Am I your girlfriend or your puppet? Make up your mind. You tell me you love me, and you want us to be absolutely equal, and that I shouldn’t hesitate to tell you if I want you to do something for me. And then you turn around and drag me into the center of a crowded football field with all of your football-playing friends and their puppet girlfriends and parade me around like I’m something expensive you picked up from a store. I try to tell you I don’t like the attention, and you say, “Wait a sec, Sweetie.” Then you smile, and laugh, and thank people around you for their compliments, and you never get around to listening to me.
Afterwards, you pick me up and toss me into your car— figuratively, of course— and haul me over to one of your monkeys’ (oops, I meant friends’) house, where there’s a party going on. I hate parties. But you smile at me, and twirl me around, and then I’m dancing. And then the partners switch, and I’m dancing with a stranger, and I hate it. But I keep going, because I don’t want to make a scene.
The song ends, and you come for me. I’m relieved, because I don’t want to figure out what to do now on my own. Of course, then you pull me over to your friends, who are drunk and acting more monkeylike than usual. You pass me a cup, and I glance at it suspiciously. I don’t drink it. You can make me do anything else, but I’m not going to get drunk for you, even if I am your puppet.
You give me the puppy-dog eyes. Then you plant a light kiss on my cheek and whisper, “Please? For me?” You shouldn’t be able to have this effect on me, but you do. So I sniff the cup’s contents once, then take a small sip. I won’t drink any more. As soon as you aren’t looking, I slip into the kitchen and pour it out into the sink. Then I reappear by your side. You don’t even notice I was gone. I’m just an accessory, aren’t I?
I act drunk, like the rest of your friends and the accessories on their arms. We end up back on the dance floor for way too long, no matter how many times I remind you of my curfew. I can drive; I should just leave. But I can’t. You hold my strings, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
We end up at home three hours late. My parents meet me at the door, but you’re already gone. You just dropped me off and sped away, you coward.
I’m grounded, you know. But it doesn’t seem to matter, not when you’ve got a perfect smile and a perfect mask showing only the most polite young man. You can charm my parents into anything— even letting me go to your football game next week despite the fact that I’m grounded for “seven years or until I say so, missy”.
And then the game is over and I’m on the field next to you, in the middle of a crowd. “Let’s go,” I say. “I want to go home!” But you still aren’t listening, just telling me about the party so-and-so is having later in between smiling at your adoring fans.
I should do something about it. I should stand up for myself. But your touch, your kisses, your sweet words all drown out my voice, and so I don’t.