FEAST OF LOSSES

I liked her best when she was puking her guts out, more than once, in a mini dress, can’t remember the color, maybe cream, fall 1998, rural New England, by a big tree, then another, after the dance at which I’m pretty sure she didn’t dance but at which I’m absolutely sure she did a great deal of underage drinking, after which I helped a few guys prop her up, walk her back to her room in the little house for upperclassmen where I put her to bed, where she puked again, all over the spread on her twin bed, which I’m pretty sure I later inherited. I do love a hand-me-down. Vulnerability. Rigid self-appointed authority demoted, somewhat disgusting, disarmed. Then back down the gravel road in the dark, across the little causeway into co-ed Kendrick, down the stairs to the room I shared with a round-faced ritalin addict who sold drugs out of our mini-fridge. The sight of her now sends distress signals along my own vagus nerve, freaks out my brainstem. Something’s not right down here. I hardly know, anymore, if we ever liked each other, beyond that night. I hardly recognize the strong chin that once glistened, winningly, with disgorged matter, the deep, hard set of disapproving eyes, suburban wardrobe, blow-dried hair, cute glasses, her crimped lips souring the air with words.

Originally appeared in The Bookends Review.