Every summer night of high school I would eat dinner with my parents, run upstairs and put on a cardigan, and ride my bike down to Main Street. It wasn’t far at all, maybe half a mile through the neighborhoods. Riding at dusk was invigorating, the cool sea air on my face served to snap me out of any kind of teen doldrums.
This night I wasn’t able to find my usual crew, some nights were just like that. I grabbed a coffee anyway and sat down to smoke a cigarette, something I did with one set of friends and not with the other. I sat alone a few minutes, watching the tourists heading back to their cars, their hotels. A school friend walked up and sat at my table, casually throwing a leg up on the patio table. “What’s up girl, where’s your crew?” I said, “You’re here now, make yourself comfortable.” He laughed, and went in to buy his coffee.
Thinking about it now, a bunch of 16 year olds drinking black coffee on a street corner? Is that even normal?
I watched him through the big window, antagonizing the Australian woman who ran the shop. Fashion was so weird; big polyester “old man pants,” band tshirts, cardigans, the occasional babydoll dress if a girl was feeling fancy (which I seldom was). Sometimes I felt like there wasn’t an unattractive person in my entire city, everyone was so stylish and beautiful.
He came out and sat with me a while, we talked about a girl he liked and how he was going to ask her to homecoming soon, before school started and some other guy had a chance. I really liked it when my guy friends told me these things. I liked being someone that people wanted to tell their secrets, I still do.
People started showing up, pulling up chairs. I recognized most of them as being older kids from the other high school in the city or recent graduates. They were sort of hyper and wild, loud, all but one of them. He sat directly in front of me, his skinny limbs all folded up and crossed over, a steel toe Doc Martin dangling from his leg. He had dark brown hair, heavily pomaded, slick. His skin was like porcelain; white, chiseled bones. Madonna was playing on the coffee shop speakers overhead and he started miming the lyrics, staring right at me and never breaking a smile. I had never been pantomimed at before, fact.
I got on my bike at the end of the night and rode home, I loved the way the yellow street lights looked against the navy sky. I would ride like someone was chasing me, as fast as I could. I would try and take the corners so tight that my bike tipped sideways. I always felt a little surprised by how quiet things were when I got off my bike, the sound of my own breathing seemed enough to wake the whole neighborhood.
I parked my bike on the side of my parent’s house and quietly went inside. Up the creeky stairs, sound of my dad snoring, trip over the clothes on my bedroom floor, crawl into bed and turn the alarm clock the other direction, reach over and push the power button on my stereo, volume so low it’s barely audible. I dreamed of a long stranger, limbs like a marionette.
The next evening I lingered in my closet a little longer than usual, tried on a few more corduroy pant options. I lined my lips in the darkest wine lipliner and filled them with blood-red burgundy. Cigarettes and matchbook in my pocket, house and bike lock keys on my belt loop, $2 cash in my shoe.
I had plans to meet my best friend at the coffee shop, her dad was dropping her off. She was already there when I arrived, holding down the fort. I was waiting in line to order my coffee when I saw my friend from the night before. He gave me a hug, I guess we were real friends now, instead of just casual acquaintances. “I know someone who likes you!” he teased. “Well, I know two people who like you, but one of them is someone I will let you hang out with.” We really were good friends, I guess. “You know who it is, come on.” I smiled a little and said, “Is it…the guy from last night, the Madonna dude?” He put his hand on my shoulder, “He’s coming out tonight, you guys should talk.”
I sat down with my friend, leaned in, and smiled. Smashing Pumpkins, “who belongs, who decides who’s crazy…” playing overhead, the soundtrack to that year, or two. He walked up wearing a tight white tshirt and low-slung wool trousers, his long bangs slicked straight back. He did not sit with us, he just stared at me and walked by slowly. He flicked his cigarette to the right just before walking through the coffee shop door.
My friend raised an eyebrow, “That’s the guy? Really? You know what you’re doing.” A few of our friends joined us and I felt hot and nervous as I tried to anticipate when I would, presumably, eventually, talk to this guy again. While acting natural, of course. Of course.
The shop closed and a few of us lingered a while, my friend got picked up and I walked over to my bike alone. “Hey, you wanna hang out tomorrow night?” I said I did and he gave me his address on a piece of paper that he pulled from his pocket. “I don’t really have a phone at all right now, so just come by around 7.” I looked down at the paper, back at him, and he walked away, glancing once over his shoulder.
At 7pm, I pulled up to a house with a lawn that was probably mowed the previous year. I walked up the driveway and saw bottle caps embedded in the weeds and dirt, a few potato chip bags. There was a sign on the front door, “In back. Come in.” I opened the door slowly, announcing myself and calling out, walking through the dark house. No lights on at all, aside from the glow from the backyard. I opened the sliding glass door and looked out into the 2 foot tall grass. He was laying on his stomach with candles lit all around him, writing in a notebook. There was a half empty bottle of cheap red wine beside him. He didn’t rush to greet me, but sat up and crossed his legs. “Let’s go somewhere, I know a good place.” He said, and grabbed his wine.
He directed me to Pacific Coast Highway, and then down South a little further than I normally ventured. We stopped and parked on a very sharp incline, it was hard to walk down the street without worrying about falling forward and tumbling down the hill. There weren’t any street lights, but I could see that we were in the midst of the wildly expensive old beach mansions. He opened a gate and we walked through someone’s yard, and then up their outdoor stairs. “Do you know these people?” I whispered. “Do I look like I know people who live here?” I followed him up another flight and around a corner. We were on a small platform jutting out over the sea, there was a table and two chairs, and a gazebo roof. Tangible secrets, the very best kind.
We sat a while, talking about his living situation. His mom and dad had divorced and his mom moved into an apartment but left him and his brother in the house while it was for sale. What happened to them when it sold? Well, he was aiming to make sure that never happened. “She just left you guys there? How do you eat, do you have a job?” No, they did not have jobs. Their mom dropped by every so often to leave some groceries and money. They didn’t have cars or a phone, so it would be difficult to find employment. Mostly they walked to the pay phone at the liquor store on the corner and bought cigarettes and cheap wine.
We sat in stillness a minute, I watched him take long sips from the bottle. He leaned toward me, grabbed a fistful of my shirt and pulled me closer, “I’m going to kiss you now.” It was slow, mindful, not rushed and desperate. I stood up, “Let’s go to your house and you can show me your devastation.” He laughed, “I really, really like you.”
He pulled my hand through the dark house, stopping a minute in the hallway. “My brother and I are working on this collage.” It was almost covered from floor to ceiling with newspaper clippings and illustrations from books. I didn’t know if this was part of the Buyer Abatement Program or actual art, so I just said, “I see.” It was either fascinating or depressing, depending.
We walked into his room and he lit a candle. It’s everything you’re expecting; twin mattress on the floor, empty wine bottles, books and journals stacked in various places, a stereo, and a typewriter. Random record and cassette liner notes were taped to the walls, as well as a fair amount of graffiti. Not like, tagging, but graffiti, art made directly on the walls. He pushed play on the stereo, Tom Waits.
He sat upright at the head of the bed and I sat at the very end with my feet on the floor. I looked straight ahead and tried to think of things to say, the awkwardness of teen desire heavy in the room. I gathered myself from inside and crawled toward him, pulling lightly on his threadbare white tshirt. We kissed sitting in the position a while, and then he took off his shirt, which was wet with sweat. He stopped and looked at me a minute, pulled back. The candle flickered brightly a few times and I was able to see he had a tattoo on his upper arm, which was unexpected. “What’s your tattoo?” He giggled and touched his arm, “Oh, it’s the Kellogg rooster. You know, from the Corn Flakes box.”
The next day was weird, I really didn’t have a way to get a hold of him and just showing up at his house seemed way weird. I decided to go down to Main Street that night and if he was there, he probably wanted to see me again. He was there. He sat down right next to me and grabbed my hand, he introduced me to his friends. He had to leave with his ride home so I stayed a while and got invited to swim with his ex-girlfriend and a few others. I felt a little odd because they were all old friends and I was younger than them. When we got to the house a few of the girls were laying on the floor watching a movie already, like they were waiting for us.
We went up on the roof and got in the hot tub. A few comments were made about Jesus, so I gathered they were church friends. Not altogether super shocking except that I knew she was his ex-girlfriend, this was a very strange pairing. Someone asked if we were dating, and someone else asked if he was still drinking. I was starting to feel like I was on the receiving end of an intervention. “You’re so young. You have to be careful.” Clearly they didn’t know me.
I went home and laid in bed, wondering if this guy had recently broken up with church, or if he had a straggler ex who was trying to scare me away. I would never really know, and it was less important with each passing day anyway.
Monday morning we were driving around, trying to find him a job. He had decided, with much convincing, that if he got a job he could stop worrying about when the house was going to sell. He was willing to work anywhere, from grocery store to car wash. He turned in about 15 applications in one day, but as hard as I tried I couldn’t see anyone hiring him. He was so alarmingly handsome, but this was the era of heroin chic. He was gaunt, translucent, and weird as hell to the average eye. “Would you like to hire this vampire to buff your Ferrari?”
We needed a break, we stopped at the humane society to pet dogs. We found a brown pitbull puppy who really wanted out of the cage. He cried and scratched and pleaded with his eyes for some love. A woman came down the aisle and told us it was time to close. We got into the concrete kennel with the puppy, allowing him to chew on our hands and shoes. We were only in there a few minutes, but when we came out the door to get back inside the office, they way to the parking lot, was locked. We noted the twisted barbed wire on the top of the 10 foot cinder block fence, we walked the perimeter looking for another exit. I let the puppy out to play with us, we took turns carrying him around, we threw a ball for him in the courtyard, the other dogs were going absolutely apeshit with jealousy.
In the very back of the greenspace, there was a tiny brick building with a locked sliding glass door. I pulled up and over on the door handle and the door popped right off it’s hinges. We were in the grooming room, it seemed. There was another door, an exit, on the other side of the room. We grabbed the puppy and left, careful to secure the door as we left. “We just stole a dog. Shit.”
The puppy was an absolute menace; it destroyed everything in it’s path with it’s sharp little teeth, it could not walk on a leash, it growled and bit people regularly. I tried to take him for a walk once, loading him in the car and taking him to a nearby park. He just tried to attack me the entire time, people were literally doubled-over laughing at the spectacle. We couldn’t really afford to care for the puppy, obviously, and we were terrible dog parents, so we sought a new home for him. It turned out that we found a very stable and experienced dog owner through the Penny Saver and they seemed smitten one another right away, whew.
I had a really busy schedule of work and school and we sort of drifted apart a bit. The initial excitement was wearing as summer wore on anyway, and his drinking was becoming a huge issue for me. My parents were asking to meet him, which only made me more aware of the temporary nature of this relationship; my parents could never, ever, meet him.
One night a couple weeks later, I surprised him at his house. I brought some coffee and a book, and candles. He didn’t answer the door when I knocked so I let myself in, assuming he was in the back and couldn’t hear me. The house was too quiet, it put me on alert. I shifted to ninja-mode myself, which was a weird thing to do since I wasn’t prepared to sneak up on a bad guy and save the day or anything. The door to one of the unused rooms was open an inch, I saw a shadow crossing the floor and stood holding my breath, listening. He was talking to someone, someone was in the room.
Quietly I asked, “Hello? Can I come in?” He opened the door only as wide as to reveal his face and the one hand holding the door open. He looked completely insane, no color at all in his face now, pupils fully dilated, eyes so wide it was easy to imagine what he’d look like a just a skeleton standing there in front of me. It was unpleasant. “Hey, what’s…up? I brought you coffee.” He told me to leave it on the counter in the kitchen and shut the door in my face. I noticed the kitchen sink, crawling with ants, and about 5 empty Donald Duck orange juice cartons. I set the stuff I brought down on the table and started to walk toward the door. I noticed him standing in the hall now, he looked super scary. “Can you bring me some orange juice?”
I never went back. I said yes, but I lied.
