blast from the past

every day a new beginning tainted with the transgressions of the night before
not four hours earlier we poured our hearts out but the plexiglass filter never really left the conversation.

There is always a rock star and there are always too many girls. She was on a billboard looming over santa monica and Beverly. She looked drugged. All the girls copied her look. Dresses and high heels and pouty lips. Big eyelashes to hide the sleepy eyes. Purses packed with pipes and pills.

I push myself out the door in the nick of time, faking the confidence to carry my look: summer dress, loose waves and smoky eyes. The night's excitement mounts with every curve in the coastal highway. Anticipation sweetened with smoke and the piercing ocean breeze wafts across the road.

Our high heels stride across a sidewalk strewn with sand. Tan legs and painted toenails and half smoked cigarettes lead us into the bar. The music is visceral and I almost start crying. Shrieks of joy compete with wailing guitar solos. I'm pounded and propelled forward into the song, compelled to move.

Flash forward three zip codes and my heart is breaking. I want to say asshole but I know it's just not meant to be. I want to remember enjoying him. I want to lay my cheek on his shoulder and close my eyes and breathe. Instead I pretend he thinks I'm beautiful. I pretend I just didn’t dress right.

Scrapey scrapey scrape the skin crumbles off. bones underneath poke through soft scratched skin. I tug at my jeans and they still don’t fit right, they fight my body's natural contour so I scrape a little more and eat a little less, fuck the guy I hate and imagine the guy i love fucking other girls instead of me, I pretend I can be more perfect and he’ll change his mind but really he won't. He doesn’t need me. I pretend I represent truth, it makes him uncomfortable. I'm the girl who never knows what she wants, instead invites everyone to crash my world and relive my favorite story.

Songs are everywhere, their words stick themselves to the people I think about. I can't keep my words straight when the radio comes on. the songs hypnotize me. I can't resist. like booze I'm drunk on the idea of living my own music video and I give into the emptiness of a fantasy even as it resurfaces hours later when I silently carve his name into my flesh.

and the aftermath: aka
today: 7/32/06

did he earn back his ringtone?