tib0r

Smoky was afraid of the dark but he'd torture himself by shutting himself in his room for days on ened, listening to Christian Death by the light of a few stubby candles. He ended up jumping in the river and we never saw him again.

Licorice Pizza was the name of the girl who taught me how to smoke cigarettes behind the dumpsters in the abandoned junior high school parking lot of my suburban home town. I think her parents were hippies but she was a punk.

Cherish Gallant told me that where she came from she used to get beat up a lot: she said she learned how to make black eyes sexy. Her hair swooped down in front of one eye; when she smoked cigarettes, the smoke curled up there hidden behind that one wing of hair. She told me I was the only person who'd ever seen her cry.

Beaver came to my rescue when I was hiding under a table in an apartment on 18th Street, smoking cigarettes because I was hoping the party would move into the other room. We left the party and got burritos at the all-night taqueria and he professed to me his love for Jesus.

Erwin was so put together all the time. She smelled like expensive hair products and always had really nice shoes. But her dirty secret was that she lived in utter squalor. I went to her house and her room was a dirty futon mattress in the corner, clothes lying on the floor in wadded up heaps, and make-up spilling off of a beat-up dresser with missing drawers.

Heather wore wire-rimmed glasses and she had little hands that curled up like snails. She rolled the tightest joints and showed me how to hotbox. She was Little House on the Prairie meets Deadhead parking lot and I never saw her lose her shit, not once.

Astrid isn't her real name but I dream about her all the time. She taught me how to give blow jobs in her bright modern kitchen, using beer bottles. I used to hear her puking in the bathroom late at night when she thought everyone was sleeping. She was the first person who ever told me I was beautiful and I totally believed her.