The Story

Sitting at the new wine bar in "Our Community," called Bodega. Just talking with Jason about what our future partnership will be like and all, and there is this clangoring apparition of a long blonde-haired, skinny preteen girl trying relentlessly to pen The Story of what happened. She's just there in the window to our side of this table we just kissed beneath, where we sit on the floor facing each other figuring it all out. She is trying to figure it out too, but for her, the story is hard to spell out. It began with a boy that she didn't get along with. Somewhere in there was a black and blue. And her favorite was strawberry. She kept shaking the pen, thinking it ran out of ink, but only because she was holding it up against the window. I told her to hold it down and write on the ground, and that helped. I asked her where her parents were and she told me that her mother lived somewhere else and that she was staying with her step-father for the weekend. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night he picks her up. I wondered where he was and why she was outside pressing her deepest secrets against the outside window of a bar at 10pm on a Friday night, where I and Jason and other cultural predators of the night frolicked merrily. I asked her why she was out here, and she said that "he", pointing at the bartender, said to write a story and he would hang it on the wall. So there she scrolled on the back of one side of an 8 1/2 x11 black and white menu from some wine party they had had just to put something of what happened into the world and into the hands of an older man she hoped she could trust. And I couldn't help but sense that the green-eyed monster driving her nervous fear, making her run to the nearest sign of civilization--this hipster bar on her block--was that same one inside me. I wanted that story! But I had no money on me. And neither did Jason. I went inside the bar and relayed the story of what just happened to Jason, and how we had to buy the story. He said we could go to an ATM and get her $20. , but I said that was too much and maybe she'd be mugged. "How about $5.?" That's good I said. And then he worked out something with the bartender, and we walked outside with $5. for the girl and bought her secret. I didn't know if I had helped her or hurt her.