I read the story which was a true story told with a twist as all things are. Nothing is in fact factual. I read it with a wavering voice into the microphone and too fast and I forgot my useful dramatic pauses and the need to connect with the audience with eye contact as my family sat over towards the back at a circular table and listened, probably wondering two things: Where did she get that language? And This is a big deal?
The story was simplified and also neatly wrapped in metaphors and tied up at the end as if all were well. You read it yourself, my only witness; if it weren't for you I could have embellished the shit out of the whole thing, but then again, without you it wouldn't have existed to start with. There wouldn't be a story of two teenagers in a playground huddled up and crying as we listened to a stranger, a girl our own age, a romantic adolescent encounter as ours could have been had I not been so stubborn, getting her face pummeled next to the sports car they drove up in. Even now, years later, I only remember wardrobe details: tiny white sports socks, baseball cap, the kind of neck that looks like an overgrown fist erupting from tee-shirt, warbled with veins. He was a short bastard; we could have taken him if we wanted. We were supposed to want to. I was supposed to feel bad for her, despite her cheerleader good looks and pussyish nature and all of the bad associations those things still carry. I was supposed to feel one with her, take her under my proverbial sistlerly wing, defend her honor, defend our universal beings, You Are Me/ I Am You. But I was not you, that was not my ass being called a lying cunt and that was not my face shoved into a car window. But the term bitch stung for years later and I cried for the rest of the night. I made eye contact with her as the police drove up, I rolled down the window and looked right into her and saw nothing but nuisance. Had we been a nuisance? Would the night have gone smoother for her if the two of us, two overly emotional teenagers with a penchant for good deeds, lurking in the wooden beams, the little castle made of wood, the slats that jiggle unexpectedly when you walk on them, not existed?
The two of us, me and you, did we talk about it much after that? A sore subject; all that guilt. Months after, years after, we had our small ways of getting even, taking that short bastard with the sports socks down in the form of- what did we do? Picking fights with strangers, putting out your fists and opening that big mouth at the first sign, the first chance. Anything to be useful again. Anything to be active. "Me tough, you tough," you said once. Maybe you were talking about tattoos without tears or big boots worn with jeans or the fact that at any given second, our own fights could turn so sour, so ugly. Were we that far off from that couple that night? Different cars, different clothes, different politics; but the same, the same passion, the same hostility between us. We fought like there would be no tomorrow. We fought because we loved each other deeply and had little clue how to deal with such a looming reality as each others lives with us in it. And we were both cowards, because despite the bloody noses we'd earn on Saturday nights, despite the confrontational attitudes and the swaggers we carried with us, we couldn't fight when we most desperately needed to. We cried like babies instead.
TRUE STORY.
