I do not want the boys. I don’t want the games and the glances. I don’t want the room temperature beers bought for me and the trying-too-hard to-be-cute conversations. I don’t want the pretend compliments, or the walks of shame. I don’t want the rules or the jealously, and I really don’t want the dirty looks from the pretty girls. I do not want the cold sores or the quarter-life crises. I don’t want the Spring break or the Snap Chats. I definitely do not want the shots of Patron. Or the lime. Or the salt. I can do without the tagged photos on Facebook and the 2:00 AM text messages that make very little sense. I don’t need to be taken out to one more dinner at an overpriced restaurant whose all-organic ingredients only ever come from local sources. I don’t want words to be tossed around by the ones who won’t begin to learn their real meanings for another twenty years.

     I want the men. I want the jawbones with just enough stubble and strategically placed scars. I want the stern voices. I want the hands that have touched many women before me, for that is the only way they can know how to touch me just the right way. I want those hands to appreciate me, because I am not the first. I am not the fifth. I want to plead the fifth. 

      I want the short tempers. I want the intelligence. I want the tattered books older than I am stacked on bookshelves taller than I am. I want the achy bones, and the dirt underneath the fingernails. I want the tell-tale signs that he has been smoking cigarettes since I was eight. I want to fuck his brain more than I want to fuck his body. I want all of the wrong-doings of a lifetime to make the man speak to me a certain way, but never with certainty. Because the men know that nothing is certain. His tone of voice will teach me things I could never learn from all of the boys. When the men speak the words, they know the weight of their meanings. 

     I do not want the boys. I only want the men. 

     But the men are too smart to want me. They know my type. They’ve seen us before. The girls who think they are good enough for the men, but aren’t. Smart enough to stay away from the boys, but naive enough to go after the men. The men aren’t fooled by the lines I so carefully paint onto my eyelids in the morning. The lines on my eyelids make me late to work every day. They are not impressed by my perky bust or my smooth, tan legs which I spend so much time on in the bath every night. They are bored to death by the high heels making my small feet look ever more dainty. The men can see right through my youthful fake smile. 

     The men want the women. You know the ones.

     The men want the women with the flawed bodies and the broken minds. The women don’t want to go to parties, because they have been to parties before. In fact, if you are lucky enough to convince them to go out for a drink, they will choose the bar most likely to be quiet. If it’s a Friday night, the women would rather be found snuggled up to their old dog with an issue of The New Yorker. They want the women who have learned that what they look like doesn’t matter as long as they are literate. It took the women fifteen years to learn this. They want the women whose legs aren’t quite as smooth anymore, because they spend more time reading books and making art than grooming themselves. They want exactly the type of woman that I hope to be someday.

     The men don’t want me. The men want the women. And I don’t blame them. Still, I do not want the boys.