Who Put This Song On? Page 18
“What up.” Matty nods and high-fives me.
Sean tosses the candy into David’s lap. “Overdressed and Mouthful, by the way, is not a bad band name.”
“We’ll add it to the ever-growing list.” David pulls on a gummy with his teeth.
Matty jumps off his skateboard and leans on it in one graceful move. “Okay, but we should probably also, you know, learn a song?”
“That does sound pretty important,” I offer.
“See, she gets it!” Matty presses, as David and Sean instinctually wave him off. “Morgan, any interest in joining a band?”
“Oh, come on!” David shouts. “You can’t just trade us in!”
I’m trying to be in on the joke as much as I can, but unfortunately, I happen to be an extremely awkward teenage girl, also clinically diagnosed with major anxiety and depressive disorders.
“Sorry, I don’t play any instruments.”
“Neither do these idiots!”
(I excel at being one of the guys, always have. There’s no mistaking my energy as feminine or flirty. I’m a total non-threat, too emo to exist on a plane of cuteness. And despite my boobs, my body’s stocky and weird—sometimes I feel like my shoulders are perched up to my earlobes, masculine and out of proportion. In pictures, I always look…sturdy. Like my emotional baggage is showing. While the downsides to my asexual aura are copious—see: Operation David Santos—guy friends are an undeniable perk.)
“Hey,” says Sean. “I write all the songs and design the album artwork. That’s a thing.”
“Whatever, Basquiat,” Matty teases back, relenting. “Anyway, I gotta go. But seriously, dudes, let’s meet again in two weeks to work on that chorus, okay?”
“Yes, Dad.” David rolls his eyes at Sean, snickering. The boys fist-bump each other. Their intimacy is cute.
I force a chuckle, but even though I just met him, I’m on Matty’s side—I have to root for my fellow intense people.
“Lata. Good to meet you, Morgan.”
“Yeah, you too.”
Once Matty’s out of earshot, Sean leans in toward me. “We give him a hard time but it’s only because he’s like, a legitimate musician, and also because we love him.”
“Plus,” David adds without lowering his voice, “he’s our token white.”
Sean snorts and I giggle, “Of course.”
“Listen up!” David exclaims. He’s hype. “Do you guys want to make a fort in here or what?”
And suddenly he’s peak zany David, doing the most. He crawls up to the front seat and turns on the car battery to play Devotion by Beach House, rustling through all the crap that lives in his car (what I call “a mess” and “garbage,” he calls “a system of alternative organization” and “supplies”), and tossing towels, throw blankets, and half-eaten candy bars back at us. We assemble ourselves in the wagon bed, blanket over our legs, a patchwork of dirty shoes and chocolate wrappers and our reeking feelings. It’s getting dark, the 7-Eleven is having a slow night, and I think maybe this is what camping is like. If it weren’t for the smog, there would be an ocean of stars up there. If it weren’t for the parking lot, and everything just beyond the parking lot, the night might feel romantic, inspiring.
(I’ve gotten very good at pretending I have more than I do. Or maybe, in some moments, I have everything. That’s what I mean about stopping to notice the flowers, as dreadfully and sickeningly corny as it is. It shocked me. I hadn’t looked, really looked at one in forever.)
David pulls a joint from his jeans pocket. He lights it between two fingers and inhales dramatically, holding the smoke in his chest and emitting a croaky cough. Bows his head, offering it to us. Sean accepts, but doesn’t smoke it. When David finally looks up to face us, he’s deadly serious. “So, okay, I have to tell you guys something.”
Sean has an immediate good-guy reaction, burrows his thick eyebrows all concerned and gently reaches out to touch David on the shoulder. “What is it, buddy? Everything okay?”
He passes me the joint and I take a little bit, careful not to inhale too much. I’m not in the mood. I chew on my lip, stay quiet, like if my body is still, my mind will be, too.
David shakes his head, gingerly accepting the joint from my fingers. “Naw, I’m fine, it’s just…Do you guys ever feel like you have no purpose? Like you’re just here taking up space for no reason?”
Sean’s chest seems to expand, like his heart is trying to escape. “Hoo, buddy, do I! I actually thought I was the only one who’s totally clueless about how to do this life thing. I keep expecting it to just click one day, but instead, I just get older.” He laughs nervously at himself.
Of course, I’m completely swept up by his vulnerability, by David’s. Of course, I want to scream Yes! What is happening?! Are we going to be okay?! But I don’t want to bring up the events of July 22, 2008, because I don’t want them to be real. I don’t want to carry the darkness around; I don’t want to face my shameful secret. I just want to move on and be like everyone else, not sick. So I just go, “Yup.”
“Actually, Morgan, you got me thinking about all this stuff. You know when you were telling me about that poem by Assata Shakur?”
“ ‘Affirmation.’ ” I nod and recite the first line: “I believe in living.”
David leans into his cousin. “Do you know about her? She was a Black Panther and part of the Black Liberation Army.”
“The FBI arrested her for a bunch of murders she so totally did not commit,” I add. “I was just reading her autobiography, and it’s awesome.”
“Whoa.” Sean smiles. “Wasn’t she Tupac’s aunt or something like that?”
“Yeah, his godmother!” I lock eyes with Sean and immediately look down with a shy smile.
“Dope,” he says, hands folded over his knees.
“So, anyway,” David continues, “I was mentioning this stuff to my dad, and out of nowhere, he tells me how he got beat up by the cops back in the day.”
“What?” Sean blurts.
“Yeah,” David says flatly. “When we lived in San Diego, when I was a baby.”
“What happened?” I gasp, and David’s chest rises as he closes his eyes in a deep breath, as if at a pulpit.
“So, my dad was speeding, I think? Or maybe he was doing nothing. I don’t know. The cops pull him over, and then they didn’t just arrest him, they beat the hell out of him. Like, with freaking clubs, their pistol grips, but also just shoving him into his car with their bare hands. He had bruises all over, his eyes were swollen.” David exhales.
“Jesus,” I utter at some point.
Sean shakes his head like he’s seriously going to cry, but I think it’s just the way his eyes shine. “Poor Uncle Ron.”
“He spent the night in jail. As soon as my mom bailed him out, he pledged to take down corrupt cops. He wrote this op-ed for the newspaper, he held a meeting with all his neighbors, it was like his thing. But after a couple years—and mind you the whole time my dad is like getting way deep into it and my mom is taking care of me, which as we all know could not have been easy—people in the city started getting aggressive toward him. Someone left a note on our doormat. Someone else spit in my dad’s direction while he was at the mall. He’s just shopping for khakis at the mall like a regular dad!”
“Wow.” Sean looks devastated, slowly shaking his head, but I’m beginning to think all of his reactions are big ones. “Just, I had no idea about any of that.”
“Dude, same. I don’t even know if your parents know all about it. And obviously my dad stopped trying to kick up dirt like that. That’s like, a hundred percent not what he’s like now. Anyway, I guess that’s one of the reasons we moved out here when I was little.”
“That’s crazy,” Sean says, and a gust of wind floats his hand my way a little, brushing our thumbs. I pretend not to notice. “I guess I
could see Uncle Ron getting fired up like that. Like, for something he cared about.”
I say, “That is super crazy. It’s awesome, though.”
“It really is,” David says, “and the thing is, I wish I knew that version of my dad. The badass version. On some level I get why my parents moved and became all suburban, but I also want to know more about those rebels.”
“Totally,” I say. “It would be cool to know I have some badass in my genes. That’s how I feel reading about the Black Panthers. What was it like to be so committed to the cause?”
“Exactly!” David throws his hands up like spaghetti to a wall. “That’s what’s bugging me! I just keep thinking, what do I care that much about?”
I’m nodding emphatically. “For sure. Sometimes I feel like I could have that in me, but I don’t know what to do with it.”
“So, let’s figure it out already. Let’s do this.” Sean says this so firmly, it startles me.
“Do what? Take down cops? Right now? I gotta go home, dudes,” I joke, my weird impulse in the face of sincerity.
“No, I mean let’s all make a pact to figure out what we wanna fight for. Look, the whole country is all cranked up on this ‘hope’ stuff. The president is black! Anything can happen.”
“True.” I raise my eyebrows at David in consideration, and he shrugs back. “I guess there’s more possibility now….maybe.” I hate that I can’t stop thinking too much, about everything that’s wrong.
“So why should we be left out of all that, out here in the middle of this wasteland?” Sean gestures empathically at our particular wasteland. “Stuck being depressed in the 7-Eleven parking lot…”
I feel pricked by the d word. Anything can happen. You can escape.
“Hey, I love this 7-Eleven,” quips David, and Sean elbows him, laughing.
A small, sleepy smile creeps onto my face. I wish I were a different kind of person. I wish I could look ahead, be hopeful. I wish it with all my heart.
“We can call it an end-of-year resolution. Anyway, that’s what I’m doing,” Sean concludes. “I am so tired of being so bored, man.”
If this guy isn’t in student council, he really is doing things wrong. I’m totally swayed.
“Okay,” David sticks out a hand for his cousin, “I’m in. If Ron Santos can fight for something, then so can I, right?”
“Absolutely,” I agree, and I think I mean it. “I’m in, too.”
My whole life other people have been telling me what’s important, literally telling me what to care about and who to root for, how to behave and think. I’ve been a good student, obedient and determined to do everything right. But what if I could follow Harriet, or Assata, and refuse to play along? What if I could be in charge of myself?
HARRIET TUBMAN COMES TO ME IN A DREAM
Harriet Tubman comes to me in a dream. She’s on a talk show set, with a glass coffee table between her and another black lady.
“Harriet Tubman?” I ask.
“Yes, I am.”
She sounds kind of like Beyoncé in interviews. I turn to the other lady.
“Are you Oprah?”
“I’m you, in another life.”
There are other people scattered in the audience bleachers—kids I recognize from school, some moms from my art class, David and Sean, but Harriet Tubman and Other Me are only talking to me.
“Harriet Tubman, are you also me in another life?”
“No way. But I could be.”
Other Me becomes the only person in the room. She leans in so close our noses are almost touching, and everything around us goes black.
She’s just as annoying and dramatic as I am.
She says, “What are you doing?”
(NO SUBJECT LINE)
From: aaaaaaahhhhmeg@yahoo.com
To: daria_but_black@gmail.com
12/1/08 6:17 PM
Lover,
that was messed up today, I know. I’m so sorry we hurt your feelings. We seriously didn’t mean to offend you. I love you. James does too. I owe you In-N-Out. I’m sorry everyone in our stupid town is a boring idiot. At least we’re way cooler and smarter than pretty much everyone.
<3
From: Sean.something42@gmail.com
To: daria_but_black@gmail.com
12/2/08 10:24 PM
Hi Morgan,
Dave gave me your email, hope that’s ok. It was great meeting you last night! I’ll definitely have to check out that Assata book. I was wondering if you might wanna hang out sometime?
Text me 909-555-6500
Peace
Sean Santos-Orenstein
From: davidneedsahaircut@yahoo.com
To: daria_but_black@gmail.com
12/4/08 1:08 AM
Hey btw forgot to tell you I gave my cuz yr email, figured it was ok since u are both huge nerds
ttyl
ds
THE DIARIES OF MORGAN PARKER
December 3, 2008
*listening to Steely Dan—Two Against Nature (forgot how good this is!!!)
It’s me again of course, old crazy me.
Meg and I made up because why not. Everything else sucks. A lot of things can be fixed with cheese fries and laying in the grass. Even when my friends don’t understand me, they love me at least.
They’ll probably drop me eventually or we’ll drift away. That’s just how things go. But right now, here we all are.
This year has been crazy. It’s the year where nothing is as it seems. Everything is different: my friends, my style, my ideas about the future. Most importantly, my idealism and romanticism have shifted to the dark realm of realism, which leaves me with a bleak view of life. Nonetheless, here I am, five foot nothing, scared to death. I wish I were in control, but I am who I am. I like to be sure, except I cannot in fact recall a time in which I was actually sure of myself. I am stressed, inquisitive, immature (I admit it), confused, discouraged, and obnoxious. But quietly and secretly, I think I am a grand, passionate hero. I know that sounds super dramatic.
DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY WAYS YOU CAN FEEL YOURSELF EXPLODING?
In this moment I feel particularly suburban. I’m aware that my world is small and today is only a sliver of my life, a blink. Meg and I are chewing on iced coffee straws and browsing the little boy’s shirts at our favorite Salvation Army, across from the Stater Bros. where Coco works. We hopped in Meg’s dusty car after school feeling silly and light. It’s a sunny windy day, and there’s nowhere else for us to be. I’m almost nostalgic for how boring it all is.
“Oh my god,” I say wryly, holding up a heather-blue shirt with neon lettering. “I must have this.” It’s from the church down the hill from my house—Marissa’s church—and it says, “Fantastic Journey with Jesus.” I giggle with utter delight.
“Oh, most definitely,” Meg bellows across the aisle. “That is fantastic!”
“What’d you find?”
“Well, this I’m getting for sure,” she models a bright yellow tee that says OK in thick block lettering, gives her best Zoolander face.
“Yes!” I laugh. “Actually, it kinda looks dope with that outfit.” She’s wearing a black and red flannel, skinny jeans, and what she calls her “shit-kicking boots.”
“So, um,” she starts, shuffling hangars indifferently. “I’m sorry again I was being such an ass on Monday.”
“I know, dude.” I nod. “I’m past it, really.” We mosey around the store, bopping to “Heart of Glass.” (Is it just me, or is Blondie always playing in a thrift store?) I’m pulled as if by a magnet to a row of blazers.
“I just wanted you to know…I felt really bad….” She hangs at my side chewing her lip.
“I know,” I whine. “And like I said, I forgive you, and we’re cool, I promise.” I hold up a houndstooth number that would swallow
me; return it to the rack. “It’s just…I get really tired of people trying to tell me how it is to be me. Like, there are some things you just can’t understand. And that’s okay! Like, that’s good!”
“I know.” She lowers her eyes. I shouldn’t keep pressing, but it’s as simple as this: I want to. I want to say my piece—I owe at least that to myself, to Harriet and Assata and all of us.
“That’s the thing, though. You don’t have to pretend to know. You could ask me stuff, you know. Or just listen. Like, if I wanted to know something about heavy metal bands, I would go to you. I wouldn’t try to speak on that, you know?” I stumble on a marvelous velvet navy jacket that’s almost too good to be true at $8.99. I pull it from the hanger as I keep waxing philosophical, keeping my tone even (no one will be telling me Don’t get so emotional today).
“Sometimes I feel like white people can’t bear to be left out. Like, maybe it’s an A and B conversation, you know? Okay, what do you think?” I adjust the lapels and stand up straight.
A smile creeps to her mouth. “Damn, that is perfect.”
“Isn’t it!?” I squeal, gathering it in my arms with my other goodies. “Anyway, I’m sorry about all my feelings,” I say to her face.
“You and your feelings.” She rolls her eyes, and the way she smiles, I know we are family.
“Okay, but what about this one?” I present a green plaid Tommy Hilfiger blazer.
Meg scrunches her nose. “Don’t you already have one exactly like that?”
“Ugh, fine, you’re right.” I slump. “It’s probably time for me to cut myself off on the blazers.”
On our way out, plastic bags weighing down our wrists, Meg halts to marvel at us in the storefront window’s reflection.
“Let’s take a picture!” she dives into her tote bag excitedly.
We stand there in our small town, heads tilted like clinking glasses, me in my sweater and button-down, so stumpy in my Vans next to Meg’s long spindly form, and looking indescribably cool in shit-kickers, disposable camera held out next to her face. We strain to hold cheesy smiles as an old car screeches past, blaring Lil Wayne. I’m fairly certain we’re cackling or blinking in every frame she snapped. I’m fairly certain that we’re glowing in every shot.