— Fiction —

Reminiscing

Do you remember, my love? To me, it’s as if it were only yesterday. Our youth. We were young then, nary a care in the world. I’ll never forget the first time I laid eyes on you. Do you remember, my dear? I didn’t think that you would. With all of the Quaaludes that you had ingested, you couldn’t have picked me out of a line up. Don’t fret, my peach. I remember. Let me remind you.

It was a grand summer day, one of the finest of the season. The sun was shining brightly; the birds were chirping in the sky. It was as if the heavens had aligned to allow us to come together on this spectacular day. I had caught a bum urinating on the wheel rims of my 1974 El Camino and I’d beaten him within an inch of his life. It was clear that he was drunk but, to be fair, even drunk everyone knows not to take a wiz on the rims of the Camino. It’s a sin.

I reported to the job that morning, ready to focus only on work. Once I stepped into the room though, all of that became a distant memory. I saw you across the room. You were chugging a bottle of Jack Daniels in a race against some other guy. I only had eyes for you. You finished the bottle, emitted a belch that registered on the Richter scale and threw the empty bottle against the wall. It shattered into a great many pieces. Your glassy eyes turned to me, looked at me, through me. My heart began to beat as quickly as a drum, but that may have been the crystal meth.

I was wary approaching you. Would you rebuff me? I prayed that you would accept me. I’d never seen you around here before. Were you new? Were you nailing one of the members of the band? Several members of the band? All of the members in the band? I didn’t know, couldn’t know. I walked toward you slowly. My mind raced and I had trouble focusing, though that could have been the gasoline fumes I’d huffed. Will she or won’t she?

When I stood next to you, you turned to me with your ice blue eyes. Look at how blue they were. They reminded me of the clear blue lakes of the Rocky Mountains. I had been there once, on a mushroom trip. The icy water looked as clear as glass, reflecting the surrounding natural beauty in its surface. I saw all of that in your eyes. Also, they were the color of Viagra.

I told you that I had some Viagra and that if you wanted, we could go back to one of the dressing rooms and hump like rabbits. You said cool. We turned to go and I knew. I knew that you were the woman that I’d spend the rest of my life with. Or, at the very least, for the next 4–6 hours.