Abolished Adolescence

The Story of a girl who gives up her teen years in exchange for a fake ID, nights at bars, and sex with strangers.

Abolished Adolescence

James Cacciatore

            Spark. Light. Drag. Exhale. She stood outside of the corner bar, the lights from the neon signs, streetlights, stoplights, and passing cars all illuminated her face with a prism of colors. Her face occasionally hit with the rush of an orange glow with each hit of her cigarette. Her friends crowded around her sharing the smoke break, but not her thoughts, as her eyes and mind wandered distracted by something not quite there. Perhaps her thoughts shifted to places unknown, or maybe they were exactly where they wanted to be. Her drunk turned her mind into a quiet but violent river, the current pushing and pulling. No one would know what roamed in her mind. Her thoughts belonged to her and her only.

            The weekend nights of getting whacked in bars have become a regular routine for her and her friends. While at first they thought this would be a fun thing to do every once in a while, it became ritual for these girls. The excitement, the rush, it became addicting. For her it felt like a separate world she could live in for a few hours. Her classmates knew little of her sins in the nights. In class she smiled and got her work done, talked to her friends about their excitement for prom. By the time Saturday rolled around, she would be stuck in some bar, putting down sugary drinks loaded with alcohol, and lusting for a man to take her in his bed by the end of the night. When Monday morning rolls around, she will be back in her desk, her classmates blissfully unaware of her sinful nights. This cycle has lasted for months, and will last for many more to come.

            After the drizzle of ashes ended, the girls migrated their way back into the bar. All hit with the sound of drifting conversations, and the smell of alcohol and stale smoke. She took her seat next to the man she hoped would take her in a ride in his car tonight late after the lights of the bars have went out, but right before the sun could rise. His face lit up, clearly happy with her return, his boys in the background egging him on. He took a quick look at the bartender and with some mutual connection the bartender conjured up a beer for him and a Twisted for her. Which they happily opened and drank, piling up the load already built up over the last few hours.

            He started first, returning to story interrupted by her smoke break. Some story about a trip he took with his previously mentioned boys. A story filled with beer and a run from the cops after a late night drinking in the park. For him this story was one from years ago, back in the days of his early adolescence. From the days he longed to return to. She had similar memories, not from years ago, but just a few mere months ago. Ever since her and her friends got their fake IDs, she left the nights of drinking poorly mixed drinks in the shadows of the overpass and kissing boys from her school, skipping ahead to the nightsof bar hopping and incredible sex with strangers. The cost only being a mere eighty dollars, and a wait time of about two months for her ID.

            While she took no interest in his story, she instead was invested by his emotions, his nuanced movements, the passion and longing for days long gone in his eyes, and his goofy smile when he forgot he was trying to show off for this girl. His one arm lay on his thigh, and the other had a strong grip on his beer sitting on the bar, and it was obvious he was flexing. These subtle movements, his cocky smile, the flexing, and the occasional trying-to-be-sexy-eyes, weren’t what attracted her to him, but rather she loved the little show he put on for her.

            Around the bar were similar stories. The men bought the girls drinks. Some girls huddled in the corners pretending to be uninterested, while the men played pool, occasionally taking a glance over to the girls after each shot. The bathroom was currently locked. It has been for a while, and will be for a while longer, much to the disappointment of some girls waiting by the door. From inside the door, there were the faint noises of someone taking it while sitting on the sink.

            Back at the bar, the blossoming “romance” has evolved from subtle expressions, to occasional touches to the shoulder, or her resting her head on his arm while she laughs at his not so funny story. The odds of sex were basically set in stone. The only thing that could ruin this was maybe one of her friends pulling her away from this stranger, or if he and his boys got into a fight with another group of men. Luckily, each girl and boy seemed too preoccupied by their own partner for the night.

The lust in the air was now amplified and the hours passed like the cars outside. As each pair left, it was time for Him and Her to take their leave. Her friends seemed to have left her, so she felt it necessary to get a ride home from this boy. After their last drink, he helped her off her seat and out the bar. She walked with a wobble, and her eyes staring a mile away. In the back of her head she feared she would turn him off, but his mind was just as set as her.

They exited the bar and were hit with the cool air, they both let out a small shiver, and he hurriedly leads her to his car. He opens the door for her, a gesture taught by many fathers to their sons, and she steps in, immediately warm from his velvet seats. His car smelled of smoke, old fast food, and a black ice scented air freshener. In which she just shakes her head, now quite used to this “boy smell.”

He steps in, seated next to her, giving her a small look. She just blushes, and there are no words said. He simply starts the car. The radio turns on, and by some fate, a quite but soothing ballad plays. And he pulls out of his parking spot.

They cruise, and her mind returns to the coursing river. She quickly lights another cigarette, and blows a puff of smoke out the window and it spins away in the wind. The lights of the city yet again illuminating her face, as a wave of déjà vu hits her. Not just from earlier in the night, but from past weekends of riding to some boy’s apartment.

He pulls up and slowly parks into a spot near his apartment. She looked at the buildings, trying to guess which one held his home, a small game she liked to play in her mind. While her ID said twenty-one, little games like this were small pieces of evidence that she was seventeen. When he parked, he exited the car, and they walked to the apartment next to the one she guessed was his. Close enough.

The door creaks open. A light switch flicks on. Keys rattle as they’re set on the counter. She took a look around his apartment, which was filled with typical sports posters, beer trinkets and the like. To her she thought that he was about as basic as a boy can get. These were the boys she looked for on these nights. Plain, basic, and forgettable, the perfect match so that she can get what she wants, without having to think to hard about him. He goes to offer her a drink before she kisses him, and they move quickly into his bedroom. And in due time, they’re in his bed, and their tongues intertwined.

To her, he tasted like NewPorts, the signature cigarette for poor boys in the city. The taste that told her that he spent his younger days smoking on the corner sitting on the steps with his small gang of friends with a forty in his hand. He was a boy with a troubled but happy past, living in an inner city with a public school education. Hidden between the football posters were pictures of friends and family. It always amazed her that these basic boys had lives, that they were something more. They lived a long and life filled with many stories that she would never hear nor care to here.

To him, she tasted of Marlboro Blacks, The cigarettes for those who felt they were above NewPorts bought from the corner stores. The taste that told him that she may felt like she was above the city boys on the corners, but he knew that she was living in the same urban hell as he did. He would never tell her this, just settling on letting her live her small fantasy, as for people like her, fantasies were the only thing that allowed them to cope with their miserable lives. What comforted him was the fact that he was able to accept and deal with what he truly was.

Shirts came off. His belt clattered and hit the floor with a ring and a thud. Soon enough, he was inside of her, and both hit with a wave of ecstasy. While strangers, it would be a lie to say there was no passion. However the passion was not for each other but for the sex. Not the being but the feeling, almost as if they were making love to themselves. While it lasted about an hour, it felt like a few minutes, and afterward they lay hot in the bed, a few inches of each other. He looked over to her and felt something, as if maybe he could love this girl. He came to the sudden realization that maybe he could bring true happiness to this girl, that he could show her that there was more to life than sex with strangers after a night of getting drunk. No such thoughts came to her mind, and he could see this, so he threw these thoughts away before getting stung by the feeling of rejection.

And after a few minutes, she was hit with panic, just now remembering she had to be home. He asked he what was wrong, and while she desperately explained, his drunk mind could not wrap around the concept. Soon she was quickly dressed, and before he could say goodbye or thank her, or even know her name, she was quickly out the door. And before the thought of going after her crossed his mind, she was well down the street and around the corner.

She walked at a brisk pace, and a few tears rolled down her face. Not in sorrow but in panic, of letting someone down. She had to be home to be up early for some family event. And the fear of disappointing her family shocked her into an almost full sprint. She pulled out her phone to maybe try and call a cab, but the battery had died hours ago. And she frustratingly runs her hand through her hair desperately thinking of a solution. She thinks of returning to the boy’s apartment, but she has already forgotten where it was. And in a last ditch effort, she checks her purse and finds enough money for bus fare, and settles on that.

Thus, a short walk around the corner brings her to a bus stop on a familiar corner. She walks to a bench and plops down. A small rush of relief hits her, before being washed over by a wicked pain in the head, and she rubs her temples for a few minutes while waiting. The cars have since long vacated the streets. Not even a creep or homeless man walked these streets. The night was truly dead. The prism of lights was instead replaced by the orange static glow of the streetlamps above her.

After a minute, she opens her eyes, and notices a park across the street. It was shrouded in trees, and baseball fields and playgrounds littered the grassy fields. Staring into the abyssal darkness that shrouded the park, some memories leaked though the cracks. Memories held back far upstream in her mind. It was on the jungle gym in which she shared her first drink, enticed by Rebecca to ignore her parents’ warnings. It was a forty of some piss warm malt liquor, but the excitement of drinking her first drink overshadowed the puke inducing flavor of the beverage. That night she became drunk for the first time, singing with her friends, and dancing around the playground. By the end of the night, she had to be helped home by Chris.

Chris soon became more than a nice boy who walked her home. In the dugout, she shared her first kiss with him, after an awkward week of trying to adjust to being in a relationship. Johnny and Francesca mostly pushed for the relationship, as the idea of the four of them going on a double date seemed perfect. They spent an hour in the dugout before the actual kiss, talking about school, the stars, their family issues. While in the middle of a story about her first dance recital, he leaned over and kissed her. He tasted like the honey bun he shared with her.

On the baseball field she ran with Janae, Johnny, and Francesca to escape the cops kicking them out of the park. Their spotlights searched for them in the fields, the circles of white lights dancing in the fields, occasionally tagging them. She felt that she could run forever, and she wanted too. They weren’t doing anything wrong, but rather just wanted the rush of running a higher authority. Back then they felt invincible.

She used to share Janae’s cigarettes that she stole from her dad on the steps by the dried up fountain. They were stale, and held no menthol. The smoke stinging her throat, and with each hit she exhaled with her mouth open too wide, in which Chris would make fun of her for the next few weeks, calling her “Macaulay Culkin.” In which she would hit him every time he did.

These memories quickly came flooding in, held back by a dam, which broke to flood the drunken river. And after the flood rushed in and filled her mind, all was left with a stagnant lake of past memories which she gave away in exchange for nights spent in dusty bars and in strangers’ beds.

She shed no tears, instead staring blankly into the park that held great stories. Stories that didn’t need to be shared in bars with strangers, but rather with friends long into the future, reminiscing on their adolescent days. She would never go back to the days of drinking in the shadows. For the lake will dry up, the dam rebuilt, and in one weeks time the drunken river will be back in course, such is nature’s way. But for now she sat on that bench, drowning in the past, pulled by the current, and unable to reach the memories she destroyed upstream.