Inner Musings

Thursday, February 21, 2002

I met Zac at a party, probably two days after the New Year. It was 2002, and I wanted to unwind. We were at the Ramada, and through my acquaintance with Andrew, our two parties conjoined. Zac wandered in and out of the room, socializing as his nature demanded, and came back several times to where I was playing cards, and sat on my feet. I remember what I was wearing; a pair of gray shorts from the University of New Orleans and a raspberry-colored tank top that I ganked from my sister. Chloe had been eyeballing Andrew (�since sophomore year�) so I thought we could accept their invitation to sleep back in the other room without unsolicited weirdness. I ended up sleeping in Zac�s arms as we watched Castaway. Tom Hanks cut his rotting tooth out with the blade of an ice skate as Zac�s hands flattened across my back, pressed me closer. �Can I kiss you?� he said. I smiled and buried my head in his chest.

I left the next morning to go to church, and hoped that I would run into him later, get his number from my friend Lupe, something. Eventually I did, in the Albertson�s parking lot with Chloe and Kathrine, just before we went to Club Dakota�s, and danced amid sweaty awkward teens. I gave him my pager number and he said he�d call later that night. We went dancing, and afterwards, stripped off our pants and dangled our legs out the car window. This attracted the attention of a car full of well-intentioned but slightly strange military boys rolling next to us, and we shivered together down at the Cove as Chloe burned coloring books from the backseat of her car. I met up with Zac later that night, and ended up traveling down to Port Orchard with him, Felix, Jonathon, and Michael. I spent the day out there, from the time we got there to about seven in the morning, we stayed awake, talking, eating. Once the sun rose, Michael and Mike had left and Felix was on his bed with his girlfriend. Zac and I slipped under the sheets and blankets of the rickety couch, and afterwards I watched four hours of the �Real World� as he slept, my own body refusing sleep.

He turned out to be five years older than me, the largest gap I�ve spanned yet. We were both surprised; I thought him to be maybe 19, and he thought I was at least twenty. He promised to go to the party that Chloe and I were throwing that weekend.

Over the next few weeks, the haze of love drifted up around my eyes and I followed him around, drunk with feelings that were uneasily familiar and portended tragedy in the end, swords and poisons, but I shoved that part back and concentrated on the soft-focus mood-lit moments that were not extinguished but instead amplified when he trusted me with the details of his past; his dealings in drugs and the felony conviction, the jail time, his ex-fianc�, the car-stealing�a lot. Big load for a little seventeen-year-old. It didn�t register, and I overlooked it romantically. Eventually I was doing a lot for him, sneaking him into the house at night because he didn�t have a place to stay or a job, and couldn�t have held down either of them since he was still in court dates up to his ears. He was never caught outright, but we ran into a couple sticky situations that required fast thinking and fast talking. From the very beginning, we marveled at how much we had in common, how well we got along.

My parents were concerned with my �new life;� how I�d started to hang out with Lupe and Chloe constantly, how late I was out, especially on school nights. I didn�t see much of Moon anymore, but then again, she�d been wrapped up in her own involvements, namely those by the name of Julius.

And then, everything started unraveling.

Anemone Ra 11:13 AM