11 Things I Remember About You

Esther Mollica
Nov 7 · 7 min read
Once upon a time I was 50% less unattractive

I was feeling a little bored and lost in thought yesterday, so I decided to Uber where no woman has ever Ubered to before: South Jersey. I wanted to see my old friend’s memorial bench down the shore and just say goodbye. How strange it was to find the bench on my very first try (there are hundreds of benches on the boardwalk) and in a place called, “Shipwreck Point.”

I sat down and just looked at the water, thinking, “None of this is right — I still don’t feel like any of this is real, how could you be gone? O, that a siren must lay amongst wrecked ships” when an old woman just sat down next to me and asked me if I was there to say goodbye.

(Uhh this is the old lady I encountered. Not Juliet.)

“Tell me about your friend’s life,” she said.

How much personal information could I divulge to a stranger? “We worked together a long time ago, she was very intelligent and witty.”

“Well now I’m going to tell you about MY life!” she exclaimed. She went onto tell me that she used to be hot, “Banged every guy” in the room in the 70’s and that “Every night at her house was like Sluts-R-Us.” I nearly fell on the ground. This woman revealed to me that she was 67 years old and I’d never heard a grandmother-aged person with such a foul mouth in my entire life. I truly could not fathom an elderly lady describing such things, but when I thought about it, are old people not just ex party girls who’ve been around the block a few more times?

On and on she talked about love, sex, a friend of hers that turned out to be, “a little more than a friend, I’m not sure if you’d call it a lesbian thing but I definitely fucked some women in a fishnet jumpsuit” and again, I just could not believe my ears (especially not when she invited me to smoke pot with her in her car!) Yet here I was, along for this crazy ride with a random, dirty old lady.

She said her name was Eleanor and I told her that my name was Esther. “Get a load of these double Es,” she quipped.

“What do you think your dead friend thinks of our conversation?” she asked.

“Well, she had a mouth on her, just like you, so I’m sure she’s floating above us and very amused,” I said.

“Was she a big slut like I was in my youth?” asked Eleanor.

“She certainly knew how to appreciate and enjoy life,” I said. Eleanor laughed so hard she dropped her Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.

I became very quiet and just said, “Eleanor, she was so free spirited, she danced on the wind for a time.”

I always somehow speak or write in a very overblown, archaic and poetic manner whenever I’m deeply affected by something emotionally. I say something ridiculous like, “T’was the wellspring of my heart, stagnant with such courteous discontent, that poisoned any lover who raised the waters of my sorrow to their lips.” I can’t just say, “You know what, I was really FUCKIN’ SAD.”

Eleanor became very serious. “You still have a lot of life left in you. How old are ya, Esther? 20?

“I’m nearly 40.”

“Aahh well. You look great for your age, kid! I feel like your friend sent me to you today. To remind you not to take life so seriously! Maybe this Juliet, maybe she wants you to remember how important it is to live wild and free.”

“No one knew how to do that better than her,” I said. “I think when we knew each other, she was so full of levity. She was not afraid to do or try anything. In knowing her, I became less fearful and embraced life, I changed a lot. I was never the same person again.” I felt shy, ugly, and tired before I met Juliet. Her bravado was contagious.

To be fair, Juliet had that effect on people. Anyone who knew her seemed to grow up a little afterwards. I do not think I would have been ready for my wife had I not changed as a person before we encountered each other.

“Well, I think she sent me here with that message then,” said Eleanor. “Don’t come for me yet, Juliet!” she said, making the sign of the cross. “I have a lot of life left in me too!”

I thought about all of the ribald sex tales Eleanor just blurted out and thought my God lady, how do you have the energy? Will I be like this when I’m 67? Accosting people 30 years my junior on the shore with, “Lemme tell ya a long story about dildos, kiddo!” (Ha, “long.”) God, I hope not. Maybe I should wait until I’m 69, then go back to Juliet’s bench and do that to people.

Eventually I parted ways with Eleanor, started walking back to take a train. I still feel that Juliet reaches people with music. The creepiest story I have is that I was doing my laundry in the basement when I heard a loud, “Smack!” and saw a guitar pick bounce off of my foot. She had one tattooed on her wrist, to remember her dad (who was a guitarist.) Honestly I got so scared that I threw all of my laundry into the bag and just ran out of the basement. But I kept the pick, even if it frightened me.

Ghost pick!

So I walked for a very long time along the beach, when Ke$ha’s, “Die Young” came on the speakers at a bar. I don’t think Juliet would have ever listened to Ke$ha in an unironic manner, but the joyful beat and lyrics seemed to fit the spirit of our bygone youth:

Looking for some trouble tonight (yeah)
Take my hand, I’ll show you the wild side
Like it’s the last night of our lives (uh huh)
We’ll keep dancing till we die

I hear your heart beat to the beat of the drums
Oh, what a shame that you came here with someone
So while you’re here in my arms
Let’s make the most of the night like we’re gonna die young

Well Juliet, since Eleanor interrupted my quiet grieving process, I’ll just write a few of the things that I remember about you:

  • You were an old soul who loved Janis Joplin and I was convinced you were a reincarnated flower child from the 60's.
  • One time a mouse fell through a grate into your apartment, and you spent the whole afternoon building a ladder out of popsicle sticks, baiting it with peanut butter so that hopefully the mouse would be able to climb back to where it needed to go.
  • Never one to shy from a good prank, you once told everyone at a bowling alley that we were from a professional lesbian bowling league in Iowa and “needed a real challenge.” But we both sucked so bad at that neither of us scored even one point on the lanes that game and we had to leave because it was embarrassing.
  • You mocked me for having a terrible selection of books on my shelf (I had to sell most of them to be able to get to New York with 2 duffel bags) and said, “Your taste is pedestrian, and your selection is far too small.” I derisively called you a size queen. But secretly I put a few Franzen and Wallace books into my Amazon cart, so that we could bond over one writer who wasn’t Jennifer Egan.
  • You sang classic Gaga fairly well.
  • …But you were a terrible driver (and I’m an Asian woman with no driver’s license.)
  • I was loathe to admit that all of your criticisms about the poor grammatical structure of my work were valid.
  • Everything about you was a paradox. You were femmey with a butchy swagger, an air of confidence bordering on arrogance, but secretly insecure. You used to chain-smoke Newports, but switched to American Spirit Greens for the health benefits.
  • I was intimidated by your talent and intelligence, but I loved when we exchanged writing and I felt determined to someday be good enough to be a real challenge to you.
  • Whenever we made little games about who could find better pictures or write better headlines for articles, you always won.
  • I teased you about being a Jersey Girl until you called me a Shore Whore. That shut me up!

Thank you for sending that old strumpet to me down the shore, friend. For the first time since you died, I finally feel like I am now free and can move on.

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