So there I am, minding my own beeswax, loitering at the station in that specific way that isn’t quite waiting and isn’t quite existing either, probably trying to remember whether I’d already had lunch or whether I’d just thought about having lunch so intensely that my body registered it as a meal, holding this plastic cup that tastes faintly of regret and lemon, wearing an outfit that very clearly began as an attempt and then lost momentum halfway through, like I’d started with confidence and ended with “eh, people have seen worse,” when this guy comes up to me, and I know immediately he’s about to become a story I will tell other people with hand gestures, because he has the look, you know the look, hair so gelled you could ice skate on it in a crisis, jawline carved like the villain in an art-house film where everyone whispers and nothing happens, except without the art or the house, and a camera hanging around his neck that absolutely, definitively, aggressively says Cannon with two N’s, which is how you know it’s fake as hell, and he smiles at me like we’re already in the middle of a conversation I did not consent to starting, and he says he wants to do a quick interview, a quick one, for a magazine, and the magazine is called The Urban Lens, which already sounds like overpriced eyewear for people who say “aesthetic” like it’s a personality trait and think exposed brick counts as a belief system, and I’m standing there thinking, oh no, this is happening, when he adds—very casually, like he’s offering me gum—that they’re doing a feature on what the average person thinks about gender equality, and I swear to god the words “average person” just hang there between us, vibrating, like a mosquito you can hear but can’t see, and I look at him and all I can think is, buddy, if you’re looking for average, I just saw a guy arguing with a pigeon over there, full eye contact, real conviction, had opinions, passion, a thesis statement, honestly might be more your speed, no offense to pigeons, and the way he said it too, “average person,” like it was a badge of humility I should be honored to wear, like I’m just strolling around the station hoping someone will finally recognize me as the spokesperson for statistical mediocrity, like I should pin it to my jacket and say thank you for noticing, and meanwhile I’m thinking, spoiler alert, I am barely the voice of my own internal monologue, half the time it’s just elevator music and screaming, you want average, sweetheart, I am practically a limited-edition fuck-up, signed, numbered, possibly recalled, get in line, and I take a sip from the cup at exactly the wrong moment, wince, check it like it personally betrayed me, and then I hear myself saying—because apparently I do have instincts after all—“Yeah, no thanks, dude, I’m not really in the mood to be today’s symbol of statistical mediocrity,” and I leave him there blinking, frozen, like someone just turned off his Wi-Fi mid-thought, and I walk away feeling that very specific mix of triumph and mild confusion that comes from surviving a social interaction you didn’t prepare for, and later I think, wow, ladies and gentlemen, that is how I almost became the face of gender commentary in a fake magazine run by a guy who probably thinks the male gaze is an optical disorder, and honestly, next thing you know they’ll be asking me for my opinion on world peace, which—to be fair—I actually have, but only if snacks are involved, and even then I reserve the right to change my mind halfway through chewing.

I mean—average? Excuse me? Do I look average to you—no, don’t answer that, absolutely do not answer that, this is a rhetorical situation and you are not emotionally insured for the consequences, but honestly, average, that word, that deeply suspicious little word, it just sits there like it knows something about you, like it’s already decided you’re not worth a second look, average is the grey sweatpants of personality traits, not offensive enough to complain about, not impressive enough to remember, just… there, neutral, a kind of statistical beige, and I hate beige, I hate beige, beige is what they paint asylum walls when they want you to give up quietly, beige is what happens when white is too ambitious and gives up halfway through the process, beige is resignation with a color code, and the way he said it—average—like it was clean, reasonable, responsible, average, I swear the word itself feels like chewing on chalk, and if you stretch it out, if you really look at it, average is supposed to sit somewhere on a spectrum, right, on one end Beyoncé—capital B, no explanation required—and on the other end that guy who eats cereal with a fork to save milk, a man who wakes up every day and chooses chaos, and I’m meant to be somewhere in the middle of that, a midpoint, a shrug in human form, no thank you, absolutely not, I refuse to be a median, because what even is average anymore, really, is it bingeing the same three shows over and over because making new decisions feels like filing taxes while being chased, is it pretending not to see your ex at the grocery store even though you once made a whole playlist about him with a very clear emotional arc and at least one song you can no longer hear in public, is it knowing exactly what time the new Big Boobs magazine drops at the station kiosk—hypothetically—purely as an observational exercise—don’t look at me like that—but average is such a cop-out, it’s lazy, it’s safe, it’s the verbal equivalent of backing away slowly while maintaining eye contact, it’s the word people use when they want to dismiss you without sounding like a dick, which is ironic, because it’s still a dick move, just in comfortable shoes, and the joke—truly, the cosmic joke—is that I am not average, I am spectacularly, catastrophically specific, I am not a type, I am a footnote with opinions, I am a once-in-a-generation cocktail of high-functioning anxiety, artistic delusion, and unresolved mother issues, shaken violently, no garnish, add a crippling addiction to flaky men and deeply inappropriate cheese consumption and voilà, we are off to the races, full speed, no seatbelts, but sure, yeah, go ahead, ask me what I think about gender equality, random man with a camera from a fake magazine, just make sure you spell my name right in the footnote—Tallulah, it’s not hard—maybe blur the background, maybe soften the lighting, and definitely, definitely add a filter, because I bruise easily and I do not trust raw footage.

Now look, I know the world’s gone to hell in a handbag, and not even a good one, not something vintage or charming or structurally sound, but one of those knockoff leather disasters with flaking seams and a sticky Werther’s Original permanently fused to the lining, but even so, even now, I would still rather trust a man yelling at a bird than a guy with a symmetrical face and a press badge that smells like aftershave, because the pigeon guy—he’s honest, that’s the thing, he’s not pretending this is anything other than exactly what it is, and you can hear it in the voice, the raw conviction of a man who has reached the end of his rope and found a pigeon sitting on it, and he’s like, “Get off my briefcase, Margaret, I told you once, I won’t tell you twice,” and I don’t know who Margaret is, I don’t know what she did or what history led them here, but I believe him, deeply, spiritually, in my bones, because that man has known betrayal and bad parking enforcement and the slow erosion of hope that comes from thinking today might be different when it absolutely will not be, and honestly, if we’re being real, Margaret probably deserved it, whereas Mr. GQ over there with his fake magazine and his camera that probably weighs more than his convictions just reeks of marketing minor and unfinished Tinder bios, the kind where he says he’s “into travel” but what he really means is that one time he got drunk in Lisbon and vomited on a tour guide, true story—not mine—but I felt spiritually implicated just hearing about it, and there’s something about glossy people that makes my shoulders tighten, people who try too hard to look effortless, who smile too much, like they’re trying to distract you from the bodies under the floorboards, and yes, okay, maybe that’s just me being judgmental, maybe that’s my issue, maybe I’m projecting, but no, actually, floorboards, definitely floorboards, and I mean, I get it, everyone’s got their thing, some people hoard houseplants, some people hoard compliments, and some people—like me—hoard resentment, old art supplies, and vivid memories of interviews I never agreed to, and when you really break it down, when you strip away the branding and the confidence and the lighting, between pigeon guy and Camera Ken, I will choose the man who names his pigeons every single time, because at least he knows what rejection sounds like when it flaps away in front of you, and he probably has a deeper emotional vocabulary than my last three boyfriends combined, and honestly, at that point, what more do you really need.

You ever have that moment where your life suddenly starts to feel scripted, like somewhere there’s a bored screenwriter chewing on a pen and going, no no, let’s hold the silence a bit longer, let her stare at nothing, let the toast burn while she contemplates existence, because that’s authentic, and I think, wow, okay, welcome to my indie film, the one where nothing technically happens but everyone looks very serious about it, where the pauses are longer than the dialogue and the soundtrack is just ambient disappointment, and I want to turn to the camera that isn’t there and say, hi, I’m Tallulah, please lower your expectations now, and this whole random-guy-with-a-camera thing suddenly clicks into place like, oh, right, this could’ve been a moment, this could’ve been the moment, the inciting incident in the montage version of my life where everything is shot in warm light and I suddenly have purpose, where he interviews me and I say something painfully insightful and just vague enough to sound profound, something like gender is a performance but so is pretending not to cry during Pixar films, and then—bam—viral sensation, the internet decides I’m relatable but not threatening, people love me in that short, intense way strangers do, I’m invited onto panel shows with mismatched chairs and aggressive mugs of water, someone offers me a book deal with a title like Spill: The Unfiltered Chronicles of an Art-School Misfit, Reese Witherspoon options it because apparently she options everything, and they cast someone weirdly blonde to play me, which I pretend not to notice but absolutely notice, and for a second I let that fantasy hang there, shimmering, perfectly lit, and then I remember that instead of all that I told him to go find a pigeon, and I laugh—sharp and sudden and a little unhinged—because honestly, yes, absolutely, I stand by it, no notes, and the more I think about it the more it feels right, because my entire life is basically one long, un-airable pilot episode, the kind that ends with a polite smile and “we’ll call you,” and they never do, and I stand up and brush imaginary dust off myself like that helps, thinking, yeah, The Urban Lens, great concept, super real, definitely not something made up by a man whose deepest relationship is with his own eyebrows, and I walk toward the edge of the stage of my own existence and the thing that really gets me sneaks up on me, quiet and annoying, which is the what if, what if he was real, what if that actually was the moment I was supposed to say yes to, the fork in the road where another version of me took the mic and didn’t immediately sabotage herself with poultry-based redirection, and I look straight ahead and think, oops, smile about it, because honestly, if you’re sticking around, you should know—that one doesn’t even crack the top ten of my bad decisions.