This is the second story I wrote for a class this semester. It's a much-improved version of something I did over the summer. At least, I hope it's much-improved. There are line breaks between the paragraphs because I can't figure out how to get indents to work in the blog. The story has swearing and drugs and sex and everything, and it's called "Two States" after a song. Enjoy.



Ours was a typical pop relationship: he had the longer hair and I wore the pants. I met him in a graveyard on a snowy Christmas Eve and the first thing I noticed about him was his arms, which were covered in a revolting three colored sweater. They were behind his head as he lay on the granite roof of a mausoleum. A glass piece dangled from his lower lip, just barely sticking in place. It was yellow with residue, and I wondered if it’d been clear once maybe. He didn’t expect me.

"Hey, you," I called, looking up at his feet, "wanna share that?"

"Shit! I didn’t, didn’t see you there. Where’d you come from?" He stayed on the roof, leaning forward like he’d tip and break his neck against a headstone any second.

I smiled. "My gramma lives over that way, and we’re at her house for the holiday. But I can’t stand old people, especially when they’re related and I know I’ll grow up to look like them." He smiled agreement and I reached up.

"O!" he looked surprised, "Sorry. Here you go." I had my own lighter, of course.

He hopped down, long frame unfurling like a flag. We sat on stones across from each other. The streetlights gave him a halo of glowing snow. We talked. His name was Craig and he played bass and liked to go to shows and his favorite song was "The Professional." I watched his hair, unwashed shaggy blonde over his green eyes. He lived two blocks east across the highway and his laugh was like wind chimes, which didn’t fit him at all so I laughed too. He hated Christmas because Santa had scared him since he was seven. And then I kissed him, hard and warm and dazzling, there among the skeletons. I’d broken up with Jacob two nights earlier and I really didn’t need to be kissing people right after meeting them, I thought as I did it.

And then I took him home with me, walking a mile or two and stopping to kiss or grope at corners if we decided to wait for cars and in the middle of the street if we decided not to wait, and I snuck him in the basement door. We slept on the floor on couch cushions and old blankets waiting to be washed and in the morning after my parents left I found stir-fry in the fridge and we ate it out of the container with our fingers, laughing at our eyes watering from the spice. He snuck out at six-thirty when my dad got home and I gave him my number when he asked. Didn’t expect him to call. I was looking for pop relationships then – all fun and quirky and hormones and impulse. Temporary like hair color and superficial like tattoos.

He called anyway and after the ice melted we decided to go to a club in the city – some band a friend of a friend of his was in was playing, had a CD coming out, wanted to celebrate but needed people to do it. I wasn’t a fan – I’d seen them once before when they’d played at a tribute show two towns over for a kid who wrapped his car around a lightpole doing doughnuts in a parking lot one night. But I didn’t care about the music, really. I’d been sitting around inside forever since the holiday and I needed to do something.

It was a cloudy and strangely warm night and the rain made its little galaxies on the windshield and we named the constellations after streets and relatives, joyous as the aunts and cousins we didn’t like were whisked away by the wipers. He parked in the driveway of someone we didn’t know three blocks from the club.

We held hands as we walked – his idea, not mine – and talked about clichés – my idea, not his – and yelled outdated catchphrases at cars as they sped past. His arms were uncovered this time, and he shivered a bit whenever I rubbed against him, rough but smooth with water against my skin, hands and arms and shoulders touching fluttery. We were young and of course brilliant and the people we passed on the three blocks of sidewalk (wrinkled and hunched and bifocals under umbrellas) couldn’t look us in the eyes.

The club smelled of dried urine, spilled vodka and forgetfulness. It didn’t matter. We found a couple tequila sunrises and a spot by a side pillar and watched the stage as the band set up their amps.

"You sure these guys’re gonna be worth seeing, Craig?" My asshole boss didn’t pay me enough to waste money on bad shows. Even if it was only a little money.

"Yeah, of course they are. I keep telling you, they’re a lot better than they were when you saw them two years ago."

"I sure hope so," I frowned up at him.

"The lead singer went through a lot in the past year, really evolved a lot. They’ve come a long way – changed a lot, you know? – since those songs about girls and cars that they used to do."

"Hey, I couldn’t help overhearing," said a deep voice next to me, and I jumped, "I couldn’t help overhearing you talking about the band, and I just wanted to say how totally true that is, what you just said there." A long arm in purple sleeve pointed from behind me at Craig. I turned. There was this old guy, lines all through his face like old asphalt and hair oily and shoulder length and loose filled-pocket-covered pants matching his shirt.

"About change, right? About change," deep-voice continued, "It was exactly true, totally so. It’s like that one writer says, whassis name, Dallas, he says change is all there is. People argue – philosophers argue, all the important ones – they argue what everyone is, if they’re good or evil, and everyone likes to assume they’re good. But they’re not, they’re just changing. It’s all there is, ever."

"What’re you, fucking crazy?" I looked at him in the eyes, "I don’t think you even know what you’re saying."

"Yeah," said Craig, "That didn’t make any sense, not any at all."

"No, what don’t make sense is you, both of you, standing here wanting it but not accepting it, needing change and not caring enough to try for it. My friends here," purple-shirt gestured around the room with both arms, and I noticed other people dressed like him scattered about, "We travel around and we talk to people, and we get them to change. Sometimes we do things in the streets, even. We’ve got animal costumes in the van."

"I think you’ve probably got a shitload of shrooms back in the van, too. I think you’re just nutty, and all your friends probably are too," Craig said.

"Yeah, why don’t you go bother someone else, maybe they’ll be fucked up enough to like you," I smiled, not very fondly, "The band’s coming on soon, and we wanna see the show, don’t we, Craig?"

"Yeah," he said, "We drove all the way here to see it, we wanna see it without you interrupting us."

"Okay, whatever you two say," purple-shirt said with his eyebrows up and hands in front of him, fingers pointing up, "I’m just saying, is all, just saying. One day when you realize not all gods are hiding in the machines of the cities, you’ll know what I mean." He backed away and disappeared between a thick guy in a long army coat and a girl in a lace-up top.

Craig raised an eyebrow at me, "‘We wanna see the show,’ huh?"

"Okay, so maybe not, but it was all I could think of at the time, okay?"

"Right, I figured." He looked around. "You wanna go somewhere, then? We can get back in later, maybe, if it’s okay."

"Sure, sounds excellent." So we got our hands ex’d with smelly black marker and headed out away from the direction of the car. The rain had stopped and the air smelled like already spring and so we skipped along the sidewalk, me two steps for his one, under the streetlights and intermittent moon.

I spotted a rabbit, brown and black and white splotched, on this shuttery old house’s front lawn. We chased it back through the yard, hopping the wire fence as we went, then across four more yards until it ducked under someone’s foundation. I sat down on a new oak deck to the right – I figured it deserved it for being a deck in the city – and Craig sat next to me. I’d lost my cigarette going over the first fence, and I lit another one while I caught my breath. Craig didn’t touch the things or I would’ve offered one to him.

"I think people shouldn’t be allowed around drugs, and if they are they shouldn’t try and talk to anyone else, unless they’re me, and especially if they’re old," I shook my head, brow furrowed disapprovingly, and wagged my finger at the air in front of me, "The government should do something about their kind, for the good of the common welfare."

Craig chuckled, "Okay, but what did you think about what he actually said? Do you think he was right?"

"What’re you talking about? It was all just nothing, really."

"Well, do you think he was wrong about change, do you think there’s some way at all to keep things the same?" He stared at his knee. "You said he was nuts when he said that, but I know you didn’t really mean it."

"Of course I didn’t mean it. I just wasn’t gonna agree with some druggie old enough to be my grandad, right? Then it’d have been me, being fuckin’ crazy."

"That’s what I thought you thought. So there’s no way, then, no way to keep things the same?" Purple guy must’ve really gotten to Craig and I didn’t see why. Stoned profound only makes sense if you’re stoned yourself, and I’d been with him all night.

"No, no, of course not. It there was, don’t you think someone would have bottled it to sell by now? We’d see it on street corners and everything." I leaned back, my elbows digging into the woodgrain.

"Ha ha. But really, I mean." He looked at the scraggly old pine tree to his left.

"Guess I just haven’t thought about it ever." And I hadn’t. "I mean, why would I want to not change?"

"I just wonder, I just wonder sometimes if I’ll miss now. Or at least miss the way I am now. How I think and look." His rough tapered fingers folded and unfolded.

"Why would you?"

"I don’t know, I just guess it might be nice to sit back and enjoy thing the way they are, right? Not be worried about the way they’re gonna be in a day or a week."

"So don’t worry about it, silly," I smirked even though he couldn’t see, "Just think about something else."

"I suppose. I suppose you’re right." He looked at the sky like he thought he could see the stars from the city, even if it wasn’t still cloudy.

"’Course I’m right."

"So you don’t think, you don’t think you’ll ever stop changing?"

"Maybe when I’m dead. But even then, prob’ly not. Worms and maggots and stuff, y’know." I waited for him to laugh.

"Don’t you think you’ll ever get tired of it, ever find something you like enough to stick with?" He looked worried at the lack of stars, and I sat up and leaned forward onto my knees.

"I guess maybe, but like I said I’m just not going to think about that right now, y’know? It’s a waste of time, believe me, I know. Figured it out a few months back. Just don’t care about it at all and you’re better off."

"Why?"

"I dunno, that’s just how it works. You’re just happier that way, if you don’t worry about stuff. Just do what you want, that’s all."

"I just don’t think it’s that easy, not that easy at all. That’s all I’m saying."

"Well," I looked around the yard, small and cramped with its three crooked trees, "If you think about stuff like that, you miss the chance to chase the fox right over by that tree there."

And we stopped talking and chased the fox, through another yard and down an alleyway. It tried to hide behind a trashcan but we saw it and Craig kicked the can over. The fox jumped out a flash of red-orange and scampered to the street. Foxes usually aren’t as quick or dodgy as rabbits and this one wasn’t definitely. Because it ran out in the street and a late-night delivery truck going who-knows-where almost hit it while me and Craig watched, scared and entertained as the truck swerved to the right and the fox first froze then jumped left and across the other lane and off the road back behind the used bookstore across the street.

"Sooner or later its luck’s gonna run out," he said and I laughed a little too much.

"Here, come here," I pulled his arm back into the alley and out of the reach of the streetlight and up against the wall and we fucked there before the show got out, crumbling brick and mortar leaving lines and powder on our hands and backs and legs.

Then we walked back to the car, slowly, through the crowd coming out of the club. The show was good, most of them were drunk, the singer had broken his leg during the last song when he’d tried to dive off the stage and the crowd up front wasn’t having a good time. Nothing sparkly, nothing I was interested in, and I decided I didn’t want to go to any parties that night, I just wanted to sit and watch cars driving by and throw hard small rocks at them. Craig looked at me and I looked back and squeezed his hand and so we didn’t go to other people’s parties.

We went onto the highway and pulled off between guardrails and climbed the hill to the very very top. The ground was still wet, so we crouched on our heels and with our fingernails dug rocks out of the dirt between patches of snow. Deep night traffic was the best kind, drivers hunched over late for their sleep and rushing to it, drivers leaning back in the passing lanes and listening to fast music. Drivers staring at the road.

Glimpses, that’s all, and the trick was to lead the car by a bit and throw just right to hit the window. And if it was perfect, just fast enough, there were other glimpses, of the driver jerking shocked and maybe angry if he realized in his own glimpse what had happened. That was the real satisfaction. The sound of a direct hit was xylophone plinking – once, Craig hit a brown haired girl through the open window of a van and we laughed. Then the van stopped and four guys dressed entirely in purple got out of the sliding side door.

"Hey, I recognize you two. And you know what? Sometimes," said a deep voice through oily shoulder-length hair, "sometimes you gotta force change to happen, that’s all I’m sayin’." The four of them walked slowly up the hill.

Me and Craig scrambled for his car, wrenched the doors open and breathless he started it and they were almost on top of us baseball bats out from behind their backs but we drove, sped down the hill leaving tire tracks in the frozen rain-soaked mud and hitting the highway like a rock.

"What the fuck was that about?" I asked as Craig hunched over the wheel, foot welded to the bottom of the car.

"I dunno, I just dunno," he said, "but I hope that van was as slow as it looked."

The sun coming up between apartment buildings lit our way back.