The Records

  Max always warned me about how important the truth is in a society full of liars, every time I thought about lying or would think about lying I would think about Max and feel guilty as hell. Sometimes I would write down all the lies I heard or avoided telling and set the paper on fire. When Max asked about it and I told him what I was doing he laughed, "I used to do that before I taught myself how to handle the lies." I don't tell lies and I don't write them down, I tell people that they shouldn't lie because Max wouldn't like it. The worst kind of lying is fake sympathy, when people pretend they know and care about how you feel but really they don't. I don't like when people that were rude to Max talk about missing him, because they don't. I  MISS MAX! I WAS HIS AND HE WAS MINE! YOU DON'T GET TO MISS SOMEONE YOU DIDN'T CARE ABOUT! All they do is lie, to themselves, to their families, to strangers, to me! Don't lie to me about who I love more than anything, you don't get to pretend about someone as authentic as Max. I f*****g hope my tears don't destroy all this writing, I don't think I could write it all again. I get so mad when people disrespect Max by telling stories they aren't part of, all of the real stories are the adventures me and Max planned or took.

                 Max wanted to die in a remarkable way, I suppose in a way it was kind of tragic yet remarkable that he lived as long as he had. I apologize for all the disarray (did I even spell that right? F**k it.) my mind is all of my thoughts jumbled together. The psychologist I'm seeing has me going ten million directions in my own damn mind. I've never liked psychologists, the irony of it all is that I plan on becoming one once I'm out of college. The b***h is that I'll have to stop working at the record store, even though music is therapy. Maybe I'll be able to do both, I can work as a psychologist during the nights and work music all day.

                  I remember when Max first brought me to the record shop, it had been raining and we had been stuck in his house all weekend, we had played through all of his records and mine. We craved new sounds, like a junky craves a fix. Max showed me that there's nothing close to the rawness of going to a rock show, but records come pretty damn close. You go into your room and turn off your lights, make sure the curtains are closed and your door is closed, then you turn on your record player and lay on your floor to let the music consume you. We got hired at the record shop when we Max was seventeen and I was eighteen, the manager offered to hire us after he got married and had to help take care of a baby. "There's nothing to slow your life like the nostalgia that comes with having a baby that makes you want to be small again," the record shop owner told us when Max asked what it was like to have a baby in your life.

                  You gotta excuse my writing skills, style, ect. I honestly can't bring myself to give a f**k enough to write properly, every damn English teacher I've had has tried to fix me but I damn well like the way I write. Ya know, there's people who can't write a word, I can though so kiss the a*s I was blessed with if it gets on your nerves.

                    Max kissed me for the first time in the back of that record shop, it wasn't an awkward kiss, we both knew we wanted to be closer physically. It wasn't like we planned it ; he was flipping through the new records and I was behind him with my arms around his waist and my head on his shoulder, he turned to ask me something and our lips brushed against each other. It's kinda cliché if you ask, two teenagers who're (I realize that without the apostrophe I wrote w***e, but that is the importance of the apostrophe.) working together and spending all their time together somehow end up making out in their workplace. Usually cliché is bad, but in that moment all I was thinking about was how his lips fit perfectly against mine and how I could feel his lip piercings against my own. We pulled away from each other and tried to laugh it off, but ended up hugging for what felt like forever. I wish it had been forever, because then he would still be here and I wouldn't have so much time to sit by myself; listening to records isn't the same without Max tracing patterns on the back of my hands and smiling mischievously at me before kissing me.