She is plain-looking, or so I’m told. Her hair is not as shiny as some girls’, her features not as symmetrical. Her skin is pale and her eyes dull, often cloudy from shots of Fleishman’s. To me, she is stunning.
She is too thin, emaciated almost, and though I know she envies my curves I can’t tell you how many times I have glanced resentfully at her bony hips, her tiny thighs. “The proud owner of a ten-year old boy’s body”, she tells me. She knows I adore it, and is painfully aware of the sex appeal she possesses. Her slender neck, the precursor to a flat chest and concave stomach, is framed by messy curls and fake Chanel necklaces.
She likes to watch me kiss her boyfriend. Usually it’s the three of us in the backseat of my car, windows steamed up around us, or lying on a ragged sheet in someone or other’s smoky basement. We kiss each other, giggling, watching him watch us. She will often take my face in her hands and beg me to kiss him. “We love this!” she’ll squeal. She makes me feel sexy and exotic, though I know I am neither. Eventually, I leave so they can fuck or smoke or both, knowing all the while that the next morning’s breakfast will contain deliciously intimate details about all that I missed out on.
Together, we share a fervent contempt for all things lucid. Fascination with mind-altering drugs and a tinge of teenage alcoholism rope one tightly to the other. “We’re not burnouts baby, we’re intellectuals,” she tells me. “We are scholars with a preference for a somewhat modified perception”. For us, boredom is more dangerous than all of the pot or vodka combined. It is like a disease, or one of those scary drugs we swore to each other not to touch, like heroin. Once in a while, she will become so consumed by monotony and restlessness it gives her stomachaches, even an ulcer. In the hours preceding parties, we lay together fretting over the dullness of our lives. We crave a change of scene. New experiences are the greatest fixes.
One day, she came to school drunk. Stumbling into second hour Spanish (a class we have together) after skipping first hour P.E. She reeked of her mother’s Peach Schnapps and before the bell rang she was whisked away by the Administration. I created an errand to take me to the office, where I could hear her sobs penetrating the principal’s closed door.
She was suspended for five days. I brought her McDonald’s during my lunch period and entertained her by repeating all of the horrible gossip I’d heard about ‘the incident’. She’d smile, sip nonchalantly on a pumpkin shake, and say things like “What a dumb bitch! She’s the one who could use therapy!”
She is relentless with partying. I will not be hypocritical; I am constantly at her side, either to hold her hair away from the vomit or to bum her a Camel Red. I can’t get enough of her. She is intoxicating, intriguing; she shakes and buzzes with a delicate electricity that I have never before witnessed in another person. Her physical being is a perfect match for my mental structure. We challenge each other regularly, each forcing the other to expand her borders with intimate discussion. To me, our conversations are a form of art: beautiful, tragic, mystifying. To talk with her is to create poetry.
We lay together often, limbs overlapping, muttering verses by Heart (“You don’t have to love me yet, let’s get high awhile”) or Pink Floyd (“There is no pain, you are receding. A distant ships smoke on the horizon”). We talk about our favorite author (Jack Kerouac) or her favorite poet (Allan Ginsberg). She often comments on how I sit, with statuesque stillness, and I tell her she uses up enough motion for the both of us.
Our relationship is symbiotic. I am infatuated with her manic energy, and she is addicted to my mind. She pokes and prods and digs deeper than anyone ever has into my thoughts. She claims that talking to me holds a certain profundity, gives her a wonderfully new kind of high.
I love her, I really do. I adore her passion and I crave her vigor. But I am afraid that I don’t need her as she needs me. I can feel her cling to me mentally and emotionally. She is weak, a specter lacking physical substance
Time is the enemy. With every tick of the clock, another second is chipped away from the moments we can be together. There is a year left of high school. I will be attending college out east next year, at an Ivy League in the middle of New York City. I have no idea what comes next for her.
I tell her I don’t know what I will do without her. She can see through this lie, but I think she appreciates the attempt. “You are the one who is leaving me,” she’ll pout. “And what did I say about bringing that up?” I can see the fear in her eyes and am flattered by her need for me. I tell her I love her and always will. “It’s not love, babe, it’s addiction.” I tell her that’s the only kind that exists.
It is a lazy Sunday afternoon following a Liquid Lunch. She stirs from a drunken stupor and I can feel her crying softly beside me. I open my eyes to find her close to me. “What the fuck am I supposed to do when you go?” She cries for a long time. “You’re my anchor. My fucking anchor! I swear to God I’m going to up and float away.” I hug her and touch her hair, whispering slurred reassurances. “You will be fine. You will flourish. You don’t need me. Be strong, baby, be tough, okay? You don’t need me. None of this is real.” We fall asleep just before sunset, thinking all the while about friendship and youth and dependence.
She does not speak to me about leaving for a while, except to encourage me. “No force on Earth will keep you from success, especially not me, not even your own lack of ambition”. It is important to me, I remind her, and it will come soon enough. But for now, I say, we will be together.
I tell her that someday when distance and years have separated us beyond repair; she will stumble across some obscure piece of writing. The story will embody a character so full of life and passion and cheap vodka that she will know immediately where the inspiration came from. “I may not use your real name,” I say. “Hell, I probably won’t use my real name. But when you read it, you will know. You are forever my muse.” I tell her she is too legendary not to be documented. She smiles and nods, not believing me but at peace all the same. She takes a sip and tosses me the empty bottle. “Don’t you ever fucking forget me.”
