My name is Olivia and I was born in 1997. I am happy. I express myself easily and authentically. My voice is my own. My mind catches the light. My thoughts move fluidly from point to point: forwards, not backwards. There will be a time when I no longer want new things. I have a desire, then another one! I wear my heart on my sleeve. I am an open book. I have a favorite pop star, model, magazine. My black hair waterfalls to my waist. When I smile, it is like opening a can of Coca Cola; I have straight teeth. I breathe in. I breathe out. I am vulnerable but not fragile. Sometimes the taste of salt enters my voice; I hold the note. It costs no energy to hold still. When my breath clouds the windowpane, I do not have to draw my name. The way I spend my days never fails to give shape and sense to my life, somehow. I have short hair because I decided it’s cool. This is what makes me me: a collection of true hard facts. Facts are facts because they never change, only accumulate. In the summer of 2021, I broke my foot dancing in flip flops on a table in a bar on Chrystie Street. By the summer of 2024, I’d had three concussions. I wear loose cottons. I love cowboy boots. I have a pet liger which is a combination between a lion and a tiger. In December, I will go to Jamaica, if the tickets are not too expensive. I love travel. I probably love Jamaica. I hate or love something in increasingly sophisticated ways for years, then stop and switch. Aphex Twin: I will never change my opinion on... I am not like a well, I am like an infinity pool: clear, flowing outwards. I am the same as ever, just a different weight. When I smile, it triggers the release of dopamine, serotonin and endorphins. I read and began implementing this fact as a child. When a dreamy, faraway look enters my dark brown eyes, it means I am thinking about something... When someone sees me mouthing what I am thinking, I pretend I was listening to music, but sometimes, vice versa... I became depressed in 2010 and chill in 2020. I’m afraid of things losing shape. Some things never change. Every good thing comes my way. It is my birthday. I communicate my opinions on music, literature, art, and fashion. I love music. I love Mexican food. I love to give presents. I don’t mind if my girlfriends talk shit about me if they actually like me and I never hear about it. If you are not constrained to facts, there’s more to say; that’s why women talk to each other so much. Like most women, I file many of my observations under “men” and “women” without knowing whether men do this. I used to be impressed by men who are good at math. I can vaguely imagine the divine majesty of mathematics and the euphoria a brilliant mathematician must feel when grasping the perfect laws of an immutable universe both real and invisible. Girls on TikTok believe the universe can be changed through words only. They state a wish as a fact and the universe listens. Usually, this statement seems to be about something else, when really it is about boys. The universe is listening and implementing the will of women whose desire is to be desirable! Though I have tried with method acting, I cannot actually truly imagine what it would be like inside the brain of one of those women. Deep down, it is hard for me to believe in stuff that is not real. It’s disappointing to discover the limits of my will. I like to play pretend. My dreams are mostly banal wishes I already knew about, but when I have a fever my dreams get abstract and procedural. I know what it’s like to be five lines of C++ executing a recursive function: like Don Draper’s shadow in the Mad Men intro, falling through the same window outlined in a red-hot glow over and over until the function bottoms out and I wake up! That is my favorite dream. When someone tells you a dream, they are telling you something about themselves they do not understand, so you better listen up...One time I appeared so accurately in a boy’s dream that I felt apprehended. I spend a lot of time with people and things who do not see me: magazines for example. But through his description of his dream of me I saw myself like through a telescope. I was startled. How could the real me have gotten into his head. Even stranger because, to me, of all men he was ultimately hardest to remember. He was a music video. He was beautiful. He was like a boy a girl would invent, which in retrospect maybe I did. Watching him was great but thinking too deeply about his subjectivity, a migraine. I assumed at first he was one of these boys who have alternately fed and starved their emotions, folded and twisted their opinions, generally tortured their insides until they resemble a kind of rare and writhing orchid. I was already familiar with the type. This was when I liked professions of love being made to me in a graveyard. He, too, acted suspiciously similar to Romeo in Romeo & Juliet. His intensity was charming but ineffectual: like the flame of a candle, mostly symbolic. But over time I realized there was nothing so gardened about him. He was a natural. One night, I was troubled to feel his heart beating very fast in his chest. He was awake. There was all this botanical complexity growing blindly in the dark. I don’t know, I like the desert. We mostly walked around listening to music together, one earbud each. Lol. And that is the only information through which he’d be able to identify himself in my description... but it’s okay because he’ll 99% likely never hear about this...I love to hear other people’s dreams, which worries me because supposedly this isn’t true for most people. I sometimes worry that I don’t understand what is the normal content of a casual conversation. I never see my reflection in a dream. I dream of malls without words through which I wander calmly pocketing things. My mall dreams are familiar as a screensaver. There is one mall near the central train station of a European city with escalators impossibly intersecting each other while violin music plays. I have been there three times. There is another mall that is a flat box stretched out on the horizon of a neverending parking lot in Los Angeles, Texas. This one has lower quality stores than the other. When I go there, I first drive my SUV to buy an ice coffee at the gas station convenience store cathedral. I don’t know what happens to the coffee once I enter the mall. I like dangling the keys to an SUV from my fingers while wearing sunglasses and drinking ice coffee, then I feel like Kris Jenner. The bigger the keys, the better. If I were Balenciaga I would make fake keys like that. I see myself flip-flopping improbably around the Lower East Side with my Kris Jenner keys. It’s a way to trick boys into thinking you’re rich. Jingle the fake keys to a huge mommy SUV in their peripheral vision. My dreams are different from life because they do not have pictures in them. They do not have opinions, only feelings. To me, sadness is a feeling like water spreading up a paper napkin...no, it is dawn and you realize you are too light like a meringue...meringues are stupid...no...it is a photograph of Marlene Dietrich...tumbling into a waterfall...I am sad: I’m on a bridge and a black-and-white photo of Marlene Dietrich slips from my slim fingers into the rushing current like a teardrop...I had a children’s book called Doomed Queens. I was interested less in the melodramatic demise of Cleopatra (snake bite suicide) than the ironic composure required at the guillotine. The executioner shall not have much trouble, for I have a slender neck! This quote, attributed to Anne Boleyn, surely influenced my current personality. I looked forward to getting shots because I could practice stoicism. I watched the needle enter my skin impassively. Everything was and is deadly serious to me. The levels of theatricality one can perform secretly on the inside surpass the possibilities for outwardly exhibited theatricality tenfold. Apparently my mom took me to the doctor because she thought I had an ear problem, but I was just pretending not to hear her. I am not sure what influence ballet had on my current personality, except I like to wear either high heels or flip flops. As a little girl I had a pet cobra named Principessa. I loved to play with Barbies, as you might expect. Around her neck, Anne Boleyn wore a tight pearl choker with her name, a gold B, hanging off it. In the subway, I look at my reflection. My breath fogs the window pane. I do not rely on metaphor; I see things as they are. I do not know where my thoughts come from; they surprise me. I do not know what you think of me, but I’m sure you have the right idea. No matter the shape of my sunglasses, the form of my face never changes. Surely, my eyes work just the same whether or not I wear mascara. When I smile, it is like I have remembered something mysterious. I breathe out. I trust you know a thing or two about me. What belongs to me will find me. I do not believe there has been any miscommunication between us. I adore puppy dogs. I have a twenty-one-year-old boyfriend I like to dress up in a Chrome Hearts hoodie; he takes care of all the animals. To suggest that I have a positive work attitude, my Slack profile picture is the smiling emoji. I have cried in front of my boss. I fantasize about a dashboard of “That Was Easy”-type buttons or even better an electric shock bracelet with which to give myself constructive criticism. I am not complicated...Deep down, I believe the world is composed of points distributed at equal distances on the same plane without pattern. There is no such thing as deus ex machina. There is no such thing as character development. There is no such thing as a conclusion. There is a catch in my voice. I look down quietly. One time I... crashed my car into a bridge I watched I let it burn. I wink. “I Love It.” I look up. Sure, I’ll tell you about it some time later. I breathe out. In my room I have books. In my bed I have sheets and under it, a lot of stuff. In the summer I have tan lines. I don’t know much about my insides. I assume you have the right impression of me; information circulates naturally from inside out; it happens whether I want it to or not. I like fashion trends because they move naturally. Girls everywhere react simultaneously to the current cultural conditions: one morning you wake up and remember Twilight. A year later there’s twenty- one-year-olds wearing Twilight t-shirts. In fifth grade Jack D. got time out for saying he wanted to “kill” Edward Cullen from Twilight but I was rarely disciplined. I am the perfect audience for an advertisement by Don Draper. I like being influenced. I love to succumb! I write dramatic statements in my diary. I also write in books as I read them. I annotate using four symbols: star, asterisk, exclamation point, heart. Star and asterisk are the same and mean what you’d expect. Exclamation point is for interesting yet extraneous content that may distract from the main issue. Heart is for something on the page that seems not universally relevant to all readers but speaks to me personally. Like how when I smile, I'm looking right at you: we like to be addressed. I am not telling you this for any particular reason. People have touched me without my permission. I have a pet cheetah with a pink, crystal-studded collar. I could be blond...........Did you know it is possible for me to see myself 100% clearly. My face and voice give information that enables you to interpret the meaning of my words. Sharing the occasional true hard fact about myself is surely a necessary and natural part of casual conversation. A true fact is a hard fact...That’s not me that’s Michel Foucault, sort of. I’m not so sure “knowledge is power.” It is interpreted as the one gaining knowledge gains power. However exercising honesty is in my experience similar to hurling your subjectivity at someone’s head like a BRICK: I used to enjoy that feeling. Oh I am open with people I know and private with strangers. I drink tequila and kahlua, never gin. You know, some men cause everything to contract to a point. Other men cause things to expand. I am actually not drunk. I am afraid of the right things. Saying something and saying the opposite of that thing are much more similar than saying something and saying nothing, in fact sometimes the effect is indistinguishable. According to some, expressing yourself is a form of vulnerability, but only if it costs you something. I want a daughter and a sports car. I shrug. I smile. I love ice cream. My eyes flick from your left eye to your right eye. Men tell things how they are, and so do I. I communicate my preferences in matters of taste. I have a favorite painter, a favorite poet, and a favorite philosopher. Painting is so great; I love it. Yum. I drink coffee. I get nervous. My face gives information. Never have I ever faked an orgasm. Humans are just animals who can talk. I am sad when I am hungry, tired, or on my period. I have a favorite noise musician. I have a pet monkey who can talk. This cute monkey loves to ask me questions about myself. I think the most beautiful scene ever is in Bladerunner when he gives her the test to find out if she’s a robot. She cries because there’s no way for her to tell whether it’s a robot crying or a human. It’s so sad. I always laugh because the question she fails the human test on is whether she would eat a dog and I definitely would...I cried in the Barbie movie... Sometimes, upon waking, I realize my dream has been nothing but a long sequence of ballet. My mind is deep teal and calm as a lake in shadow. When I speak, it is like Daisy in The Great Gatsby: softly, so you have to lean in close. When you throw a BRICK in a lake, it disappears from view. Oh, no, I do not remember that. Oh yes, it is my birthday. Only the real hard facts tell you anything about anyone. Like things that have happened in their lives. I’ll never know how many times I have been pregnant; I guess I could be pregnant right now. Desire always feels like an opening—really, it is a terrible contraction. Everyone knows that people have shockingly similar dreams and desires, which is why one does not ever need to speak of them! Like most people, I don’t ask questions when I don’t want the answer!! I have had sex with seventeen people but, just so you know, some of them were women!! By the way, I am not telling you anything for any reason!!! I put my headphones on, I listen to my favorite song. I worry a lot what other people mean. I am communicating to you that I have a favorite noise musician. What if I told you I have a pet mountain lion named Baby. My period comes every twenty-eight days. I smile. I do not chase, I attract. My favorite flavor is black raspberry with white chocolate chips and rainbow sprinkles. I have a little sister; her name is Lucia. I have opinions on C++.