That said, I get that you got no one else to go to, which sucks. So, kid, I’ll talk to you about this but only this once so relish it and NEVER ask me again.
Listen, it’s simple because men are simple. A guy likes a chick, he needs to get her attention. There are a coupla ways to do this. The dicks, they do it by bein’ a dick to the girl, insultin’ her hair or her makeup or somethin’ totally made up just to start a conversation. Best thing to do is ignore ’em. The better ones, they’ll try an’ be your pal, buddy up to you about somethin’ they think you might like even though they definitely fuckin’ don’t. These guys are harmless, Lou, just friend zone ’em for long enough and they’ll give up.
Then there are the best kinda men, yeah? The ones that man up and claim a woman the way a woman wants and needs to be claimed. He sees somethin’ he likes, he goes up, lays it out and asks her out. He does what he needs to do to get to know her, listenin’, spendin’ the money and, better, the time to know her mind so he can rock her world. Somethin’ fucks with her, that man is gonna throw down to make it right again. She wants somethin’ he can’t immediately get her? That guy’s gonna work his fuckin’ ass off to get it for her just for a chance to get some more of her sweetness. That’s the kinda man you’re gonna get yourself one day, Lou. Not now, you’re just a kid, so be patient. Ignore the dicks that will be ignored and throat punch the idiots that won’t. Make friends with the pussies who let you do that to them. And wait.
Z.
Zeus,
I think I know what kinda guy you’re talking about…
Also, I wanted to throat punch one of the dicks that wouldn’t take no for an answer but good girl Louise Lafayette wouldn’t do that, so I spit in his Coke when he wasn’t looking at lunch and watched him drink it after. It was nearly as satisfying.
xoxo,
Loulou
2015-2016
Zeus is 35. Louise is 16.
Zeus,
It’s my sixteenth birthday today. Mum threw me a massive Sweet Sixteen party with like four people I actually like and one hundred people I actively can’t stand. They were all hoards of plastic Ken and Barbie dolls littered around our backyard like a kid’s playroom. Only, I didn’t have fun with them because I refuse to play with them. I stood in the middle of all the pastels and polo necks listening to my parent’s friends talk about politics and vacation homes and I was more than the usual bored. I felt like I couldn’t breathe and honest to God, I think I was having a panic attack. Suddenly, I couldn’t stand my own life anymore. I wanted to rip off my double strands of pearls, tear the Tiffany charm bracelet from my wrist and run away. Do you know whom I wanted to run away to, Z?
You.
All I could think about was racing to you, finding you already straddling your great metallic dragon, the rev of the engine like a warrior cry as we took off into the night. Not sunset. There are no sunsets for men like you and women like I am at the heart of me. Only inky night that clutches at you as you tear past, moving through the darkness like we own it, like we are only free inside the shadow vortex of it.
I’m being nonsensical. I snuck a few extra glasses of champagne and my head feels like it’s filled with helium. What I’m trying to say is that I want to run to you. It doesn’t have to be away with you. You’ve got kids, really great ones from the looks of things, so I get that we probably have to stay here. I get that it’ll be hard because you’re a mechanic and I’m the Princess of Entrance, because you’re nineteen years older than my sixteen. But I know it’ll be okay just as long as I can get to you. I’ll leave whenever you want me to. Just say the word. And Z, say it soon.
I love you,
Loulou
Louise,
Can’t write you anymore. Don’t ask me why or try to change my mind about it. It’s not cool, a grown ass man writing to a teenage girl and it’s my fuckin’ fault that you got confused and you think you’re in love or some shit. You don’t love me, little girl. Fuck you don’t even really know me. Happy to have been here for you through the cancer, through your growing into a seriously cool young woman. It was my fuckin’ honour to be your guardian monster. But truth is, you don’t need me anymore. You’re good, healthy and grown. So, I’m gonna duck out here, tell you to keep livin’ true and free. Forget your parents and their bullshit, forget what anyone else expects from you. Life’s too short and you know it, little warrior, so live while the goin’ is good.
Z.
May 2017
No matter how devout you are, Sunday service is never fun.
Trust me, I’d been the pastor’s grandchild and the mayor’s daughter for long enough to know what I was talking about. I’d tried counting backward from one million, naming every important figure in the Bible in order of the gravity of their sins, conjugating French and Latin verbs until my eyes crossed. Anything, however tedious, was better than listening to my grandpa read yet another passage from the Bible.
I had tried for years to be pious, good and strong in the face of all the evils Christians believed to walk the earth and tempt the weak. I had tried and I had succeeded so well, I was a kind of paragon of virtue in Entrance, BC, an example that mothers used to teach their little girls how to grow up right, the ideal wife for young men who stayed true to the path of righteousness. Louise Lafayette was a pillar of the community just as her mother and father were, just as her grandparents had been.
All that goodness, all that trying so hard and how did God repay me?
With cancer. Again.
I’d lived through an entire two-year period in my childhood with it running hot and corrosive through my blood and yet, now that it was back, I still wasn’t used to the taint of it, how it blackened my vision both literally sometimes and metaphorically. It was hard to believe in the things I was supposed to believe in when I felt so miserable, so beyond the help of prayer.
They’d just diagnosed me as stage two and the possibility of chemotherapy loomed on the horizon.
I’d lose my hair again.
It was such a vain thing to be concerned about but even though my parents were Sunday churchgoers, they were human enough to practice pride and superficiality. Heck, they were the King and Queen of Entrance; they lived for those things. Mum had been more devastated than I when they said I’d lose the thick mass of pale blond hair I’d had since birth, hair that I’d inherited from her. She’d cried and clutched big handfuls of it in her fists, wiping her tears in the strands. I would have been grossed out if I weren’t devastated myself and trying so hard to hide it.
It was the end of my grade eleven year of high school, less than twelve months from graduation and all that entailed, including prom. And I was going to be bald for all of it.
Mum said they’d get me a really good wig but everyone would know it wasn’t my hair and that was somehow worse than rocking a naked scalp.
My friends were nice people so they wouldn’t make fun. They would just ignore it, as we all ignored the ugly things in life, and move on.