I am a journalist of lies. Fiction writers are obligated to tell the truth, even when writing fiction, which is something I just can't live up to these days. Despite that, my friends keep telling me that I should consider telling the truth, that it'll be easier.
I haven't really been sleeping well, but the anxieties keeping me awake aren't especially interesting. I'm in my second year of university and it's just all the usual existential angst that you'd expect from someone my age. Am I in the right program? What am I doing with my life? Am I even going to make it far enough to graduate? Is it all worth it? I can't answer any of these questions, and people keep telling me that's normal, which is okay, I guess, but I don't want to feel normal, I want answers.
The environment around me is hostile and I have no friends. Yesterday I went on a date with my boyfriend, and we talked as we often do, but he didn't understand. I started the conversation by saying that we should get engaged. I was joking. He ended it by saying that we should break up. He wasn't.
So I find myself alone and aimless, and the world around me is in a state of flux that I cannot begin to wrap my mind around. And I can't sleep, and it's cold in the room. But I think I've got a solution to my problems, I think I know exactly what I'm going to do. It's going to make my life perfect and everything will be fine and I'll be able sleep again knowing that I've made an important contribution. And people will love me.
I'm going to become a journalist, a real one. I will cover an important war and I'll probably win a Pulitzer and everything will be right. I've got a lead on a source who'll tell me exactly what it's like to be on the front lines.
"I'm not really a woman," the woman I'm sitting with, named L, says. "I am a bundle of perceptions shaped by the socioeconomic expectations of all those around me who choose to perceive me as having characteristics that traditional patriarchal hegemonies characterize in their sad and oppressive gender binary system as being feminine."
"Really," I say, loosely taking notes but not really caring. This is not the person I am here to see, it's just her roommate; she doesn't really matter, I'm just killing time while I wait for the important one to come back.
"I exist as a body of dissent against that mainstream oppressive power," she tells me, "so really I'm not a person at all, I'm actually just a political statement. My body exists not for the benefit of myself but so I can help advance the fight against all that is wrong in the world. My soul doesn't matter, what matters is that I choose to express myself in a way that runs contrary to evil agendas. That body, then, is not a reflection of a feminine soul; it is simply a bundle of perceptions that transcends both the masculine and feminine and into the pure essence of cultural neutrality."
"Really," I say. "So where do you pee?"
"Well, I use the lady's room," she says uncomfortably, and there's a moment of silence.
"But we're working to fight that!" she finally exclaims. "I'm really glad you mentioned peeing. We're fighting hard to make it so that even then, we can have a special ghettoized bathroom alongside the normal ones so that us tools of dissent can keep fighting the fight prominently even while peeing! What we're really doing is embracing the idea of ghettos and--"
The important woman walks in, and I leave L and her horrible shrill voice and pointless blathering behind without any further ado, getting up and walking away.
"It was really nice talking to you!" she trails off, but I pay her no mind.
The woman who just walked in, meanwhile, commands all my attention. She's the pinnacle of beauty, her hips swaying with each step, and I think maybe I've managed to fall in love. Stay professional, I tell myself, this is Captain Linda Rogers herself, I have to keep cool. She's my real insight into this vicious and senseless war; she'll be my chance at redeeming myself forever.
"Captain Rogers!" I say, excitedly. "It's a real honour to finally meet--"
She comes close enough to me to put her finger on my lips, and she shushes me with a whisper.
"Hush, love," she tells me, and I feel her staring me up and down. "Now, you're that journalist, aren't you?"
I nod nervously, staring at her, finding it harder and harder to keep my composure.
"It's nice to meet you, little miss," the captain says.
"I...," I stammer, and she takes her finger off my lips, "I have so much to ask you."
"Well, let's start the interview right away," she says, right before she grabs me by the arms and pins me against the wall. I quiver, confused as she kisses me, but when she finally breaks off, she explains, "We don't have much time left."
This is important, I have to get my questions in, or I'll never make it as a journalist! But she pays no attention to my protests and quickly unbuttons my blouse.
"No bra," she observes with a smile. "You really were prepared." Then her hands move, acting just as beautifully as she looks, and I find myself moaning.
"Please," I tell her between gasps, "I'm a journalist, what are you doing?"
She unzips my pants, and looks up at me. "You need a press pass," she explains. And then she goes down on me, and I feel overwhelmed, and we have the most incredible, the most powerful, the most wet fuck I've ever had in my life inside that doorway.
And then, and only once we're all done and we're cuddling on the floor next to her boots and her coatrack, she places a medal on my chest, and when I look at it, I see that it has her name on it.
"There, little miss journalist," she says, kissing me tenderly, "without that, nobody would've ever taken you seriously. But now, you'll get to see the frontlines."
Still feeling warm, I turn around to thank her for giving me that badge, but she's already disappeared.
"Hey," I say to her roommate, "do you know where she is?"
"Um, she's got a war to fight, she's on the battlefield," that horrible shrill voice tells me.
"Can you show me where she is?" I ask.
"I'm sorry," she tells me, "but I don't really leave the house."
That's fine, I think to myself, I'm a journalist! I can go find her myself, I'll go find that war and I'll prove myself for sure. I'll win that Pulitzer and I'll impress my friends and my ex-boyfriend and all will be right in the world. I just know it, I've really grown as a person here.
As I look at the snowy, mortar ruined battlefield on the edge of the Otonabee river, I think to myself, war truly is hell. It's cold and miserable, and my jacket is much too light to deal with this kind of weather; I feel like Napoleon crossing into Russia, and I wonder if I'll die of exposure. Probably. Worst of all, though, nobody's salted the icy streets.
The trenches are empty as I walk through them, but I know there's a battle up ahead. I just have to cross this empty, abandoned town first; but I know exactly where the fighting is, I just have to follow the smoke plume, the sound of gunshots, and the distant sound of Katy Perry.
But there's no point in complaining, I tell myself, this is my chance to prove myself! So I suck it up, and take another drag of my cigarette to keep me warm, and I march onwards towards the battlefield. It takes me an hour to hit it. I walk casually forward into the smoke.
Suddenly, a mortar hits the ground behind me, and I'm blown forward in a huge explosion. I hit the icy edge of a trench, and directly overhead, I hear gunfire coming towards me; without thinking, I find myself running.
"Press!" I shout, but bullets fly overhead all the same. I shout it louder, and I keep running, and I run and I run until I slip on the damn unsalted floor of the trench. I slide forward, out of control, unable to slow down, until I crash the wall of a trench.
"Ow, ow," I say, and then I look over my shoulder and realize that I'm not alone anymore. A woman in a ball gown behind a machine gun is staring at me.
"Who might you be?!" she demands hostily, pulling out a sidearm and pointed it at me. "To which side do you belong?"
"Press!" I tell her anxiously, holding my hands up. "Don't shoot, I'm a journalist!"
"For whose side are you reporting?" she asks with a glare, flipping back her long blonde hair with her pistol. "Are you a Butch or a Femme?"
"What?" I ask, confused.
"Well, which one are you?!"
"I...," I stammer, "I don't know! I thought we were fighting patriarchy!"
"Oh," she says, and then she puts the gun away, returning to the machine gun pointed into the smoky distance. "You're one of those types."
"I don't understand," I say.
"That's because you're naive," she says, "but you'll understand soon enough."
"Which one are you?"
She scoffs loudly, firing her machine gun at some unseen enemy. "I'm a Femme, of course," she says.
"Who's winning?" I ask, not really sure if that's the right question. I mean, I don't know what to say at all, I wasn't expecting this at all! This wasn't the war I was prepared to cover.
"They are," she tells me between bursts. "There's only three of us left."
After a good few seconds of firing, and I scribble that down in my notepad, she continues. "There used to be four, but then she defected to the other side," she tells me.
"That's unfortunate," I say.
"She used to be beautiful, too," she says, "but now she's got a mohawk. Can you believe--"
Suddenly a mortar lands right behind us, in the trench.
"Shit!" she yells, and without thinking I throw myself to the side just as it explodes in a huge flurry of smoke, shrapnel, and snow. My ears ring and I can't hear or see anything, and I just lay there in the fetal position, terrified for my life.
When the smoke finally clears, I see that the woman in the ballgown is dead, and everything has turned quiet. I sit up, and I do the only thing I can do; light a cigarette.
Over the horizon, I see a group of men, all dressed in three piece suits, real Edwardian-like. They're all holding rifles at their sides, laughing amongst each other as they cross No Man's Land, over the barbed wire and icy ground. I don't know who they are, but they're absolutely hot. Nothing like a man in a suit, I think to myself; I wouldn't mind getting one of their interviews.
They don't notice me until they get to the edge of the trench.
"Hey!" one of them shouts with a woman's voice, "Who the fuck are you?!"
"Press!" I yell back. "Don't shoot, I'm press!"
"Oh," she says with a shrug. "Fair enough."
Another says, with a husky-but-feminine voice, "Wait, let's see your credentials, first."
They all hop down into the trench, the untrusting one training a gun on me, until I show the badge. She grabs it and looks it over.
"Linda Rogers?" she asks, scornfully. "God, what a bitch." And I'm scared for a second, but then she shrugs too; apparently my credentials check out.
"Hey," the third says, sitting next to me. "Bum a smoke?"
"You don't have one?" I ask, surprised.
"Nope."
"But everyone smokes," I say.
"Yep."
"Uh...," I say, feeling puzzled, and I pull out the pack, offering one. "Here you are."
"Thanks," she says, and she puts it in her ear.
Behind her, her comrades are putting their attention to each other, laughing loudly and slapping themselves on the back.
Suddenly, I remember why I'm here, and I quickly pull out my notebook again, starting to scribble down everything that I just saw. It's important, they need to know back home that this is what all the fighting's for! I set out to make a difference, and by god, I'll make one!
And so I write.
"Hey," the one who needed a smoke asks me, nudging my shoulder. "What're you going to call your story when you publish it?"
I don't know, I never thought about it.
"Because you should totally name it something clever," she says. "People love stories with clever titles. Something like 'All's Quiet on the West Bank Front.'"
"That's retarded," I say.