I remember Shana. Go down to the coffee shop just to hang out, and she�d show up eventually. Stupid, painted on face with an outfit that matched so well she looked like a stripper, but I loved her.
Hanging out at Denny�s until 3, 4, sometimes later into the morning just holding each other and listening to whatever stories people would tell us. �You two, you have something special,� they would say, �I can see it.� We didn�t consider ourselves an item. We only kissed once before she left, once when she came back the first time, and then on her final visit we had one final relinquishing of inhibitions that destroyed everything we ever had and threw my life into chaos.
Let me explain. I met Shana through Simon, purely by accident. I was getting sick of the north-end, suburbanite crowd that knew nothing other than living off their parents and the assembly-line consumerism culture that permeated those neighborhoods. So I drove downtown, to see what was going on. Downtown was something new at that time, somewhere near the end of my senior year of high school. I went to the coffee shop, a place where my brother took me once on a school night to hang out and act cool. I was thirteen then? I don�t remember exactly, but that first peek had always made me wish for something outside of my life of needing a ride to every destination. I longed for that pedestrian lifestyle since the first time I saw it, and that�s what I was looking for when I went downtown.
I saw Simon, a despicable creature who would play a role of nemesis later in my life, but right now, I didn�t know anything about him. I knew him as somebody who Layla was dating, on the rebound from Keith. I knew Layla through Keith. I saw him standing on the corner, in front of the coffee shop, so I decided to stop and say hello.
Hello.
He was talking to a girl of red hair and painted face, Shana. There seemed to be music in the line between her eyes and mine when we first met. I can�t remember what kind of gibberish I might have said to her then, but it ended with me remembering about a show that was happening at the underground, a few blocks away, and her agreeing that we should go.
It was odd, at the show. I remember running into girls who were surprised and excited that I had a date. I don�t remember who was playing, or what type of music. It could have possibly been Soul Food, a band from my high school, but I�m not sure about that. It could have also been the Blue Meanies. I�m pretty sure it wasn�t both of them.
So, a phone number, and then a call the next day, or the day after that. I don�t remember, but it was appropriate timing. Or did I see her at the coffee shop before I ever reached her on the phone? Whichever the case was, the next time I saw her was at the coffee shop, and that�s when I met Charlie.
Charlie also liked to hang out with Shana. He had long hair and an orange VW bus, which actually belonged to his mother, but everybody knew it as Charlie�s bus. Charlie and I got along, despite the obvious love-triangle developing. One night, the three of us sat down to discuss the events that where occurring, and what should be done about them. We actually only stared into each other�s eyes, asking every question and presenting every arument with nothing more than what could be seen in the honest reflection of our pupils, until Charlie decided to give up (I think.) He was the smart one for this.
So, I gained a friend, and Shana and I continued to hang out every other day, or every day, or twice a day. Whatever. We would walk through downtown, and she would tell me about how she saw everything--her stupid image of the world told in a slow southern drawl, smoking her Strawberry Bidi�s painting a picture that was either hopelessly na�ve, or opened a door to a new possibility of looking at things. She was dumb, but I felt a comfort in hanging out with her. Other guys would hit on her as she walked down the street, and being as young as I was, seventeen, I got confused as to what to do. She was three years older than me, and I had no territorial instincts at the time. I always let them compliment her as much as they wanted to. I knew she would be embarrassed. I didn�t know she wanted me to stop them. I just told her that they mean her no harm. I never felt threatened by any of them.
Once, we had an old bum at Denny�s tell us his life story. His life story started when he left his wife. He used to own a small house and a lawnmower, he said, but left that all behind to go hop a train. Town to town, train to train, he�d been living ever since. Shana sketched out the details and then wrote them into a song. She knew how to write a good song. It made up for a lot of other qualities. She wrote it and sang it for him, right there in Denny�s.
The way she would sing. If I could hear her sing again, it would melt away so much bitterness I hold in my heart.
Angelic, virginal voice.
I used to drive her home at night, thirty miles from town out to the plains where the wind crashes like waves on a beach. I would drive real slow and turn off the radio, and she would sing softly for me, holding my hand all the way.
On that last trip, it was the end of July. She was leaving with her family back to Texas, and we had planned for a long goodbye. 5 am, and we�re still talking in my Honda, I lean over the stick shift, and kiss her gently on the lips� She pulls me closer ever so briefly, and then, no, she can�t. there�s so much emotion in the moment, and neither one of us knows how to deal with it. Her hand, still clutching my back scratches nails softly down my spine, turning into a loving caress as it reaches the base of my back, around, to my chest, grasping, pulling me closer. Wasn�t that a no? I ask her. She pulls her hand away, and we stare into each other until dawn is too obvious to ignore.
I drove home in a panic, and snuck in through my window same as ever. Things weren�t ever quite the same after that, and by the day before my eighteenth birthday, she was gone. I was left alone with thirty friends I didn�t care about to drink myself into oblivion on a thirteen-dollar bottle of wine.
Sometimes I wonder how I'm going to tell today's story, once I have years of retrospect to tell it through. I don't like living in the past, but sometimes I enjoy examining it.