Boys Life

Tracy was not exactly Purple Diary fodder. She lived with her mother and stepfather. She was in community college. Bebe was one of her favorite stores. She had an ex too but her ex is on the stalker side of things so she keeps a Glock 9mm under the seat of her car. (TRUTH I SWEAR) The heart tattoo on her left breast was not done by Scott Campbell; it’s India ink and home needle work. It’s not the only one either. There are 7 or eight others. The smiley faces, musical notes, and Asian characters tell the story of her adolescence, depression, teen gangs, drugs.

It was not all sparkle shirts and self mutilation though, Tracy was the smartest girl I’d met in ages. She had this quick scientific mind that constantly impressed me. I got the sense that she could do anything, if she just realized she was worth it. She had this air about her, I would not be surprised if she up and left town for Yale. I’d be equally unsurprised to hear of her arrest, with large quantities of cocaine found in the spare tire of her Volkswagen Jetta. She reminded me of a helicopter, this giant steel hull weighing her down while delicate blades effortlessly lift her off the ground. One second you look and think nothing, “a helicopter, it flies.” Then you’re listening to the thump of the air, looking at the shape and design and wondering how on earth this hunk of metal is not falling out of the sky. That’s Tracy.

Tracy and I had a kind of unspoken kinship about the turtle race to adulthood we were both running. I was slowly getting over my ex and working out the things that kept me from being successful. Her academic mind was floundering in community college, she was getting over her problems with drugs, and coping with being shoddily tattooed for life. We hung tough for a few months. She was on the pill so we did it a lot. Whenever our parents were gone we’d be at each other like rabbits. Once we even got yelled at by her mother. “Who’s fucking up there!” I threw on my clothes, and while passing her mother and step father on my way out, “Have a good afternoon!” God I was such a little prick. Another time in the bathroom at a neighborhood pool, no one in a giant woman’s room but us. I remember this was one of the first times I felt like a real adult having sex. We were in the showers together, no hang ups no awkward moments, just pulling her bikini to the side and taking what was mine. I even bought her birthday presents. A CD I liked and something she’d like, a gift card to Bebe. She and her best friend Misty came to support one of my creative endeavors. It was nice to have people in my corner but god the two of them looked tacky. Not wanting to integrate my creative friends with Tracy and her gang, I played busy for most of the evening.

It starts to slip. I’ve never called her my girlfriend or suggested we should be officially together so it’s easy to let go. A few more nights out with my buddies and a few less afternoons with Tracy. I care about her, it’s just not doing it for me anymore. I want more. More than Tracy has to offer. More than this fucking town has to offer. I stop calling to hang and by that night at Ihop it’s been at least  a week since she and I have seen each other.

The day after Ihop I’m making calls trying to sort out what happened. I call Sean, who has made a teen fortune power washing backyard decks, and is my only peer who owns his own home. He is good friends with the dude she has supposedly fucked and I figure the transgression occurred under his roof.

“That shit’s none of my business dog, I don’t know what he does when he’s staying here. I can’t get involved in all this.”

Thanks for nothing, Sean. I make a few more calls. Most conversations centering around Jessica being a notorious liar. I figure it’s true anyway, I just have that feeling in my gut.

About a week passed and I start hanging with Tracy again. I’m with her and her best friend Misty at the mall. Tracy is looking for something while Misty and I wait outside a store and talk.

“Did she do it?”

“Why do you care so much?”

“I just do.”

“She was never your girlfriend so even if she did, which she didn’t but even if she did it’s none of your business.”

A heavy feeling hits my chest and sinks down into my abdomen. I know it’s true now.

Tracy and I are in her car outside my parents’ house. I suggest that I might love her. My actions over the past few weeks have suggested otherwise. Even though we’ve been hanging again, I’ve been keeping a palpable distance since Ihop. I don’t know why I bring love into our conversation. I know it’s bullshit. I don’t love her, but I want her to love me. I need her to be devoted to me even if I don’t give a fuck anymore. No, I don’t love you, but you need to be smitten with me enough to not fuck some creep. I think about her home made tattoos, about being self destructive. How tied into that need to tear everything apart was her transgression? My barely post adolescent heart needs this to be: To look at her like some fucked up girl trashing a good thing just because. Just because trashing anything good is all you know when you’re young and fucked up. She is compelled to destroy. It’s not her fault. My ego forces me to pity her.

Tracy takes me to dinner for my birthday. It’s a place my parents used to bring me as a child. When I moved out of mom and dad’s and started frequenting places like this on my own I realized just how thrifty my parents had been. My income was meager but I could still afford to eat, a special occasion meal, whenever I wanted. Once a highly anticipated annual dining adventure, this place was now just an over lit mid-range Cajun chain, a sort of Popeye’s with cloth napkins. Childhood illusions shattered, it was still a favorite of mine. I eat too much and begin to feel shaky. I go to the bathroom and vomit. This used to happen a lot the previous winter around the time of my breakup. I could not hold down real food. I was depressed and love sick, my mind turning on my body. One day I sat on the bathroom floor of my parents house after being unable to hold down my lunch. On the tiny black and white hexagonal tiles, I started to feel good. A post vomit wave of mellow came over me like three beers into a six pack. In a split second I understood every girl who held her hair back and forced a finger down her throat. I got off the floor, into therapy, and did not puke again until my birthday dinner with Tracy. I think about that afternoon on the bathroom floor as I clean up and return to the table. After dinner outside in the parking lot Tracy produces a complete skateboard from the trunk of her car. She explains that one of my friends had helped her pick it out. She comments that the graphic on the bottom was ugly and was not her choice, but my friend insisted its irrelevance and that wood quality was the top priority. I explain that he was right and how happy I am with the gift.

This is the last time we hang out. I can’t be the dude that takes some chick back after she’s been whoring around. That is just an outfit I’m not comfortable wearing.

The next day I tell my boy who picked out the skateboard with Tracy: “At least I stuck it out long enough to get that complete.”

I remember kick flipping a set of stairs on that board. My buddies called it the Spider Man kick flip. Nowhere near amazing even by less than professional standards, it was, however, a small victory for me.

Four months later I moved to New York and started a new life.


A few months ago I saw Tracy on Facebook, with what looked like child and husband in her profile pic. My friend request is, as yet, unanswered.

The Sunday before I posted the Halloween Boys Life, an old friend and I are playing a game of S.K.A.T.E. My old pal says to me:

“Yo, you remember the spider man Kick Flip?”

I laugh and say I do, throw my board down and do a double kick flip hoping to give him a letter in our game.

BL