Teenage unrequited love

“Hello. What’s your name?”
“Lucy.”
“You’re beautiful. I need a ride home.”
“I have a car.”
Out it slipped. We’re connected.


* * * * * *


Less than an hour later we’re lying on your bed and I’ve forgotten that this is the first time we’ve met. This is also the first time that I’ve been in a boy’s bedroom with the door closed. I don’t know your last name or which month you were born, but have already learnt ten different ways of how you kiss.

“I love you, Lucy”
“You filthy liar!”
“No, I do. Don’t start with that shit. You know I do.”
“You just want to get laid.”

I leave your house at three in the morning when the crunchy brown leaves have turned into soggy puddles in the rain. I’m shivering, standing with my back arched against the cold brick wall of your garage. This is the place that we say goodnight so your parents don’t see.


* * * * * *


He has posters on his walls of films that I hate. One of them is A Clockwork Orange.

“Why do you have that poster? That movie made me feel sick”
“I haven’t seen it, I just liked the poster. I’ll take it down if it creeps you out.”

He rolls something between his index finger and thumb before placing it in a pipe.

“Do you want some?”

He flicks the lighter as I inhale and something translucent fills my head. How can you be so beautiful? Did you ever adopt a whale? My cat ran away and got hit by a car when I was ten. I think I love you more than you know. I’m hungry, let’s go to the store.


* * * * * *

At night I get to know myself in a way that is not possible when you are around. When you are not co-opting my thoughts, my speech, my movements and my time. Even my hands and ears and mouth are shared with you these days – breathing without you becomes a very strange and exceptional time. Little thoughts come, fragmented pictures appear and disappear before I am able to register and remember.


* * * * * *


It’s four am and you’re on the telephone dialing the emergency help-line. You’re sad and broken - you don’t know what to do with yourself. You are beating yourself up and thinking about putting holes in your skin. You are looking for someone to hold you and tell you your worth - you need me. I throw my cigarette onto the lawn and say goodbye to myself as I become an ambulance again.


* * * * * *

The last thing I’d call it was romance. Maybe desperation. An irrational religious kind of obsession. Things have soured. I guess that it was explosive at first, the sort of fake love that is so easily professed. I didn’t know the first thing about you other than that you could tell me the words that I needed to hear, words that don’t need to be attached to any particular person to feed my hungry heart.