yes, i became her spy. slid back into being his friend, his music girl, the old me that he'd pull out and dress up, in those years before. back when i breathed in his every words and posed myself ready for anything, wanting to be something he tucked in with him at night. but, i'd grown out of all that. i could take him out with us, robert in the backseat now. i'd catch his eyes in my rear view mirror, and notice the familiar smile. he'd tease me about still making mixed tapes, how the cure always seemed to be on side one of every damn time. we watched each other slip in and out of beds and bathroom stalls, and sometimes we would danced.
sam wants him for more. she's wearing her hair short now. dyed fire station emergency red with black streaks underneath. she's tired of the boys who come around to easy and eager, dropping their current everythings for her. dropping their lives for her, dropping their pants. she wants something with a scent of chase and challenge. but, as always, she wants the upper hand. the cheat sheet. the poison apple that you can’t help but take a bite of.
connections are hard to break, and love is so twisted and topsy turvy. the jangled pieces that make up that kind of emotion sometimes play tricks. hide-and-seek, boomerang, twister. and i know how this works, what the particular ticking of my heart sounds like, how i am even clumsy at love.
it was a july night. sam was in the front seat playing with the rewind button, wanting to hear the line again. "you know what they say about small men.” then she’d laugh, asking me if it was true. i think she just figured all those years sleeping in robert’s bed that we must have done more then just sleep. there was never a boy that she didn’t devour, strip naked and fuck. and i had my share of that, too, but not with him. i don’t think she understood the protective shell we kept around us, individually and together. perhaps that was part of what felt over with him. when i started to step outside of the walls, let people touch tender parts of me, skin on skin; i think i have gone too far beyond the innocence we once shared. sometimes we steer ourselves so far off the map that even a dozen u-turns would not bring us back to where we started. robert and i had been living in a cul de sac existance, and now i was speeding on the freeway.
that night i had spent hours getting ready. nothing fit right, nothing felt right. i had that tumbleweeds upside down and back again feeling in my stomach. i felt fluttery, flustered, short of breath. sam kept asking me what was up, why my face was flush, why my words seemed full of fury and fire.
i couldn’t wait to see you. but i didn’t say that, couldn’t admit it then, not sure i even knew it myself. this was just a job for sam, a friendship assignment. it was too late to say you can’t have him, he’s mine (hadn't he always been mine?).
i saw you first. dancing in the middle of the floor. we were at that place that used to be a roller rink, with the snack bar dressed up and changed into a dj booth. you were surrounded by friends, as usual; dressed in the finest things that stolen credit cards could buy. an olive suit, a black tie, black docs. you looked like a love child between wall street and melrose avenue. you wave at me and smile. i try to look down, look at my feet, just like i used to. back before you helped me find sleep, and safety. i am trying not to give my feelings away, to not tremble at this reincarnation of emotion. i feel like everyone will read it off my skin, in the way I stand, the tilt of my head, the color in my cheeks. he's written on my face again, sewn into the hem of my dress, in my hair.
i duck out the door and walk down the street. the city, and the night, it all feels blurred. there’s that big ralph’s grocery store, the one we went to with taryn and charles. we rode on the carts, playing catch with the avocados, the gala apples. its three blocks away, and i swipe at the tears running down my face as i walk down the sidewalk, then pace the aisles, aimlessly. i am trying to focus on this muzak version of ‘everybody wants to rule the world’, but right now i can't remember a single line of lyric. i end up buying roses, an armful of bouquets, the last that they have. one for her, one for me, one for him. the thorns cut up my hands while i run back down the street, the night air stinging my wet cheeks. thorn cuts and petals blending into some sort of tye-dye sentiment, i suppose, you trade a kiss for my blood roses. our first kiss, after all these years. rushed and tinged with guilt, yet so fucking beautiful.
i run, just like i've run my whole life. i exit stage left, hide in the far bathroom. i latch the door shut and fall to the floor, pulling my knees to my chest. this is what I want, what i've always wanted. but, how can i admit it? to her? to myself? i trace the word betrayal on my arms, over my heart. i know this is more like a passing fling to her. but, I know how she reacts, how she’ll see this. janie, you were supposed to be the messenger.
***
"do you think john and nick were ever lovers?" sam asks, as i try and tack up a flyer for hot lava on my ceiling. it fits perfectly right next to the duran duran and t-rex postcards we'd found in the back at wacko, i slid them in my purse pretending to look for my lipstick. they had been left there, abandoned, right next to those adult gag gifts; wind-up penis toys and vintage bathing suit model playing cards. that big grey cat was always asleep by the fan, we always tried to guess its name like some sort of feline rumplestiltskin game. i heard sam say something, muffled in between the last chords of 'cracks in the pavement', and last night still pacing nervously in the hallway of hungover thoughts.
“what?” i say, still only half-listening still fixated on that kiss last night, wondering if it was just a drunken mistake, or a misread signal. was he thinking about it this much, too? why am i feeling like i’m some awkward sixteen year old version of me again?
“janie? are you even listening to me? you’re not doing that counting bullshit again, are you?” she has been painting her toenails green, lying on her back on the unmade bed that i rarely slept in. but now she's sitting up, trying to reach over and grab the bottom of my dye-stained sweat pants.
how do i say this? how do i say the words? i don’t even think it is fear of her reaction anymore, or her feelings. i think it is admitting it. i really don’t think i’m ready for this. at all.
“it’s robert, right? i know i’m right. he’s the only thing that makes you act like this. the only thing that would make you ignore a homoerotic duran duran question. fuck.” she's standing up now, walking over to me in a wobbly sort of manner, in order not to wreck her toe art. she grabs me around the waist, hands on my hips firmly, and shakes me a little. i know she is trying to get me to look at her.
“i’m sorry.” the whisper voice is back, that shyness that never really goes away, just lurks in the back waiting for the invitation that insecurity up and offers. it really isn’t fair for adolescence to re-appear like this, though; to just swoop in and take over. is there ever a moment when we get to put it behind us? for good? leave it behind with unopened geometry books and locker combinations? cheerleaders?
“oh please. i’m so over him. he’s boring already. but that skinny little friend of his. i don’t know. something about that deer in the headlights gleam. makes me itch.” sam always sounds like she’s dancing when she talks, like she should have a back up band behind her piping in with their do do-do do's.
“troy? do you mean troy? he’s gay, sammy. you know that.” I say, knowing full well that sexuality is just another hurdle she likes to roll over.
“well, maybe i can teach him a better way to suck cock. or maybe he can teach me something. you know, there is always something to learn from boys.” she is half-laughing now, “hmm…maybe i could get john and nick to join in. what a learning curve that would be!”
“hey! nick’s mine!” i grab her hair, the back of her over-sized t-shirt. michael’s t-shirt, she still wears it to sleep in. we are both laughing now, play fighting and rolling on the floor. we finally lend up on our backs, side by side on the floor, eyes on the ceiling, and a bit out of breath. sam kick’s my bedroom door shut, pulls a cigarette out of the pocket of her cut off jeans. i grab a lighter from under my bed, hand it to her. we pass it back in forth. inhale. exhale. silence between us for a moment, side two of seven and the ragged tiger coming to a close. one of us will have to get up and change it soon.
“you know someday your heart is gonna kill you.” she whispered it to me, kissing my hair as she stood up. she kissed her hand then, and smacked it on david bowie’s lips, on my closet door. that ziggy stardust poster an ever-favorite. then she walked out of my room.
***
troy called me that first night, unexpectedly. to actually hear his voice was so strange and surreal. even in robert’s car he was silent, even more hushed than i was. robert taking up all the air space in the jeep, filling in the gaps between songs; talking about things and people, space and time. earlier, in the car, i thought i caught a recognizable look. something i’d seen in myself, in my own eyes. troy was as mesmerized as i was. if he could have been, he would have been a music girl, too. one of us at that table passing star hits across the table. sleep overs with hair dye and richard blade's video one. writing notes about billy idol’s snarl and robert smith’s lips, watching sing blue silver until you could mimic with simon exactly, body movements and all, to ‘union of the snake’. in a different reality he would have been one of us.
that night we watched mtv together, through the phone. we talked about boy george and madonna, scritti politti’s ‘a perfect way’. troy would tell me about crushes on girls, but i knew it was a fable. A contrived way of positioning himself as a teenage boy. i didn’t stop him, though. nor did i come clean about robert either, not that he ever asked.
troy was the first person I told about the dreams, the man in the shadows with snakes for hands, and what it was really like in my house.
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