now that I've lost everything to you
you say you wanna start something new
When I was a junior in high school I was in love with a boy named Derrick Bones. Bones and I went to the same freakout church with our grandparents and bonded immediately over our distaste for organized religion and my crush on the fact that he drove the same car as my brother. Derrick's first name was actually Buster, but that's a secret. Bones and I had the kind of reciprocal smit that led us to sit next to each other in the hope that the pastor would make the congregation hold hands and I remember the first time he used the finger-twining technique instead of the standard Revival grip, and the first time he kissed me (in the volleyball pit while we were ditching Youth Group), and the time that he said he should start hanging out with my brother (the better to get in with my dad). He was tall with shaggy blonde hair and stupid, stupid cheekbones and a snaggly tooth. He liked John Steinbeck and Skinny Puppy and had no desire to ever, ever get a tattoo. He was only funny if you knew. I thought he was an alien, amazing and weird and completely nuts.
There was a camping trip for the boys in the church, while the girls had a Sleepover Tea. This is what my life was like. I attended the tea, where I was told that it does not help to ask God to ensure that you do not get pregnant because God is Not In The Business of Helping You Sin. Bones went camping where he died. Did he die? No one knows. He must have, but he couldn't have, because he is still out there, somewhere, walking patterns in the dust. The boys were sleeping near the edge of a canyon when their camp was interrupted by the arrival of what was alternately referred to as a bear, a mountain lion, and a man. Something came in to their camp and they all ran. Ran, ran, and when they reconvened, Bones was not there. He was either eaten by a bear, mauled by a mountain lion, or killed by a shotgun-toting mountain man. They called for him all night and looked for blood in his sleeping bag and found his shoes and screamed and screamed. The next morning they saw him signaling them from the other side of an impossible canyon. He was brought to them via search and rescue helicopter due to the impassable nature of the canyon and the endless forest on the other side.
Bones never spoke to me again. He never spoke to me, or near me, or toward me, or around me. He spoke to God, about God, of God, and with those chosen people that spoke only of and to God. He had been saved. Redeemed. Washed, as it were, in the Blood of the Lamb. He no longer wanted to hold hands with the Unwashed. He no longer knew, or cared, about the existence or presence of anything outside his walk with God. He was Paul, abandoning his name on the road to Damascus and leaving me to hitchhike home.
I can understand that. I know the power of a life changing experience; hell, I've seen Motley Crue live. I know that sometimes, in order to pick up one thing, you have to put something else down. I resented it, but was also not without awe for this boy that had seen something that he did not talk about. I have great respect for The Event, and would not argue that leaving me behind was a very, very good idea.
I am not so certain that I would have dealt particularly well if he had come back from camping, ignored me to death and, upon interrogation, said I don't know, I guess I just don't feel like it. I don't know that I would have accepted (as though it is up to me) Nothing, really. Or had he stated that I was great and awesome and funny and cute but that was not enough, he wanted something different or, worst of all, he would rather have nothing than me, I don't think I would have been able to let that go. I think I might still think about it now, fifteen years later, and wonder what I might have done differently. And I think that I might have hated him, and I know that I would have said I wanted him to be happy but the reality is, I probably would have wished he would fall into a canyon and get eaten by a bear.
It's a good thing this is not bear country, and I do not live in Colorado, and I do not go out with people as vengeful as I am.
When I was a junior in high school I was in love with a boy named Derrick Bones. Bones and I went to the same freakout church with our grandparents and bonded immediately over our distaste for organized religion and my crush on the fact that he drove the same car as my brother. Derrick's first name was actually Buster, but that's a secret. Bones and I had the kind of reciprocal smit that led us to sit next to each other in the hope that the pastor would make the congregation hold hands and I remember the first time he used the finger-twining technique instead of the standard Revival grip, and the first time he kissed me (in the volleyball pit while we were ditching Youth Group), and the time that he said he should start hanging out with my brother (the better to get in with my dad). He was tall with shaggy blonde hair and stupid, stupid cheekbones and a snaggly tooth. He liked John Steinbeck and Skinny Puppy and had no desire to ever, ever get a tattoo. He was only funny if you knew. I thought he was an alien, amazing and weird and completely nuts.
There was a camping trip for the boys in the church, while the girls had a Sleepover Tea. This is what my life was like. I attended the tea, where I was told that it does not help to ask God to ensure that you do not get pregnant because God is Not In The Business of Helping You Sin. Bones went camping where he died. Did he die? No one knows. He must have, but he couldn't have, because he is still out there, somewhere, walking patterns in the dust. The boys were sleeping near the edge of a canyon when their camp was interrupted by the arrival of what was alternately referred to as a bear, a mountain lion, and a man. Something came in to their camp and they all ran. Ran, ran, and when they reconvened, Bones was not there. He was either eaten by a bear, mauled by a mountain lion, or killed by a shotgun-toting mountain man. They called for him all night and looked for blood in his sleeping bag and found his shoes and screamed and screamed. The next morning they saw him signaling them from the other side of an impossible canyon. He was brought to them via search and rescue helicopter due to the impassable nature of the canyon and the endless forest on the other side.
Bones never spoke to me again. He never spoke to me, or near me, or toward me, or around me. He spoke to God, about God, of God, and with those chosen people that spoke only of and to God. He had been saved. Redeemed. Washed, as it were, in the Blood of the Lamb. He no longer wanted to hold hands with the Unwashed. He no longer knew, or cared, about the existence or presence of anything outside his walk with God. He was Paul, abandoning his name on the road to Damascus and leaving me to hitchhike home.
I can understand that. I know the power of a life changing experience; hell, I've seen Motley Crue live. I know that sometimes, in order to pick up one thing, you have to put something else down. I resented it, but was also not without awe for this boy that had seen something that he did not talk about. I have great respect for The Event, and would not argue that leaving me behind was a very, very good idea.
I am not so certain that I would have dealt particularly well if he had come back from camping, ignored me to death and, upon interrogation, said I don't know, I guess I just don't feel like it. I don't know that I would have accepted (as though it is up to me) Nothing, really. Or had he stated that I was great and awesome and funny and cute but that was not enough, he wanted something different or, worst of all, he would rather have nothing than me, I don't think I would have been able to let that go. I think I might still think about it now, fifteen years later, and wonder what I might have done differently. And I think that I might have hated him, and I know that I would have said I wanted him to be happy but the reality is, I probably would have wished he would fall into a canyon and get eaten by a bear.
It's a good thing this is not bear country, and I do not live in Colorado, and I do not go out with people as vengeful as I am.
posted by machine central at 10:19 AM
2 comments
