Chapter Nineteen

"And she would run, run, run, run, run Take a drag or two" Velvet Underground

We listened to The Velvet Underground to get into the mood, and I skipped over Sweet Jane. We all underdressed for us, knowing that a warehouse wasn’t the best place to wear fur or sequins. I borrowed one of Marie’s prep school pleated skirts that I fished out of her closet. Viv just wore spiked heels and a leather jacket, and spent no time on her makeup. She was really started to look ragged, but I supposed it was intentional that night. Marie wore her ripped tights with a skintight leopard mini-skirt, one of mine. We walked there, giggling and taking swigs out of a forty in a paper bag. I texted Lexi and she met us outside, air kissing the girls, and hugging me.
“Is your skin baby-soft?” she wiggled her eyebrows at me, smiling.
“You’re lucky you’re the beauty intern, free product.” Viv remarked.
“I’m cheaper than animal testing.” Viv laughed appreciatively. Marie looked kind of sullen, glancing around at passing people.
“Let’s go!” Viv had seemed to find a new friend in Lexi, and they grabbed hands and practically skipped inside.
“Ugh, where did you find her?” Marie rolled her eyes.
“She’s nice, c’mon Marie.”
I knew Marie would be in a bad mood all night, and I felt a knot tighten in my stomach. We paid five bucks for a plastic cup to drink from a keg all night, and we snaked our way to the stage. I looked around at the crowd, and a familiar back caught my eye.
“Jesus, why does he keep showing up?” Marie had spotted Andrew as well.
“Probably because he likes everything we like, remember?” Viv said.
“Oh yeah.”
“I’m going to say hi, get it over with.” I gulped my beer down and strode over with false bravado.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
We both paused.
“Uhm, how are you?” I was regretting this.
“Fine.” He looked at me coldly, and I recoiled on the inside.
“Yeah, me too.”
“Where’s your boyfriend?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Oh so now you make out with random dudes in public, nice.”
“Whatever, you’re being an asshole.” I turned to go and he grabbed my wrist.
“Wait, I’m sorry. I…” He trailed off.
“I know.”
He kept his hold on me wrist, and we fell into a familiar formation. I fit in close with him, felt his chest rise and fall with his breath. He kissed me, hard, and I kissed back, fueled by anger, passion and sadness. My fingers wound into his hair, and he pulled me roughly close to him. I broke away, and looked him in the eyes. Without talking, he pulled me to the warehouse wall, and we pushed against it, grasping at each other with equal pressure. He finally stopped and looked down at me.
“I can’t do this again.”
He turned and walked away, to the exit. Tears welled in my eyes, and I put my hands to my head. I felt empty, alone. Couldn’t do what? What I that horrible? I went back to the keg, and filled another beer. I found the girls by the stage, and the band had just started playing. I breathed in the smell of sweat, beer and cigarettes. It felt alive in there, and I let myself blur into the fold of energy. This was the exact opposite of the world I normally ventured into. The grimy boys were actually grimy, not styled to look so. It felt too honest to me. There was so much raw emotions, I had nothing to hide behind. The music surged, and the crowd was connected together by powerful chords running through everyone’s veins. Viv was sucking face with one of the dirty punks around, and Marie was finally laughing with Lexi. Smoke hung in the air above my head, like a cloud of smog. Everyone was lighting Marlboro Reds, cowboy killers, and they reminded me of the townies I used to skip class to smoke with. They’d say “Go Red or go home,” in thick Boston accents. I lit a Camel, feeling bourgeois with my rich kid cigarettes. I blew the smoke up, pursing my lips. I spent the rest of the show trying to reconnect with my surroundings but I only felt his palm imprint burned onto my wrist.
“Come onnnn.” Viv tugged my arm, harder then she meant to. She was dragging me back to Lexi’s, where I planned on drinking and drugging my way into oblivion.

“No yeah, I totally agree.” Lexi was cutting lines up on a coffee table book.
“It’s like, they were expressing movement and stuff.” Viv was eying the lines intently. I hated coke talking, the way you had to fill the time between lines with pure bullshit. Viv and Lexi were shitting around about the art at the warehouse, and Marie and I were talking quietly about nothing. I took my line as it was passed, and then Marie took hers. She flipped her hair over one shoulder, holding it back as she leaned over and pulled through the rolled up twenty. Viv and Lexi were matching line for line, becoming increasingly manic.I felt jittery and ill at ease, so I drank some white wine from the bottle. We took a cab back to Marie’s, Viv talking loudly with the cabbie about Armenia.