Paige`

P.S. Personal Secret. My friend came up to me

and offered me a pill. She was counting them

from the palm of her hand back into the bottle

as I heard her say… he loves me. he loves me not.

I declined the offer and told her that I was just having Pepsi.

Ninety proof Pepsi, she smiled as I poured the vile to the lip of the can.

Gotta go perform some miracles for the masses, she smiled

as she made her way into the family room into the foyer

past the living room silent as a morgue.

I had walked past the dried flowers and senior picture of her

in the foyer on my way in, past the flowers placed

casual and pretentious…

I had come in from Annie’s Records and Tapes

down the street from 51st past the retaining pond and

houses yellow lit and lonesome. I had bought

a tape off the import album, IceHouse, from Australia.

I was a strange child, I didn’t want my MTV. I wanted that too,

but I wanted the little club at seventeen down the street

with the warm pearl beer in the parking lot and Paige` by the cars

dancing by the cars reaching up… and when she held

the planets in her hands they were blue like a voice

and they whispered with applause.

Blue Lights, Green Lights, Red Lights. It was just the other night

and she was electric. One of the kids with us stood at the front

of the stage in the club and played the base guitar from the front.

The band was a girl’s band wearing ripped knee length

t-shirts with red paint sprayed across them spelling Kill Your Dog.

I didn’t understand what Paige was up to, and yet I did. She was

envisioning the ambulance lights for herself. And the dog. Clever? Who am I?

Pete and repeat. Not too original but then again some

of the people I hang around with. Not Paige.

I watched Paige beneath the stars in the parking lot.

And when she held the planets in her hands that night,

they were blue like a voice and they whispered with applause.

But that night I knew that Paige`…

And then I heard her in the kitchen behind me screaming…

I am not a freak. Well, Paige… She had recently climbed on the stage of

the concert for Garbage, depants the drummer and invited him

to her Hotel Party. Not a freak but certainly

larger than life. And then I heard the club glasses being

thrown against the walls and tile floor like screams being shattered

and I found myself wrapped around her as she was sliding onto

the glass covered floor. They were club glasses shattered all over the

kitchen floor like Amethyst dreams. And she began, as I kept her arms

away from each other and then she stopped and laid curled up in my arms.

The next time I had seen Paige` was at graduation in front of my parents.

The self-proclaimed rocker ran up in front of everyone and

grabbed and kissed me.

I was 17 years old and back on that night I had come in from the side of the

house from my friend’s car and I hadn’t even been drinking that night. I had

just left Paige’s party where she had freaked out. I walked past my parents

as they watched Match Game in the silence I now understand why they

basked in, and I walked up the stairs and rolled my felt shirt up and washed

my arms off in the sink.

I was 17 and I never felt so alone from my parents that night. It wasn’t

because I thought I was invincible. It was because I was. When

I die if someone puts what’s left of my remains under a marker that says

that, then I would be grateful. That is the one thing that, if someone asked,

that I’d like them to know: Was there a vulnerability in me? Yes, that. At that

age. That bothers me.