VEGETARIAN

by Wilma Bernard

I always felt stupid around Ron, but for a long time I didn't know it was stupid. I thought it was love.

When Ron and I met we were both eighteen and freshmen. The meeting was the first mistake, I think, and in this I feel like the innocent party. I did not try to meet Ron. My roommate Diane introduced us. She knew Ron because they were both super-vegetarians, the non-dairy, no eggs variety. Diane introduced me to Ron because she thought we would really hit it off, both being art majors, and boy was she right. I started feeling stupid right away.

The thing about Ron was, he was charming. He was smart, and cool, and handsome, and he always brought me flowers. He always told me he loved me. I believed him, I don't know why; maybe I convinced myself with sheer wishing. I needed him to love me. Just one time, I wanted the fairy tale. But see, the thing about me was, I was never as good as Ron was. I was never as smart, or as cool, or as good-looking. I wasn't as kind, or patient. I gossiped, and I messed things up all the time, and I hated the girls he had class with, the girls who made him laugh, the girls who stopped by our table in the lunch room to talk homework and to flirt. He never messed up, not in a way that he would acknowledge or anyone else could see. He flirted back, oh, you bet he did. But it was never anything concrete, never anything I could pin on him. Instead he corrected me, always gently. And for the longest time, I bought it. He had eyes that could reach down into me and make my insides seize up. His eyes made it hard to breathe, sometimes, but then he'd look away and I'd know that breathing really wasn't all that important. What was important was those eyes telling me that they loved me–even if they also told me I was mean and stupid and petty. I needed them to love me, even if they made me hate myself. His eyes made me a vegetarian, made me eat tofu and veggie burgers and pretend I enjoyed them. His eyes made me study harder, and they squelched my uncool sense of humor, and they adjusted my taste in music and clothes and friends. And if I rebelled by one percent, they looked disappointed. If I called one girl a dirty name when she couldn't even hear me anyway, they told me I was overreacting. I had to get my shit together, if I wanted to keep those eyes on me.