Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death
It’s Friday night. I’m getting fingered in a parked RV in my boyfriend’s driveway while Jello Biafra snarls about his cock being big enough to make him a star. My boyfriend is a skateboarder. His friends are skateboarders. My younger brother is a skateboarder, too. They’re all here now—distant but rowdy silhouettes drinking OE800s, cracking jokes.
I’m not a skateboarder. I’m just a girl in ghost white Adidas and knockoff Vamp lipstick who loves boys with piercings and peroxide hair. My boyfriend has both. Soon, he’ll be inked from neck to shin. Soon, he’ll buy a used Toyota Corolla and trick it out with rims, a sickass spoiler, and yellow racing stripes. He loves The Descendents, the New York Yankees, and pro skater, Mike Maldonado. Eventually, he’ll love me too.
The RV’s lights remain off, so my boyfriend’s mom won’t suspect mayhem. The slightest disturbance (a shattered bottle, that asshole Eric aping Crass and bellowing “I don’t give a toss!” for the hundredth time, the bass rumbling out of our janky boombox) and she dashes outside to glower, hands on her hips, her head a dumpling-shaped shadow clouding up the camper’s windshield. But she’s so overworked, she doesn’t really give a shit. It’s just for show. My skater boyfriend routinely clambers out and assures her we’re all leaving soon. So soon, he lies, until she trudges back indoors to her TV programs and secret cigarettes.
The RV is dank and trashed. The younger kids share joints. The older ones drink cheap beer, smoke Newports. My skater boyfriend is straight edge although not super militant. He drinks soda, likes sex. I’ve already stopped drinking and never smoked. Soon, I’ll give up meat for a steady diet of 7-layer burritos and frozen MorningStar Farms faux meat crumbles. Pretty soon, I’ll lose my virginity.
Soon, my skater boyfriend will tattoo “poison-free” onto his tanned forearm in Old English font, the Chinese symbol for “vegetarian” on the tender underside of his wrist. But at this moment, his naked arm is obscured by a glow-in-the-dark cast. He broke his wrist mid-heelflip or truck stand or while trying one of the other million unearthly tricks in those skate videos we watch repeatedly. He brags about pins in his wrist, complains about the odor.
My skater boyfriend buries his good hand in my baby blue corduroys and aimlessly plunges. He’s so damn pretty his ineptitude’s almost endearing. Sometimes I wish we went out on real dates, but we’ve only been going out a couple months. Plenty of time to get to the mall movie theater, the Applebee’s nearby. Besides, we hang out almost every day.
Weekdays after school, the skate crew descends upon drugstore parking lots, filling the asphalt with the oceanic roar of their wheels long past dark. Inevitably, the pigs arrive with their empty threats and trespassing warrants. We receive our slips with a smirk because we know we’ll be back. No one gets arrested here except for dope dealers and our dads when they drive home drunk from the Ale House.
Our favorite drugstore is the Eckerd’s where we use our five-finger discount on boxed hair dye, slathering our strands in their customer restroom, stuffing the pockets of our baggy khakis with Airheads, forking over loose change for those giant rainbow-whirled lollipops that remind us of childhood.
Us girls squat in front of the automatic doors, sucking on our fructose spirals, our scalps fizzing with transformation. The boys fly and flutter above the asphalt. Hardcore butterflies grinding against curbs, suspending themselves in the no-see-um breeze. Shirts lifted, feet tethered. They cheer on every attempt at a kickflip or fakie or whatever the hell. To them, it’s all love and physics and temporary freedom from this shithole town, this shithole life. But I remain an object at rest desperate for her unbalanced force.
When I’m not here, I’m a girl splayed across her bed writing bad poetry. Indolent with longing. When the devil compels me, I exercise in manic bursts to Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine. I wish the devil compelled me more often. And not just to exercise. I’m afraid I’m wasting the best years of my life. I’m afraid nothing will come along and let me transcend myself, whether through pleasure or pain or both—like all my favorite songs promise.
In the secluded back of the RV, I lie supine and sober except for the intermittent pulse of dopamine when my skater boyfriend stumbles upon my clit. My friend Winnie is sprawled out next to me, raving about The Cure’s “The Lovecats.” I’m kinda annoyed that Winnie’s only now discovering Staring at the Sea, essentially a greatest hits album. But whatever. I mutter feeble “uh huhs” while my skater boyfriend kisses my neck, his fingers still digging their way inside of me. A raw but mild ache. Like yanking out a dry tampon.
I find my skater boyfriend’s tongue again, lean into the dependable crook of his fiberglass arm. That asshole Eric rewinds side 2 so The Dead Kennedys can repeat their tired rebellion. Soon, these lame-ass parties will end, and our crew of scrubs and gutter punks and working-class weirdos will slowly disband. My boyfriend will drive us to the mall movie theater, to Applebee’s, to work at the supermarket that also employs his mom.
Soon, we’ll fall in love and swear it’s forever. So soon. But not just yet. Tonight, our wheels remain stationary. Tonight, it’s the tepid glow of his hand through the black and the yeasty, Frito’s smell of boys and our clothed bodies attempting new tricks, cheering each other on. Tonight, there’s time for my skater boyfriend to push himself against me and propel me somewhere outside of myself. Somewhere I can’t find. Somewhere better and new. There’s still so much time for us to do nothing. My dad won’t pick me up for hours.