gatsbysgreenlight
The girl vomited into the vat of hotdog pulp. That was the story my fifth grade teacher told us, and I wonder now is she was lying. How many of idols--then, now, childhood, last year--had constructed themselves from pieces of folklore and pop songs. My teacher also played us Louis Armstrong, and we liked it, so I left with soft jazz stuck in my stomach and stopped eating meat four years later.
We often played Joy Division. We played it on popping vinyl, imagining we were English by the sea.
The stove dials said "LITE," and I wondered at the misspelling. Was it foreign? From the time of my grandparents? I'd never used gas before and the way the flames leapt out in an ocean roar made me jump back, count the ways I was still alive.
Words are always too much or not enough, too few or too many. "Balance is proportions and not opposite," I said to the Pole in London, late-night drunk and walking to the store for more cider. No, I'm lying. I didn't say that. I thought it and laughed while stiffly trying to shrug off his hand.
Texas was bluegrass, and blue grass, and cockroaches scuttling out of it in swarm when the sun went down. Late night dehydration was a battle, a brave arms against the bugs, thrashing against their ancient exoskeletons until they curled into themselves, pussing and bleeding into the linoleum. They would always be there after you were gone.
They danced on the roof, bulky bodies swaying over the glow and crowd from the festival below. They could smell the sour sunny beer swelling up, and they felt themselves waving against it, sweat clinging to fabric and fingers sinking into skin.
The bent metal of the shop light you bought when you said you were going to work on the car, fix all of the broke small pieces, the ones that didn't change anything, didn't keep us from going grocery shopping or taking the dog to the vet, but still made the drives over less than the windy American movie ideal.
How we loved to rally, around a Cause, a capitalized and towering Cause, around a God, a capitalized--of course--God. We rallied around our loves and our families and our school spirits and always we were fizzing into the swarm.
You were calling me everyday, asking how I was. I was calling myself good and well and doing alright and you were repeating those words back to me. Remember when we used to talk about things that weren't ourselves, or were ourselves, but not those distant ideas of ourselves that we stick adjectives to now, on the phone, when you call?
I warned myself not to call you. I visualized where I would be in two weeks if I gave in to my compulsion. I would probably lying in bed in the middle of the afternoon, staring anxiously at my phone, praying for the three-inch screen to light up with your name splashed across it.
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