I’m sitting in the passenger seat of his car, watching the rain plop itself down onto the windshield. I’m so high I can almost feel the sound of the rain drops on the hood of the car. The rain is a fat, heavy rain, plodding along in the sky, all over the city. San Francisco is beautiful when it rains, and we're sitting up by Twin Peaks with the entire city laid out before us, like a giant buffet. There's a heavy fog that's hanging over the city skyline, just the very top of the Golden Gate peaks out of the grey sky. It's early on a Sunday morning, and part of me is afraid we'll get caught. He's reassured me so many times that it's a Sunday, it's raining, we'll be fine. I’m sitting right next to him, but I suddenly have this amazingly empty feeling I understand is loneliness. I miss him, he’s right next to me, in person, but I miss him. I know this is because he’s not the same person he used to be. He’s different, and I’m somehow still the same, and it hurts. I close my eyes, he turns on the radio and I can feel the music pulsating through the speaker because my right knee is pressed against it. He finishes rolling our second blunt. I can still breath in traces of smoke in the car from the last one. realize I don’t remember where we’ve just come from, and I don’t mind so much. All I can remember of Saturday night is him picking me up. My eyes are still closed and I'm rummaging through my memories to piece together the missing spots. Wondering why they matter so much anyway.
All the parties were the same. All my nights lately felt the same. Same people drinking the same drinks- talking to the same people about the same things. The same people leaning on the porch out back or standing in semi circles in an overgrown yard, smoking, holding their beverage of choice in one hand, a cigarette or blunt or joint in the other. The same people hooked up, the same people fought, the same people got too drunk, or too fucked up, and had to be taken care of. The same people had the same drama, and the same people complained about all the same things.
The only thing that ever changed was the location, and after awhile, the only way to tell it was actually a different house was by the framed family pictures on the walls. Sometimes I'd see someone's senior picture, or a sibling's portraits, and try desperately, drunk or high, try to remember if and how I knew this person.
Who did we know here again?
It never really mattered- who knew who, everyone in the city that we partied with was only seperated by two people, three or four at the most. Everyone knew everyone else more or less. Otherwise you knew someone who knew someone. High school, grammar school, someone who lived on your block. It was always the same. Another house, another yard, another street crammed up and down with cars. Nothing ever really changed, and part of me liked that. Part of me liked the fact that I wasn't really from here. I didn't grow up here, and I was merely another link in the chain of people. I was a newer link, somehow that felt shiny and fresh to me. I could be invisible if I wanted, "who's that, what parish are you from?"
I run my hands along the side door of the car, feeling the pattern woven into the fabric underneath my fingertips. Every nerve ending is on high alert, and when he puts his hand on my knee I turn to face him, and we both laugh for no reason.
The only thing that ever changed was the location, and after awhile, the only way to tell it was actually a different house was by the framed family pictures on the walls. Sometimes I'd see someone's senior picture, or a sibling's portraits, and try desperately, drunk or high, try to remember if and how I knew this person.
Who did we know here again?
It never really mattered- who knew who, everyone in the city that we partied with was only seperated by two people, three or four at the most. Everyone knew everyone else more or less. Otherwise you knew someone who knew someone. High school, grammar school, someone who lived on your block. It was always the same. Another house, another yard, another street crammed up and down with cars. Nothing ever really changed, and part of me liked that. Part of me liked the fact that I wasn't really from here. I didn't grow up here, and I was merely another link in the chain of people. I was a newer link, somehow that felt shiny and fresh to me. I could be invisible if I wanted, "who's that, what parish are you from?"
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