Simone is not mine, other than her name. (Also, random, but the title of this story is a quote from Simone de Beauvoir. "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.") She's the mod-looking woman in the bar scene.
The thing is, everybody knows Jim Kirk. Simone doesn't, technically, but she hangs out in a bar in Iowa, so she kind of knows him by osmosis. It could have been any bar—at least, that's what she's been told—and she probably would have seen him. And she has, a few times, but she hasn't met him so much as been hit on by him once, and she doesn't count that.
Her name is Simone Louise Brady. Simone, because it was exotic. She likes to tell people, later, when she's in college—studying philosophy because she knows she's going back home to the farm, so why study something useful?—that her mother named her after Simone de Beauvoir. Really, she doesn't even think her mother knows who Simone de Beauvoir is, and if she ever comms home, going on about existentialism and the human condition (perhaps after one too many martinis, but still), her parents will just smile in bemusement. Anyway, it's what she likes to tell people, and it makes her seem… somehow beyond the little town in Iowa where she grew up.
The Louise is for Louise Brooks, because her family may have been the stereotypical Midwestern farmers, but they appreciated culture, in the abstract, anyway. Which is why she's in college, so she should at least be thankful for that. She appreciates that fact that her mother may not know Kierkegaard from Baudrillard, but she does know her obscure 20th century movies. It's something, at least, and if growing up in Iowa has taught her anything, it's not to judge.
So, the night Jim Kirk hits on her in a bar just on the outskirts of Riverside, she doesn't slap him like she almost wants to. She just smiles her biggest smile and tells him to fuck off.
See, Simone ended up right where she'd planned, which is distinctly more depressing than it possibly should have been. She's back to living with her parents, along with her two younger sisters, who are twelve and fourteen, respectively, and her ten year old brother, who's a menace to everyone. And… it's where she expected to be, after college, but it's nowhere near what she wanted, even if she's not exactly sure what that was to begin with. She works for her dad, doing his bookwork, and she's got a part-time job at the local library, cajoling kids into reading instead of just tearing up copies of Moby Dick for fun.
One weekend, her first year after graduation, Sarah, her old roommate, calls her up. Sarah's living in Des Moines, and she basically guilts Simone into coming to see her. They spend the whole first night bemoaning fate, and the next day Sarah, who was always the more optimistic one, demands that they go out shopping. So they do, and Simone comes home with a suitcase full of these gorgeous clothes that she'll probably never wear. But she wants to. She wants to be that girl.
So, the next weekend, she goes out to the bar. There's only one good one in town, The Warp Trail—which, stupid name, but the bartender is great and flirts with her in a non-predatory way, which makes her feel comfortable enough to come back.
It's like this. Riverside is a small, boring Midwest town, and Simone's never getting out. She knows. But that's during the week. Come the weekend, Simone does her hair and puts on her nice clothes and paints her eyes thick with makeup. She becomes someone else, then, someone who had the life she'd never dared envision but always sort of wanted.
Simone Louise Brady doesn't drink this much, doesn't dance like this. Simone, though—"Just Simone," like she tells Jim Kirk when he slinks up to her at the bar—Simone does, and she loves it. Simone is a happy drunk, energetic and extroverted the way she never is at home.
Jim Kirk is a sad drunk.
Okay, she's not looking. Really. It's none of her business, and she'd had her chance to sleep with him, and she would've taken it if she'd wanted it, so it's not that she's got a thing for him. It's just that he's there, and you can't help but notice Jim Kirk, really. He fills up every room he walks into (or at least, she imagines so; she's never seen him anywhere but here). So anyway, it's not that she's looking.
It's just that he's sliding up to this girl, thin, pretty, with long hair and dark skin, and Simone can't really help that she's got a front row seat. Which just so happens to give her the perfect angle to see that, shit, he's kind of an asshole but he's got some seriously sad eyes. He's probably the saddest drunk she's ever seen, which is saying a lot, and she pities him.
She pities him only slightly less when he gets into a fight and knocks over her drink, but like she said, he is kind of an asshole.
When the next weekend comes and the bartender tells her Jim Kirk's left for Starfleet? Well, yeah, he's an asshole. She wonders if space is far enough away from here, and she wants to run. She wants to get out, like he did. Not to Starfleet—she was never cut out for that, and hello, philosophy degree. Just out.
Gods, does she hate him.
