"This is where I met her", I told him, "This is where they held the concert. I had wandered off from my friends, after a while, the repressed sexual tension got to me -- made me grab my crotch just to get a laugh and then just get myself lost in the crowd. Sometimes it felt like anything different would be better."
He nods, and turns to look at me. When he does turn, and notices I've been looking right at him, he smiles a little smile and turns away. Eye contact is an issue for him.
"She was trying out the mosh pit for the first time, and she was learning the hard way. My first mosh was pretty calm: just people moving in a circle. I got pushed around a bit, but nothing big; it was fun.
"She really got beat up though. The one way she was lucky was that being thrown out of the crowd meant she landed right on me." I realize I said 'she was lucky' and that just doesn't sound right. It was both of us that were lucky, so I throw in a "No, we were lucky" for his benefit. He does one of those smile-and-hide-your-face combinations again. I bet he's starting to feel silly doing that all the time, but it doesn't really matter right now, this isn't about him.
We go outside. It's dark, and raining. Perfect.
There's something about cities in the rain, maybe it's the way you can almost smell the iron oxidizing, or maybe it's the way they get so deserted when it rains. That's got to be part of it, I think, it's too beautiful to not be. Maybe seeing all that grime and dirt and scandal, the drugs hiding jut behind the curtains. You know that the poor bastard who tries to earn a living with compliments, handing them out like pamphlets, hoping someone will not only take one, but read it, is there somewhere. Eventually, he'll have been out there so long that he'll barely care if anyone gives him any change, even if his next meal depends on it.


He's staring at me again. I wait a second, keeping him in my peripheral vision, and pretend to still be lost in my thoughts.
He keeps looking.
I turn to look back.
He smiles and turns away.

A cigarette slides by in the gutter. It reminds me of her, but she's been on my mind a lot and most things will remind me.

"She used to smoke. Back when I met her she smoked like a bastard," I say. He was drifting off and he jumps a little when I say it. In retrospect, it was good he wasn't listening, it gives me a chance to correct myself. I didn't want to call her a bastard.
"She smoked a lot. It kept her alive," I tell him. He doesn't believe me, but he smiles, just a bit, like he thinks I'm joking. It is a decent pun, but I mean it.
"Really, it was her parents that were killing her back then, and her school, the cigarettes were what was keeping her alive."
He nods sagely. He's old enough that he might understand, probably gets the general idea.
"The downside to living in such an upscale neighborhood," I say "is that there is a lot of the world you don't see much of. Being part of the richest ten percent -- or whatever the fuck the number is -- means you only see ten percent of people." No, not people... It sounds like everyone's just a head floating around the way I said it. "Ten percent of society, I mean." He does the smile thing again. "We grew up in the other ninety percent..."

By now we've come to one of those loading bays. The ones where there are two or three or four doors that slide up into the ceiling when a truck is pulled up to it to be unloaded. The rain and the dark makes it hard to see into the corners. She practically lived in those corners. She was beautiful, her blond hair covered in shit from the streets, all tied up in a knot somewhere between the back of her head and the top of her back. It wasn't particularly long, but it was long enough that it got in her way if she didn't tie it back.
On days like these you could walk by and you'd just see a little orange dot. You might think it was just a butt, burning out, but then you'd see it flare up and maybe wiggle a bit. The most wonderful part was when you could see her eyes. Couldn't tell what fucking color they were, but you could see just a glint of red-orange in them, just that one cigarette telling you she was looking at you.

"Her parents tried to get her to wear makeup, be a 'real girl'", I spit out, "didn't give a fuck she liked numbers as long as she got good numbers in school. At school, she was just another punk to the teachers. She'd ask a question and they'd give her a look and turn to someone else. You didn't take the punks seriously if you were a teacher. Sometimes I thought it was just so they wouldn't be reminded of how powerless they were."
"Not to say the punks weren't about power. Most of them were just as scared as the fucking preps. Actually, a bit less scared, because they weren't like everyone else; that was the point."
"Most of them, or a lot, did it for the scare factor -- See how hard people would have to work to not comment on them when they saw them. It gave them a purpose in life. She dyed her hair once, and she felt fucking stupid for doing it. Made her hot as hell though."
"She didn't like it because she thought she was vain. It was almost like she had given up to her parents."

"So, she smoked. It was her way of telling her parents she hadn't given up. It was her way of telling the teachers at school that their happy little moral dreamland was a farce, and that there really were no rules, and they were afraid of her for it."
"She was a minor, smoking was illegal, and that was what kept her from killing herself. They could pretend she didn't smell like smoke, that her teeth weren't turning yellowish. Sometimes she didn't brush specifically so they would be a nice yellow, and she'd smile really huge at the teachers and her parents."
"They absolutely hated her for it. Because she reminded them all that their entire lives, and most of their silly moralities were lies."





It stops raining. I miss it.