A few years ago, I woke cotton-mouthed and clammy from a dream about a woman I used to know. I had not seen her in person since high school graduation, but once or twice a year, we met in a dream. In this one, we were back in a room with old teachers and friends, where I had to give a talk. I arrived late, half-dressed, unsure what to say. This woman, I’ll call her Alison, sat in front, smirking and perfectly made-up. The tilt of her eyes suggested I was not only dumb, but mean. How had she mastered the art of both villainy and victimhood so well? And how, in real life, did she now see me?
I have long been compelled by a desire for emotional reciprocity. For two people to “be on the same page”, nothing lopsided, the scales balanced. When we cultivate a crush, after all, we want to be their crush too. Suppose it is the same with an enemy? That one’s commitment to, say, having a nemesis might be matched only by one’s desire to be a nemesis in return? As much as I wanted to exorcise Alison from my dreams, the thought of untangling us entirely sent a kick to my side. A little whine of “No”. Part of me was tied to the narrative of our opposition. Like the dark moon on my thigh where I once sat on an old nail, I felt something like affection for what I had survived, for what it said about me: that I was worthy of a nemesis.
Alison and I met on the brink of middle school. The building was new to both of us, but I, who had attended classes on the same campus for years, was asked to show her around. I arrived in a necklace of bead-strung safety pins, tender because my mother had stopped me from buying the shoes I thought I wanted: the same clogs my teachers wore. I, gangly with braces, did not know how to be a teenager. Alison, petite with glossy copper hair, did. She arrived in the right flare jeans and fat plastic flip-flops, filing her nails into almonds and painting them gold so they’d cut the air like machine-smashed pennies. At 12 years old she walked like a starlet who knew her name was in the Oscar envelope.