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."

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.

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.