Your Best American Girl – Blen Bogale

August 22, 2025

Every Thursday, Lola Graff would see him in the mornings. He was on the sidewalk, in the dining hall, anywhere her path crossed on Thursday morning. She could sense him on those mornings, feeling a contemptible shiver, and every time she would turn, their eyes would inexplicably meet; this boy turned her eyes too often. 
        The morning they had the most interaction was April 11th. She had woken up ridiculously early this Thursday because she’d missed her morning class the day before. So on this day, she made sure she was awake, but two hours before class was overkill. On her way to print a nuisance of an article before class to kill extra time, she stopped to have a cigarette. Her head always throbbed in the morning; her alarm went off, and the sound never left her head till she had a cigarette. Getting cold and impatient, she felt it and turned to land on him. Every time it happened, it was never expected; every time was the first time. He didn’t see her; he just kept walking off in the distance, but still she had felt him. After heading inside and failing with the printer in the library, she went to look for a book a friend had recommended. It was either a Henry Miller or Anaïs Nin novel, something to do with debauchery and Paris. Searching the stacks, with a vague inclination of the title, she almost gave up wandering her time away, until she stumbled over a frayed and overly abused book. Picking it up, she glanced over the ripped cover to see the rest of the title, Of Paris, and the author, Henry Miller. Her happiness over stumbling upon the right book was short-lived; she opened the frayed pages to find some of them stuck together, and multiple clumps of pages seemed glued together. It looked like all the good parts were unreadable, people had too much fun.
        Re-shelving the book, she decided it was time for a coffee to have with a second cigarette. As she contemplated whether cereal was appropriate right now, it came again, a stronger, an incessant tingle through her spine. He was watching her, and this time, their eyes hadn’t locked. She lost the advantage of distance, but with only two other people in the vicinity, she just happened to be the only one he was remotely interested in. The tingle spread through her body, the pressure collecting elsewhere. The pressure was incinerating, driving her out to the door, yet her breathing had become downright unbearable. The dissipated energy had made her so very itchy, so very hot. Panting, she ran into the bathroom on the edge of sanity, she dove into his, and made sure the door was locked till the energy dissolved into a big screaming nothing.
        The all-American boy of the twenty-first century is chronically online, a heavy smoker, and skinny to the touch, not that she’s ever touched his deliriously long limbs. He had a classic name, though not a very popular one, so you probably didn’t know another with the same name, but you knew the name and how to spell it before one knew John F Doe. The American boy, who was deviously brilliant and boyishly stupid, was quite coy in his romantic and sexual endeavors—but you knew he was with many girls, younger girls, but kept things pretty quiet, and never took things all the way, because he hadn’t met his all-American girl. That easily dropped one into a false sense of safety, and of love, from his heart right to yours, which made him quite popular among most. The all-American boy was quite shy; he didn’t love attention, he feared it at times, but put a little drink into him, and he was everyone’s friend. Unfortunately for himself, he possessed an edging, lulling musk, which is why they all followed him so rabidly. 
        His smell was reminiscent of the ambergris that floated all around her at the time. Her friend, Layla, wore ambergris essence every day, rain or shine; it was a strong, ecstasy-inducing smell. When Layla first picked up a bottle, Lola started to discover slight symptoms of nausea and headaches, and even though she wasn’t a fan of the smell, it had never seemed to her to be the cause. But then Layla started buying everything in the scent of ambergris: incense, candles, lotions, stickers, etc. Her credit card limit had gone and went ages ago, but after Paris, it was only debts and scents of thick and riche ambergris. 
        “Ambergris is the aphrodisiac of Marie Antoinette, you know. I want the lusty, dirty smell of the French, because I may not be French, but the people of France and I, oh well, we’re the same.” Layla would say.
        One summer in France with a dementia ridden aunt and Layla, who had left a timid freshman, and a lover of chocolate, sleepovers, light drugs, and a virgin too; came back a sophomore who was slightly anorexic (although on this Lola cannot judge), obsessed with sex and the exhibition of her body, and heavier drugs. At the sight of her body—now a character from Jim Morrison’s Paris—barely there like a wisp of air, Lola knew she was bound to be an eternally lifeless virgin. 
        The ambergris became a part of her as well. She was angry more often; any little thing would set her off, yet the electrical currents of April 11th hadn’t left her. Her mood and social graces were elevated, and she became more desirable for conversation. 
        Every morning, her cigarette and her all-American boy woke her up. Sleep and the dreams her mind taunted her with used to be religious. Mimicking her desires, but now her glances and proximity to him have made sleep a hindrance, because she never dreamed of him. When she sees him, she becomes younger than she ever was before: a classic boy, a classic story, the all-American boy to make her his American girl. 
        His effect on her started all too subtly, she just got excited, curious, and sweaty. She was simply a girl with a crush. Now, she sweats for him—excessively and constantly—and bleeds violently every month because he will not touch her. She often catches glimpses of his hair, and a wanton feeling comes to push him down, hit him till he bleeds and begs. Her face is often quiet, toiling, and behind her eyes plays the movie of him as the beggar, and her as his captor. This dream will never happen, and she continues to change as his heart does, and her dream of him stays as steadfast as her own heart. Yet, in his absence, she swells, becoming ugly and drooping as she peels face, arms, back, and legs all from the weary bed. All the youth that had long clung to her face like the tar and feathers on a sinning man had melted to a deflated and saggy state. She knew one day she would need more of him, and to avoid more rejection and to keep some sense over herself, she tried everything not to need more. Only eating at midnight, when no one could see her. She ate and ate like a Southern man, face greased, and a napkin tucked into her shirt, of course. It was touristic bravado; she was eating the biggest steak in Texas, and she would get it for free if she could only finish it in an hour. By one, her eating for the day would be done. The food was only a little distracting, but the way her heart beat in his absence had her deliriously obsessed, leading her to cutting her wrists to relieve the tension in her blood, in her heart. Like an 18th-century doctor, she decided the patient needed a course of bloodletting. The relief the slits wrists allowed her, caused her to write and write much more crazed than my unintelligible writing, to you now, with only herself as the ink and the walls of her room as the page. This bloody occurrence only happened once, while the rest of her habits lasted as long as he. She decided, after going to such extreme lengths, that the next time he had infected her to the point of insanity, and extreme pressure throughout her body, she would have to die or speak to him.
        As the weeks passed, he grew accustomed to his new petite ingénue. On his David Foster Wallace journey, he yearned for her youth. The petite ingénue yearned for his mystery, the enigma that was the all-American boy. In each other, they hid and they took. He never gave, never gave anything of himself, anything that she wanted anyway. Seeing them together was absolutely nauseating to any viewer, yet also perverse. The young with the classically old. The beautiful and the damned. The viewer is crucial in this dynamic, the exhibition of perversion, that cannot be objected to, yet can recoil the viewer.
        Lola Graff resided in her own world, the all-American boy a pawn to her all-American dreams. As the petite ingénue closed in on her all-American boy, she recoiled, she shrugged. He was better off elsewhere, with someone else. But the cards had been dealt, and the petite ingénue was here to stay. Layla had roomed with the petite ingénue for a tragic semester freshman year; the ingénue’s room had been a place reminiscent of childhood, yet it reeked of sex and other sinful smells. The fierce, docile energy the ingénue exudes cannot be parallel, she was dubbed Mary freshman year, not the Virgin Mary, but Mary Magdalene.
        Layla would drink at the Friday night parties, and when she would drink she would exclusively drink gin and smoked only Capris. Skinny French cigarettes and an even skinnier waist allowed Layla access that Lola could never have. Layla had a privilege that allowed her to approach any man and get anything she pleased. At this particular party, Lola saw him dressed as a literary character for the party, something in the vein of a Fitzgerald or Hemingway character. In her own costume she danced, she felt it again, and turned to see him dancing, slobbering over the ingénue, grinding against her, cigarette in mouth, drink spilling out of his hand.Yet, his eyes and drooling look was steadfastly attached to Lola. He was grotesque, drenched in filthy lust. Escaping Lola joined Layla in her deep gin fog, she took to drinking to drown out the feeling and wanting she felt toward him. Yet, flashes of parts of his flesh hypnotize her, pulling something deep out. Again, and again, the monster wanted to catch more glimpses of him. She is lighter, swifter, simply beautiful; she has now transformed. She is dancing as the nymphette, Lolita, light and fluffy, she is now the crème of a puff pastry, melting in your mouth. She is now young, she is back to 17. Suddenly, he and the ingénue leave, stopping the dancing, merriment, and the overflowing youth, by walking toward the exit. Rushing slowly behind the pair, Lola follows them to the hallway where the ingénue drifts into the bathroom and the all-American boy dawdles in the hallway. She approaches him, opening her simple dress, revealing her nymphette body that radiates, tightens, and thins as she steps closer and closer to the unsuspecting boy, her body transforming to the desires of his eyes, aging her body appropriately. As she comes closer, he turns to behold the beauty of her body, he looks with a suspicious nonchalance. She stands there, soaking in the strength of his body while he looks deeply at the curves and gestures of vulgarity her body makes for him. 
        The door of the bathroom starts creaking open, turning the all-American boy’s view and his body toward the door. The instant he turns and sets his eyes on the effervescent young ingénue, Lola Graff and her Venus body start to melt, to shed tears with flesh, till she is just a pile on the floor. The all-American boy and the ingénue embraced, kissed, moaned, and made love over the bloody pile of the nymphette, of the long-ago girl.