Girls Like That
I was twelve in some hideout beneath pallets and cardboard, rat poison stacked in corners, when I reached over and traced my fingers down the bare curve of her ass and understood what I’d want the rest of my life. She wasn’t one of those girls who’d turn into something else—all makeup and polish and distance. She was my best friend, and that was the whole thing.
We were still doing Power Rangers moves off stacked earth bags, still beating each other bloody in the woods, still sneaking into her room late to watch pornography on a borrowed tape with her little brothers and laugh until we couldn’t breathe. That was the setup. You have to understand that part.
Three years later, at fifteen, she came upstairs from her mother’s restaurant where she’d been waitressing, and we talked until morning—dreams, the future, some R&B guy we both liked. I slipped her underwear off without thinking much about it, worked my way into her, and her little brother was asleep beside us grinning in a dream, the full moon coming in through the window like it was all arranged. A year after that she told me she’d always been lesbian, had wanted it since kindergarten, but that didn’t stop anything. We just kept going.
I’ve never been into the other kind. The annoying ones with the heels and the purses, the glittery mouths. Even though I dated some of them once or twice, just to check. What I wanted was a girl with an actual brain. Direct. Crude. The kind who wore boxer shorts instead of thongs, who got skateboards instead of sunburns, who had opinions and didn’t ask permission to laugh or curse or take up space. A girl you knew as a friend first, and then one day she’d be standing there with breasts and a cunt you suddenly knew what to do with, still the same person, still grinning.
A woman I knew once told me I liked this type because I never had a father, that I was trying to reclaim some lost authority. Maybe. But it doesn’t change the fact that I can’t stomach girls who say yes to everything, who need to fit some standard of what beautiful looks like, who giggle and flirt and never fart or grunt or throw a punch. What’s the point. You might as well date a doll.
The best years of my life were with women who were more friend than girlfriend. Who’d drink with me until dawn, do drugs with me, puke and yell and carry on, then come to bed soaked and fucked up but still themselves. Who had these small firm tits with puffy pink nipples because God apparently couldn’t decide which way to make them, couldn’t finish the job—and I was grateful for that, genuinely grateful. They’d go shit loudly in the bathroom, come back grinning, tell me something insane that just happened, and keep fucking me with beer and a salami sandwich in their mouth. Take blurry photos on whatever camera we had around and send them like it was nothing. That’s the real thing, the actual love, nothing to do with Disney or magazines or advice books. Everything else is trash.
I live fine without it most days. Sleep with the conventional ones sometimes. But I’m always waiting, somewhere in the back of my mind, for someone—loud and unhinged and shameless, the kind who burps and farts and drinks beer without worrying about her breath, who doesn’t own makeup, whose small breasts and pretty cunt and that specific knowing smile are all the invitation anyone needs. Someone who’s actually lived. Who’s got a history worth drowning in, with real peaks and valleys and favorite films that mean something and songs that stick to you. Who spent her childhood playing football instead of Barbie. Someone where you know in the first second that the entire rest of it—all of it—will be sex and beer pong and beating the shit out of assholes for fun and traveling to nowhere and watching sunsets and listening to music too loud and spending money stupidly and swimming naked and just existing together without apologizing. That specific grin you only get when you’re fucking your best friend. That’s the whole thing. That’s all of it.
Promise.