Day ?

Uhg. I say uhg because I've got so much to catch up on. How many days can you spend thinking about things that have already passed? What's it like to not have a vivid imagination? I can't even go there. Spotify is my new best friend. Spotify is my new best enemy. It's all time suckage and head in the clouds. I've got to find better shoes my soul hurts. His face is four times less its normal size but is in complete proportion with the rest of our story. An abandoned Sonic Drive Thru. Cattails in the field between our houses. Pleasant Run Ave. Wood paneling and bathrooms with wall gas heaters that leaked that sweet sour smell. If I would have known then what I know now we could have played Sylvia Plath with our heads on the wood floor, nose pointed to the glowing ceramic grates.

When he comes in swaggering in belted trousers and clean slick hair the women are agog. Long gone have the days of grunge, side shaven head, long hair pulled back in messy mélange of bird nest fodder, ice blue hair gel and wheat fields. One can only think of the shrinkage of some things and the hopeful growth of others. I didn’t wear a chest bearing neckline for nothing. But still, when his hug became longer and the stubble on his face grazed upon my neck, and his warm breath made its whispered advances, my knees lost the gentle grace of gravity momentarily as his hand on my ass made sure I didn’t fall.

How many days can you spend thinking about things that have already passed you by?

My teenage crush made a pass at me.

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Our teenage monarchy was ruled by a queen. Her black widow lipstick and waterfall onyx hair over her left eye, wrists punched thru t-shirts to made them large and worn thin. Black leggings on thick Latina thighs with knee high boots laced tightly still race through my mind. You don’t understand, but everyone loved Valentina. Her name could leave a left a watermark on your heart if her half hidden smile didn’t.

Hey, I said its all right.. you know I won’t forget all the time I waited patiently for you..

In the frame house with wooden floors the walls were filled with gold rimmed picture frames with cardboard backing. They were the kind you would buy at the dime store to put your school portraits with crossed eyes and missing teeth and seriously bad hair in. These pictures were taken at various times of life ranging for the sickeningly sweet age of 5 or 6 to the zit riddled awkwardness of early pre teen, to the cap and gown with fake bookshelves behind you. All three girls had their own spot on various walls. It felt like home even though you were only a visitor. It was where you‘d raid the fridge, watch the tube, sneak cigarettes in the back yard and get holy water thrown on you periodically by the mother who shook her head and begged God to bless these creatures that had taken over her daughter’s life with Mohawks, safety pins, black hair dye and music that sounded like the opening of old tombs in the graveyard. It was only later when I got older and had my own beautiful daughter that I understood the gesture of the holy water as benign. There was nothing better than having a house full of teenagers eating my food and filling the bedrooms with laughter long into the stretching fall evenings of suburbia.

I’m not sure how I fit in these days. I was a girl, but my budding had yet to really blossom. I was rallying around the ugly duckling story for almost 16 years and nothing ever became of that happy ending. I tried in vain to follow her cues, bought the same looking clothes, but couldn’t help that the tshirts didn’t fall as gracefull off my chest and that the leggings hugged my dimpling fat and would roll over the mound of my stomach filled with yoohoo and tiny chocolate donuts. My constant struggle made me tug  She had unknowingly made every nuance of femininity follow her.   It clung to her hips and sparkled in her one unhidden eye. He hands like bird wings ever scribbling in her secret notebooks filled with poetry and lust, when they weren’t pushing away her shock of bangs away from her face. I have to say I felt like a 2X4 standing next to her, but I was totally in love with every strange and charming thing she ever said and did. If I would have been older and could have seen the eyes of every person I called my friend light up when she walked in the room I could have been president of her fan club and the membership would be forever growing in numbers.

On this one particular afternoon we stood shirtless in her bedroom carefully tearing, cutting and safety pinning our tshirts to make them more acceptable. Her best stretch was when she would take her knee and shove it into the arm pit of the poor pitiful rag and pull, teeth gritting with all her might, hearing the satisfying crackle of seams splitting, causing unraveling black threads to slowly domino out of their carefully sewn rows.