from hothead paisan: homicidal lesbian terrorist, by diane dimassa
***I wrote this for my English assignment and yeah… Enjoy****
When I was seven I met a girl who made me giggle. My first
day at school and she walked up to me, her hands filled with sand, “Here, have
this, you’re my new friend.” I took it gratefully, stunned by this tiny girl
with glasses too big for her face. I carried it around with me until I was told
off; sand wasn’t allowed in the classrooms. We’d sit together and laugh and cut
out tiny pictures of animals we would tape to our tables. She’d tell me stories
of older siblings and slide her glasses up her nose right before they’d fall off
her face. I’d sit there and eat my lunch, chiming in every now and again to
tell her about my funny memories, which always resulted in her laughing so much
she began to snort. But summer was the
best, because the sun seemed to focus on her, making her blonde hair light up
and set her apart from our other classmates, always making me smile. She’d buy
red icy-poles from the canteen and would later hold my hand with her sticky
sugar coated ones during play time. It seemed as if nothing could compare to
her gapped tooth smile and messy hair. I remember thinking of our days as being the
best thing in the universe, having endless fun and never growing tired of silly
jokes or colouring in.
When I was ten I met a girl who made me smile. We’d sit in
her room with Avril Lavigne playing on her TV and her parents arguing from the
kitchen. I’d bring over my mum’s lipsticks and eye shadows and we’d give each
other colourful makeovers to help pass the time. She’d welcome me into her pink
room and her freckled cheeks would glow underneath our messily made blanket fort,
then we’d sing along to the music, our hands together as we danced across the
room. She embodied happiness and wore yellow flowers behind her ears, sometimes
woven into her two long braids. I remember movie nights with her feeling like
they could last forever, the morning never seeming to come as we lay in bed and
laughed at our own jokes, staying up past midnight and sneaking into the
kitchen to steal ice cream and cookies for snacks. These nights were magical
and held a kind of sacredness, nothing bad could enter our forts, nor could
parents or siblings. She gave me confidence, energy and ice cream.
When I was thirteen I met a girl who made me laugh. This
girl was fearless, she approached me with certainty and demanded that I be her
friend. She’d text me at four in the morning and we’d talk for hours on end.
This girl was my best friend, this girl was beautiful and she knew it. She’d take me by my hand and we’d run home
from school, collapsing on her bed, laughing, as we shook off our school bags.
She’d sit me down and open up to me about the things that erased the confidence
from her eyes, she told me about her mum and car crashes and things that made
her cry. I’d hug her and tell her it would be okay, because I felt as though I
needed to protect this girl, and I wanted to make her feel secure. We would
climb trees on her uncle’s farm and she would laugh when she had to help me up
to the highest branch, before kissing me and smiling the biggest smile I had
ever seen. I’d laugh nervously, my brain buzzing and my cheeks flushed, then
she’d kiss me again and we would just sit there, staring at the sunset. “Don’t
tell my dad.” She’d always say as we climbed down. For the longest time I
didn’t know if she meant don’t tell him that we’d climbed the tree or that we’d
kissed, I figured it out the next summer when her uncle came down to the back of
the farm to call us up for lunch and found us kissing. I was sent home and when
school started she wasn’t there. My teachers told me she was sent away to live
with her aunt in New South Wales.
When I was sixteen I met a girl who made me cry. This girl
was filled with shards of glass and storms. She was a hurricane that would
bring me along and then drop me to the ground when she was done. This girl
wasn’t kind or good for me, but she was captivating, she made me feel special
and loved and important. She’d pick me up in her old, beaten car and pause to
tie her long golden hair out of her face as she told me of the night’s plans.
When I was with her there were colours, there were lights and there were fields
of experiences and firsts and the little things that mattered. She’d put her
arm around me and promise me that tonight was going to be the best night ever, and
then we’d dance for hours on end, to music neither of us had ever heard. Whenever
we went out she’d be surrounded with crowds of older boys and pretty girls, but
she always managed to look down at me with her big green eyes that told me none
of them mattered, that nothing else mattered, because we were together and the
night was young and we had a car that could take us anywhere. But this girl was
poisonous. When we were alone she’d yell and scream and push me around. She’d
fill my ears with stinging words and leave me crying on her door step at the
end of each night when she was done with me. And for whatever reason, the next
day I’d come back, and we’d go out, and she’d love me, until we went back to
her house and she’d blame me for the car breaking down, or my parents finding
out we were drinking, or for her forgetting her keys. She’d blame me and I’d be
sent away shaken and scared, but I still came back.
When I was nineteen I met a girl who made me dance. I
complimented her on the scarf she wore to class every day, she had smiled and
whispered, “My dad bought it for me from Spain,” then she looked at me properly
and leaned in closer, “You have very pretty eyes.” I blushed and thanked her,
she smirked and resumed paying attention to the lecture. This girl was amazing;
she was charismatic and could charm anyone. She knew every student and every professor.
She was smart, creative and emotional in all the right ways. She was all things
bright and all things extroverted. This
girl was warm and this girl was lovely. She wore flowing dresses and took me to
sophisticated parties where we would stand in the corner and laugh at every one’s
ridiculous outfits, we’d get tipsy on champagne and spend the rest of the
evening in dingy cafes in the city that smelt like old smoke and pancakes. My
year with her was the best year of my life. Her dad would buy plane tickets to
fly us out to Spain to stay with him. We’d spend hundreds of dollars on
expensive Spanish food and waste hours watching street performers, dancing, and
just being in each other’s arms. She was the first girl I had fallen in love with,
and every moment with her was special, was magical, and was perfect. The night
before she left to move to Spain permanently we laid together in her bed and
cried. Eventually we stopped and I laid beside her, playing with her long red
hair as she rested her head against my shoulder, “This won’t be the end, long
distance works for a lot of people,” we’d tell each other. When she left, we
lasted for two months before we mutually agreed it wasn’t working, it took me five
months to properly recover. She was my first love.
When I was twenty-three I met a girl who made me jealous.
This girl could never love me back, this girl was the one that got away. I fell
for her despite myself. I really couldn’t help it, everything about her made me
smile; the way she covered her mouth when she laughed, how she did her makeup,
the way she cut her hair, the skirts she wore that would billow around her
every time she spun around, which was often. This girl was kind to me and took
care of me, she was my friend and was there for me when I needed her. We moved
in together and it felt like torture, I wanted so much more than what we had,
but I couldn’t have it, so I had to remain content with our current friendship,
with inside jokes and crying on each other’s shoulders. For then, it was
enough, but I couldn’t help pining. She eventually met a man, and for months I
was taken over with jealousy, why did he achieve what I could not? Soon she
moved out and moved in with him, they became engaged and I was forced to let go
of my feelings. Yet we still remain friends, and we have dinners together and
laugh about my younger self and her love stricken feelings.
When I was twenty-seven I met a girl that made me sparkle.
This girl, she was The One. She’s the girl that made time stop, that froze
everything around us every time we kissed. The girl that made my stomach fill
with butterflies and my head fill with romances. This girl was every definition
of perfect. I could stare for hours and hours and hours at this girl and her
beautiful blue eyes, at her constellations of freckles that littered her back,
I could stare and he stained lips and her short wavy hair, I could stare at
this girls tanned legs and I could listen to her angelic voice until the day I
die. I fell in love with all these, all of the beautiful perfect pieces of her.
I fell in love with her flaws also; the stretch marks pulled across her hips,
the small mole on her jaw, the scar in between her eyebrows from when she was a
child, the regretted star tattoo on her finger. Everything about her enraptured
me, she was perfect to me, and I too her. She’d surprise me in the mornings
with sweet coffee and a sweeter smile. This girl would take me on adventures I
will never forget. She made me feel like
a million stars, she made me sparkle, she helped me love everything, she helped
me follow my passions and to realise what love felt like. This girl was lovely.
