blue and certain shades of green and peter pan collars and a circle
pin on the correct side (one side meant virgin, the other meant
whore, typically I never could remember which was which). S. and I
both wore sweaters and dark red neither of which was conservative,
we each wanted Mary to be our best friend,
so S. told Mary lies about me and Mary stopped speaking to me. I
suffered. Rhett. Noel. Mary, then I told Mary lies about S. and Mary
stopped speaking to her.
there was a confrontation. I won. I won Mary, it was strictly
platonic and ethereal. S. had a nervous breakdown and her mother
sent her to school in another city, when she was 15 she had an affair
with a painter, he fucked her and she became a woman, then she
became a Bunny in a Playboy Club, then she disappeared. Once S.
left, Mary seemed kind of dull.
then my best friend was Rona. she was afraid of me because by
then I was angry as well as smart. I wore only black by then, she had
read in Dear Abby that if you had a close friend and she didnt pluck
her eyebrows and they were hairy you should take her aside and tell
her to pluck her eyebrows. Rona and I had never spoken but since
she wanted me to be her friend she took me aside anyway and told
me to pluck my eyebrows. I did. then she was my best friend.
because I wore black and we both emulated Holden Caulfield as
much as possible we went to Ronas house every Wednesday night to
drink her parents booze, they went bowling. Rona had a boyfriend
who had a boyfriend, her boyfriend was tall, handsome, blond,
broad shouldered, and had been in the Navy, she wasnt allowed to
see him because her parents thought he was a creep and too mature
for her. her boyfriends boyfriend was (as we said then) a fag. he said
mean malicious things about everyone we knew and we thought he
was very clever. Ronas boyfriend of course was not a fag since he was
Ronas boyfriend, had been in the Navy, and was tall, handsome,
blond, and broad shouldered, he had even, Rona whispered, made
some girl pregnant and fucked a real whore.
the 4 of us would drink whatever we thought Ronas parents
wouldnt miss (we drank mostly from heavily tinted bottles) and
make lewd remarks to the best of our combined abilities and talk
about the disgusting fact that Rona and I were virgins, it disgusted
all of us but not equally, it particularly disgusted Ronas boyfriend
and her boyfriends boyfriend. they after all did everything, whatever
that was.
the next morning I would go to school wasted, superior, and
dangerous, and shout in the hall: damn this damn school, an outlaw
I was.
then we met Johnny, he was a real outlaw, he had 7 brothers and
sisters and was Catholic and went to a Catholic school, he made his
tuition turning tricks in bars in Philadelphia, and he smoked grass,
and he used morphine, he was our hero.
