to beer-soaked parties or latex-reeking bedrooms or, hopefully, deadly drunken crashes. You wonder how close you are to what *they* are. You want to think you’re different, but you can’t deny the fact that you’re all marching to the slow, ominous beat of the death drums. Drums that signify an end that just won’t come soon enough. Jake appears from somewhere, and with his goofy smile he says, “I’ve been looking for you.” You drop the cigarette and crush it under the long, pointed heel of your sparkly white shoe. “I have, too,” you say. He looks at you quizzically. “Huh?” “Nothing.” He drives you home. The silence is the same. When he pulls into your driveway, he kills the ignition and looks at you imploringly. Now, the world tells you that you have a choice at this moment. The world tells you that you can thank him for a good time, get out of the car, and walk alone into the empty house. The world tells you that, as a free and independent woman, you don’t have to do anything more than that. And maybe the world is right. Maybe you don’t. But none of that matters. It doesn’t matter that you invite him inside. It doesn’t matter that you lead him upstairs to your bedroom. It doesn’t matter that you undress yourselves in awkward silence. It doesn’t matter that he watches you as you do, but you look distractedly out the window. It doesn’t matter that you don’t feel anything when he enters you, because you can’t feel anything at all. It doesn’t matter that he drenches you with his sweat. It doesn’t matter that you have to pretend like you’re enjoying it, even though the world tells you with reassurances and hashtags that you don’t have to do that, either. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know that you’re faking. It also doesn’t matter that he’s not wearing a condom, nor does it matter that he comes inside of you. He wants to stay. He wants to lie beside you and stroke your hair. He wants so many things. He wants everything that you cannot give him. None of that matters. You tell him to leave, but that doesn’t matter, either. It doesn’t matter that, as he dresses himself, he looks like he’s going to cry. It doesn’t matter that you don’t see him to the door. It doesn’t matter that he was ever there at all. For hours, you lie there, looking up at the ceiling. You lie there until you can’t take it anymore, so you get up and go into the bathroom and turn on the shower. You gasp a little when you step beneath the scalding water. And as you stand there, feeling the water glide over your skin in its eternal rivers, you imagine a coat of grime falling off of you in thick globs. It slides down you and swirls around the shower drain before being mercifully sucked down into the abyssal sewers beneath the shrieking pit of retarded children that is the World of Man. After an unknown length of time, once you feel at last that you’ve been washed clean, you get out of the shower and dry yourself off. You can already feel the grime beginning to collect again.