On Finding a Voice

by Charlotte Hass, FA25 Writing Team

I.

I’m sitting across from a 35-year-old man at SAT tutoring, and he’s asking me if boys and girls can “just be friends.” I am half his age, sleep-deprived, and I say, “Yes, of course,” because somewhere between mathematical concepts, my teacher figured I’d be a formidable debate partner.

I am wearing gray sweatpants and nothing has ever seemed more inappropriate, but the conversation lasts an hour, and SAT Tutor hears me but doesn’t listen. In the end, he calls me “intelligent” with a rise on the last syllable, so I know he means it as an insult. Like, “I can’t believe it! You can actually keep up.” I took debate my sophomore year of high school, so I know my arguments ran circles around his fallacies. Still, by his command, we “agree to disagree” because when you have a conversation one-on-one, the person who wins simply forces the other to concede.

My arms are crossed, and he tells me to try problems 21-30, and there is a question that requires synthetic division, and in truth, I feel synthetically divided myself, skin made of plastic, joints of silicone, feet and fingers of clay. I am something so close to human before SAT Tutor reminds me that I am, in fact, not.

II.

Four months later, the first boy to ask me out is a libertarian gun rights activist (I recall another boy from sophomore year, but he doesn’t count; he just wanted help with chemistry homework). I almost say yes despite how vehemently I abhor his stances because he’s nice to me and offers me rides on occasion.

We’re working on a student film together. I’m the assistant director and producer; he’s the production sound mixer. I am one of two girls on set. With the boys, Gun Rights Flirt declares he’d like to conceal carry when he turns 18, and I shudder at the thought of such destruction in calloused grasp, and he grins and says, “Are you really afraid of guns? I need to take you to a shooting range.” I suppose, in his eyes, this is incredibly romantic. My fingers flex over invisible triggers, and with the last of my sanity, I offer the student director a suggestion shot down by every boy in range. Theoretically, I should have influence on this set. If only I could lower my voice an octave.

III.

At school, every Friday, we gather in “Life Groups,” a pseudo-religious attempt by my school to get us to befriend students in separate cliques. This week, we are painting ceramic plates. I sit across from an incredibly wealthy girl I used to be friends with, and her best friend I knew by proxy. Wealthy Girl mentions an SNL skit from last week, and I feel an unbecoming urge to purge the words from her throat. We’re no longer friends. We barely speak, and it’s civil at best. To say we “didn’t end on good terms” would be an overstatement; to say we still like each other as people would be too hefty an assumption. Proxy Friend laughs at something I say. I’m reminded of all the times I told a joke on purpose and received static silence in return. I decide I am only funny when I’m not trying to be. Wealthy Girl recalls a memory we shared together, but she is speaking to Proxy Friend. I am no longer allowed to feel ownership over something colored gray by the passage of time. It is not fair, but I say nothing.

IV.

Eventually, I decide I love film so much I want to pursue it. My school’s film program offers a semi-cheap New York City experience, so I trade 3 days in a light-polluted cigarette wasteland for my services as my triplet siblings’ College Essay Advisor, which essentially means that they write a first draft, refuse to revise, and I talk them through all the ways their work needs improvement without condescending to them. It’s not worth it, and then, it is.

We rent a place in Brooklyn two blocks from a subway station. On the first day, I powder my cheeks with blush too pink for my complexion and visit Central Park. I’ve seen it in movies, but never while it’s raining. Central Park is peaceful despite the towers of concrete nearby. I imagine myself as the park, then as a building, and figure I am a bird perched on the telephone wires between them. The next day, I walk to The Drama Shoppe alone. I sit in a cafe across from Bryant Park and read The Bell Jar, a seven-dollar latte steaming beside me.

That night, there is a party on a boat, but I do not know anyone. I sit by the windows and watch the skyline. My friend from California calls me; I cannot hear his voice but the movement of his mouth is a comfort for which I could not have thought to pray. He says to keep an eye out for his friend, Charlie, who is, by some miracle, on the same trip with his school. I wonder if everybody knows everybody, and mine is the only forgettable face. But then, I return to The Drama Shoppe, and when I ask for recommendations, I have to clarify that I am a writer. The man with whom I speak smiles when I say I’m looking for dark comedies, that I loved Fleabag and I’ll devour anything half as good. I pay for four plays, and Drama Shoppe Man jokes that one day, I’ll have a piece on one of these shelves, perhaps beside one by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I laugh and mutter, “Yes, I’m the only aspiring writer in New York; it’s very original.” I don’t think he hears me.

But the city is wonderful, in the end, and on our 5 AM flight, I cry to my playlist of folk darlings, Noah Kahan and Hozier and the smoother parts of sad songs. Colorado seems like a nothing-sphere by comparison. Here, it is beautiful and quiet, and I decide I’d like a different, more exciting city to tear me limb from limb and leave scars after each blow. I decide I cannot wait to get out of this forsaken suburb even though I am beyond grateful for the resources available to me, and that is an interesting opposition with which to wrestle. Is it morally upright for me to despise the sentiments my classmates express loudly, arrogant and sure, as the policies they blindly support disrupt everyone’s livelihoods but their own? Or am I selfish, an embodiment of “what’s wrong with America,” which, when boiled down, always seems to come back to teenage girls?

V.

I am walking from school to get coffee. I am wearing a knit sweater and jeans—this is important. As I cross the street, an embellished Jeep packed full of boys slows beside me, and one of them shouts, “Nice sweater, you whore!” They laugh and drive away, and I wonder if any of them believe in God or if their Christianity is just a front, something to fall back on in case they’re ever caught catcalling girls on the street. I tell no one about this, so today is not that day.

VI.

I melt my silences into ink and I write with them. Not outrightly, not autobiographically, but these characters migrate to pages in spirit. SAT Tutor becomes a backstory, Wealthy Girl and Proxy Friend the inspiration for a script; Gun Rights Flirt is a warning, New York City is a backdrop, and eventually, by some miracle, I twist unoriginal experiences into art. Short stories to submit to competitions, plays to chip away at until my fingers callus like a boy’s—the boy’s—and poetry to choke on later, chicken-scratched and fervent and deceptively shallow. And then, when I’ve wrung dry the inspiration, these tales become fables to laugh about with friends—with California Friend, who sends me a long string of texts about how “my life isn’t real.”

But it is. The more I fictionalize these experiences, the more real I become.