Tuesday, March 16, 2010

She dated asshole-guy after asshole-guy. They made her the town-mattress, the ho.

We became fast friends. I had a non-sexual crush on Troy. Her hair was truly the lion's mane with wild red curls, lashing out and pulling you in. Her smile slightly crooked and mild like yogurt. I didn't detect any darkness. Not at first.

She came from another world. The Valley via Bakersfield. The first time I stayed the night (hands on the blanket, mind you, I was still closeted), I woke up in the morning to find her mom chain-smoking, drinking beer straight out of the can and listening to Aerosmith in the kitchen. It was 9 am. Troy's baby brother, wearing a bib and eating Wal-Mart fish sticks,  was trapped inside a cloud of smoke.

It was the first time I became acutely aware that someone's parent was a raging alcoholic. All the other ones, the relatives and family friends, did their boozing and escapism more elegantly.
They weren't Polish blondes with three inches of roots. They didn't wear Iron Maiden t-shirts. And they didn't drink malt liquor.

Later Troy told me about all her mom's boyfriends and how once she'd walked in on her mom getting fucked doggy-style on the living-room carpet, by a guy with a mullet and a hairy back. She said there was a parade of men like that. They drove pick-up trucks with bumper stickers and smelled of sweat and tobacco. The father was long gone, the mother wasn't even totally sure who he was.There had been so many of them, because her pussy was pure magic. At least that's what she had told Troy, and then Troy told me.

Troy started using a lot of eyeliner and getting more drunk than anyone I knew. She passed out in dumpsters. Woke up in parking lots with her panties around her ankles. She was the kind of teenage girl who always cries at parties. Saying nobody loved her, and that she was fat and ugly. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Once she threatened to jump out of a window.
She dated asshole-guy after asshole-guy. They made her the town-mattress, the ho.
But her heart-shaped face always had sweetness for anyone who would hold her gaze for a split second of our fucked-up eternity.
Then we didn't see each other for awhile. Turns out that during that while she cut herself really bad. Next time I saw her, her arms were striped by glossy scars, running all the way up to her shoulders. Some were so deep and desperate that they had cut into muscle tissue.

She said she had been home alone at the apartment. Drinking vodka and sinking a razor into her flesh. Time and time again. Crying and pacing. Crying and pacing. Cutting and bleeding. Swallowing the fire water.

Then, even later, we lost touch. What happened to my Troy?
Does anyone know?

15 comments:

  1. amazing writing, as always...

    come and check out the Alexia Admor giveaway :)
    xoxo

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great, great post. I am very impressed with your writing as well.. All I have to say is imagery, imagery, imagery.

    ReplyDelete
  4. lost friends from a lost generation.
    i was thinking about a boy the other day
    that was the sweetest, confused, country boy
    i've ever known.
    at this party someone started a fight
    and he got hit by a beer bottle and got a bloody lip.
    a few days later i was at his apartment and we started making out, and
    he stuck my hand in his pants right when his roommate came home and i pulled away
    cause i didn't want to embarrass him.
    he said he wanted me to let him try "h"
    and i said no,
    so he found a hott mess of a girl
    and they started getting fucked up as hell together.
    never saw him again, i was thinking of him the other day, and how i'd like to.
    --d.

    ReplyDelete
  5. do you know how much you rock my world? a lot.

    i'm off to get a wig, buy some temporary happiness.

    xxx
    t

    ReplyDelete
  6. what happens to all of us? we drown, or we learn to float. there is no other way. and sometimes you can fight and fight and still drown. or you can teeter on the cusp for so long you forget what it means to float.

    i love what you said about my gaze. someday maybe i can have the honor of breaking your heart?

    emailed essay + real name is coming as soon as i have time to type it. then you will have all my pieces. what then?

    xx x

    ReplyDelete
  7. oh i forgot. there's one more piece. which is something we have in common but i've never talked about. guess.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hey Doll, excellent as always (gush) xo - E.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This reminds me of a friend I lost touch with. Last I saw her she was falling apart and I still worry about her to this day. I love the way you tell stories, you have a very unique voice. It keeps me interested from the first word to the last.

    ReplyDelete
  10. hopefully she is somewhere rising up from the ash

    ReplyDelete
  11. Oh, this made my eyes fill up with tears. She sounds like a lovely girl.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I wish I had an answer for you, but I don't. I wish I had answers for anything, but I don't. Perhaps you will find her. Let's hope together.

    xo, Sophia

    ReplyDelete

You Rock. I am certain of it.