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TURNING EIGHTEENS
Seven fifteen. A pack of cigarettes and a pack of gum. Just because
you can. The store clerk looks up—a silent man with dirty glasses
and the vivid outline of a goatee, though rough and unstylish, not quite
as planned. I hand him a ten and he stares for a second, not quite looking
me in the eye as he glances at the ID and pushes it across the counter
with a sigh. Kids these days, as if he is slightly too old to be classified
as naive, selfish and rebellious. It’s a kid thing, and he hands
me the change— three sticky quarters and a sparkling dime. I smile, /thanks” as I grab the two packs and purse and stumble out
with the change still in hand. The dime drops to the floor, and rolls.
Between the minimart rows of candy and pain relievers it stops. I watch,
a moment of suspense and slight indecision. Finally, caving in to pride
and laziness I walk away, pushing the heavy door to the world. These
days, I don’t use dimes anyway.
We sing out loud in the car. Screaming the over-played lyrics as if
they mean something to us, as if we could ever be eighteen and completely
happy. Sometimes we are, escaping, and we care about nothing. These
days, we can live and say it doesn’t matter, because we’re
young—we have our whole lives spanned far ahead of us. And we take
random photographs, jot down indecisive dribble and cling viciously
onto these monumental moments, knowing it will all be over soon. Soon,
they say, and we look the other way.
We never get lost. I could close my eyes and know every turn, every
bump in the road. I know which yellow lights are safe to run and which
gas station cheats you ten cents on the dollar. We’ve been around,
and we’re proud of our knowledge, our so-called sophistication.
Girls just want to have fun.
She told me she’d rather be mean and poor than fat. She’s
never known poor, but I tell myself that is beside the point; I’ve
noticed her legs in skirts. It’s a self-consumed, repulsive yet
stylish and clichéd destruction. Overwhelmed by my own realm
of thought, I’ll step out of the way. They say they’re going
to confront her tomorrow, but they won’t. We all know our own dysfunction.
We don’t need therapists or confidence building books or Ann Landers
to tell us. These days, we know our own games, it comes with the territory.
It’s a kid thing. And we are proud of our secrets, our whispers,
our gossip, handing her the cash and pushing it to the back corners—she
gets her nails done every Tuesday.
Sometimes it’s as though I don’t even know who I am anymore.
The email was particularly long. So impersonal—email—though
a moment of shared depth as I stare at the blue screen in the dark,
and wonder if I can hear my own voice in the words. I don’t seem
to remember exactly when it was that I changed. Tracing back the short
span of my life, mentally documenting every late night phone conversation
or long walk home. Since when did I start eating alone, my sandwich
and a table for one—there must be something to read—I should
be terrified. I am only eighteen. They’d like better to sterotype
the rest of us. Kids are all the same, they say, and leave it at that.
Too complicated, too frightening to see that there is some depth in
our madness, some scrambling search for reason in our hazy highs. I
don’t seem to recognize anyone here.
A middle aged woman sips her latté in the corner—her reflection
in the window is stark and aged and rises profoundly from the misshapen
glass like a terrible fish from its depths. Someone said that, but she
cannot remember who. Someone warned her, but it is too late. She knows
that now, catching my eye and holding it there for a while, lingering.
Strangers pass outside. I pretend I can’t see the writing on the
wall. It’s all graffiti to me. And poetry and life are too much
intertwined, they wouldn’t believe us if we tried. Fate will have
its way and it’s easy for people to believe in something. We all
still die alone and live in obscure glances. These days, I have my whole
life ahead of me. Too many second chances, maybe. Counting down the
days, so we have a right to get lost now.
- Rachel Patall-David
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