hurled through space at an incredible rate, yet standing very still
"Oh, you smoke Parliaments?" she squeaked. "Hey, I smoke Parliaments! Wicked!" It was definitely a squeak, but it wasn't an unpleasant squeak; it was soft and scratchy, rough at the edges. She was wearing a sort of mask made out of noxiously green glow sticks. "I'm going to a rave," she informed me, shaking her blonde Sailor Moon pigtails. I smiled at her and exhaled smoke from my nose like a dragon. I watched the smoke drift up into the black sky and lazily disperse into nothing I could see or touch. "I've never been to a rave before," she stage-whispered. My chest was full of stones, and I almost said something stupid, something like, "Take me with you." I wanted to be full of something else, for a change. So desperately. Her green mask was a buzzing grid in the dark, and she was so pretty. Instead, I lowered the cigarette from my mouth. "Wow," I said. "Sounds exciting. Good luck." Her ride arrived and she danced away.
The fact is, I don't smoke enough to know what I smoke. I would rather not have a specific type of cigarette become closely tied to my image or identity, anyway. Alicia smokes Parliaments.
I am drinking sake. Tomorrow I will add another pill to my daily lineup. I went to Rite-Aid with my friend Freesia. I bought, what, lipstick (cheap Halloween green and white and black, dark red, red is my favorite) and shampoo and meds? That sounds about right. I had to sign a bunch of electronic forms before I could pick up my tigerlily-orange bottle of pills, scribbling on a blue screen with a plastic stylus. It felt vaguely cyberpunk, the way writers in the 1980's and 1990's thought the future would be. Buying medicine to take sorrow away in a dingy, paperless chain store full of florescent lights and strangely colored, garish cosmetics.
I live on a loud hall. I am sewing a picture of an anatomically correct heart on the front of a bright red t-shirt. The other day, this boy at the smoking hut decided to play Guess The Ethnicity with me. I'm (very) white, so that doesn't happen often, but every now and again my dark, thick, wild hair incurs someone's curiosity. "You're Greek, I bet," he said, nodding sagely. "You have Greek blood. I can tell." I do not have any Greek ancestry that I know about, and I told him so. I hate all the noise on my hall, all the shouting, the trashy pop music, the non-endearing squeaks and sqeals of the girls I stereotype as bimbos and feel awful about stereotyping as bimbos.
I am drinking sake. Apricot ale. Earlier, I ate tortilla chips dusted with some mysterious combination of spices that made my nose run and my eyes water and my throat burn clean and clear. I felt like my throat was coated in silver. I ate a grilled sandwich with giant wedges of pepper in it, tongues sticking out from between slices of seed-speckled bread. I felt much better after I ate the sandwich. I think I had been hungrier than I'd realized. I wanted, almost, to dance. It didn't last, but I did want to...I wish I danced more often. I wish I wrote more, and I wish I were a better writer. I've just been reading, these past few days. Magazines, novels, essay collections, webcomics, blog posts, newspapers, short stories, anything I can get my hands on. I've been trying to keep a list, but inevitably things are left out. I forget. I'm flighty. What else is new? I miss a lot. I wish I were better with human beings.
The crickets are an unrelenting chorus through all the hours of the night. It isn't cold enough to kill them yet.