Part II: First Verse (1998-2000)

My parents finally divorced in the fall of 1998. Mom worked as a home healthcare nurse for a paraplegic man in his mid-thirties. Despite her and my dad's efforts to repair their rocky eighteen-year marriage, an intimate relationship with her patient sealed it. The guy secretly videotaped the sexual encounters and sent the footage to dad. When the family court judge asked me which parent I'd rather live with full-time, I chose my mom. She wasn't the ideal candidate, but I refused to leave her. I believed it was my duty to ensure she didn't vanish or overdose and die.

I was thirteen and throwing myself into whatever activity I could, from competitive figure skating to acting classes––even an impromptu trip on Amtrak to West Palm Beach for a bikini modeling job I was too young to land. Mom and I sat in the same modeling agency's offices with which I'd signed a contract six years later and listened to several talking heads deliver their rejections.

"She can't book the commercial work we see other girls her age booking," one woman said.

"Her look is too sexy, too mature for her age group," said another, "and the jobs we have, ones ideal for her look, won't accept models under fifteen."

"She's in no man's land," said the only male in the room.

Back in Greenville, dad rented an apartment adjacent to the interstate while Mom and I shared a bedroom in the disabled man's double-wide mobile home twenty minutes outside the city limits. Most nights, she dropped me off at North Main Street within Greenville's bustling downtown––the city's heart and where the cool kids assemble.

"I'll park in the lot across from the cemetery and read my book until you're ready to go home," mom said––omitting the part about making a quick detour to score some crack cocaine first.

I'm too busy to care for very long. A rebellious disposition and a profound longing for acceptance have me eating up the anarchist movement in small-town America. I fall for the first clique of misfits I find––a mix of drum and bass musicians, mural artists, freighthoppers, and drug dealers––mostly part-time waitstaff. Through them, I find the city's rave scene and weasel into an all-night party. To gain entry into more raves, I needed a government-issued identification card proving I was at least sixteen.

"Go get your birth certificate," mom said.

I watched her gently rub away the last digit of my birth year with a polymer eraser. Then, with a sharpened pencil and the precision of a neurosurgeon, she replaced the five with a three. One nervous trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles later, and I had the most legitimate fake ID possible.

The Astro housed most of the parties. I was there Friday night, then again on Saturday, followed by an after-hours party at someone's house where I met Denny––a twenty-year-old, rail-skinny regular on the party scene and the first guy to put his hand down my pants. Denny was a line cook at a popular downtown restaurant, and within a week, I found myself outside the kitchen's emergency exit door, watching and waiting for Denny to take a smoke break and invite me to a party. He finally did, and he made sure the bartender served me. Enter my first drink of alcohol––a pint-sized long island iced tea. I barely felt a buzz after one.

A friend of Denny's sold paper tab blotter acid––also known as LSD. When I drop acid, I am warm, loved, and nurtured. The first time I did it, I wished it would last forever. It didn't, but it changed me evermore. Quickly, I gave up on every other activity in my orbit, mainly formal education. Mom and I had both slacked off on my homeschool assignments. The long-distance learning academy dad paid to educate me kept sending textbooks. Eighth-grade algebra was the last one I opened. Why anyone thought two Geminis lacking discipline and moral standards could play teacher and student is lost on me.

***

I have one friend, Joy, whom I've known since infancy. Until I turned nine, we lived in neighboring houses built by our fathers––the property line marked by a row of red-tip bushes planted by mine. Dad cultivated plants of a different variety before he built that house, but he quit growing marijuana around the time he and my mother made their marriage official in 1980. Their tying the knot meant mom got overnight visitation with her toddler son two weekends per month. Mom was seventeen when she delivered my half-brother. Memorial Day 1985, when I was born, he was almost eight, and the custody agreement hadn't changed much––less than fifty days per year, I had an older sibling around. I had Joy looking out for me otherwise. She and I were an inseparable unit among the neighborhood kids. We spent most of our playtime at my house getting our Barbie and Ken dolls involved in scandals that would put a Spanish Telenovella to shame.

Joy was fourteen when mom and I made the six-hour drive to our hometown and back and picked her up for a New Year's Eve sleepover. Though we lived hundreds of miles apart, Joy and I seamlessly picked up where we had left off. Best friends forever. We hatched a plan to ring in the last year of the nineties by losing our virginity simultaneously at midnight. We didn't know our suitors yet, but confident we were, nonetheless.

Once downtown on North Main, we hear word of a free concert––a local rock band scheduled to take the stage of the riverfront amphitheater at midnight. Our tiny hips struggled to hold onto our low-rise jeans as we danced toward the front row. I made eye contact with the singer, which didn't break until the set ended. Then, he walked toward the edge of the stage and motioned for me to join him.

"My name is PJ Did you like the music?"

"Yeah, it was perfect."

"What's your name? I'll sign a drumstick for you."

His eyes sparkled like cut sapphires. I was enamored.

Joy and I fell asleep an hour later, still virgins.

***

I asked around downtown and learned that my friend Stefan––a guy our crew named my bodyguard––knew PJ as a patron of the pool hall where he worked as a bouncer. So, I posted outside Corner Pocket's entrance next to Stefan, waiting for the blue-eyed songbird to sweep me off my feet again. Midnight, night four, he appeared. I lied and told him I was seventeen. He was twenty-two and had an on-again-off-again girlfriend named Nina. I learned he worked as a bartender at another downtown pub. The following night, I showed up and spotted his bandmates seated at the bar. I pulled up a stool to join in their huddle, where, for hours, I remained the center of attention––drinking shot after shot of liquor chased with beer. In my naive mind, I became a better version of myself with each sip.

At two in the morning, PJ announced the last call for alcohol and invited me home with him and the band. When we arrived at their place, he offered a beer and suggested I join him on the couch. Then, the other three men dispersed to their bedrooms one after the other. Skittishly, I nurse the bottle of bitter lager without saying much. I considered getting up and running out of there, but the desire to feel wanted outweighed the urge to run.

After venturing upstairs, I studied PJ's shadow on the wall of his dim-lit bedroom while he tuned the FM radio to the alternative station. Finally, he joined me on his bed, kissed my neck, and laid me down. Less than five minutes of painful intercourse happened before he asked if I was a virgin; I didn't respond. The warm damp blood saturating the bedsheet was his answer. Hastily, I dressed and left. I avoided him for months. Then, one fall night, Mom and I passed a joint and scanned the classified ads in search of a place to live. We found an advertisement for a basement apartment in the heart of the downtown community. The two-bedroom unit sat beneath a large brick house, and despite a prime location and suspiciously low rent, the landlord struggled to keep a happy tenant due to the loud upstairs neighbors––four young men in a local rock band.

It can't be PJ's band!

It was. We moved in the next day.

On the nights Nina didn't show, PJ knocked on the basement door. I'd go back upstairs with him because I was a dumb kid––my clammy palm sliding up the handrail.