Fic: Not a Pretty Girl - the girls she knows (Girl!Bob) PG13
Image by Itsy
Title: Not a Pretty Girl - the girls she knows
Fandom: Bandom: MCR
Characters: Girl!Bob
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 1327
Summary: Bob carries these women with her all the time.
*
There are three women, besides her mother, that Bob thinks about every single day of her life.
*
Bob's first boyfriend--well, her first real boyfriend, because she doesn't count Mark from 12th grade--was a monumental prick.
They started dating not long after Bob hit the scene in college. If Bob's instincts were as finely honed then as they are now, she wouldn't have gone near Danny with a ten-foot pole. Unfortunately she was young, naive and far too easily dazzled by pretty boys back then.
Danny was a king of the scene. He was the lead singer for a local band that was rather popular, and he was ridiculously good looking. Bob remembers stammering and blushing when he first spoke to her. A part of her still felt like the outcast band loser she'd been in high school and she couldn't figure out why he'd even noticed her, much less sought her out, in a room full of hip scene girls who were better looking.
She thought he was charming with his self-deprecating smile, thoughtful conversations, and his habit of hovering around her solicitously. When he leaned in towards her one night, obviously planning to kiss her, she almost blurted out, "Are you serious? Me? For real? Why?"
Of course, she knows now that he picked up on the way Bob was still struggling with self-identity, still trying to figure out who she was and what that meant. She could have gone in a lot of directions and was ripe for the shaping.
Once they were dating, it didn't take long before everything about Danny gained an edge of sharpness. He dominated most of their conversations and continually told her she was wrong about everything, even when she was obviously and clearly right. His hovering became less solicitous and more creepy, and he started curling his hand around Bob's bicep, tightly, every time another guy was anywhere near her.
None of it sat well with Bob and alarm bells were ringing somewhere inside of her, though she couldn't pin down why, exactly.
It came to a head one night when Bob went out to see an early show for a band and got caught up talking with their sound guy. They were discussing some of the local venues, just bullshitting about which ones were good for live shows, which ones sucked, and that kind of thing.
Danny showed up ready to spit nails, angry that Bob hadn't gone directly home after the show. He grabbed her arm and she pulled away, instinctive and immediate, and said, "Calm down."
Danny said, "Shut up, you stupid whore."
Bob punched him. She didn't even think about it, just hauled back and landed one right on his nose, which started bleeding like a motherfucker. He stared at her for a minute, blood pouring down his face, then made a move like he was about to come at her. Bob bared her teeth and was ready to stomp him into the ground if he actually came any closer.
He didn't. Instead he spat a mouthful of blood at her and walked out of the club. She didn't know why at the time, didn't get it, but she knows now that he was a coward, a bully, and a fucking pathetic piece of shit.
A few weeks later she saw him at a bar. He was with a girl named Jackie who was in a couple of Bob's classes; they'd spoken after class a lot, in fact, and were sort of friendly. Bob saw Danny notice her, then whisper to Jackie. The two of them laughed together and Jackie tossed Bob a triumphant look.
Jackie stopped talking to Bob after classes. Eventually she also stopped wearing short-sleeved shirts and her make-up started looking caked and layered at her cheekbones, then around her eyes. She kept her head ducked and didn't make much eye contact with anyone.
When Bob put the pieces together, her stomach cramped up painfully and she cried, right in the middle of the hall after class.
*
Early on in Bob's touring life, probably on her second tour, she met a stripper named Penelope in St. Louis.
Penelope was a self-described broad who drank her whiskey straight and neat, and chain-smoked unfiltered Camels. She had a gaze that could gut a person at twenty feet just as easily as it could brazenly induce all manner of filthy fantasies. Once, a customer had tried to corner her in an alley after her shift and she'd put a stiletto through his hand. She was tough, ballsy, and hardened.
Bob only knew her for a night, just had one long conversation with her at some dive bar, and they talked about Penelope's work. She told Bob, "Objectification? Oh, no, honey. No, no. What they come for, whatever they see in me when I'm up there? It's meaningless. Self-perception is key. They can't do something to me that I don't recognize or believe in."
At the time, Bob couldn't comprehend how that could be, didn't think it was possible for someone to be herself when there were people taking-taking-taking in unseen ways. But nowadays, Bob's life is spent on stage. There are articles and pictures of her band in magazines, videos on Fuse, and clips all over YouTube. She gets it and she clings to it.
*
Bob doesn't know her name but there was this girl in a club in Chicago. The girl was sweet faced, with deep dimples in her cheeks, dark pink hair, and dainty tattoos on the front of her shoulders. Bob wasn't there to work, or even to see the really crappy band that was playing. She was there to hang out with some friends who knew the band, and they were pressed along one of the walls, drinking and laughing.
The sweet-faced girl caught Bob's eye early on in the night because of the pink hair. It was sort of really cute, and whenever Bob scanned the crowd she looked for it, like a private little in-joke with herself.
Which is why Bob just happened to see the girl go down like a stone, a plastic cup falling from her brightly Xed hand. There was a guy closing in on her, acting like he was there with her, but Bob knew better because this guy hadn't talked to the girl, not even once, and everything about him was making Bob's skin crawl from halfway across the room.
Bob pushed her way through the crowd and shoved the sleazy guy away, hard. One of her friends had followed her, and he kept the guy back while Bob knelt down by the girl. Her eyes were open, her body was still, and Bob wanted to throw up because she knew the signs of a dosing.
She brushed the girl's pink hair off her face and sat with her while security called an ambulance, and until two people Bob had seen the girl with showed up, scared and frantic for their friend.
*
There are others, too, thought of less frequently but regularly nonetheless:
Kristy in Texas, who shot her father to just make it stop. Lisa in Maine, who carried mace and a small metal bat with her at all times, even when she was going to the grocery store in the middle of the afternoon, because she learned the hard way that there are men who think it's fine to take what they want. Kennita in New Jersey, who spent a year being stalked by an ex-girlfriend but refused to hide away. Rita in Georgia, who took a stapler to her boss' dick when he told her to put out or get out. Marlene in Michigan, who broke ten different cycles and spent her days teaching other women how to do the same.
Bob carries these women with her all the time. They're her strength, her wisdom, her voice of experience, her cautionary tales, and her hope.
.End
14valentines Day 11 - Voting
Including tonight's entry, I have posted 18,500 words so far for 14valentines, nearly all of it written as I went. *dies*