Goddamn it she took my breath away every time I saw her. All dark skin and dark hair and dark eyes, that white open-mouthed smile she couldn't seem to control, the short haircut that I wanted to run my fingers through, it all made me
die a little inside.
"I would really appreciate it if you stabbed me in the heart right now. Right here, shank that motherfucker and leave me to die. Put me out of my fuckin misery."
"No, come on, no, she's not worth it. She's not worth it. You're stronger than this." The motherfucker thinks this is a joke. "She's not even that hot, dude, forget about it." Now he's fuckin up.
She's laughing at me, asking me why I'm such a faggot. She is drunk and high. When she called me an hour ago she was cheerful, happy to talk to me. Somewhere between then and now she's gone through a few cans of cheap beer and shared a blunt with her friend. I am told by a friend the most hilarious fucking thing this girl has ever said in her life before she stared getting trashed tonight - "Life's a bitch and I'm fucking her tonight."
"That's actually not funny at all," I tell her.
"Well it's not funny at all that you like to suck cock." She laughs to herself, her idea of humor.
Suddenly she becomes very serious, very grave. "Nikki," she says to her friend, "Nikki my head hurts but we need to finish this vodka." She's tripping over her words, but this is not necessarily because she's intoxicated, she does that when she's sober too. It is part of the reason I think I've fallen in love with her.
You can hear her puking in the bathroom. I wish she wasn't so pretty.
When I first met her she was hidden behind an expensive digital camera. She was in a church's parking lot - in Texas these are everywhere in suburban neighborhoods, and invariably you can see kids drawing on the concrete with chalk and jumping rope and playing the games that children do when they haven't been sucked into Xbox 360 and the Wii.
"Why are you stalking these children," I deadpanned.
She laughed wildly, uncontrollably, and that alone was enough to kill me softly. "This is for my photography class. There's not much to see in this town so it's either this or a gay sunset1."
I said, "Sunsets are pretty."
"They are pretty, everyone thinks they're pretty," she said, and what she said next melted my heart, "But kids playing on concrete can be pretty too, or you can take it in another direction and it can be sad." She leaned in closer and confided in me, "I haven't decided yet."
1 - if you are not already aware, the title of this write up is taken from the title of a song by Modest Mouse; the lyrics that make me love the song the most are, "and i claim i'm not excited with my life anymore, so i blame this town this job my friends the truth is it's myself"