Happy Halloween.

There was a strobe light in one corner of the basement; it was all we had to see down there amongst the Top 40 pop and the recently pubescent boys and girl dry humping in the corner where their parents couldn't come downstairs and see them. All I saw, between each consecutive flicker of the light, was that stupid fucking grin on his stupid fucking face. I contemplated slamming his head into a wall momentarily, only to remember how trapped I am in this stupid, weak little body. Catullus found me in a corner later that night and told me he hoped I'd be alone for the rest of my life.

Alone or not, I find myself in a basement every year, surrounded by people I don't know bent at familiar 90 degree angles, yelling song lyrics I wish I didn't know. It's not as bad as he hoped - or, at least, he wouldn't think so.

Never heard him lock the door, part 3.

That's not really what happened.

Dirty Hippy's boyfriend called; without asking for my approval, she said yes and her mother whisked us away to a Rite Aid on the other side of town. It was cold and dark and the unnatural buzzing fluorescence of the 24-hour store made me blink my eyes and rub my temples. We weren't far from my house - a five minute drive, at most - but I felt stranded, lost on some dark, paved island millions of miles from where I was comfortable.

The boyfriend appeared, his bumbling, ugly, lion-haired best friend in tow. Greasy-haired upper-middle class scum with a tan, mousy face. He hadn't hit puberty and his voice was anathema to me; I was more of a man than he was. I loved Dirty Hippy more than him - more than he ever would. But she had him, and I'd do anything - anything - to convince myself I didn't want her.

When the 21-year-old Army asshole welcomed me into his apartment and offered me booze, I drank. It was dark and sparsely decorated, with sandalwood incense burning in all of the corners. It was rank; it permeated and everything smelled like her. It drove me crazy. And I drank. Until all of the shadows and people and noise - that fucking Rage Against the Machine bullshit meddle of guitars and spoiled suburban punk-manifesto rap - blurred together into an uncomfortable, unfamiliar haze. I felt like I was wrapped in wool; nothing was comfortable and everything was warm and itchy and nothing made the feeling go away. I watched as the boyfriend slipped his tongue into Dirty Hippy's mouth. Put his hands in her pants, up her shirt. when the 21-year-old Army asshole offered my fag and I a tour of his oh-so-20-year-old apartment, I accepted so as to quell the heat in my eyes and the dry, sandpapery, golf ball-sized lump that was rolling between my throat and my mouth. To this day, I'm not sure if that ball was vomit or some primordial, angry scream.

The bathroom. The hallway. My darling bisexual soon-to-be-gay faggot making idle, excited comments about the Super Nintendo out in the living room, about the burn mark I'd put in the carpet when I'd ashed a cigarette without paying attention.

The bedroom.

I wasn't paying attention. Too busy admiring the orange glow of the room, the way it hit the canopy and looked purple and blue from certain angles. Too busy complimenting the sheets, the dresser, the handcuffs beneath it - military grade; hard steel with swiveling closures.

Too busy to hear him lock the door.

I don't know what happened, what progression of awkward, unwilling action occurred. I remember his grin - smug, sleazy. Too-white teeth and eyes that crinkled and creased a the corners. Stubble that itched and scratched and irritated the sides of my face, my body, the place that was too high to be my cunt and too low to be my stomach. But, suddenly, I was naked and he was on me and I was saying no. No, no, no. Over and over again and he kept moving. I saw Dirty Hippy, saw her calling me a pussy, her baby Christian girl who needed to be corrupted, telling me I should shut up and get laid. I stopped loving her, but it was at the cost of forgetting I was worth loving.

Hands I didn't want on me, fingers around my wrist, my neck - "all girls like this, right?" That fucking stubble against my side, at the place where there's no fat and my ribs show through. It felt like it was burning, like he was striking flint against my bones over and over, desperately trying to start some fucking campfire at boot camp. Everything was orange for some reason; the dim lights and the vodka, rum, and tequila and God knows what else sloshing around in my head just made it hazy and bright and brownish orange; our skin blended into the light. Rough, long fingers inside of me, nails too long. Begging. "You have the cutest clit." Tongue. His cock in my mouth, telling me to let him fuck me. Over and over again, I said no.

And, suddenly, like that, he stopped. Took his dick out of my mouth, shoved it back in his pants and fastened his belt. My underwear looked dark and foreign on the floor, the blue of my shirt too bright. Awkward. Sickly.

I pulled my clothes on and Dirty Hippy cheered as I walked out of the room and towards the restroom. I vomited before I could close the door and a large, black boy stumbled in, told me to lock the fucking door, and stumbled back out as I flushed and gagged and flushed and gagged and identified the carrots and watermelon and assorted breads that came out with each heave. Lettuce here, tomato there. Seeds. Bile. More flushing. Listerine.

I stumbled outside and back to the party, where Dirty Hippy lifelessly put her tongue in my mouth and my fag put his arms around me and kissed me and wiped away the few tears that managed to escape when the Army asshole wasn't looking.

And a month later, I went back.

He ushered everyone out of the room upon my arrival and unbuckled his belt, told me to "finish what I'd started." His hands tangled in my hair. I felt dirty and burned holes in his carpet until he kicked us out.

I felt dirty for two years, until he stopped calling and moved away.

Sometimes, in the dark recesses of my dreams, I can still see his stupid fucking grin.

Was it a dream?

Dirty Hippy's hand finds mine the moment my parents' car pulls out of sight and we join the kinds we pretend not to know outside the food court, lighting up Turkish Golds and cigarillos, popping tiny yellow pills into our mouths and waiting for the caffeine to kick in. 

We enter the mall and her hand leaves mine, instead sliding around my back and resting at my waist where she digs her nails in until the tiny indentations they leave turn spotty and red with blood. She tugs me into Hot Topic and puts me in pleather pants that make my ass disappear; she calls me her dyke and hits me with a poorly-made imitation bullwhip while we wait in line for me to purchase the pants. 

At home that night her hands tug my shirt over my head, leaving me in my bra and the pants she picked out for me as she tugs me onto my waterbed. I bury my face in the place where her neck and shoulder meet and am overwhelmed by Red Jean No. 5 and the faint remaining scent of nicotine and pot from our earlier excursion to the mall. 

My room is insanely hot and I don't know if it's us or the ineffective space heater on my bedroom floor. My hand traces the barely-there muscles of her stomach and as I try to kiss her, she turns away from me, telling me she can't do that because she's not gay. 

I can still taste the margarita on her lips from last weekend as I fall asleep staring at her shoulders.

The spiral.

Dirty Hippy begins dating a boy with greasy black hair and I begin to scream. 

I drag a utility knife across my wrist, my arm, the places where my ribs are closest to kissing the air (I have stopped eating and they look as though they are trying to escape the stretched white skin holding them prisoner) and I am screaming "LOVE ME LIKE YOU LOVE HIM!" My mother sees the crusty, scabbed lines and does not say a word; her eyes are filled with wet denial and I smile at her as I get on the bus to drive to the zoo, the white fishnet on my arms creating peppermint swirls on my wrists. Nothing is wrong, I tell her. Nothing is wrong.

I hold her when we go to sleep in spite of him and I am screaming "I AM SO MUCH BETTER FOR YOU!" The girl with the Egyptian eye tattoo who I have come to love (for being cool) and hate (for replacing me in the Hippy's hierarchy of friends) calls me an emo cunt when I am not around and Dirty Hippy tells me we can't do that anymore.

I take ten, eleven, twelve caffeine pills at night before heading to the mall for the ritualistic drug-addled Friday night escapades and and vomit in sterile whiteness of a downstairs Macy's restroom and I am screaming "I DO NOT WANT THIS!" That night, when I am puking and sobbing and shaking and pulling out my hair in clumps, is the first  night Dirty Hippy will understand what she has done to me, what she has reduced me to. What I have allowed myself to become.

I drink two bottles of Robitussin and I am screaming "I AM TRYING TO FORGET YOU!" Technicolor swirls and fuzzy edges allow me to be happy in spite of myself in twelve hour spans where nothing hurts and I no longer want to die. The next day, I realize I can live without her, without the coma her fickleness has put me in. I throw away my stash of drugs, alcohol, and the utility knife. I begin to shake without the chemicals that have sustained me. I panic for days, stretching into one, two weeks. I hurt. I begin eating again - not much, but anything is a step up - and the dark circles under my eyes begin to fade, ever so slightly.

A year later, I cut off all my hair and take off my braces. I begin listening to angry punk bands with names like "Discharge," and "Crass," as well as bands with electronic bass beats with names like "Combichrist" and "VNV Nation," (Victory! Not Vengeance!).  My jeans get tighter, my belts get pointier, and I have food fights with new people like Egg and Thom York and Myra and a boy we call "Patches" for the patches sewed onto his pants at lunch as we mock the hirsute boy ("Wolf Man,") and the boy we think has leprosy ("Patch Adams"). I am screaming "I HAVE FORGOTTEN YOU. I AM FINE."

Killed over Avignon.

I'm drunk and surrounded by Michael Cera circa Juno clones and barely-dressed girls. My cowboy boots are just slightly too big and I trip over myself and opposing scantily-clad traffic as I walk up the steep, unstable stairs from the apartment basement to the ground floor in search of a seedy bathroom, the floor of which is covered in piss and vomit and - oh Christ, is that blood? is that a fucking tampon?- Lord knows what else. I wait in a line behind the Pope and roast in the Hellish humidity generated by hundreds of bodies rubbing up against each other.

I consider the number of people who are probably unknowingly contracting a disease or infection as yet another Michael Cera clone eases up behind me in the line. He attempts to Make Small Talk, which I can tell from the hesitation seeping out of his eyes like so many embarrassed tears that this is a feat requiring great effort on his part. I gratify him with response until the bathroom door opens and I realize I'm next as the Pope glides past me. 

As I leave the restroom, I nod to Michael Cera and scurry back into the basement to find myself alone in a sea of bunnies and ironic New Jersey kids dressed as guidos. The people I came with are gone.

Outside it is cool and smells of exhaust and vomit. It's better than the heat and sweat of the party house and I take a moment to feel some semblance of cleanliness in the crisp October air. I find a group of kids I don't know and ask if they are headed in the direction of Broad Street; they nod in the affirmative and I join their group, accepting gum from a boy I don't know dressed as Harry Potter. 

And suddenly, they are gone and I am on Broad Street with no one else in sight. The parties have not ended yet and this portion of the street is eerily devoid of life, save for the cars ad busses whizzing past, their lights blinding and dizzying in my drunken stupor. I get my bearings on campus, though I am barely hanging on to them, and stumble in the direction of the end of campus, to the two towers I've come to call home. 

Inside and safe on my floor, I encounter the people who abandoned me and fling questions only to be told it's my own fault. I return to my room and find the tiny, plastic case filled with guitar picks and two tabs of acid wrapped carefully in tin foil - I consider my ability to make this night better or, potentially, worse as I hear screaming outside my door. 

I throw open the door and a boy I have come to hate is standing with a boy I have learned not to trust are screaming lyrics at each other, the latter slumped against the wall across from me. I do not have any grasp of the situation until I realize I've suddenly cleared the three-foot gap between us and am yelling at the top of my voice, shoving him with a palm closer to the wall. Before I know what's happened, one of the boys from the floor is throwing me back in my room and dragging the other two away.

I sit on the floor and cry until five in the morning. The next day, I am a shell and hushed whispers succeed my every move. I become a ghost, remembered passively. I become the Dead Man in Yossarian's tent, gone before I'd ever been given the chance be there.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...

When I was three years old, I tied a blanket around my neck and sat at the top of the stairs for two hours, contemplating the drop. It didn't look too terribly bad, and I knew very little - if not nothing - about momentum and physics at the time.

All I knew was that Superman and Batman could do it. I hadn't discovered the distinction between their worlds and mine yet; I hadn't discovered that they possessed gifts that no one else did. I hadn't discovered that their worlds contained possibilities ours didn't.

I hadn't realized that they were more special than I.

The carpet on the stairs was not-quite sky blue; it was a little darker than that, a little more grey. I thought about Superman, flying through stormy, dense clouds, dodging lightning bolts . I thought about Batman, leering over a building at some faceless villain, his shoulders and cowl blending into the night sky behind him. At the bottom of the stairs lay an expanse of hard, neat white tile, sterile and uncracked and uniform like a cotton ball cloud on a summer's day.

I stood up and puffed out my chest, tightening the blanket around my neck and standing at the very edge of the top step, so close to wobbling off that I curled my toes around its lip as a bat would in order to to cling to a tree branch. I grasped the rail nailed so neatly into the wall and jumped.

When I woke up, I was still lying on the tile, my mother hovering over me with a look of panic. All I could remember was the way that first, blue stair looked when it made contact with my face. Its softness seemed magnified - ironically, of course, because in actuality it was almost as hard as the tile.

Somehow, I had always imagined the sky to be softer. 

Not quite like the wind.

It smelled like rain the day I stopped running.

It's been years since then - getting close to ten, actually - but, sometimes, when it's overcast and humid and everything smells just a little earthier, just a little more like the worms are waking up and poking their heads out of the ground, I remember it.

The Seamstress and I were staying at a resort with her parents during one of their extravagant yearly psychology conventions; the kind where we ate from a barbeque buffet each meal and smuggled desserts back to our room, where we read manga and played handheld games and watched too many direct-to-order movies. We'd grown tired of the swimming pool and the television and the poorly-furnished arcade and were quickly growing restless in our suite. One of us - I can't remember who - suggested a day trip to Hershey Park in order to get away from the muted, meticulously decorated room; near-obscene garishness was the break we craved, and we begged for it for days.

Her parents caved towards the end of the week. We loaded into the car with cash for food and plugged our ears with music while the Gameboys that shook in our hands emitted tiny, digitized blip-bink-bop tunes. It was sunny when we left, but the day had turned grey and moist by the time we arrived; we pulled umbrellas from the trunk and carried them under our arms and spoke in faux-British accents while we twisted fake mustaches. 

We stood before the giant, swinging pirate ship as it swung from one extreme to another. 

"This one is my favorite," I told the Seamstress, craning my neck and following the ride's ebbing motion with an outstretched finger. "It gives you that funny 'woosh!' feeling in your stomach." We elbowed each other as it came to a stop and quickly piled into the farthest left seat, so as to reach the maximum possible height the ride would allow. 

My hair was long then, pulled back with a little elastic band. I remember two, maybe three drops of rain hit me in the face as we rocked back and forth; I worried they would stop the ride, worried they would close the park, but no such decision was made. Ecstatic, I hopped off the boat and we made a dash to get back in line. The Seamstress, always a few steps ahead of me, leaped off of the ride's steel platform to the pavement beneath us; I followed suit.

I didn't realize what had happened until I stood to walk again; my right foot gave out beneath me, and I was back on the pavement where I'd started, and, behind me, a small divot in the pavement marked where I had landed unevenly the first time. I tried again, and suddenly it felt like a million little pins had wiggled their way under my skin, under the muscle, to a terrifying place where nothing could get them out. I tried again and again; I tried until the Seamstress plucked me off the ground and carried me to a bench where her parents gave me suspicious-yet-sympathetic looks and urged me to try walking again.

The medical transportation vehicle made annoying whirring-wooping noises as it bounced around on the gravel and cement below; the car on the way to the hospital did the same - sans the siren - and every jolt and jar agitated me more. By the time I was x-rayed, my ankle was black and swollen to seven times its normal size.

Nothing was broken, but no one ever figured out what exactly was wrong; I was placed on crutches for two days and in a walking splint for two weeks, after which the doctors told me I was fine. 

Only, I couldn't run anymore.

Bedbugs.

Cozy and I lay in her bed, arranged as usual: she on her back, I on my side with my head on her shoulder. It was still daylight, but the cloudy, winter sky tinted everything blue-grey; it could have been a snowy day in March or a rainy day in August. We were quiet, aside from the sound of Mew's And the Glass Handed Kites and the occasional rustling of her pit bull in the kitchen.

I can't remember what, if anything, was said, but I found myself thinking about the day in May when Thom Yorke and I sat on the curb outside his house. We'd both been crying when his stepfather returned from work, and so we exiled ourselves to the front yard where we made small jokes and nudged each other with elbows and let the sun burn the backs of our necks. When I stood to leave, Thom Yorke put an arm around my shoulders and told me not to lose hope; told me that somewhere, someone was waiting who could make me feel human again. Somewhere, I'd find someone who didn't make me feel alone and cold and empty.

I didn't realize I was crying until Cozy placed the palm of my hand against her face and reminded me of how perfectly the two things fit together. I hadn't believed Thom Yorke initially, but there, at that moment, I realized how worthwhile everything had become. I legitimately cried for the first time in months. It wasn't embarrassing, it wasn't ugly, it wasn't unhappy, it wasn't shameful, and she didn't let go once.
It was the single most liberating thing I have ever experienced.

Never heard him lock the door, part 2.

For two nights I cried myself to sleep.

For two weeks I hid my neck in flesh-tone eyeshadow, collared shirts, and zip-up sweatshirts. My parents never noticed, but I felt just as dirty and ashamed as though they had. The scratches on my back burned in the shower each night and I felt as though a brick had taken up permanent residence in the very bottom of my stomach.

Two months later, we returned to his apartment.
He sent a lion-haired boy with tragic acne to let us into the apartment building. The elevator doors opened to the third floor, where Dirty Hippy's boyfriend lay on the grayish carpet; his hair, dark and stringy and splayed out on the floor around him, looked almost like blood from a distance. Dirty Hippy screamed. The 21-year-old Army asshole yanked him back into the apartment by the legs of his pants and scooped me into his arms, kissing me.
Two minutes later, everyone had gone from the apartment and we sat on his couch, he with his belt unbuckled and I with my hair askew. He took me into his bedroom but this time I was sober and aware and frightened; my clothes felt heavy and the brick in my stomach had finally dislodged itself and was making its way back to my mouth where it had presumably entered two months ago.

Two hours later, he finished himself off in the bathroom while I put on the skirt he bought me - $40, from Express. I smiled and made a show of it, pretended to be happy and flounced around like a 50s sitcom housewife.
I vomited the next morning and hid the skirt in the pile of clothes I wanted to send to my cousins in Arkansas.

For two years, I refused to answer calls from numbers I didn't recognize.

He said he wouldn't call me so much; I didn't realize it meant he'd never call again.

I cried when I tore the rear-view mirror out of the Starving Artist's car.
We sat for half an hour while I frantically tried to reattach it with duct tape and I grew increasingly hysterical with every failed attempt. The Starving Artist grabbed at my hands, my wrists; he begged me to stop crying, told me it was okay and that it could be fixed.

I cried when it started to rain.
We sat in silence while people mulled around the us, highlighted orange by passing cars. He started the car - a big, moss-green SUV - at which point the rear-view mirror toppled out of its bulky, improvised duct-tape base and crashed into the dashboard with a loud thud. It bounced to the floor at my feet; I picked it up and cradled it in my hands, turned it over and watched the way my tears trailed around the glass - just like the rain on the windows. He drove us to a nearby parking lot and did carthweels in the drizzle, sang songs and did somersaults, anything to make me stop.

I cried when it began to thunder.
He crawled into the passenger-side seat with me and played me songs with unmemorable lyrics and soft piano melodies. He squeezed me every time we saw the lightning and refused to loosen his grip until the thunder had passed; I cried harder and blew my nose into his favorite button-down shirt. He told me it would be okay and put his hands on my face, kissed my forehead.

I cried when he told me he loved me.
We made small, careful motions; his hands fumbled with the buttons of my cardigan and I, unsure, kissed the small, sensitive place where his neck and collarbones met. When I told him I loved him, too, he pressed his face into my shoulder and cried.

A month later, I sat in the dark at the edge of my bed and begged him to be there - to be alive - when I came back from Canada; he hung up the phone.
I stood in the shower under scalding hot water for three hours, hyperventilating, screaming, digging my nails into my arms until I bled.
I couldn't cry.

"Now is that gratitude? Or is it really love?"

Cozy's willingness to kiss me on the nose when it's raw and red and cracked and bleeding makes me want to cry.

Never heard him lock the door.

My clothes seemed so garish and tacky, lying on the floor of his bedroom.
Everything was so sparse and white, so painfully, blindingly spartan; and there my clothes lay, unceremoniously crumpled, screaming in cobalt and ebony.
I could see them over the edge of the bed, peeking out from the broad curve of his shoulder. He shifted, and suddenly they were gone, replaced with smooth, lightly tanned sinew that flexed ever-so-slightly as he adjusted himself to grab my wrists, adjusted himself so as to pin me down.
Music thumped from the living room area, filtered through the apartment walls. Rage Against the Machine; the bane of my existence. His breath, hot in the crook of my neck, came in time with the bass; he told me he loved me, called me "baby," smiled that smug-fuck grin as he bit my neck in all the wrong places. His nails were well-manicured, almost offensively clean, contrasted with what we were doing. He spoke to me as one would an uncomfortable minor appearing in their first dingy, dimly-lit 70s porno. I pictured it in my mind: the wood-paneled walls, the flat, grimy bed, the shaggy, most-likely bearded middle-aged man. Something in me tightened, screamed that I was better than that, than this 21-year-old army asshole who didn't understand that "no cock" meant "no cock" unless you slapped him across the face.

Nothing good ever comes out of a bottle.

Thom Yorke overdosed on Seroquel and fell through a car window.
His body was pumped full of chemicals and his scalp was stapled six? ten? times.
He laughed in the faces of the doctors who saved his life.
When a girl asked him why he hadn't answered any of her texts, his only response was, "I tried to kill myself last night."
He refused to answer when she called him a minute later.

These are our players, this is our play.

The Leads:
1. Thrust: myself. Goofy, misanthropic, small. Prone to bouts of romanticism, pop culture references, and grammatical wrath.
2. Cozy: the girlfriend. Talented, hilarious, endearingly nerdy. Sings opera, talks in funny accents; supposedly ill-tempered.
3. Thom Yorke: ex-boyfriend and best friend. Drug addled, disenchanted, older than his age. Insanely creative, lacks hope.
4. Ladybug: amazonian Jewfriend. Confused, strong, open; talks about anything and everything. Loves potatoes and loaf.
5. Matthew Broderick: the brother. Successful accountant; failure with relationships. Lonely, insanely intelligent, overworked.
6. The Boo: softspoken designated heterosexual. Incredibly white upper-middle class. Needs love, focuses on grades.
7. Canned Vegetables: hyper-emotional floormate with dedicated boyfriend of three years. Loving, good-natured; hates conflict.

Ensemble:
1. Egg: other best friend. Whimsical, jaded; annoying welfare reliant boyfriend. Prone to sporadic depression and binge-drinking.
2. Catullus: token dyke. Snarky, repressed, overexerted. Has equally repressed girlfriend. Voice of reason; level headed.
3. Unity Poster: collective of former high school newspaper staff friends. Loud, witty, eclectic; multiracial single entity.
4. Mama: high school Journalism teacher. Crying shoulder, mother-away-from-biological-mother. Classy, dry humor. Cultured.
5. Dirty Hippy: tenth-grade love interest. Arty, adventurous, dependent; born three decades too late. Smart, naive.
6. The Seamstress: long-time friend turned enemy turned friend again. Open-minded, loving, misunderstood. Cares too much.

Understudies:
1. Myra: social climber and chameleon. Lives in LA with border-hopping boyfriend. Creative, conniving, disconnected.
2. Cowboy Bebop: narc. Pseudo-intelligent, faux-cultured. Mommy issues. Compensates for idiocy via physical might.
3. The Starving Artist: only boy I have ever loved; sensitive, unmotivated. Prone to bad luck and brilliantly phrased lyrics.