We will go to the premiere of the new "Gatsby" film dressed as the characters and I, the dark and rough one, will ironically inhabit the blue-and-blonde china husk of Daisy. Everyone else will be appropriately cast. He really is Gatsby, I think. He holds onto things dangerously, just as Gatsby does. All the disappointing sentimentality is there.

I doubt he made me Daisy on purpose or to convey some secret, sweeping metaphor. He likes physics. His mind works logically. He has a straight-line male mind. I must remember that by design he is a simple, intentional creature. When he read "Gatsby" he was impressed by the metaphors, not encouraged by them.

I always said I hated Daisy while reading "The Great Gatsby" because it made sense. In my comfortable ugliness, of course I had to scorn her white dress and the stupid things she said. If I didn't, it would look like I envied her, and surely that would be the end of the order I had just created. I had arranged the best parts of me during that time into a formidable beast of sorts with unshaven legs and everything. I was finally used to feeling worth something. In my overly-stubborn independence, of course I had to turn up my nose at the fragile magnetism that was Daisy. I had just learned how to look up and over floaty white things like her.

When I look back at my old copy of "Gatsby" all marked up with old ideas, I realize how much of the content I missed by reading it emotionlessly. I understanding I had to push last year is natural now. The metaphor of Daisy couldn't be more straightforward. She's the American Dream, white and of the east, secreting money, a painted, buoyant fool. Her spotty courtship with Gatsby and her broken promise to him must be recognized as cruel even though they seem realistic to us. The affairs are moral loopholes. If the novel is about the sad truth about America and the vehicle is love, what does that say about both?

Now, in these new and sadly familiar days, however, Daisy represents more than just an antithesis of my platform and foundation. Each time I pass a mirror now, I practice being like her and making my voice full of money like hers. In my closet there is a white dress that is tight enough to reveal my feminine geometrics, and this dress is intended for the night when I will assume her character. The only thing I fear now is that my role as Daisy will be revoked. I look forward to being white and representing cruel unattainability for a night, instead of gray and brown forced strength.