Young Writers Society

"You can deny anything, if you want to. Reality is merely a matter of perception. If you define reality like that, then you can change your perception and consequently change the reality. Don't like something? Then deny it."

There's always that point in our lives when we're the most impressionable, when the basic parts of who we are is being molded by external forces, most of which we have no control over. That part of my life was spent with my parents in the navy, moving from place to place, and so I never had a chance to be molded into much of anything except for a chameleon.

Most people say it's hard being a navy brat; maybe I've always been a little more detached than most from the world around me, but I never have understood what those hardships were supposed to be. I formed friendships and got to move before any could hurt me. I was never what people thought I was, because of all the impressions of me vying for dominion in my soul. That didn't bother me; it is another fact of life.

And yet, everyone I meet remains positive that my unimpressionability is merely a veneer, that my chameleon-like tendencies are only a subconscious defense mechanism at hiding my insecurity. Everyone's a psychologist nowadays.

I'm in the back of a cab that's at the back of a long string of traffic. The driver is a man with eyes as small as fingernails and black as the night sky, and they're watery, like he has allergies. Over these, thick eyebrows that bunch up on his forehead and make him look perpetually puzzled and succeed in making his eyes even more invisible than they'd be naturally. A skinny face, sprinkled with some adult acne, but mostly so oily that he shines like jewelry every time the sun hits him. His unwashed stench is made worse by the stifling air that builds up inside the vehicle, perpetually circulated by vents spitting out air that only serves to make everything more like a furnace.

I wish vaguely for a second that the traffic would dissipate so I could go home and let the hot water from the shower beat out all the stresses of the day, unknot muscles that I hadn't even known were capable of becoming knotted. At least my heart has never become knotted, like Katrina, the girl that has the cubicle next to me and recently discovered that the guy she has been seeing for the last three months hasn't considered her a relationship at all, just a sex partner.

Men are animals. Women can be too, of course. Then, we leave those animalistic impression on the children, and so the neverending cycle of crapping on each other to get ahead will continue.

A depressing thought. I push it to the back of my mind. I prefer not to dwell on the unchangeable, and the bestiality of human nature is so ingrained in us all that it is unchangeable. So I think back to the man I met, three nights ago.

It was at the bar that I go to once a month, mainly to allow myself the privilege of getting wasted as much as some people do nightly and having an experience that is semi-normal just to see what it's like. Usually I end up going home alone, slumped over in the backseat of the taxi, and if I haven't gotten kicked out on the curb to make my way through the cold, gray city streets then I wake up in my bed in various states of half-dress and not knowing how I got there, but knowing that though I left the club alone, I didn't arrive at my house that way.

When he sauntered over to me, I didn't know what he was doing. He looked as drunk as I felt, and the dim lights coupled with my dizziness made look irresistibly attractive, though if I was sober he would have likely been as ugly as a goat.

Then, he said it. About reality being a perception, about being able to change your perception, and the intensity of his words rang with such clarity and strength that his sobriety was unquestionable. I tried to push myself on him again, aware that I was drunk, that this was not like me, and also aware that I would not remember much of this encounter anyway and thus there was no reason to not do it.

"Not now. Maybe later."

So he gave me a piece of paper that smelled like the underside of a bed, arms pits, beer, a crusty pair of boxers with the mysterious stain that someone presses against your nose. It was white once, but it was yellow, God knows how.

Then, he left. I left later, alone, and woke up the next morning fully clothed, the bed next to me cold, and painfully aware of how much of a whore I had been last night. My cheeks went red as I recalled someone having told me that alcohol could not make you do something that you would not normally feel lead to do; it would just release the inhibitions that kept you from doing what you truly wanted to do. I pushed the thought away, though, because it was unchangeable.

I realize that while I've been in thought, I've been staring straight into the driver's eyes in his mirror. He's licking his lips, and I feel puke rising in my throat as I recall that I'm wearing the shirt, the lacey white one where my boobs spill out. I know that when he lets me off at my apartment, he will look to see which one I enter so he can return later that night, drunk and horny. I think that I'll give in; it would be much more pleasant than having a disgusting slob force himself on you.

I'm not sure that reality is a matter of perception at all. Reality is reality for me. My perception is shaped by the reality, not vice versa. It's unchangeable. Unavoidable.

And this bug-eyed, slobbering, over-fifty man, probably with a penchant for pornography involving slightly pedophiliac themes, will be next to me in bed the next night, and none of it will mean anything at all to me, because I am by nature a chameleon and remained untouched by virtually everything.