Growing up I moved around a bunch! Crunch a bunch, dude! One of the things about moving all the time was ushering in new people as friends until the next crop. Which was always kinda ok with me until I got to high school and went to 5 separate schools. I noticed all around me as people were “clicking” up and preparing for the heartbreak of leaving for college, leaving behind BFFs I wasn’t. I mean the high school buffet was nothing. I’m pretty sure elementary school was completed in just under 13 separate schools. My mother went to one high school. And kept those “Golddiggers” (that was their mascot, swear to God) close well into her adult life. One in particular. My godmother! And mom to a daughter exactly one year and half younger than me, Jessica…my best friend who was my childhood friend simultaneously. The only person who consistently appears in my memories. Even with all the moves.
We were friends apparently as diaper dwelling babes, but our friendship didn’t really start (according to us) until we were 8 years old.
I had just moved back to Colorado from Alaska and our moms thought we’d be chums again without skipping a beat. No. When I saw Jessica my immediate impression was WEIRD. And as a shy, skinny girl in huge glasses I didn’t need more oddball quirks introduced to my world. She was in my eyes “perfection”. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and just the right amount of tomboy from having an older brother. See, my mom is blonde and raised me in white suburbia….all the way up until my Senior year of high school. Senior year was spent as a “Ghetto Bello” for Montbello high school. But thats besides the point.
Jessica fascinated me as kids playing, then as the one to lose her virginity way before me and would happily share her teen sexual adventures that just blew my freaking mind. Now I don’t want you to think it was the “Jessica Show” and I was in the audience. No, no, no. The girl may have taught me how to cuss but it was together we set fire to her neighborhood. Then as a cover we told the firemen that a couple of black boys on bikes threw matches at a bushy covering we were playing “innocently” in and set it ablaze. Completely fucking racist as shit (and oddly completely my idea!) but we just said the first thing that came to mind….
Now I didn’t lose my virginity until 20 but I had one encounter on a playground with a boy after way too many Keystone Light beers. Make out-third base action. And to this day I chalk up to sustaining me the rest of my teen years sexually speaking. We snuck out. Actually we snuck out a lot! But it was cool as long as she brought her beeper and it DIDN’T go off. We were safe. Safe, stumbling down her street calling “here, kitty, here kitty” to a skunk.
Now I don’t know how rights of passage are suppose to go with childhood friends but I am pretty sure Jessica helped through some and I, her. I hope!
At 19 on a visit back from college (a small liberal arts school, of course) she and I got matching tattoos. My first! Her 10th probably. The bow I have on the back of my neck. She got the exact same one and it meant “tied together for life”. LIFE LESSON: Tattoos are better when they have meaning so deep behind them you wondered how you went un-tatted for so long.
Oh and I can’t forget the skater period I went through in high school before evolving into emo and eventually, well, you know. A super hip chick!
She introduced me to the bad DISTURBED, whom I LOVED. We saw them in concert along with ROb Zombie, whom I still love!
SHe showed me how to decorate your back window with skate stickers and from there I took it to another level, but always loved how important that shit was to us. Scuffing at fellow drivers and their either lack of decal or poor choice. We were the authority. I mean we even kept out skateboards in the back window so as to restate our love for all things ANTI-PREPPIE. Puke!
Even now as I listen to STATIC-X writing this I know its better than whatever the girls our age at the time listened to…98 degrees? This was her favorite band. So weird and out there, just like her. Just like 20 years ago when I met her and began a 20 year friendship.
I lost her last month to cancer.
I just wanted to share a special part of who I am by doing what I do. She was apart of my soul and I like to think I feed my soul with my writing. And fucking hell, I finally got past my pesky writers block! It just took the most out there individual I will ever meet to bring me back to my weirdo style.
I write with the main goal of recollection and amazement for myself. Just this once though, I hope I wrote selflessly.
Each and every word, dedicated and written for my BFF?
How odd.
Perfect.