What was it we were listening to? Do you remember now? As we made our eyes and lips up in your bathroom mirror, kissing our reflections, then throwing ourselves down on your sister's bed, flattening our stomachs until it felt like they were touching the mattress, to get our bubble jeans zipped up? I always envied your purple ones, even though I knew I looked better in the blue. Sometimes I wonder if we caused damage, that some of our internal organs have never sat in the right spot again. Sometimes I think I get more stomach aches and that are more painful than the average person. But I am still the kind of person who wonders what she might be dying from. Not that I really want to know. I really hope when it is my time to go that I go in my sleep; no clue beforehand, just good night and good bye. But let’s get back to this: what were we listening to? The usual? Guns 'n' Roses? Dr. Hook? April Wine? Or maybe we were on our Kenny Rogers kick? Our friends teased us and our mothers wanted it to end because something in Kenny's voice reminded them of their mothers.
It doesn't matter, I suppose. We found them there parked in the mall's back lot, just dirt and grass and they didn’t know they were waiting for us, so they were surprised, but pleased. They were listening to Nirvana and I thought that made them cliche already somehow, but nothing mattered but the bright shine in your eyes when your boy ordered Donny out of the front passenger seat of his beat up old blue Cavalier. They called us ladies and we thought we were. Fifteen years old and soon sitting in a wooded area on the outskirts of town, our lips moist on the twenty-sixer of rye when it was our turn of the pass. "Don't gag," you whispered fast into my ear, while you pretended to flip your hair. Were you so worried I would embarrass you? I have always been the better actor.
Tipsy before long, I swayed back and forth, back and forth, and Donny caught me in his arms and pulled me close. "Whoa, take’r easy there, lush," he whispered, his mouth pressed into my hair and I felt like a girl, a real girl, fully and formed, a girl and I giggled, I truly did, I can't do it now, but I could do it then. Then I turned towards his lips and found them waiting, for me, the kiss all the more warmer for the chill in air. I am a girl, I am a girl and summer is almost over. I kissed him again.
"We should go to Nancy's house," your boy will say and I will think boys are so dumb, do they not pay attention to anything? "That's not a great idea. We don't really...we don't get along with her. Actually, Nancy hates us too. But she’s a real cunt about it."
"No, no," your boy will say. "She is gone for the week. The whole family. Florida. We know where the key is. Her place backs onto this woods. No one will know we are there, if we just keep the lights off. Keep quiet, you know...Let’s go."
And I won't even have to look at you. I will feel the want radiating off of you, popping like fireworks, I will think I’m standing to close. I will look at Donny, watch him pull off a Hollywood promise with his eyes. See the idea occur to him before that boy will say it. "We could fuck in her bed."
"I'm calling dibs on the parents bed anyway," your boy will say.
I will be surprised by Nancy's's house when I see it. The girl of then always looking like a woman of the streets; her mascara and powders too thick, her sneer the perfected Joan Jett. I will remember the day when I watched her consciously pull her eyes apart after blinking, the flick of her fingernails, middle finger and thumb. Her room will be clean and sparse. A single bed, a dresser, a desk. The wallpaper, row after row of little yellowed flowers with gilded leaves. The white curtains will be billowing lightly in the nighttime breeze, the window left open. But Donny will close it. Shhh.
"You haven't done this a lot," he will pause a short time later, burying himself deeper into my body, looking at me straight on, when my wrong movements bend him the wrong way.
"I'm sorry-" I will try to reply, but he will hold up his hand, "No. I like it better this way. I can show you everything. I want to fuck you all night. There are no mistakes, just happy little accidents. "
"Did you just seriously quote Bob Ross?" I will say.
“Yeah, he’s cool shit,” Donny will laugh and I will agree to everything because I liked Bob Ross too.
Two hours later, you and your boy will make yourselves known and the boys will want to raid the kitchen. Soon we will have pulled out a binder from under the bed and in the thin light from a street lamp, we will read the poetry written by a girl we hate and her friends (that we equally hate), one of them your boy’s girlfriend. We will laugh at their sonnets of love and rainbows and eternal flames. No sorrows of tomorrow, just the pains of the day. Surface shit. "You're better," you will whisper urgently, but I will already know. We’re both better, no matter what.
And then you will kiss me, grabbing the side of my face with your hands, your tongue chasing mine, thin and worn, not swollen like mine and I will not ask you for another five years if you liked the taste of him. And at first, you will wrinkle your nose up, sniff even, but then you will laugh and shrug and say, “Easy come, easy go" and then we will laugh and forget everything that came before that moment for a little while again.
It doesn't matter, I suppose. We found them there parked in the mall's back lot, just dirt and grass and they didn’t know they were waiting for us, so they were surprised, but pleased. They were listening to Nirvana and I thought that made them cliche already somehow, but nothing mattered but the bright shine in your eyes when your boy ordered Donny out of the front passenger seat of his beat up old blue Cavalier. They called us ladies and we thought we were. Fifteen years old and soon sitting in a wooded area on the outskirts of town, our lips moist on the twenty-sixer of rye when it was our turn of the pass. "Don't gag," you whispered fast into my ear, while you pretended to flip your hair. Were you so worried I would embarrass you? I have always been the better actor.
Tipsy before long, I swayed back and forth, back and forth, and Donny caught me in his arms and pulled me close. "Whoa, take’r easy there, lush," he whispered, his mouth pressed into my hair and I felt like a girl, a real girl, fully and formed, a girl and I giggled, I truly did, I can't do it now, but I could do it then. Then I turned towards his lips and found them waiting, for me, the kiss all the more warmer for the chill in air. I am a girl, I am a girl and summer is almost over. I kissed him again.
"We should go to Nancy's house," your boy will say and I will think boys are so dumb, do they not pay attention to anything? "That's not a great idea. We don't really...we don't get along with her. Actually, Nancy hates us too. But she’s a real cunt about it."
"No, no," your boy will say. "She is gone for the week. The whole family. Florida. We know where the key is. Her place backs onto this woods. No one will know we are there, if we just keep the lights off. Keep quiet, you know...Let’s go."
And I won't even have to look at you. I will feel the want radiating off of you, popping like fireworks, I will think I’m standing to close. I will look at Donny, watch him pull off a Hollywood promise with his eyes. See the idea occur to him before that boy will say it. "We could fuck in her bed."
"I'm calling dibs on the parents bed anyway," your boy will say.
I will be surprised by Nancy's's house when I see it. The girl of then always looking like a woman of the streets; her mascara and powders too thick, her sneer the perfected Joan Jett. I will remember the day when I watched her consciously pull her eyes apart after blinking, the flick of her fingernails, middle finger and thumb. Her room will be clean and sparse. A single bed, a dresser, a desk. The wallpaper, row after row of little yellowed flowers with gilded leaves. The white curtains will be billowing lightly in the nighttime breeze, the window left open. But Donny will close it. Shhh.
"You haven't done this a lot," he will pause a short time later, burying himself deeper into my body, looking at me straight on, when my wrong movements bend him the wrong way.
"I'm sorry-" I will try to reply, but he will hold up his hand, "No. I like it better this way. I can show you everything. I want to fuck you all night. There are no mistakes, just happy little accidents. "
"Did you just seriously quote Bob Ross?" I will say.
“Yeah, he’s cool shit,” Donny will laugh and I will agree to everything because I liked Bob Ross too.
Two hours later, you and your boy will make yourselves known and the boys will want to raid the kitchen. Soon we will have pulled out a binder from under the bed and in the thin light from a street lamp, we will read the poetry written by a girl we hate and her friends (that we equally hate), one of them your boy’s girlfriend. We will laugh at their sonnets of love and rainbows and eternal flames. No sorrows of tomorrow, just the pains of the day. Surface shit. "You're better," you will whisper urgently, but I will already know. We’re both better, no matter what.
And then you will kiss me, grabbing the side of my face with your hands, your tongue chasing mine, thin and worn, not swollen like mine and I will not ask you for another five years if you liked the taste of him. And at first, you will wrinkle your nose up, sniff even, but then you will laugh and shrug and say, “Easy come, easy go" and then we will laugh and forget everything that came before that moment for a little while again.
Comments