A Million Skinny Girls - Locomotive

I jumped into the ride and ended up between a red haired junky with too much shit in his face and a skinny blonde wearing a little leather skirt with just the right amount of leg showing to make me think I'd made the right decision.

  Somewhere off in the distance Guns N' Roses was putting on a clinic on how to play a rock song.

  We drove through the city. It wasn't really anything other than neon streaks that overlaid that wet kind of black. A moving picture of still images that passed in and out of time just like the ride. There were phantoms out there beyond her legs. I could feel them out there in the neon black whispering stories about the good old days when women were women and men were men and the world wasn't overrun with SJW victims that ruined everything cool. We smoked real cigarettes and drank real beer and we listened to real rock music in leather jackets with spikes. We did what we wanted and there wasn't an apology out there in the darkness of the world that will never be again.

  The skinny blonde smiled at me and licked her teeth.

  She asked me a question but it didn't matter what she had asked then and it doesn't matter now. I'm sure I answered her because she giggled a little. It wasn't the stupid fake chin to the shoulder Instagram selfie giggle it was a real giggle. There wasn't anyone watching us. We weren't preoccupied with being watched. It was raining out there in the dark that thin kind of rain that is more like a mist. The perfect kind of rain for cruising through time with a junky and a skinny blonde girl. The junky was talking the way they always talk. I don't remember what he said either but that's because I never pay attentions to junkies when they talk. I only pay attention to junkies when they get that ferret look in their bloodshot eyes. Only when their fingers start doing that little dance, searching like blind rats for something to steal that they may be able to sell for a fix.

  The ride pulled to the side.

  She got out without looking back the way all the confident ones do. I fear that all the confident ones have gone. I may have smiled when I got out the other side.

  There was an ocean. I could hear it out there in the dark. Calling the children of darkness with its siren song. I walked over to it. I didn't look back. I knew she was following me.
  I didn't need anyone to tell me how good I was at the things I did. It was all plain to see to anyone who had eyes in their head.

  When she stood beside me she was a million miles away from her home planet. I was even further away from mine.

  I knew right then that no matter what happened, no matter how perfect I thought she was all thin and pale and leather and hair that would cover me, that no matter what we said or did or how many days weeks months we spent in smiles and kisses and sweat and heat I wouldn't ever love her. She knew she would never love me either so she smiled and took my hand and I let her take me from the fathomless cold of the endless sea.

  We walked towards the dark neon.
  She took me to Gaslamp. It was full of street kids that had sold just enough of their innocence to afford a new set of clothes. Full of pimps and beggars and heroes and thieves. It smelled like salt and dreams and the night lasted forever. There wasn't anywhere else in the world to be. We wandered among them but they didn't see us at all.
  It was Halloween and we didn't need any costumes. They all wore costumes. They all had to pretend every chance they got. We never had to pretend. She took me to a party where everyone was wearing costumes that made them look like us. She smiled and nodded and then she disappeared into the crowd. It didn't bother me that I had lost track of her. You could still smoke inside back then so I leaned and smoked and watched them all. Picked out the ones who wouldn't last to see the next Halloween. Picked out the ones that wouldn't last to see the next week. When she came back she had a twelve pack of beer in each hand. I took them from her. She shouldn't have to carry that shit. Then we left the party behind and she told me she didn't know a single person in the room.
  We laughed and drank their beer. Then we went back to her place. Walked passed the neon passed the noise and the lights and the fading dreams. When we got back to her place she put a vinyl record on a turntable in her room. Something old and wonderful and rocking. Then she showed me with her teeth why passion is so much more fun than love. We took a break when it was time to turn the record over to the B side. The night lasted forever.
  By Christmas I was saying goodbye.
  I told her I'd be back in a week but she knew she'd never spend another holiday with me so she just smiled and gave me a kiss and told me not to forget her.

  I looked over at her and her hair had changed. She was a little bit shorter. The jeans she was wearing were tight enough to make her ass look great but not so tight that she would be posting pictures of it later. She wasn't that kind of girl anyway. She had things to do. She was too preoccupied with school, too preoccupied with being something besides pretty. Too preoccupied with becoming something great to need a bunch of strangers to like her pictures to feel good about herself. There wasn't one single bit of her that gave a fuck what strangers thought of her.

  I wasn't concerned with any of those things either. I had a name to make. I had things to create. Things that could move people in a way they didn't realize they could be moved. I had dope to smoke and songs to write. I had pictures to paint and stories that had just begun to bleed themselves out into the reality we pretend means something in the grand scheme of the eternal void through which we spin with no real power of our own.

  Her name had changed along with her hair and clothes.

  We were a thousand miles from the sea.
  The parties were lamer. Everybody was uptight and all they talked about was how good the football team of their shit midwest college was. They drank craft beer and I wasn't allowed to smoke inside. They wore collared shirts and their costumes were the kinds of things little kids wear. Except the girls. They all wore lingerie with paper butterfly wings and acted like they were sexy.

  The city was starting to get tame. The taming of things always starts off small. So small that the things being tamed probably don't even notice. That's why they let themselves be tamed. There wasn't a wild place left in the city whose name doesn't even matter. They are all the same.

  Like the million skinny girls who pretend to love you.

  She was a sweet girl. The kind of girl people dream about. The kind of girl that stands on her own that asks for nothing other than what she's earned. The kind of girl that your family loves. The kind of girl that puts up with their shit with a smile. She was the kind of girl that knew how to calm this restless thing inside me. The kind of girl that made me feel like the things I do are as special as they are intended to be. There wasn't anything I wouldn't have done for her. I may have talked myself into thinking I loved her because I was supposed to

  You're supposed to love girls like that.

  We got to the middle of the field. It was boring and gray and flat.

  She hugged me and I knew I wasn't ever going to spend another day with her.

  The wind blew and her strawberry colored hair swirled around us both and when it stopped blowing she was gone.

  The illusion of love lingered in her absence.

  It took a little longer than it should have to get out of that field. Years maybe. Decades. Aeons.

  When I finally got out of the flat gray there was another skinny girl waiting there for me. She was cute. The kind of cute that lasts long after beauty fades away. There were more out there but she was the one I decided to talk to. I had seen her a thousand times as I walked through the flat gray. Through the static aftertaste of the illusion of love.

  She danced and laughed and told me that she wanted to be free. She asked about the lives I had lived and then frowned when I told her the stories. She told me to make art and then got sad when they weren't pictures of her. She liked being told how beautiful she was. It was all she wanted in the world. For people to tell her she was beautiful. For the world to tell her how pretty she was. How special she was for just being alive. She wanted everyone to want her. We shared dreams in the darkness beyond the stars. The ropes they had tied to her since the day of her birth were too tight to let her go very far. I tried to pull her along with me but there wasn't any strength left in me.

 The city was tame.

 There was no music left. Just pasty weak little kids that don't know how to play the instruments their parents bought them. Everyone is a punk rocker that's afraid to fight. That's afraid to suffer. That's afraid to give something up to create something truly great. They pretend they are great because the other no talent weaklings tell them they are.

  There were no neon lights and the children of darkness had moved on to that land beyond the sea. I had stayed behind when they had called. I was too busy pretending to be something I'm not to hear their call. The animal inside me had been ground down to nothing in that empty space of gray static.

  I was too busy losing myself to notice they had all gone without me.

  I was the perfect victim for illusion.

  I began to believe their lies. I began to believe my own worth was based on the opinions of another skinny girl. I forgot how to create. I forgot the power I hold in my hands. That all the true Seekers hold. I lost the things that made me unique to this decaying, boring ball of rock. I got just as fucking boring as the rest of them.

  I told her I loved her.

 And then I was alone because other people told her she was beautiful. People that told better lies than I did. People she chose to believe. People who will never love her.

  I didn't leave the place I waited in for so long very often.

  I didn't need to.

  There are a million skinny girls on the internet.

  There are a million skinny girls who want to be famous for being a skinny girl.

  There are a million skinny girls who need strangers telling them they're beautiful to feel good.

  There are a million skinny girls that will lie and tell me they love me.

  There are a million skinny girls that will call me when the liars have abandoned them.

  There are a million skinny girls that will disappear when I tell them the truth.

  I won't bother listening to them anymore.

  There aren't many children of darkness left on the face of the planet of the lame.

  It's time for me to find out where they've all gone.