7.26.00, 11:45 p.m.

Some girls are self-destructive, but stupidly so. They call you because they've known you for years and years, and god knows you've bailed them out of bad situations before: a bad boyfriend, a bus ticket, an abortion.

Some girls you've watched grow up, awkward fourteen year-olds in black still high after days on crank, crying on the couch because they can't sleep and the boys they've madly in love with are in the other room with other girls, and they're hungry, too, do you have anything to eat? You're not much older but maybe you took care of your mother or your latch-key siblings, so you are used to being concerned, or giving, or stern, depending on the occasion. Later they sat and pulled at the threads in the worn seat cushion and confess they feel used in little-girl voices. They hiccuped miserably, and your heart swelled with pity. Later still they forget they said anything of the sort, and leave town with the boys to play house for a while before the cocaine makes problems and aborts the fetus you were going to pay to get rid of because they, your awkward fourteen year-old girls, spent all their money on beer and food.

You forgive them because you believe they'll learn, if the hard way.

But ten years later they still date older men on motorcycles or sexy punk boys with drug habits or alcoholic musicians who prefer depression over company. They let you know they could do without, but choose not to because a girl's got needs, tossing their hair all nonchalant, but you're suspicious. Feeling powerful they tell you how beautiful the men say they are, licking bared necks in dimly-lit bars, tequila shots lined up on the counter. They say coyly, "Men are afraid of me," pause, "or they should be," and you force a wan smile. A week or a month or a year later they are devastated and shattered because he was married or because he needed some space or because she got on-stage, drunk and lipstick smeared, and made out with the singer of a local metal band, who happened to be a friend of his. Another week passes and there's a substitute who is just "a bit of fun," and you roll your eyes holding the phone against your ear, and feel terrible for it.

In between there are pregnancy scares and trips to the clinic, where they'll lie about their yearly incomes to get free services. They wake up mornings not knowing where this bruise came from, or where they left their wallets. They call you at six a.m. and you drag yourself out of bed to drive them to all their drinking spots of the night before, ducking through the hole in the chain-link fence to search the bushes and trails at the back of the rural cemetery, half-hearted and tired in your bones.

 home | archive