The phone woke me. It was my best friend. Her voice was trembly, and I couldn’t tell if I was still dreaming or not. The see-through receiver with its colorful guts made of neon gears, wheels, and wires felt heavy in my barely awake hand as I muttered, “Lisa?”. My other life faded and the brightness of this life, the one of my childhood dusty pink bedroom with long strips of early morning light on my face, came into focus.
“Oh my god, have you even been listening?”
“Yes, sorry. I was just asleep is all. Keep going.”
The night before, I had left her earlier than usual, but she was getting on with a guy I didn’t really like. This was not an uncommon scenario for us, nights that unfolded as me as a third wheel. She was a magnetic girl, so it wasn’t her fault. I would watch it happen again and again: her just minding her own business as we’d be eating dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant or wherever, not sending out any sort of call, not soliciting anything in particular, and then- here they come. It was like witnessing a science experiment every Friday or Saturday night, as it seemed the atoms in her body would line up in their direction and pull their atoms directly into our tight little booth. Before I knew it, we would be coupled up, the opposite poles usually pressed together inside her magnetic field across the table from me and some pimply like-poled kid who nervously ate chips and salsa on the edge of my booth’s seat.
Lisa and I not only did not agree on the definition of ‘attractive’, but we most certainly did not agree on how we should handle the oftentimes awkward (if not nefarious) spots her superpower would get us into on the weekends.
It was 1995 and the term ‘boundaries’ was not as widely used as it is now, if coined yet at all. The concept was foreign to many girls I knew, myself included, for fear of being classified as a prude, or worse- a bitch. If you were not a magnetic girl, saying no wasn’t as difficult. But if you were a magnetic girl, good luck. I used to think, “well, I guess that’s just the cost of having perfect boobs”.
My life was simpler than hers. My walls were made of logs and my neighbors were my grandparents. My parents were ex-hippies (though they don’t love that term and they think it makes them sound like a costume from Party City), and we did the sorts of things for fun that others would consider community service or Biblical type fun.
Calling all 16 year old girls! Do you like shucking corn? Waiting for thunderstorms on a porch swing? Listening to my dad perfect the same set of bluegrass chords on his mandolin for hours? Polishing homemade wooden furniture in your bedroom? Debating the colors of tastes and the shapes of sounds? Watching Poirot on PBS with my mom? Observing my younger brother ride his Mr. T Hot Wheels tricycle through a muddy puddle in our yard? Hanging out with my grandpa who has Alzheimer’s and can’t remember what he was saying but really got a kick out of the little kitten (unnamed because my grandma would give it away two days later and he would never remember it existed) that would climb up his polyester pants? Spying on my grandma watching the Lawrence Welk show? Saying goodnight to everyone as soon as the sun sets? Secretly staying up late so we can catch the university’s radio station play John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ at midnight? Sneaking into the kitchen to eat dried fruit? Sleepover at my house!
It’s no surprise most of our weekends were spent at her house. Or at least that was where we would sleep. She had a car (I would not have my own car until I was 20), her parents went out of town often (mine did not), and if my house was like an off-grid getaway for middle aged people with an appreciation for crafts and organic produce her house was like a sexy electric getaway for teenagers with an appreciation for whippets and Pizza Hut. Her parents would either turn a blind eye to us going out, simply not care, or not be home at all, while my parents blissfully & unknowingly watched Masterpiece Theater a town over. We were aimless, broke, and pining, and it was so fun.
The night before her call, we had driven to the Blockbuster in town, scouring the shelves for something that stood out. She ran straight to the new arrival section, running her fingers along the shelf past action, drama, and then boom. She held Dumb and Dumber in front of her face. We had seen it probably 5 times already, and I was in the mood for broody and pretentious. I frowned and wandered over an aisle to the land of least-popular and always-available rentals. I wanted to be wherever the people on the covers were: somewhere the lighting is always mysterious, somewhere women are so beautiful they look good even with micro bangs, somewhere jazz cigarettes are legal and red dye 40 is illegal, somewhere trench coats and fedoras are unironically stylish, somewhere one gasps at the realization that they’ve been caught falling in love. I am quickly pulled out of my fantasy with her plead to get out of the foreign film section and a hasty compromise:
She waves her hand across the rows of black and white covers, “I am not watching any of this shit tonight, buuuut what about Dracula?”
“Schindler’s List?”
“Dera. Are you ok? Oooh! Mrs. Doubtfire?”
“Hmm. Four Weddings and a Funeral and if it’s too boring we can switch to Ace Ventura?”
“Deal.”
We bought Twizzlers at checkout and tore into them before we’d even reached her car. As we were pulling out of the parking space, a knock on her driver’s window made us both jump, but maybe her a little more. She rolled down the window and this very cute and seemingly innocent kid in a beanie with brown hair poking out from under it bent down close to her face. She leans back a bit, and his breath is visible in the cold night air.
“Hey, sorry, did I scare you? We just saw you guys coming out of there and we were wondering… do you guys know of anything fun going on tonight?”
I bend down myself to get a look out the rear driver’s side window. Another kid with a cute-enough smile waves back at me.
She is turned to me, smiling, but is speaking to them, “Yeah, we are just going to watch Ace Ventura, at my house if you want to come over?” Her eyebrows bounce.
I should be mad that she didn’t consult with me first. I should be mad that we just invited potential serial killers over for stuffed crust pizza. I should be mad that she led with Ace Ventura, not Four Weddings and a Funeral. But honestly I’m thrilled. As they are following behind us in their pickup truck, she looks over to me and said, “Oh my god, do we even know their names?!”
It was quiet and warm from the heat, and the air smelled like her mom’s cake batter candle as we guided them back to what we called the Rec Room, a few steps down in her split-level house. No one was home, I hadn’t even questioned it, and Lisa told them to sit on the beige corduroy couch while she unplugged cords from the Nintendo and swapped them out with the VCR. I sat quietly at the other side of the room on the belt of her mom’s treadmill, still unburdened by the responsibility of small talk to fill space (which would come in a few years). The air was heavy and the boys sat uncomfortably close to one another with their jackets and beanies still on. Their willingness and eagerness made me feel sorry for them. But feeling sorry for them also made me smile for some reason.
In no time her protons pulled his electrons closer and I felt a warm rush of embarrassment for her, for him, for me, for the other him. Is there anything more visceral than being in the Rec Room with nameless boys and with Lisa, poor magnetic Lisa? I wanted to be magnetic as well but I also did not and I wasn’t. And as the night went on, and we pretended to be too interested in the scene where Jim Carrey is pooped out of a rhino to actually notice the others rubbing their atomic forces on the corduroy couch, I began to feel so warm and so dizzy I looked for any reason to get out of there. I was too young to understand that she was too young, and I left poor Lisa alone with him.
I climbed the steps, holding onto the rail because my head was spinning, and turned into the kitchen for a glass of water.
The other nameless kid followed me.
I quickly turned on the lights, just in case he thought I was interested in anything but water, and in the starkness of florescent kitchen luminescence I can see he too was just trying to escape.
“So what is your name again?”
“Dera. (I pause) Where do you go to school?”
“I’m in my third year at Georgia State. He graduated last spring. You?”
I wanted to spit my water across the room as I realized we’d invited grown men into her house, into the Rec Room, onto the sacred corduroy couch! I don’t know why I never asked his name, but I’m so glad I asked where he went to school instead, as it yielded far more important information.
After I told him our age, he became really kinetic. I was too young to know if he was moving around a lot because he was mad at me or himself or his friend, but he pulled the keys out of his jacket pocket and walked down the steps to yell, “I’m leaving. Don’t fuck around with her- she’s still in high school, y’know. Are you coming?”
And I don’t really know what the other nameless kid man said because I was still in the kitchen, dizzier than before, drinking water to make the time pass. He must’ve declined the offer because he didn’t leave.
I couldn’t make out the exact words or sounds as the movie and space drowned them out, so I just nervously yelled down, “Lisa?” and she replied, “You can go to bed if you want. I’ll meet up with you a little later.”
I picked up the receiver off the phone hook on the kitchen wall, ocre and heavy, the twisted cord stretched out far enough for me to hide in the pantry as I called my mom.
It was a pretty quiet car ride home, and I was too young to appreciate that my mom could’ve interrogated me more about the events of the night, considering she’d probably been in bed since the sun had set hours earlier. I was too young to know how shitty it was to leave her alone with him.
Before bed, I ate some homemade hippie yogurt, and I turned on my radio just in time for the airing of ‘A Love Supreme’. I wondered if those boys who went to the same university even knew who John Coltrane was, let alone that their school played this song every night at midnight. It tasted steely blue and sounded like long drippy ovals, and then I sank into the other life where there is no age, where I float along at night with Lisa my beautiful magnetic friend under the full moonlight, where we are blissfully unaware of how easy it is to upend our canoe in the depths of the waters beneath us.
I was an opposite Lisa. Love, your friend, Lisa.
Damn, that last line is chewy enough to last a long time! To the magnetic of Lisas and my envy of the most romanticized verzion of your childhood. Lord knows I would lose my mind with all that access to it. You're the best word painter, Dera!