Satan is my only friend

We would lay in bed, falling asleep to Calvin Johnson's baritone voice. It took Beth a really long time to go to sleep because whenever the needle got to the end she would roll over and flip the record over or pick out a new one from the milk crate.

When I first met Beth she was making really obnoxious puking noises on top of a car in a sea of cans.

"Lissen," Sarah was saying to her. "I mnatta DYHKE urenithinghk, budeye think your cute." I recognized Sarah as the desperate freshwoman from New Jersey who lived down the hall. I had been going to art school for one week, now.
"WHY DOES SOME STUPID GIRL ALWAYSH WNAT TO KISS ME!" said Beth.
"I thigure kiynda cute. Lejzusst maegout a lidtle," said Sarah.

A sexually frustrated guy was sitting on the car, next to Sarah. He was looking at the two expectantly, eagerly, silently.

"I DONT WANA FUKGING KISS YOU."
"Lisn--jisst for a liddle bit. Juskisme. Juskimi--kiss. Me. Keysme."

Sarah was trying to proposition Beth quietly, trying desperately to bring as little attention to herself as possible.

"YOU THINK I WILL KISS YOU BECUS I HAVE SHOREDARE? YOU THINK I WANT TO KISS EVERY FUKGING GIRL I SEE?" she shouted, taking another huge gulp of whiskey.
"Haylesson: I jusink yo're reely cute, ohkaye? Wyontroujis kiss firra whyle?"

Another guy had come up: "MAN girls just kiss each other because they like it when guys watch, FUCK," he said to the car top voyeur. "MAN they just want us to watch them to get our dicks hard, SHIT. They love to fucking tease our cocks; so, they kiss each other."
"FUCK YOU!" said Beth, and she went back to making loud puking noises. From this, my eighteen-year-old self could tell she was very special.

Later a friend, Katrina, would actually introduce me to Beth. We went out onto her porch all together and sucked pot out of a magic lamp shaped bong. Beth had a jet black cat named Ludwig and three roommates. Their names were Ruth, Frank, and Bob. Bob was the best because he was the only one profoundly bothered by living in a shitty Mission Hill apartment with three genuinely crazy people.

It was one of those apartments where the stove had paint marker graffiti all over it and somebody had taped a bunch of broken shit all over a wall. They put up all their empty bottles of hard alcohol up over the cupboard and most of the place was a long hallway barely big enough for one person.

I remember coming by one night when Bob was out of town. All of Beth's roommates were in Bob's room cackling wildly as they epoxied quarters onto Bob's hardwood floor.

Ruth also had a boyfriend: Robert. Robert would live there about half the time. The other half the time he seemed to spend in varied mental institutions after various misadventures. Just about every time I would come by there would be some story about the latest crazy thing Robert did. Whenever I saw Bob around school he had huge purple rings around his eyes. I would always very happy to see Bob.

"Hey Bob!" I would say.

"Luhrm," he would mumble, if he said anything at all.

That night when I first met a somewhat sober Beth I got her phone number and Katrina walked me back to my dorm. Katrina insisted on coming up. We started kissing and she wanted to sleep over because it was late. I said "alright."

She took off our clothes and got on top of me and fucked me. Maybe in that moment my dick wanted to fuck and my body just did not have the guts to tell her it wasn't what it wanted. Still, it felt like shit. Some things you lose, some things you give away. At the time I was too confused to know which one it was.

The Saturday after that I called up Beth and we went to the movie theatre to see "Shortbus". We sipper her mason jar all the way there, through the movie, and all the way back. Shortbus is a great movie for a date. There is this one scene where three guys sing the national anthem into each other's butts as they are munching the butts. In my mind if a date does not find that completely adorable the relationship is probably not going to work out.

Beth handed me her jar of whiskey and I took a sip. It seemed like most of the time Beth had a jar of whiskey.

We got back to her room and we kissed. I put my hands in her cunt and gave her a quivering orgasm. Her unshaven pubic hair was as soft as a kitten's butt. It was the most wonderful cunt I had seen in my entire eighteen year old life. We fell asleep listening to "Lonesome sundown" on the record player.

On the next Monday I went to school. I went for a cigarette break during class and she was out there.

"How was your weekend?" she asked.
"It was great, actually. I was--"
"--you fucking ASSHOLE!"
"Oh."
"FUCK you."
"I thought you said you did not want a relationship!"
"THAT WAS MY BEST FUCKING FRIEND YOU DICK."
"I thought it was all going to be okay."
"THAT WAS MY BEST FUCKING FRIEND DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT THAT MEANS?"
"I did not think it mattered."
"LISTEN: I KNOW YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS STUFF BECAUSE YOU ARE YOUNG AND STUPID," she was two years older than me. "I AM TRYING TO BE VERY PATIENT WITH YOU BECAUSE I KNOW YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE YET, BUT THIS WAS VERY STUPID. WHAT MADE YOU THINK THIS WAS GOING TO BE OKAY? LISTEN, FETUS. THIS IS THE REAL WORLD AND THIS IS THE WAY IT WORKS, OKAY?" She yelled at me like that for a while until I went back inside. Later in the day I came back out for another break and there she was again. She cussed me out in front of some art school smokers.

After that Beth would not kiss me any more. At the time I believed Katrina held their friendship over Beth's head. I think to some extent this really was the case. You could even say Katrina's plan worked because we had sex again and I would call her up sometimes if I wanted to have sex. It never felt much better than the first time. However, when I think about it now I can't be certain the interaction I had with Beth was consentual, either.

The last time I saw Katrina she was wearing a German hiker's hat while she moved out of her Jamaica Plain apartment. She told me she was going to start a farm in Asheville, North Carolina. That is where she was going to raise her three unborn children. The kids she was going to have with a thirty six year old man she met two weeks before on a trip. They had been having unprotected sex in his kitchen since they met.

Some months after that Katrina sent me a thanksgiving card. It was a hand turkey she made herself. Last I heard about her was from a girl I met at a roller skating party here in Oakland. She said she was living with Katrina in Brooklyn, New York. Katrina was doing just fine. I never asked about the kids.