Until Then Baby

You know how when you are a little kid and you run away from home?

Not necessarily because you’re really running away but just because you’re sad or angry or sick and tired of home?

Home is fine but still, it gets to you sometimes.

What do you know, where do you go, when you turn 18 and you really run away? You run away as far as you can and you move in to a new place with no parents, no old friends, no ghosts.

An apartment where everything has a trick to it.

The bare bulb needs to be wiggled around in its socket every now and then or else it stays stuck on. The water pressure and temperature is a gamble, the faucet drips, the fridge leaks, the lights dim whenever you turn something else on, the door handle falls off intermittently, the carpet it stained, and there is water in the bathroom light fixture.

You do the student thing and you sleep on a mattress on the floor. You bought a second hand table, a desk of compressed sawdust, and a chair. The rest of your shit flew over the United States in two bags, moving out should be a breeze except for the several hundred pounds of books you’ve accumulated in two short years. But everything else is just something you’re borrowing from your roommates for the time being.

How do you run away from something as ephemeral as that? Not necessarily because you really want to run away but because you’re sad or angry or sick and tired of home?

And what about my ghosts?

First there was Joey. I was 13 and he was 15 I think. His favorite band was Red Hot Chili Peppers, my favorite CD is still Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik. Both of us virgins, he wanted to cyber. I didn’t. Wouldn’t. Not on any moral grounds you see, I just thought it was stupid. Still do.

Then there was Michael. I was 15 and he was 17 I think. He asked me to marry him. No shit, and who says romance is dead? His bearded dragon had a clutch and he gave me one of the babies in a plastic deli cup, a week old and no longer then my pinky finger. Today the lizard is as long as my forearm. And he never got the courage to ask me out on a real date. Got lost and never came back to claim his girl.

Then there was Aaron. I was 17 and he was 20. Not an ex, the ex. Gave him my all and broke his heart in the process. It is still up for debate whether or not it was a fair trade.

And then there’s one more. But I wouldn’t want to get him in trouble. And really, that's all there is to say about him.