Observation: Fall 2009

Three kids.  Kids.  None of them have been kids for quite some time.  Two are smoking cigarettes.  One has a forty of Mickey’s.  The only girl in the bunch is curled up in a plastic garden chair with a plastic “glass” of vodka and cherry coke, innocent and yet completely sad.  She is the only one not from a broken home, but she does not discuss why she is here.  Not often, at least.  The boys have reasons.  Broken homes, escapism, etc.  One doesn’t even know how old he really is.  Paperwork, damn it.  They have set images, paths, pre-made decisions.  What is she? Goth, punk, raver, grunge, lazy bum, whatever!  She is a human female, still in the larval stage, still mutating into the final form.  A mutation, or mutated situation, has resulted in her reproducing before full adulthood is reached.  Thinking of it makes her miserable.  Still.  So she doesn’t.  Think about it, that is.  It’s easy not to think about it when she’s trying so hard just to remember what she did the night before and who she has to apologize to this time.  Who she has to hide what from.  The backyard smells of human and cat piss.  The boys find it freeing to drop their pants and mark their territory.  So does the cat.  How is it that with these people who love and accept her no matter what she does, she still manages to feel insecure, stupid, out of place?  She feels these things around everyone.  Well.  Almost everyone.  Refill.  Top me off.  The questions fade with her special awareness.  Instant gratification.  Want.  Get.  Want again.  Starve herself beautiful.  Drink herself lovable.  Screw herself wantable.  Talk herself out of it.  Or into it.  Depending.  She is over-dramatic.  Fact.  Contrary to her belief, it doesn’t make her anymore interesting.  She’d be interesting anyway.  A person doesn’t have to be loud to have a presence.  Don’t try telling her any of this.  She won’t believe you.  Half the time she doesn’t believe herself.  Ok.  More than half the time.  Continue rambling.  She’s still sitting in the plastic chair.  As the night rolls on the vodka to cherry coke ratio becomes more and more disproportionate.  She is, as we say, sloshed.  Let’s roll, they say.  Yah!  Now she is sloshed and warped.  What is wrong with this situation?  Simple.  How can she make decisions without knowing who she is?  Or what she is?  She feels trapped in a gelatinous, squishy, ugly mass of skin and fat and bones.  Like a brain and a heart suspended in pink gelatin.  With pineapple chunks.  Ugh.  Jell-O?  Jell-O shots!  Frozen heart rolling in a snowball.  Snowballing down the giant hill from her house right off the cliff at the barracks.  She bleeds herself, letting what is good in her drain out of the fatty corpse it is trapped in.  Goddess!  What an emo child!  Disgusting.  More judgments.  More drinks.  She’s gone.  Way, way, gone.