On Scary Women, by Lynn Schmeidler
It was in high school physics class, talking with Liz and Alan. Alan was talking about some girl he wanted to ask out (he was asking our advice, what should he say?) and I was a little sad, a little jealous. I had a crush on Alan. Liz asked him something about what he’d say if he were asking out one of us. I don’t remember what he said about asking out Liz (who was a skilled flirt and currently dating some much older guy). What I do remember is what he said to me. “I’m afraid of you.”
I thought I had been flirting too. I thought all my teases and challenges had made us closer. It’s like the con woman in my story says when she first tries to ensnare the American couple she sees at a gallery in Venice, “I’ve shot too high.” Or, in my case, I’d hit too hard.
When it came to boys, I was a bully. I don’t know when it started—I remember having heart-to-hearts in kindergarten with my “husband” Steven, sharing my bag lunch with Richie in third grade, basking in the knowledge that he liked me back. But somewhere around my 10th birthday, pre-puberty, I became a little mean. When a boy liked me who I thought was beneath me, I ridiculed him. Even when I liked him, I was mean to him. I couldn’t help it. To show Paul that I liked him, I kicked him. Hard. And so, by the time I was a junior in high school, though I’d crushed on countless boys, the word was in—I scared them.
I had a strong father; I grew up in a patriarchal household with a brother. I learned early that to be noticed, approved, loved was to be the best—the smartest, the strongest, the quickest. Inside my family of origin, I competed with my father for Most Valuable Person; outside I competed with my peers. I learned to put out a very clear message that I needed no one. I didn’t go to parties (in fact, I was afraid of them.) I didn’t drink (ditto). I didn’t do drugs. (same). I didn’t attend my senior prom because by then people had paired off—how had that happened?
Robert, who I’d had a crush on all elementary school, was dating Kelly and it was rumored they’d stay together forever (they have). David, who I’d lusted after since 5th grade must have had his pick of dates, was going with Marly who was not nearly as witty as I was nor as smart as he was (was that the point?). So I asked three guys I knew would never go with me—a still-closeted dear friend who’d been asked already by another close friend in our friend group; a guy I barely knew who lived 45 minutes away but whom I’d gone on a summer travel trip with (he very awkwardly, possibly fearfully, demurred); another guy who, now that I think of it, I cannot say why I asked except that it seemed by then that it would make a good story to say I’d asked three guys to the prom and none had agreed.
Instead, I went to a comedy club in the city with a girlfriend who also “didn’t want to go” to prom, and we slept on my grandmother’s pullout couch in her rent-stabilized upper-east side apartment. The show wasn’t even that good.
I think it was Alan who stopped my bullying. Junior year of high school, discovering that you “scared” the senior you just wanted to notice you, is a little late to learn that pushing someone on a playground is not the way to get him to like you. I still think, though, that I gave off some serious stay-the-fuck-away-unless-you’re-truly-worthy vibes. Truth was I was the one who was afraid. Afraid of drinking, afraid of drugs, yes, and also afraid of relationships. Afraid of sex.
“I don’t like to be out of control,” my mother had always said in response to her own “squareness,” and I suppose, even though I mocked her for it, I also wanted to be in control. It’s not a revelation to say that growing up female in this world leaves a pretty certain impression on you that you are very much not in control. No less so now.
In the end, I sometimes think that snarky, self-sufficient, wise-gal exterior I cultivated and never quite shed did do me some good. I weeded out the men who’d be afraid of me, and maybe that was a good thing. The men in my life who’ve made their way through my off-putting initial presentation wanted a strong woman. The man I ultimately ended up with still finds me a little bit scary, but in a good way.
I fill my stories with outrageous women who do things I never did because I want to be the fearless, fearsome woman that Alan thought I was. The one I was pretending to be. The one who would have said to Alan, “I scare you? Then ask me out. I’ll help you face your fears.”
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Lynn Schmeidler is the author of Half-Lives, which was selected by Matt Ball as the winner of the 2023 Autumn House Rising Writer Prize in Fiction. Her fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Georgia Review, KR Online, the Southern Review, and other publications, and she won the 2023 BOMB Fiction Contest for her short story “InventEd.” She has been awarded residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She is the author of the poetry book History of Gone and two poetry chapbooks, Wrack Lines and Curiouser & Curiouser. She lives in the Hudson Valley.
HALF LIVES
A playful debut short story collection imagining women’s lives in a world free of social limitations.
Amid heightened restrictions about what women can and cannot do with their bodies, Lynn Schmeidler’s debut short story collection, Half-Lives, is a humane, absurd, and timely collection of narratives centering on women’s bodies and psyches. Playful and experimental, these sixteen stories explore girlhood, sexuality, motherhood, identity, and aging in a world where structures of societal norms, narrative, gender, and sometimes even physics do not apply. The protagonists grapple with the roles they choose and with those that are thrust upon them as they navigate their ever-evolving emotional lives. A woman lists her vagina on Airbnb, Sleeping Beauty is a yoga teacher who lies in state on the dais of her mother’s studio, and a museum intern writes a confession of her affair in the form of a hijacked museum audio guide.
Half-Lives is the 2023 Rising Writer Prize winner, selected by Matt Bell.
Category: On Writing
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