#do NOT get into corpse party at age 14!! BEST mistake of my life

[stealingsocieties]

redraw of something on ma page from yrs back..

[ebhenah]

1989

I’m fourteen and drunk again. My family thinks I am somewhere else and safely asleep but I’m at your place, watching the sun come up and trying to remember the complicated patty cake game you created as a drinking game. You are 18 and loaded, laughing as you say good-night to your girlfriend as she goes to the room you share and you lean heavily on me.

“She’s a saint,” you say to me, like you always do. I agree, just like I always do. We stumble down the hall to the guest room that has been officially designated as mine in your new house. 

“Boots!” I cry as I topple onto the big bed with the tacky black satin bedding set we found in the back of the Sears catalog and ordered after some other party then promptly forgot about until it was delivered. Your girlfriend hates it. You and I decided it was to be the thematic centerpiece for the room- which is now filled with black velvet paintings, heavy metal posters, and clothes, make-up, and jewelry my family doesn’t know I own. In less than a year, all these belongings will be char, but in this memory, they are pristine.

You laugh again, chiding for my impossible clothing choices and teasing me about my ex. You see the hurt in my eyes and apologize, then drop to the floor and carefully, in that exaggerated way that drunken people are careful, unlace the boots, yank them off and throw them aside. You also help me out of the layers upon layers of belts, bracelets, and necklaces and toss me one of your shirts to wear to sleep and kick yourself free of your bike boots.

You are telling me about the bike you are rebuilding. It’s all gibberish to me, but other than music and your family, it is the only thing that makes your face light up like that, so I listen. I smile and nod and sometimes ask a question and I watch your hands fly while you talk. You keep interrupting yourself with laughter. I think you are so grown up. I think you are so smart. I think you are the kindest, brightest, funniest person on the earth. You pretend to punch my chin because my hair is spiked and immovable and you can’t noogie me like you would any other time.

You ask me about home, and won’t let me avoid it. I talk about my bullies. I talk about how the teachers don’t care that I’m being targeted and jumped and ostracized. I talk about the friends that don’t believe you are real and think I am a liar. The friends I don’t really trust, even though I love them. I talk about the threats I am finding in my desk and my locker. I talk about my fights with my Dad, how I am still pleading to get them to send me away for school. I talk about the pills I am slowly stockpiling. I talk about how wonderful death sounds sometimes- even if it is just nothingness for eternity. I tell you about how much I have been drinking- how I found the boxes of alcohol that somehow never got unpacked when we moved into our new house almost a decade before and I’ve been selling it or just drinking it myself. You hug me and hold me and promise it won’t be like this forever. You are more right than you could ever know.

You remind me that bodies have one family and souls have another. I don’t tell you about how my new boyfriend scares me sometimes. You didn’t want me to date him anyway. He’s your friend, but he’s way too old for me and I am way too young to believe that is even possible. He becomes a nightmare and you become my white knight and avenging angel by the time that mistake ends, but in this moment things haven’t gotten that bad yet.

The music in the other room shuts off. The last cassette must have run out. We split a smoke and you tease me about when I used to smoke a pipe. To retaliate, I break out my old one and nearly cough up a lung from the dried out old tobacco. You laugh. I can still hear that laugh- sudden and barking and hoarse, so different from your speaking voice, your singing voice.

“Parties are better when you are here,” you tell me, “I wish you lived here… with us. With people who get you and want you around.” I carry those words in my heart for the rest of my life, but in that moment I roll my eyes and tackle you. We hug and laugh and laugh and laugh, too drunk to care that nothing started the laughter.

You sing me the lullabye you wrote for your son about me. I’ve heard it a million times and complain that it is cheesy and dumb and that it’ll be stuck in my head forever- I am wrong, it is sweet and charming and when I am 20 and have a child I cry for two days when I realize I can’t remember the words or the melody anymore and the only two people who ever heard the song are long gone.

I am almost asleep when you jump out of the bed and stumble to the stereo. I can hear the crackle of the lp as the needle hits the vinyl and then the first notes of the Led Zeppelin song you love so much. You yell ‘pile driver’ and fall onto the bed, one arm folded up behind your head. You pin my hair with your arm and my face is planted in your armpit, but I’m too drunk and too close to sleep to care. You pinch my cheek and call me Lovely Lady Lainey the way you do when you are being cute.

You are my best friend in the entire world. You are the only person that can ever make me feel like there are good things in my future. You treat me like I am precious, and your equal, and your favorite. No one understands our friendship except us… and sometimes your girlfriend… because she is, as you love to tell me, a saint.

I am 14 and you are 18 and we think we are so grown-up and tough.

I am 14 and you are 18 and we love to plan out all the adventures we are going to go on when I can get out of that damn town.

I am 14 and you are 18 and we are both so damn young and full of...everything.

I am 14 and you are 18 and we have the best friendship anyone has ever had- even if no one else understands any of it.

I am 14 and you are 18 and you are the reason I believe people can be decent.

I am 14 and you are 18 and I think we will always be this way, even when we are old and grey and terrorizing the old age home.

I am 14 and you are 18 and you are the family of my soul and the best thing in my world and I have no idea that when I am 18 you will be a corpse.

I am 14 and you are 18 and I have no idea that when I am 43 I will hear the opening notes of that song and the memory of THIS night will be so strong that I dissolve into tears at the hole I still feel from your loss and I can still hear that laugh, and smell your skin, and feel your arm pinning my spiked hair to the pillow, and see your face smiling when you tell me your girlfriend is a saint.

I am 43 and you never got to turn 22. You are long gone and I am STILL not okay, because my soul doesn’t have its family anymore.