I was supposed to be studying for midterms one night;
instead, I wrote a short story using a line from the first stanza of a song as the beginning of each paragraph.
I had downloaded chelsea
hotel no. 2 by leonard cohen and couldn't stop listening to it
march 17, 2013
I remember you well. we used to be classmates. you got upset one day and threw your chair to the front of the classroom. the teacher was outraged, the school kids were in a frenzy. that summer, you went away to massachusetts and no one ever heard from you again. you always smelt like cigarettes and peach tea, even two seats away from me. I would look at your dirty hands. they never followed the pencil across the lined paper like the teacher wanted them to. you treated yourself like an empty desk.
**
In the chelsea hotel, I bought my first pack of cigarettes. it was the morning after my best friend lost her father, the night we were drunk in new york city. we saved just enough money to drive six hours east, to celebrate our graduation. we took a bag for a few nights, we took our favorite CDs, we took our best underwear. we stayed at the chelsea hotel. she told me she'd never slept with a boy before, and I told her I knew. a lot of people back home didn't know, but I knew. she was the kind of girl so uncomfortable in her own skin, she accepted anything anyone else projected on it. that's probably where she got her reputation.
we were talking so brave and so sweet. I held her hand and laughed with her as we made eye contact with three beautiful boys across the bar. it was dark, and I whispered again into her ear the things I would say to them if I could. she bought us another round of drinks, and was so brave by the end of the drinks that she walked over to the boys. before I knew it, we were sitting so sweetly on their laps, so sweetly in their eyes. my best friend couldn't find her key, but we had enough money to take a cab to their apartment.
giving me head on the unmade bed. a scratch on my left knee from ripping off my jeans. the taste of cigarettes in his mouth. these are the bits and pieces that pervade the swallowed evening. I tried to pull my clothes back on, but she came running into the living room. She was hysterical, her made up face ran down her chubby red cheeks. She told me her mother just called and told her her father had died. without putting on a shirt, I ran over to her and held her in my arms. we cried and I forgot what happened next.
while the limousines wait in the street, filthy things go on in cabs. I don't remember why, but the boy who was with my best friend came back with us to our hotel. or at least this is how it was told to me. he told his friends that we needed help getting back, getting another key from concierge. he would sacrifice his night. I guess he didn't feel like sacrificing his sleep; he put me in the bathtub and shared the bed with her. in the morning, he was gone, and her father was still dead.
**
but those were the reasons, and that was new york. still, I find myself yearning for a cigarette whenever I feel that momentous emptiness welling up inside my stomach. one day I found myself sitting under a gas station awning, seeking shelter from the rain with a smoke in my teeth. for the first time in five years, I smelt this sickening peach sweetness, and there you were.
I was running for the money and the flesh you said. I'll pay you back for these smokes, you said. you're still the only person to talk to me, you said, and I said I knew. it turns out, you were sent away because of repeated outbursts, and you had "anger management problems" and were a threat to our pathetic little catholic school. I knew your parents were getting a divorce, because your mom used to be friends with my sister's classmate's mom, and not many people got divorces in our small town. your mother also had beautiful black curly hair like you.
and that was called love for the workers in song. love was having enough money to send your son to boarding school, to therapy, to a place hundreds of miles between yourself and what you're afraid of. you showed me the scars on your arm from other boys, and from a boy you didn't want to admit you were. you told me dirty jokes, and I gave you a fifth cigarette, and you spit onto the sidewalk. I laughed at your mannerisms. you asked me why I was being so friendly to someone who I didn't even know.
probably still is for those of them left, you said, and I knew what you meant. catholic school was nasty. I told you I agreed, and that something in me drowned there. when I realized how much I hated it, people hated me for knowing it. my best friend became my best friend when we were the two most hated girls in our class.
oh but you got away, didn't you baby? you seemed broken before, but in a different way than you were in front of me chain-smoking in the rain. I knew that you always saw beyond your circumstances, and that's why you were so angry. everyone oppressed you. me on the other hand, I had grown tame. I found pleasure in losing my mind, in cigarettes not because they were "social" or "cool" but because they made my body forget I hate myself. I don't think you ever hated yourself more than I do. I almost told you this. you touched my shoulder and said you would see me around. you walked away, and I went into the gas station to buy another pack.
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