Sometimes, as I walked around Columbus, I thought about Marilyn Monroe—and how so many of the girls walking around exhibited that buoyant sexiness characteristic of her immortally laughing self, encased for eternity in white and Warhol. Occasionally, at a party or in a city where no one knew me, where my anonymity gave me a floor to reinvent myself in whatever incarnation I chose, I pretended to be from Dayton, Ohio. On those nights, I’d force an ease of manner, animate my eyes and hope to fool everyone in the room. But within the course of a few hours and several beers, all my Indian reticence of movement would be back on field. I’d falter, shake my head no, smile a ‘never mind’ and long to leave. I don’t think anyone else could tell, but I always noticed the moment America slipped away from me.

Maybe American beauty is a religion, a higher calling you need to be born into. Maybe Marilyn is their Mother Goddess. Maybe there is a giggling girl trying—but not too hard—to suppress her playful white dress inside every American woman. And maybe the rest of us can do nothing but stand by, mesmerized and resentful.

It was a funny-looking group walking under the bright lights to the Campus Arts District. I wasn’t sure what had come over us but on some experimental impulse, Nicole, Hannah, Ward and I had decided to go out to a club.

I got into my tightest, darkest jeans and the only shirt I owned with sequins on it, then helped Hannah struggle into a swathe of black polyblend. Ward pulled himself away from the room where several of the nerdiest boys on campus sat around playing World of Warcraft and growing incidental beards. Nicole slipped into a simple green dress that floated over the perfect lines of her perfect body, and I laughed inwardly at the unintentional foil the rest of us were providing for her.

Ward smiled at me. ‘Oh hey, Tara, you look so nice.’

I felt a fierce rush of affection for Ward, for his bear-body and sweet eyes and brotherly arm on mine—because I knew he wasn’t lying even though what he’d said wasn’t true.

We entered the club and I was immediately nervous, borderline terrified. How did Tits and her friends do this every weekend? The dark room was pounding with the reverb from what felt like a thousand speakers beating in sync to the pull and thrust of a thousand bodies. On raised platforms dotting the edges of the throbbing space, bodies were drunk and more naked than not, writhing against doppelgängers and poles. The four of us stood around the entrance, a little confused and very wary.

‘I don’t want to be here.’