Twenty - All the Parking lots in America - Part 1

So here we are again, i'm trying to lay off the booze and class A's tonight and so here i sit trying to remember... and so where was I?  As the days at Podunk U. wound down i began calling in all the notes so to speak or in barbarian terms attempting to sleep with all the fair maidens i hadn't bedded up to this point, there was one in particular, the Hippie Queen and if you're keeping track and i'm sure you're not you'll remember her from a few other posts scattered among the empty bottles and dirty ash trays of the lounge, she was one of the attendees at the little readings i organized and she had a tendency to blush and talk about how she didn't want to read because some of the stuff read was so good and blah blah fucking blah, of course she lumped my shite poesy in with the good but i can assure you it was quite shite in comparison to most of the others, about the only two worse than me were Sober Rock Star and the Hippie Queen, yet what she lacked in literary talent she more than made up for in beauty and sex appeal and let's face it those fucking things trump literary talent on most days ending in Y, she was half Lebanese i believe and that long jet black curly hair and those dark eyes were more than enough to set many a young mans knees a shaking, her hips were of the variety that didn't quit, her breasts, ah those fucking breasts had been known to break many a train of thought, speaking of which she just wrecked mine...

Now where was i again? yes those breasts i mean this girl, oddly enough it was the Hippie Queen who invited me to her apartment one humid spring evening, she had said she wanted to hear more of my stuff and of course we all know where this is going, but i showed up anyhow with my little sheets of paper all helter-skelter in my folder, we adjourned to her bedroom in case her roommate came home and she began pouring wine and lighting candles and of course we read some poetry to each other, who wouldn't and then she asked if she could read me a few and i of course said yes and she proceeded to read these poems about being in love from afar and trying to tame the untameable and i stared at her intently as she read and then she confessed that those were written about me and before you could say On the Road by Jack Kerouac we were spilling wine as clothes few wither and tither and though i'll leave it to the imagination what took place that night what didn't take place was the consummation of our lust for one another and though i offered to sprint to the mini-mart and buy the proper equipment sometimes it seems that women just like to be held or some such shit and i still would have Carl Lewis'd my ass to the corner but for the promises of said consummation in the very near future...

But what does this have to do with the parking lots of America? Well i'm getting there, you see but first we must get to the fucking you know and so one fine evening before we all scattered our separate ways or more correctly i scattered my separate ways we were supposed to meet in my apartment but then she decided to take hitch a ride to see 10,000 Maniacs and though she asked me to go with her i preferred to wander around my apartment and drink, of course she said she'd come straight here when she got back but that left our hero with more than a few hours to kill and we all know what kind of trouble that can get me into and so being bored and horny i figured instead of walking around with a hard-on i'd drink more and eat some mushrooms, i mean what would you do if you're mother asked you?  I don't know how many 40oz bottles of malt liquor i drank or how many grams of mushrooms i ate, i'm assuming alot because when she knocked on my door late that night this grin began creeping across my face that broke into a bona fide smile and she looked at my eyes and said "you're glowing" and smiled and took my hand and we adjourned to the bedroom which we did not leave until the sun came up, no sleeping involved, barely a rest, if this was the only night i would spend with her i wanted to make the most of it, make sure that years later when she thought of me she would smile as the breeze fluttered through her kitchen window dig? and finally as the sun began to crack the sky we walked to the town library's steps and sat down and shared a cigarette and a cup of coffee, the smell of her hair as she leaned on my shoulder, the feel of her hand in mine, in terms of perfection it was damn near there, for a moment or two in my tumultuous existence i damn near felt content...

And of course she was leaving that morning, going home for the summer before her final year and i would leave two days later for the beach and she said something about how she'd have the house to herself and how she wished i could come and stay but i needed to hitch this ride and so the weekend of bliss would not happen... or would it?

But let me rewind here for a second, you see my first summer at the shore had actually been 2 years earlier, and if anyone remembers the posts called How I Learned to Read you might remember another fair maiden who i had fallen in with, she kept me out of jail one night and generally made my life much better and if you really want you can find those posts and get the back story which brings me to what happens after that summer... you see Hippie Queen and M1 as i called her (or M the First, you know French name, one L or two)  were high school rivals and though western Pa. is a vast wasteland of cow towns and nothingness it is alas a small universe we live in sometimes, i remember the Hippie Queen being taken aback dare i say almost jealous when i told her that i had been seeing someone she knew, why of course i don't know, she was in a relationship and had been but then again i didn't know she was writing me love poems either but i soon discovered the mutual dis-like they had for each other which usually had something to do with the men they were seeing or pursuing but this is not about that...

You see M1 and i had spent a glorious summer together but like most things i tend to like to destroy them, chase them away and then spend all my time attempting to get them back, and so when i left the beach i immediately forgot about her and didn't return her calls and basically when i did i acted like an ass, seems my ability to keep a long-distance relationship was rather non-existent as a young man but then i moved back to school and my family imploded and i she began to come up to visit, well let me say the visits started before my family imploded and when it did she attempted to help me through it but it all started so blissfully with her driving up in her bitchin' Camaro and we'd talk and screw and talk and screw, see in the beginning i was helping her come to terms with the break down of her nuclear family, step-dad of course was an asshole but he did supply the bitchin' Camaro and i had never seen someone inherit so much sadness from a divorce, it wouldn't be long before i understood much better than i'd ever wished to but that sadness was like a flame to this blind and dumb moth...

But being a blind and dumb moth has it's advantages and one of those is being blind and so i slowly forgot what she needed from me, oh hell it was more like immediately forgot and began spending most of my time getting fucked out of my head which apparently is something that she had had enough of, now by this time i was convinced i was in love with her again unbeknown to the girlfriend back in Cleveland who was really more of a fuck toy (no i am not the guy you wanted your daughter to date in my youth, though i was a master at fooling the parents) though i don't think she thought that and so one fine day M1 showed up at my apartment in the fucking ghetto of Podunk U. to find me drinking off a quarter barrel and pulling tubes, i don't even think i said hello, i walked up to her and kissed her and led her to my room where we had some blisteringly hot sex and what i should have realized then was that it was over, she was saying her goodbye to me before she actually said it, i was still learning you know but that lesson has stuck...

And so as i sat there in front of my cheeseburger and fries and soda that she bought me at the local Wendy's, i smiled and talked, pouring out my usual barrage of half-assed ideas and dreams and told her how talking to her had really helped my situation and i was really about to tell her that i loved her when she put her hand up, of course i should have realized while i prattled on she sat there nibbling and looking stoically out the window and then she just let it go, it wasn't the rope-a-dope or bob and weave it was a couple of body blows and then a shot to the fucking chin, she calmly told me that i was to fucked up and that she wouldn't be coming up anymore and that in fact she didn't want to see me again, told me that the last few times she had seen me in she felt like i was in this downward spiral and that i was gonna pull her down with me and she had worked to hard to let that happen, that she in fact had began seeing a new guy that made her very happy and that she was saying none of this to hurt me and she knew i was hurting already but that i was to much of a fuck-up at this point and fuck-ups were one thing she was trying to avoid, i didn't speak, i just sat and listened and no words would come out, what was there to say? she was probably right, and so i sat there reeling, the lights hurting my eyes, the room spinning, it was then that she leaned over and kissed my head, picked up her purse and said goodbye...

I sat and watched her walk to her car, for some reason i unwadded my paper bag and began putting what was left of my lunch into it, i could feel the water beginning to fill my eyes, it was a shitty day in March and the wind was cold and there was a stinging mist in the air, i pulled a couple of crumpled bills and counted my change as i stood in the parking lot and wiped tears from my eyes, then i tossed the paper bag in a nearby garbage can and walked towards the beer store... to be continued...