Psychodelicate

My hands are slick with sweat, causing them to slip off the thick red vinyl upholstery and hang defeated underneath the table. I am so nervous my throat refuses to swallow the syrupy soda I ordered about five minutes ago to please the antsy waitress with a name tag proudly displaying SUE in all capital letters. I have been sitting here in this sad little diner for about a hour, waiting on my best friend from high school to make his grand entrance.

God. Fae Morris. I haven't seen that faggoty (I say faggoty in a purely affectionate way) bastard in six years.

Fae - or as he is known to his God-fearing parents, Francis - is the reason I'm sitting in this god forsaken 50s sitcom reject of a diner that even Fonzie would consider tacky. That son of a bitch calls me up a few days ago, out of the goddamn blue, and insists on meeting me at his favorite diner - some shithole called Chuck's Sock Hop. The name itself makes me gag but since it's Fae, I agree.

That boy could convince me to do anything.

I can still remember when he persuaded me into buying a pair of white hooker boots and to wear them to the prom with my barely-passing-school-dress-code pink sequin covered dress. I can still hear the faint cat-calls of "How much for an hour, pretty lady?" that were shouted at us as we walked home afterwards because the limo driver was drunk and the tires had gone flat on the highway. We made an odd pair, Fae and I, as we walked down the dark highway with a broken flashlight and our quiet prayers of "Please don't let us get hit by a car, sweet Jesus" filling the quiet moments in between my being propositioned by lewd middle-aged men and the occasional swear word. The only reason I had even went to the prom was because Fae had promised to not only take me and pay for the whole thing, but to wear the Day-glo orange leisure suit he had found at some thrift shop in Atlanta that smelt like cat piss and chewing tobacco. It's a wonder he wasn't beat up by the jocks but I guess they were too busy impregnating their cheerleading girlfriends to care about what the school's resident Ziggy Stardust wore. We had spent two whole hours earlier that day fighting Fae's naturally straight blond hair to flip into a Farrah 'do and to get my boobs to stop popping out of my dress every 5 minutes. Fae had solved the boob poppage problem by gluing my dress to my body with his younger sister's bottle of craft glue. I still have a scar on my right breast from where the glue ripped off some skin.

Sue passes by again and out of shame, I sip delicately from my drink and peer down at the menu as if I'm actually going to order something. The scratchy speaker system plays "Donna" by Richie Valens and two booths away from me, a weary mother once again pleads to her little boy to "Please, for the love of God, Tommy, stop throwing french fries at the waitress". I'd pity her but she looks like she was one of the bitches in high school who made fun of you because you wore pants that were an inch too short and gave you camel toe when you breathed the wrong way. The boy stops flinging fries and switches to shooting spitballs at the ceiling. One saliva-covered weapon of mass destruction sticks to the stucco for a moment before falling anticlimactically into his drink. He laughs, his mom cringes. I keep right on gulping down my murky soda and humming along to Ritchie Valens.

The glass door opens, a tinkling bell rings to alarms the entire restaurant of someone coming in, and for a minute, I perk up but only end up disappointed as it is not Fae entering, but a large balding Asian man wearing a stain-covered shirt from Disney World. Even from my faraway booth I can smell the stench of Cheetos and B.O. that radiates off him. I slide down a little, praying to my personal God (who, this week, is Joan Crawford) that he doesn't come my way. He takes a seat at the bar and his ass envelops the metal stool in less than a minute. I can hear the stool screaming in agony and then slowly succumbing to suffocation. Then finally, death. I mourn the untimely demise of the stool and choke on a piece of ice from my drink.

The ice stays for a moment.

Can't breath. I might be dying. How tragic, two deaths in this diner in one day. Oh god, oh god, oh save me Joan. Oh, sweet Clark Gable on a crackerjack.

The ice melts and while my ability to breath returns to me, I can't help but blush at my utter stupidity. Now really, who dies by fucking choking on ice? I laugh and go to take another sip of my drink. The heavy liquid fills my mouth as I see the blond Adonis in a leopard print coat enter the diner.

Fae fucking Morris. The glitternazi who once shaved my head while I slept peacefully on his couch after a night of debauchery involving some old tequila we found in his basement. The boy who confused our small town population by dressing like David Bowie on LSD all the while fucking half the female population. The fucktard who not only my first (and only) best friend but my first kiss, first lover, and first heartbreak. The cunt-tease who left me high and dry two days after graduation because he wanted to go to Vegas and become a male go-go dancer in a show called Cocks United. I have half the mind to punch his goddamn lights out.

"Hey, Pol."

Ohgodohgodohgod. I can't do it, I can't hit that smooth-talking bastard. He looks the same as he did in high school- blond hair cut fashionably shaggy, bright green eyes glinting with sarcasm, and an outfit that makes him look like the long lost member of the New York Dolls. He slides right into the booth so that he's across the table from me and without even a word, he takes my drink from me. Fae frowns and sticks his tongue out at me, "Still drinking this shit, Polly? I thought you'd move onto something more mature - like sneaking a water bottle full of vodka in or something." I smile and finally break my silence, "Still dressing like Elton John's bastard child, I see. I'd thought you'd move on to something more mature, Fae - like Dockers and a shirts from L.L. Bean." He laughs quietly at me and takes a deep sip from my drink. His laugh sends tingles down my spine. It's deepened over the years and gained a rich bitterness that I don't ever remember it having. His long pale fingers grasp the red plastic cup tightly and I notice the dark blue polish he carefully applied onto his well groomed nails. I sigh and reach out to play with one of the thick silver rings adorning his fingers. I have always loved Fae's hands - the way the skin stretches out perfectly over his delicate bones and his long, tapered fingers that were made for plucking the strings of a guitar. He lets go of the cup and takes my hands in his own.

"Polly, it's been so long," he says quietly, "What have you been doing since I left?" He massages my left index finger between his thumbs, my insides melt into a gooey puddle of sexual frustration. "Well, I graduated art school two years ago. I had a torrid affair with my art theory teacher that ended with him being fired and me put on academic probation," Fae chuckles at me and murmurs something that I can't quite make out, "Um, yeah. I was being the stupid mistress. I thought he'd leave his wife for me. Blah blah, the same old story. He didn't. I was just a bed warmer for when his wife went out of town." Sue walks by and glares at us, her order pad clenched in her meaty fingers. Fae turns to look at her, gives her the once-over, and says in his best Rhett Butler impersonation, "I'll have a glass of water, darlin'. You take your sweet time, okay?" She, like every woman Fae meets, falls for his sweet words and scurries off to the kitchen with an extra swing to her hips. I bite my lip and Fae looks back at me, his blond hair falls in his eyes in the most perfect way that I can feel myself swooning in my seat.

It's not fair.

It's not fair that one man can do so much to me with so little. It's not fair that I still dream about him every night while he's probably in bed with a different person (Fae was never much on limiting himself to one gender) every night. I wish I had pillow to punch but right now I'm to be content with pinching his fingers a little bit. "Ow, Pol. That's a bit unnecessary, I was just being nice to that hag to get her to go away." I pinch a little harder and he pulls his hands away like a child after touching a hot plate. He cocks his head to the side like a confused dog and pouts, "Why'dja pinch me, Pol?" Because you left me, Fae. I have to get this knot of ice out of my stomach. I have to ask him why you left me alone in that whiskey-soaked shithole of a town. I've got to know why you chose dancing half-naked for drunken suburban housewives over staying with me.

"Why did you leave, Fae?"

Silence.

The entire diner seems to have fallen away and all that remains is a 50s themed abyss where only he and I exist. Time stops. My lungs constrict in anticipation for the answer I've waited for so long.

"I don't know why I left."

What.

What the fucking hell?! There are goddamn reasons for every goddamn thing. Even for the tiniest meaningless thing, there is a goddamn reason. The fact that he even called me up, in the middle of the fucking night, to meet me at Chuck's Sock Hop of the Damned. There is a reason why I sat here for one hour waiting for the son of a bitch who not only broke my heart, but left me with no particular reason as to why he did it.

The worst part of this whole sad situation is that if he asked me to, I would fuck him right this minute.

If Fae Morris asked me dance around naked in the middle of Main Street while singing "The Girl from Ipanema", I would do it. Why, you ask? Because I have no spine. My one weakness, my kryptonite, is a blond David Bowie wannabe who wears blue nail polish and has a scar on his neck from where I bit him in 4th grade after I was convinced I was a vampire. A perfect little indention of my teeth on the right side of his neck, right by a thick blue vein that practically glows on his paper-white skin. That little scar is the best representation of our relationship that I can ever think of. I am a little leech - a little vampire - sucking off Fae's coolness and popularity. The only reason people knew my name in high school was because I was Fae's best friend. I lived off his reputation and every time people questioned my own coolness factor, Fae always stood up for me and told them "she's the coolest fucking person in this goddamn town". I would have remained that little wallflower who chewed on crayons and cried at every little thing if Fae hadn't dragged me out of my corner, with me kicking and screaming the entire time. I claimed to hate the attention we got whenever we walked into a room, but in secret I fed off the envious looks other girls gave me when they saw that I was on the arm of Fae "looks like Iggy Pop only cuter and is hung like a horse or so I heard from my friend's sister's cousin's best friend's sister-in-law's niece who went out with him one time back in March of 10th grade" Morris.

The sound of a plate being dropped and shattering on the tile floor brings me out of my glitter-fueled rage. The brat from hell, Tommy, has pushed his plate of chicken fingers and fries to the floor and his mother can only watch in absolute horror as the ceramic plate busts into a hundred tiny pieces. The look on her face, that look of utter defeat that comes after a long war, and the broken way she stands up from her seat and stares blankly at the busted plate is heartbreaking. Tommy is silent, his bratty attitude dropped as he sees his mother standing there like a zombie from a bad horror movie. "Mommy?", his voice is much softer than when he was raising hell only a few minutes ago. "Mommy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to." He scoots out of the booth and grabs her hand, taking it into his own small ones. Sue grumbles from behind the counter and orders a greasy-haired busboy to go clean up the mess. The mother smiles down at Tommy, she carefully smooths down his flyaway brown hair with her free hand, "Let's go home, sweetie. I'm tired." Tommy, with the maturity and wisdom of a fully functioning adult, nods and leads his weary mother out of the diner and into the night touched sidewalk.

"God, what a fucking soap opera," Fae says nervously, hoping to break the awkward silence that's overcome the two of us. I shakily breath again and grin at him, "Remind me never to have children." He shakes his head in agreement and we both let out forced laughter in spite of ourselves. Fae looks at the table, his hair covering his face entirely, "Polly, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I left you." My heart beats faster. If it keeps this up, it'll escape my chest entirely and end up thumping onto the cheap plastic table. "Polly, I was scared. I was scared fucking shitless. I had no plans of life after high school. I didn't want to end up working at some goddamn fast food joint and the only thing that seemed somewhat more glamorous was going to Vegas. The entire time I was there, I thought of you. Every time I ended up in bed with some skanky girl I met a club, I pretended that it was you I was with. I love you, Pol and I never meant to hurt you."

My hands start to shake, my eyes are beginning to get all watery and my vision is getting distorted by the tears, "If you loved me, you wouldn't of left. Do you know how lost I felt when I found out that you were gone from some fucking twat at the local grocery store? I've spent six years trying to forget about you and that only seems to make me think about you even more. I became a whore to try to forget about you. I slept with every boy who showed me even the slightest hint of interest just because I had hoped that it would make me forget about you. But no, it didn't work. I went to bed thinking of you. Wondering how you were doing and whose bed you were in. Goddamn it, Fae, you didn't just leave me. You abandoned me and left me to rot in redneck Hell."

Fae looks up, his eyes no longer have that familiar glint of sardonic mockery and I can't help but be surprised that he's almost in tears. In the entire time I've known Fae, the only time I've seen him cry is when his hamster Eno died. We were both eight years old and still not quite used to the concept of death and when Eno died, Fae completely lost it. He locked the doorand completely trashed his bedroom. When the door finally opened, I walked in tentatively and found him underneath the torn remains of his mattress, sobbing and holding the limp body of Eno the hamster. I remember laying down beside Fae and stroking his hair while he curled up next to me and let his tears soak my shirt. I think it was then that I fell in love with him, when I finally saw that Fae, the Fonzie of our small town, was capable of crying. I forget now just exactly how long we stayed there on his floor with him clutching to me like a newborn babe, but I know that if I were ever given a wish, just one wish, I'd wish to return to that exact moment in time. And to be honest,I wouldn't mind being stuck there for the rest of my life.

"Polly..."

Sue the hag walks up to us and informs us that Chuck's is closing and that "we need to get the hell out". I grab my coat, not looking at Fae the entire time, and walk towards the entrance. Fae follows closely behind me, he slides a crisp bill into Sue's hand and gives her a playful wink. That Fae, always the charmer.

The sidewalk is lit up by a sporadic placement of streetlamps and the air is cold and freezes my lungs. I breath ice into the night sky and watch it float up lazily like smoke. I stop and turn to face my weakness. "Fae, do you really love me?" My voice wavers between curiosity and desperation, a mixture that I usually make fun of other people for having. It's so different when it finally happens to you. Fae sighs and pulls a cigarette out of his pocket, he looks at me with his wide eyes, "Polly, you know I do. I love you." He lights up, a brief flicker of light emerges from his lighter and just as quickly as it came, it goes out. Fae breathes in deeply, sucking the cancer out of the cigarette and into his lungs. He lets it escape slowly, sending the smoke slithering like a snake up into the air. "Polly, I came here tonight to tell you that I love you. I always have and probably always will. I threw up twice before I came. I changed my outfit four times. I'm a nervous fucking wreck," he takes a drag again and exhales, "It's like that goddamn song. You're always on my mind. If I close my eyes now, I can even picture that little freckle you have on the inside of your left thigh." I blush and chalk it up to the cold. Fae throws the used cigarette to the ground and crumples it underneath his Italian leather Beatle boot. I smile, letting out my final wave of ice and it melts as soon as it escapes.

"Fae, come home with me," I say to him. Not asking, not demanding. Merely stating a conclusion we both knew was inevitable. He pulls his coat around his thin body tighter, "It's about damn time. I've been waiting for you to say that all evening."

Tonight, I will go home with Fae Morris on my arm. I will make love to him in every way I can think of and some I didn't even know I could think of.

Tonight, I will give up my all my pretenses, my anger,and be loved.