The Weed is Not the Flower
Originally published February 27th, 2023 via Substack
It was in a corner of the hip-city that state municipalities had yet to dust. It was beige, unholy, and un-watered. It was wild in a bad way. Like a dog, it could have used a bit of domestication to expose any beauty of convention. It was yawning white collared Mormons shaking the hands of philistine timbermen. It was libertarians who had never heard of “social contracts.” Evening activity was moonshine cut with tap. It was poisonous modern apathy. Adolescent intentions dimmed through facile vices of OxyContin and Adderall, with respect to junior-year-dropouts-turned Denver-Methodist-receptionist benefactors. It was Parker, Colorado.
It was her and him, then me; and later she. We have our auxiliary characters for texture— but always— was I in love with him and, so as much, was he with me.
It was her with him, covered in his bed, blowing smoke out a pipe he had gotten at the renaissance fair. They were eighteen, she had twelve piercings, I had then seen nine. That night he saw the last three. Risen from the sheets, he flaunted that v-cut I wanted so badly, he was ignited by post-coital masculine mania. He took down a katana from his wall and swung it around him. Parabolic slices of air, the sword spitting steel wind into her face. She smoked and he swung, overlapping wrist onto phalanges, under elbow, between inner pits, until SMACK! Diagonal across his face, through his brow, but mostly his nose. On my phone, I received a photo, it was the Girl With Piercings, hands stained of him, holding a roll of toilet paper to the Cut-Nose-Kid’s face.
It was earlier in the summer; The heavy crème, the lemon liquor, the beer bought just for me; set off on his bedside table. Us, sprawled in his sheets and half-naked from the heat, boxers bunching out of corduroy and Levi’s. Stuart laid between the Cut-Nosed-Kid and me, drunken, I made Stuart’s salty back slick from spit studded kisses, but he never noticed it. No, he was too enthralled with the Cut-Nosed-Kid, nodding his head in agreeance to mutterings of “if I’m losing it to anyone it’s gonna be to her.” Perking up, I couldn’t tell if he had just smoked or had just finished crying.
It was with one of the Cut-Nosed-Kid’s ex-lovers, Sofia, and her mother Emy. Where I would find myself so often, drinking Nescafe Espresso, chewing on Japanese candy. I sat elbows over their bar, the pair behind the counter hallowing peppers for dinner. Where, I’d boisterously condemn so much of my past, fishing for validation so flagrantly it was almost autofellatios; moaning at, what was, just symptoms of a low emotional IQ. However, as good people do, they always shook their heads whenever I professed any self-deprecation that they deemed to be far too undercut or self-diluted.
It was when we were fourteen, when she only had three piercings, that I asked that girl to be my date to an awards show. Fourteen, Debutant-ish, in the Ellie Caulkins Opera house; we arrived fashionably late. The Girl With Piercings took my hand as we were escorted to lavish booths reserved for guests of honor and foreign imports. We were separated from the rest of the party, the Cut-Nosed-Kid sat two rows ahead of us. We were obliquely veiled; everyone’s attentions gripped by the acceptance speeches and showcase soliloquies. My hand was glued to her right cheek; her tongue found its way around my molars. She ripped my hand from her chin and put upon her thighs where they remained frozen on maroon silk. Her hands danced down my chest and reached over my belt before the party erupted. Booing from their seats upon another nominee losing, our fourth consecutive award upset.
It was also in that month, at the annual main street carnival; under whack-a-mole neons, plumes of tobacco clashing with funnel-cake fumes, where we kissed at the bottom of the Ferris wheel. Waiting for our friends, “one more thing,” the Girl With Piercings said to me, “I think I’m falling in love with you.” I swallowed cement thick spit and smiled, “well, that just made my day.” I walked her to Alain’s car and kissed her through the shotgun window. Predictably, we dissolved soon thereafter.
It was a conversation between me, Sofia, and Emy asking if I’d take it all back. It was a no. Regret is a condition that mutilates growth, while recognition fosters it. If not:
It was in the late nights when the Cut-Nosed-Kid, that-fucking-2004-Honda-Pilot, and I set across town— all politically radical and spiteful.
It was at the bonfires held by malt liquored filled Varsity Men. Varsity men whose trucks touted flags with red backs and blue X’s. We’d infiltrate clusters of hapless, lesser-than suburbanites and perform— The Cut-Nosed-Kid and I were showmen by nature. Amongst water bottles filled with vodka, dilated pupils, and iconic football chants, there would be our hands on each other’s thighs, asses, napes of backs; hair was tugged, and each other’s lips bitten; slurs thrown thus became our purple hearts.
It was the makeup viciously rubbed off before hopping off the bus and your father sees; the appointments in the Target dressing rooms, where dresses became dirty needles; the drives taking me home when the Cut-Nosed-Kid would ask, “why the fuck do you use so much tongue?” as if he wasn’t kissing me back.
It was later, the last months of senior year, The Cut-Nosed-Kid and I in the parking lot of our favorite café. We were playing hooky in that-fucking-2004-Honda Pilot. Super gluing communist patches to our department store coats, huddled over the center console. Mud peeked through sleet; sleet stained yellow by last night’s malt liquor filled varsity men. Through the roof window, peering dead trees framed white blanketed skies. We superglued, elbow to elbow in his car. The windows grew glaucous from black, single origin, arabica steam; but mostly from the huffing and puffing of plagiaristic revelations that young men tend to declare. We thought we were hot shit. After adhesion, he put on his corduroy department store coat, covering those strong, genetically pre-disposed, Germanic arms; I did the same but weaker. He reclined his seat, sighing, fogging up the window moreso, and said “I think I’m asking her to prom, man—” he had kissed the Girl With Piercings for the first time two days prior.
It was when the only girl had two piercings and I was fourteen knowing all of nothing. Where, Alain interrogated me over diet cokes in that diner off of Parker road. Where Alain tasked me to guess who wanted me to take them to an awards show that May. Sitting, guessing, smacking my forehead, Alain hitting my shoulder; is when she would walk in. In leggings she had to cuff, with a posse of Jane Austen-acolytes behind her, they wore white leather lanyards that swung around their wrists. She, who erupted out of a car named “Harrumph.” Harrumph, who died on I-95; Harrumph, who would carry six mix CDs I’d burn to get her to listen to anything but musical theatre; Harrumph, whose leather seats turned into ledgers for the cemetery of yellow bouquet’s I’d buy after recitals. She, who sat three tables down, would also be at that awards show in May. She was a dancer, and the culprit for our fourth consecutive upset; She was the Nominee. I guessed all hopeful; I loved Jane Austen; but of course, Alain hit my shoulder again.
It was over three years of careful cultivation, of growing gardens out of each other and conversation. The Nominee and I had glaucous window dialogues set in that café parking lot, pontificating vast dichotomies between democratic socialism and Marxist Leninism. We mutually cradled each other in aide of beer hazes. Careful cultivation who ultimately made crush a term too juvenile and friendship a term too lacking. That somehow rotted love and longing into a weed that I couldn’t help but water. Watering until it eclipsed the flower she had seeded in me in that diner— original intention becoming unrecognizable. Yes, we’d talk about other people, but only moan the qualities I saw that reflected her; she’d do the same, or at least I’d hope.
It was with the Cut-Nosed-Kid, watching her perform at her senior recital when he leaned over to me, asking me if I was ever going to put it to rest. He broke down her seemingly lackluster dating history since she had met me. He psychoanalyzed the patterns in our interactions, concluding with the—so few variants— of saying “people who are just friends don’t do that.” I looked into his blue eyes, that were kind of squinted and risen in confusion and said, “Of course. I know… maybe she’ll just be one of the ones that get away” I said.
It was laughably the next day when I laid it all out for her: my distinctions, delineations, and decrees. Metaphors I’ve muttered, that were once clouded in haze, thus illuminated. Which produced a frown by the Nominee. I had not expected her to beckon such upset under her mutuality in it all. I always assumed that her yesses were plausibly deniable. When you spend so long on standing on the facile pillar of “not wanting to ruin the friendship,” you anticipate all the ways it would ruin with little thought in triumph. “All love ends in tragedy eventually, so why not me?” I said, and fuck, she bought it.
It was after two months when I asked Sofia and Emy what they I thought about telling her I loved her. Sofia grabbed me, squeezing me at the sides of my arms as if also reading my pulse, “well, do you?” she said. I thought it was a stupid inquiry, what was three years of cultivation if not love? “Just make sure when you say it, you say ‘I’m falling in love with you,’ not a, cold, ‘I love you.’” A sentiment that I thought was clever and elusive enough to warrant a response, I thought it was genius.
It was decided upon when I had my head in her lap. The moon was white and fat, dripping white light into the car. Clouds passed, like light was winking itself into the front seats. She was quoting her favorite sonnet from Romeo and Juliet, massaging my head in pulses to the beat of her heart. We had played my last mixtape, and I shifted my body from staring at the pedals to her. I peeked my head up and whispered, “I think I’m falling in love with you” and she said it back.
It was love that was unprovoked, love that was unanimated. Love that had to be found and forged rather than erupted. Cultivation is not love; the weed is not the flower. I treated love like virginity, like a stick of dynamite in my mouth.
It was then how I saw it all fucking absurd, all the same. In that town with those people. With the Cut-Nosed-Kid and Girl With Piercings, and me— and later the Nominee. It was a soup of people and gross redundances. It was the handshaking, the muckraking. It was the crying in cars. It was naked bodies in backseats, tracing scars of lovers asking “why?” It was the Mothers that were present, but never your own. It was ruckus for the sake of ruckus. It was the diners with peeling orange paint, one rat away from condemnation. It was the closeted boys who didn’t see the windows. It was roads of liminal suburban expanse that, somehow, paradoxically felt smaller than your bedroom.
All of it was the artifice of saying I love you at seventeen.
