Imaginary Socialite

[EMAIL ME - IMAGINARYSOCIALITE@GMAIL.COM]

Like most people who know me too well, he moved to Calfornia.

People asked if I was sad, and I said, “Not really.” They thought it was because he’d kissed my friend, in front of me, on Nicholas Routzen’s couch.

No, actually, because I was kissing someone else, at the same time, on Nicholas Routzen’s roof. The real reason is because, this one time, we were smoking on my bed. “This one time” means “my birthday,” and “my bed” means “downstairs when everyone else – like thirty people – were upstairs.” Horribly rude, right? I can’t argue.

And while we were on my bed, I stretched my cheeks across his shoulder and looked him dead in the heart. “Here’s our problem,” I growled, and I told him everything that would make him happier. And everything that would make me greater. And a slew of magic words that pressed through cherry chapstick like an incantation, or an order, or a truth. We let it sink into the sheets, this new and heightened revelation. We played records on the floor. We smeared glitter on each other’s faces. We fell, in a graceless “thud” off the bed. We laughed so hard I couldn’t feel my lungs. And then the door banged hard and I was like, “Okay, let’s go.”
The next day, he called me.

“Do you remember what you said? The important stuff.”

I didn’t. “Me neither,” he sighed. But we both agreed it was the most fun we’d ever had with each other, ever.

Then he packed his stuff and drove away. And I said, “No more smoking anything, ever.” Sometimes I break the rule, hoping a little bit of poison can make me hack up something gorgeous from my guts. But usually, I can stretch out on my covers and realize my hair isn’t tangled from someone else’s hands, and that’s enough.

[MICHAEL FRIEDMAN - AM I THE IMAGINARY SOCIALITE?]