I don’t remember how we got there, or even what time of year it was, but I remember walking through its plexiglass shopping center doors. The small entryway adorned to be a spaghetti cowboy fetishist’s wet dream.
He was standing behind me. His hand on my back, pushing me forward.
“Oh shit, it’s—” he rasped between his crooked front teeth, and then much louder, with an air of excitement, “Ms. Diana!”
He straightened up before the elderly bouncer. The picture of southern courtesy.
“Li-seenses,” the woman at the bar stool slurred. Her Tennesse whiskey accent giving the effect of someone six drinks deep.
“Ms. D, you look lovely. How are you doin’ tonight?”
He was posturing for me, acting as though he was in control of the situation. In control of me.
“Be-ow.” She stamped his hand, disapprovingly. Without as so much as attempting to reach for my learner’s permit, she snapped the fluorescent green UNDER 21 bracelet over my wrist.
Beau stepped through the mock saloon doors, cooing an all-too-friendly. “Thank yewww,” over his flannelled shoulder. I went to follow him, but the woman reached for my wrist, a day-glow marker poised at the ready.
“One last per-caution.” She marked a large pink X atop my hand. “Don’t let that boy spin you ‘round too much, out there. That’s how they get you all confused, and confusion is what gets you on Teen Mom.” She laughed, waving a hand as if to dismiss me.
Her imparted wisdom bounced between my ears, as I was met with a cacophony of foot-stomping, banjo-ripping, and loud-mouthing conversation. Be-ow was already halfway across the spanning room, skirting on the outer border of the dance floor, headed straight for the billiards.
I followed behind him, clutching my grandmother’s purse against my hip. She’d lent it to me, “Your first big girl night out!” She’d winked as she slid a ten-dollar bill into its innermost pocket.
Grandma was supposed to be babysitting, but Beau had sweet-talked her so nicely. And mom’s shift at the hospital was so long, and 15 was a little too old to be babysat anyway wasn’t it? She was all too happy to turn a cataract-ridden eye away from me and toward ABC Family’s 25 days of Christmas marathon.
That’s it, it was December. It was two days before my sixteenth birthday. And I remember now, that I was more relieved than anything else that Ms. D hadn’t asked for my Learner’s Permit. If she’d seen it, printed in cool blue ink:
THIS GIRL IS UNDER 16, LET ALONE 18. I’d have been left on the curb waiting for Beau to drive me home.
I arrived in the billiards room, just in time to watch Beau take the cue into his hand. His calloused hands pushed the cue cube into the blue felt tip. He was surrounded by his buddies, in matching attire–Carhart jackets, and khaki Dickies. Jake was wearing a ten-gallon hat, only half-ironically.
They held Coors Lights in hand, and chewing tobacco in their cheeks, spitting into plastic cups, precariously placed on the edge of the pool table’s green felt. I scoured the group desperately for signs of any of their girlfriends, who would’ve been a saving grace when it came to getting my hands on a drink, but found none of their mink eyelashes batting back at mine.
The back door to the pool room was open, leading to the back lot, reserved for employee parking and dumpsters, that all too often caught fire from discarded cigarette buds. Dumpster fires happened so often here, that they stopped writing about it in the paper.
Most people in the surrounding town had stopped paying much attention to this place, save for the fact that a few months back they’d had a big underage bust up and they nearly lost their liquor license cause of it. Hence the PINK AND GREEN UNDERAGE bracelet strapped to my wrist and X’d across my hand.
Beau was slapping backs, between turns. A cold beer, he’d abandoned, sweating on the pool’s green. When I made the lightest reach for it, he tipped his chin, furrowing his brow.
“Nuh-uh, darling. Not here.” He looked at me with a sheriff's son’s eyes.
I blinked and stuck out my bottom lip.
I was allowed free roam of the beer fridge in the Williams’ home. His mother had studied abroad in France when she was in college and had adopted an “as long as you do it in the house” attitude. About booze, about sex, about coke. So she let her adult son bring me home, and bloat my belly and make my nose bleed, without so much as a phone call to my mother. Which I was fine with.
But tonight, I was in a mood. I was in a mood…when he’d poured a line on the beach chairs in his garage, and made me snort it up, alongside the dust mites, and dead gnats. I was in a mood when he rushed through the yellow lights. I was in a mood when I told him “My mother says over half of ER patients are drivers who ran through a red and wound up with a broken back and a vegetable brain.”
I was in a mood when he said, “Well–if you’re so afraid of traffic lights,” as he’d whipped from the main road onto Old Creek Street, an unilluminated back road that stretched around its way along the outermost edge of the county’s lines. It had taken us an extra 45 minutes, which agitated Beau. To blow off steam, he’d suggested I blow him off while he drove.
I still had the crick in my neck, and now I remember how we got there.
I remember all of that now. And I remember stepping into the cold, wet December air as I left Beau bending over the pool table, having bummed a cigarette from his friend Benjamin. Whose girlfriend, Ansley was “som-air round here, find her fur me when you cain.”
Ansley was not in the backlot, but I’d find her eventually when I’d borrow a bump and a swipe of lip gloss. For now, I fished around my grandmother’s purse for the hot pink translucent Bic, I’m sure I’d placed in here, when–
“Safiya–” my ears perked up at the sound of my name. I looked into the dimly lit alleyway, to find Parker Turner, sitting on the back curb. Legs criss-cross applesauce, like he was waiting for me to tell him a story.
“Parker.” I sighed. “You scared me.” I looked around for any friends of his and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirrored window that led into the back kitchen. I looked about five years older than I actually was in my outfit, my breasts spilling out of my tube top, and my mom’s suede peacoat across my shoulder, my denim skirt and cowboy boots the only signifier that I had come to this country-western bar under my own volition.
Parker cleared his throat, “It’s a school night.”
“It’s winter break, Parker.”
Parker rolled his shoulders. “In principle, it’s a school night.”
“Then in principle, what’re you doing here?” I cocked a hand on my hip.
In response, he pulled a grey lighter from his lighter and held its flame toward me. I bent at the hip, taking the cigarette in my lips, letting him light it. Aware that he averted his eyes from my chest, where he could’ve easily seen down my bra. I placed a hand on my collarbone, tapping it twice as if to mime “thanks.”
There was quiet as I inhaled, and as he lit up a joint. The only sounds, the frogs singing in the woods that lay behind the bar, and our breath.
He cleared his throat, “Have you started Mr. Alexander’s–”
“Parker!” I exclaimed, interrupting him.
“I am no fun.” He laughed, shaking his head.
“No, you have never been fun,” I smiled, taking a drag. I tugged on my skirt, as I crouched into a squat by him. His legs were tucked into his chest, but still somehow took up so much space, he resembled a teenaged Slenderman.
“Did your sister drag you here?” Parker Turner’s sister, Lana–(“No, not THAT, Lana Turner,” was her infamous line)—was a Nashville hopeful, and she bided her time singing here on Wednesday nights.
It was a Wednesday night. I remember that now.
“No–she’s got the stomach flu tonight.” He glanced at me, anxiously, “not contagious.” I scooted away from him still, just to get him to laugh. He let away a smirk.
“I’m here with a few friends. They’re home on break.” I glanced down at Parker’s hands, which save for a “Fuck Cancer,” bracelet were empty. No X’s, No green bands.
“How’d you get away with that?” I nodded towards his barren wrists.
“Ah–when Lana first brought me here, there was a white lie about my age, and now in their eyes, I’m 21.” Parker scratched the nape of his neck, a nervous tic. He did it constantly during Calculus II exams, and his speeches as Class President.
Parker was older than me. My whole class was. While Parker and I shared class schedules, SAT tutors, and AP test exams, he was 17, going on 18 and I was turning 16 in two days.
“What are you thinking about,” Parker’s head was cocked below mine like he was trying to peer into my eyes to find the answer.
“The Sound of Music.” I laughed, feeling a little headrush from the cigarette.
“Oh. Do you want to go dance?” He threw the dead end of his joint to the ground, stomping it out with his Vans.
He had misunderstood me, but there was something about the way he’d straightened up at the opportunity, and how he somehow felt so much younger than me.
“Sure, cowboy.” I slipped him a wink.
“Ew.” He said as he stood before me, and pointed to himself, “Not a cowboy,” he pointed to me, questioning.
“Not a cowgirl,” I admitted, discarding the end of my cigarette and standing to face him. And with my heels and with the good foot of the curb, I almost stood eye to eye with him.
He smiled, before stepping on the curb now a full head and shoulders taller than me. “Let’s dance.” And we walked into the bar, where neither of us was supposed to be together.
