Wednesday night is margarita night. The liquor stores close at 9 pm in the bible belt, so we roll up to Ingles around 10 and buy a bottle of cheap wine: Market Vines strawberry. You can get a big ole jug for only $7.00. And that is how we do Wednesday night, making extra floozy margaritas because they have more sugar in them than alcohol but we both get real drunk and go outside and look for boys to hook up with. Lori’s wearing a bikini top and a skirt and I just have on my hoodie and some jeans. Lori is a lightweight though and they call her Stumbly outside and talk bad shit about her. I can’t get nearly as drunk as her on our half assed margaritas and deep down I know I’ll never be able to pick up boys like she can but I go outside with her anyways because I can’t sleep and she can’t walk. No one is outside though, because it’s a Wednesday night and everyone is doing homework for Thursday. The only kids that are out are the drunks and the druggies and the insomniacs.
We stay out a couple hours; we finish our drinks, Lori and I. I don’t say much of anything because Lori is talking about everything on her mind. Where is the ocean now? Why isn’t it nearby? She just wants to see the waves—she needs her comfort zone. My comfort zone is with people who understand me and that’s why I’m drinking with Lori. Those boys though they break her down inside; they call her a ho. They don’t know how it is though. I tell those boys, why you all gotta be so mean? She’s not crazy… she’s from
Lori’s told me. At first, I thought that she just liked to sleep around too. It took some time, but I learned the truth. She’s just like how I used to be. She thinks she’s ugly. She’s been in a lot of shitty situations with men too and she thinks that she is no good. I tell her, Lori, you are beautiful. You just need to be careful. Someone out there is right for you, but these sketchies on this campus, are not right. Don’t let them get to you.
Lori thinks I’m talking out of my ass, but I know how it is. I know how it is to feel completely alone. I say Lori, listen to me. I am not a whore. You are not a whore, you listen to me. When I was 18, I used to sleep around; but it wasn’t sleeping around. No one called me or found me in school and said hey beautiful, you are so sexy, let’s go screw around in the gym room. That wasn’t me at all. I was so lonely; so damn lonely and I didn’t care about my body. I’d sit up late on the internet. That’s right, I’m one of the sketchies you were worried that I would get abducted by. The thing is though, I wanted to be abducted. I wanted someone to want me, I wanted someone to want my body; and they did. They wanted my body so much that they would meet me anywhere. Those sketchies met me in the backs of parking lots after work or in the middle of the day, they met me at my house when I got good at it. I drove to those sketchies houses and they showed me how sketchy they could be all over my body. One time Lori, one time I met a sketchy at a McDonalds and he took me home in his sketchy white work van and we did sketchy things at his sisters house, in his nephews bed, because he didn’t have a house, but he did have a daughter but she was in school; she was in grade school. And Lori, this one time I drove to a sketchies house and he made me cry.
That was the only time I felt like a whore… the only time. I started crying and I got up and left and I drove home and I showered for like two hours. I don’t even know how many sketchies I’ve slept with… at one point it was sixty something; sixty something moments that I sought affection. Sixty something moments when no one was around to love me back; sixty something moments that I had to convince myself that what I was doing did not make me a whore.
Do you understand what I’m saying Lori? We are not whores. We’re just lonely and we need to be loved, but no one will love us because we are sad and people don’t like to love sad people because they have sketchy problems. And that’s why I’m out here tonight Lori, with this shitty margarita, on this cold April night. I just don’t want you to be alone.
I just don’t want to be alone.
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