skinny girl

I’m going to tell you a story. It’s a true story insofar as I’m not lying, but since I only have my memory to rely on, I have serious doubts about whether these events really happened the way I remember them, or if they even happened at all. I think they happened. I’d even go so far as to suggest they happened to me.

It was three years ago this May, I was giving the German exchange student some driving lessons so he could get an American driver’s license and transfer it once he got home, instead of paying the exorbitant amount required to get one over there. At some point we met up with this girl I knew, this skinny girl with stringy hair and a pretty face.

The skinny girl was throwing a party, and I was somehow invited. Perhaps she invited me, but it could have been one of her friends. It was a party to celebrate the end of our senior year of high school, and it was my responsibility to convince my stoner buddy to use his awful fake ID to score some liquor.

Incidentally, the German exchange student was staying at my stoner buddy’s house, so when I dropped him off I picked up the stoner and we went to get the booze. I have many recollections of this same generic memory: sitting in my car outside the liquor store waiting for Stoner Boy to come back with beer or vodka or whatever. I always half-expected the cops to show up with sirens a-wailing and guns a-blazing.

But, of course, they never did.

So we went to the party at the skinny girl’s house. The German got drunk and goofy, which was truly an event, since he tended to avoid drinking, for fear of deportation and being expelled from his program. Skinny Girl and I talked a little, and I might even be correct in thinking that there was some drunken trampoline-jumping going on. One thing I do know for sure is that I broke a door handle when I was stumbling around.

While Skinny Girl’s geeky friends started to disperse or pass out or whatever, me and Stoner Boy were having metaphysical and philosophical discussions, as we often tended to do back then. He confessed to me that he had a crush on Skinny Girl.

That bastard, I’d told him some time before that that I also had a crush on said Skinny Girl. I really think she wanted me, and I remember getting some strong vibes from her that night.

You see, in eighth or ninth grade, I bought Skinny Girl an elephant-shaped Pez dispenser for her birthday. It was nearly impossible to find, and involved a tri-county search of malls and toy stores and whatnot, but it was a productive search.

In those days it was not so easy for me to talk to girls, but I really thought there was some chemistry between me and the Skinny Girl. I kind of thought this party would be a karmic by-product of our special elephant-shaped Pez dispenser bond from so many years ago.

She beckoned for me to follow her upstairs to bed. This is the part I’m not clear about. She might have actually chosen him right then, but I’m still left with the impression I was the one who was meant to go. In my memory I told him he should go. I knew it wouldn’t be some kind of a fling and that the night would culminate with a long-term relationship for someone.

I think my reasoning was thus: Stoner Boy had just had a soul-wrenching relationship with my neighbor, Goth Girl, and she broke his heart. Also, I was moving to another state about a week after this party and Skinny Girl was going to the same college as Stoner Boy. So he went upstairs, and I slept on the couch with my buzz and my bedspins. As I remember it, I fell asleep with a benevolent smile on my face.

In reality, I was crying.

But life goes on. They dated for something like a year. Skinny girl flourished in her new college environment, Stoner Boy didn’t. He got mopey and obsessive and lethargic, as stoner boys tend to do, and as their relationship neared its end, he became even weirder. He went on three-week cough syrup binges and drank vodka straight from the bottle. I went to visit him during this period and even spent some time with Skinny Girl during my stay. Of course, this pissed him off quite a bit.

But let’s flash back to the Winter Break smack in the middle of their year of dating. They both drove to my wintry state to visit. We all got smashing drunk and Stoner Boy swung his guitar into the support beam in the middle of my basement. I took the corpse of the guitar and hung it on my wall, where it stays as an exhibit, a testament to my friend’s underlying anger.

Let’s flash back even more, to a time slightly after the party. Me and Stoner Boy were drinking and lamenting and he told me a detailed story about deflowering Skinny Girl. That must’ve been some foul vodka, because I was quite sick that night.

It would be unfair for me to say that Stoner Boy was the one who was being unfair. The night before he started dating Goth Girl she came to my house and tried to seduce me. It was a sticky night, but I didn’t give in to her. She told me she wanted to deflower me.

But I refused her, and the next day she was with Stoner Boy. Their relationship only lasted one week, but I think she did some kind of irreparable damage to him. He still talks about his infatuation with her. I never told him about that night, or about the mini-fling we had for a few weeks before that.

I remember that sometime around the time of the party, either right before or right after, I spent the night with Skinny Girl. What I don’t remember is why I was so timid. I didn’t want a long distance relationship. I was so dumb. Three hundred miles isn’t a long distance relationship. Twelve thousand miles is much farther.

The summer after Skinny Girl and Stoner Boy broke up she came to visit me. My landlord was out of town, so I had the whole place to myself. She even came into the castle with me, my cramped and tiny castle.

We held hands. Neither she nor I remember whether we kissed or not. I’d like to think we did. I think I didn’t want to disrespect Stoner Boy or something. A few weeks or days after that I went to visit her and we went to the park and swing’d on the swings at 2am or thereabouts. And we ate delicious waffle-themed cereal.

Even now, I refuse to eat said cereal without her.

Now we’re grown-ups. She’s in a relationship with this kid in a band. He’s more capable than me in many aspects, but I have nothing but respect for him. I don’t even have room to reminisce now, since I’m also in kind of a weird relationship. But this isn’t a story about Japanese Girl. That’s a different string of lies for a different day.

Skinny Girl came to visit me the other day. I could’ve been happy with her.
 

(c) 2005 j baugher