Another man's system

1. I say, ‘I am fat.’ He says ‘No, you are beautiful.’ I wonder why I cannot be both. He kisses me hard. 2. My college theater professor once told me that despite my talent, I would never be cast as a romantic lead. We do plays that involve singing animals and children with the ability to fly, but apparently no one has enough willing suspension of disbelief to go with anyone loving a fat girl. I daydream regularly about fucking my boyfriend vigorously on his front lawn. 3. On the mornings I do not feel pretty, while he is still asleep, I sit on the floor and check the pockets of his skinny jeans for motive, for a punchline, for other girls’ phone numbers. 4. When we hold hands in public, I wonder if he notices the looks — like he is handling a parade balloon on a crowded sidewalk; if he notices that my hands are now made of rope. 5. Dear Cosmo: Fuck you. I will not take sex tips from you on how to please a man you think I do not deserve. 6. He tells me he loves me with the lights on. 7. I can cup his hip bone in my hand, feel his ribs without pressing very hard at all. He does not believe me when I tell him he is beautiful. Sometimes I fear the day he does will be the day he leaves. 8. The cute hipster girl at the coffee shop assumes we are just friends and flirts over the counter. I spend the next two weeks mentally replacing myself with her in all of our photographs. When I admit this to him we spend the evening taking new photos together. He will not let me delete a single one of them. 9. The phrase “Big girls need love too” can die in a fire. Fucking me does not require an asterisk. Loving me is not a fetish. Finding me beautiful is not a novelty. I am not a fucking novelty. 10. I say, ‘I am fat.’ He says, ‘No. You are so much more’, and kisses me hard.