It should not have surprised Annie that went Billy became her boyfriend early in her senior year of high school, he was still seeing someone else. He was the guy every girl seemed to want to be with. Annie fell for that.

One day at school a girl came up to Annie and angrily said, “Do you know Billy is Karen’s boyfriend?” Turns out, Karen, a 10th grader from a wealthy family, was down in Florida for awhile. Billy had kept this from Annie. There was no time to let the information sink in. This was high school and things happen at lightening speed. Nobody thinks before they act.

It was a small country high school containing grades 7 – 12 in one building. No class was over 150 students. Everyone seemed to know each other. If you were cool and smoked or snorted coke, the place to go in between classes was the “Smoking Lav”. This was a regular bathroom with most of the stalls removed (except the snorting ones) and a gigantic fan to suck out the smoke so it didn’t creep out into the school hallways. The boys had their own Smoking Lav next door.

Every morning Annie drove herself, sister and some friends to school because she had a car. They could sneak smokes on the way to school. Once there, they all made a bee-line straight to the Smoking Lav for more and to see what everyone was wearing that day. Some days were “Wear a skirt to school day”. Annie hated those days. Walking on heels was a real drag. On Friday, the lav was buzzing with frenzied talk about how Karen was going to beat up Annie on Monday when she got back to school. The tough girls were so smitten with this news. Anybody who didn’t like Annie was just literally chomping to see her put in her place.

Annie, meanwhile, was concerned. She wasn’t one of those bad mouthed, haven’t eaten in a month, pot smudged into the jeans kind of girl who beat up on people. When she confronted Billy, he swore he would break it off with Karen on Monday at school. There was no telling how this would all go down.

Come Monday morning, Annie and her posse walked into the Smoking Lav. There was bench on the left and sinks to the right. Upon entering, the lav divided like the parting seas and Annie walked down the middle, unsure what to do. There were cat calls and shrill girlie remarks like “Karen’s gonna have your ass!” Annie knew a little about Karen. She was a pretty girl. Tall like Annie. Had a ton of friends, just like Annie did. And she was Billy’s other girlfriend, apparently.

Finally Karen strode into the Smoking Lav, surrounded with her groupies. The crowd of cat-fight ready, mostly high and going to be late to class girls pushed Annie and Karen toward one another in the center of the open sea opening. The two girls just stood for a few moments staring at each other, in complete silence. The whole Smoking Lav grew quiet.

I can’t remember who laughed first, Karen or me. But in the next few minutes we found ourselves laughing our asses off. “You gonna beat me up?” “Nope”. “You gonna fight me?” “Nope”. And we both walked out together, found Billy waiting outside in the hallway and we broke up with him together.

That was in 1975.

Karen and I are still best friends to this day.

I burn for you

On fire in sweetest agony and begging for mercy to be utterly consumed enraptured filled and the sum of my being rearranged flayed from my bones and molded under your hands against your flesh against mine around you around me to the peaks of triumphant cumulus clouds exploding in waves of fire ice and sweat breaking beading washing in luminous tides to drown us in oceans of violet desire and wafting us on swelling fragrant updrafts to soar as eagles on the dawn and through silvery seas of the Milky Way to sip the nectar of the Big Dipper and inscribe our confident arch across the universe as we are launched from the bow of Orion to plummet into rippling seas of golden barley and warm wildflowers.

I burn for you