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Sophia | Jan 18 2003

The alien is living with me now. I still don’t know her name. I’m not even sure aliens have names. When I asked her about it, she told me to call her whatever I wanted, so I picked Sophia. I don’t know why Sophia; I’ve never known anyone named Sophia. Although maybe that’s why I chose the name: because it isn’t associated with anyone in my head.

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We had burritos for lunch today. I ate mine too fast and got the hiccups, so I stood and bent over and drank some water like that, with my head upside-down. It’s my favorite method of alleviating hiccups.

What are you looking at? she asked.

Nothing, I said. I was upside-down when I said this. I have the hiccups, I said.

By her tone, it sounded like she really didn’t know what I was doing, although it’s possible she knew but wanted to make it seem she didn’t so I would trust her more and treat her as I would treat any other woman.

This is the question: How much is she like other women? I see two possible answers: nothing, and a lot. What it comes down to whether and to what degree she knows things that no woman, no person, can know. Can she read my mind? Can she call up my past? Nothing she does reveals she can, but I’m not so certain.

She has a laptop computer, an iBook. When we’re not talking, she likes to sit on my bed and type what she calls her “notes.” She’s a fast typist but doesn’t always keep her fingers on the keys. Her main problem is the delete key, which she types with her right forefinger instead of her right pinky. This slows her down. When I mentioned it to her, she nodded, but I haven’t seen her trying to change.

That’s exactly how a person would react. Who is going to start typing a different way because someone (a human!) suggests it? No one, and yet one imagines that an alien could type any way she pleased.

I’m not making myself clear. I suspect she’s lying to me and that everything she does is designed to get me to relax and to treat her as I would treat any run-of-the-mill woman who happened to be sitting in my bed drinking herbal tea (she likes Wild Sweet Orange) and typing an incredible amount of what she calls “notes.”

And I find myself falling for it. If someone or something looks like a woman, smells like a woman (!), and acts like a woman, you can’t help thinking of that person or thing as a woman. And like all women, I think she’s banking on this, and on the fact that I will react to her as a man.