Not Getting Stung

    Sitting on a mussed up bed, covers in disarray. Dish soap in my hair. Cake crumbs in my sheets. It was a wild weekend, involving an indoor four-tiered cake fight--but no, it wasn't a "fight" per say; it was more liberating than that. It was more of a cake explosion. Making the mess was fun, squashing fist-fulls of frosting and moist cake between my fingers, smearing it on walls and faces, getting in touch with my animalistic side, the yearn for destruction and chaos.  Cleaning it up was fun, too. On hands and knees in my underwear, scrubbing up the gooey mess, splinters of wood from a smashed up found-it-on-the-side-of-the-road acoustic guitar jabbing into my knee caps.

     And then there was the late-knight kitchen floor slip-and-slide, and the squirts of dish soap and the constant cry: "More water," as Alisha and I skated and pirouetted across the kitchen floor, scrubbing at the encrusted cake with our heels. Starting from the carpet, (that poor depraved carpet), we got a running start and slid on our bellies like otters--we both have bruises on our hips. Alisha brilliantly used our giant inflatable cactus as a sort of flotation device, holding its arms, straddling its trunk, running, jumping, skidding, sliding across the floor with it squelched beneath her. You should have seen it, you really should have seen it. 

     Yesterday felt like spring--there was a barbecue, there was sunshine, there was PBR. I sat on a rock, eating an ear of corn, watching boys throw Frisbees to one another. One boy sat on a rock across from me, and held a stick in his hands. A white string dangled from the stick. "It's a hornet on a leash," he said. And then I saw the string feebly rise and fall as the tethered bee attempted to fly free. My stomach knotted. "Someone should untie that bee," I said, but I knew it wouldn't be me. I wasn't willing to get stung. The boy shrugged, and blew a plume of cigarette smoke at the bee, watching it twitch.

     Last night, I made a new friend, a kid named Steve, a surfer boy with a laid-back laugh. He sat on my floor, leafing through the record collection, talking about Jack Johnson and James Taylor and "Maggie May," and about letting go of vices. He was down to earth, and twirled a glass-blown flower in his hands. 

     I made a new not-friend, a kid who traded "Abbey Road" for a Styx album, wrenching the needle up mid-"Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and tossing the record like it was yesterday's newspaper. He hid behind a pair of dark-rimmed glasses and a self-assured grin. I grimaced as he spun the record the wrong way with his hands, scratching it like a disc jockey. "Stop doing that," I pleaded, defeated, wincing at the whine and screech of the needle. "No, no, I just gotta skip to a better part of the song," he said, and the record player continued to wail. But you have to lift the needle, I thought, and everything started to ache. I wanted to swat his hands away, but I knew I wouldn't, and instead I stood open-mouthed, aghast. I pictured the white string, rising and falling, pictured that plume of smoke. I was stagnant, paralyzed. My insides had gone cold, but I did not intervene--I was not willing to get stung.