I stood there smoking the rest of the Camel Ultra...

October 25, 2012

I stood there smoking the rest of the Camel Ultra Light Amanda had passed to me, staring at a skinny boy in a green sweater vest.

“You’re not the kind of girl who settles.”

This skinny boy. This skinny boy who had wandered out of the bar bathroom two and a half hours earlier, outstretched his hands and asked, “Do you trust that I’ve washed these?” which sparked an hour conversation on personal hygiene and just keeping ourselves alive until we’re sixty. Just until we hit sixty. After sixty, medical science will shepherd us into an age of everlastingness and we will live forever. But do you want to? This skinny boy who pulled up a chair and went on about Moore’s law, Heaven and Hell, Lord Byron, being alive and being dead. This skinny boy in a green sweater vest who didn’t care about where I worked or what I studied, who only wanted to know the intimate details of my ultimate peace. I can’t remember his name and he doesn’t remember mine.

This skinny boy who left me with a hug and a promise to never see me again which was slightly offensive at first because usually people want to see me again, but really, what would I have done with a skinny boy in a green sweater vest who wanted to live forever anyway? So okay, never again, goodbye. I turned to my inebriated friend who had finally released his inebriated friend from their embrace, and as we walked away, she snarled, “They have girlfriends.”

Never again took about twenty minutes as they pulled up to the liquor store we had walked across the parking lot to. You see, he said, they had talked, he and his friend. They had talked long and hard about it, and they decided that they were going to come back to see if maybe, possibly, hopefully my friend and I would be interested in having sex with them. Casual, one time only, right-around-the-corner-there’s-a-park, we’re adults so it’s no big deal sex. They weren’t interested in anything outside of this slow Friday night because we strange girls who were funny and lovely, but that was all. They had girlfriends.

This skinny boy in his green sweater vest.

There was something admirable about their honesty, and there was something uncomfortably beautiful about this skinny boy as he sat in the driver’s seat, his defeat illuminated by the soft white light of the liquor store as I declined for the both of us. I don’t care about your girlfriends and I can respect a dude so blatant about his intentions, but my friend here is drunk and I just don’t know what to do with a skinny boy in a green sweater vest who wants to live forever.

“I kind of figured,” he sort of shrugged, “but don’t go home with any loser guy tonight.” I took another drag, trying hard not to laugh. “I mean, if you want to…but you shouldn’t. Don’t settle.” He shook his head. “You’re not the kind of girl who settles.” And then they left.

That skinny boy in his stupid green sweater vest.