note to an eighteen year old self

find the bike store on figueroa, the one where all the fraternity and sorority people buy their beach cruisers, and go there alone because youre in college now, and youre entitled to do things like that - to walk down the steamy sidewalk, to walk in a huge circle because you only know two major streets, to walk in your newly ripped up jeans and the hippie top you always thought was too much of something to wear back home. walk in, browse around. look interested, but don't make eye contact with the salespeople. that will seem too immature, like you need their help to pick out a bike, like youve never had a bike before. you learned how to ride one, finally, when you were ten, going up and down the short uneven walkway that led to your house. you were afraid of bikes for most of your childhood because your father used to think the only way you would learn was if you got pushed down a hill. he tried a few times, but your mother was there at the bottom, her face beaded with sweat, to throw herself on you before you could crash. the whole equation was wrong, and no one ended up learning anything.

when the guy with the nametag on, chase, walks up to you, please dont stutter. just say, "uh, yeah, i just need a basic bike. cheap." act like youre paying for everything, for college and everything, from money you saved up by working summers and weekends and a coffee shop. even though he's startlingly attractive, with piercing blue eyes, and a tan so deep and even he looks cardboard, dont let your heart beat fast because when that happens you start to sweat, and then you get a little shaky and thats when the inevitable stutter happens. like when you were on the phone with john mckee in 8th grade, pacing around the house avoiding your mother's ears, and you asked if he had been playing his "guit-guit-i mean, sorry, guitar." this is the first of many, many occasions in college when you will have to act cool at all costs. get used to it.
he will tell you which ones are best, and show you some used ones that look to be in OK condition. just pick one! it doesnt matter, just pick one. you pick one, a five year old raleigh, and he carries it, his forearm muscles flexing as he picks it up from the hanging rack. hes a man, you think. and hes probably close to your age. another thing you have to get used to. you bring out your brand new debit card, the one your mom puts a certain amount in a month. you never actually worked summers at a coffee shop, just a few weeks at a local retail shop for petite women. youre 5'10, and soon that became a problem for your boss, who said that though youre very personable, petite women would probably feel more comfortable being sold clothes by women who understand what its like to be petite. you forgot why you applied for that job in the first place.
before you give him your card a group of three guys walk in. one is overweight and wearing one of those john belushi t-shirts that just says "college" on it. another one is tall and skinny, blond and tan. you are noticing that this is a trend, that many of the guys you will see at a college in LA are probably from LA or near LA, and therefore have spent their lives cultivating blond hair, tan skin, and the illusion of a surfboard glued to the side of them. the third one has brown hair and looks like someone you would have gone to school with back home, slighty nerdy, a bit too skinny. quickly glance away. give chase the card, sign your name casually, messily. listen to the sporadic conversations of the three boys, notice their awkwardness and feel a bit relieved by it. after you pay, dont walk away without getting the bike! and if you do, laugh about it, roll your eyes at yourself. be endearingly careless, play up your charming forgetfulness. catch eyes with chase and feel your stomach spasm, and then walk the bike out of the store. let the skinny brown haired guy open the door for you, and try not to be conscious of your face, burning. smile and do that quiet chuckle thing, and then head back down figeroa. in a block, you hear someone saying "wait!" you turn around and its the skinny guy, running after you. swiftly wipe your sweating forehead with the back of your hand, and say, yeah?
when he asks you to lunch, shrug and say, sure. smile about it all the way home, never realizing that youre walking the bike instead of riding it. tell your roommate chelsea, who eats her corn flakes and yogurt every monring in nothing but panties on the couch in the apartment you accidentally got placed in, and chain smokes cigarettes using the old-timey holders, that you got hit on at the bike store. she, who will soon introduce you to stilleto heels and the power of a fabulous purse, will call it a triumph and mix you a screwdriver. think to yourself, though dont say it out loud, im really in college now.
when you go to lunch with him at an italian restaurant around the corner from your campus, remember to ask questions about him, dont talk only about yourself. pretend to be interested in his ambitions: though he really has a talent for photography, he's purusing a business degree. dont laugh. dont feel smug, not yet, that youre bored by an upperclassman business major who is in a "good" fraternity. on the walk to your spanish class, shake your head at the irony- that the first question you asked, what are you studying, was enough to keep him talking the whole time. but when he asks you to his fraternity's formal, say yes. let chelsea dress you, take a shot of cheap vodka with her in the kitchen before you go. introduce yourself to his fraternity brothers and their identical dates at their house before the bus comes to take you all to a bar in hollywood. all of the guys drinking out of red cups, slouched back with legs spread on the old leather couch, their blond dates all wearing black, short dresses and high heeled black sandals with their toes hanging over the top. you feel out of place, in your gold a-line dress, but for the first time since you got to college its a wonderful feeling. you offer your hand to the first person you meet, and he looks at your date smirkily before grabbing your fingers and saying "pleasure to meet you." the girls laugh, and you go to the kitchen and make yourself a very strong vodka and kool-aid. make it stronger.
on the bus ride you get clausterphobic and kindly turn down the flask thats being passed around. your date, sitting much too close to you, is suddenly very interested in all of the places youve travelled to. start lying. tell him about a safari you went on in the sereghetti when you were very young, tell him about the year you lived in barcelona. lie about waht your parents do, how many siblings you have. construct a character and see what reaction you can muster from him with each twist and turn. when you say, marilyn monroe was my great-aunt, watch him nod in approval and say, cool. when you dance with him at the slick, mirrored bar the fraternity rented out for the night, dont let him grope you. when you grabs your ass, hard and greedily, say im getting a drink, and sit on the bar stool next to a gay guy named felix who says no one in the fraternity has caught on yet. buy him a martini and talk to him about the scene in the great gatsby when daisy clings to gatsby's shirts and sobs. when your date comes up to you, sloppily, a tiny blond barefoot girl hanging from his arm, and says, i think its time for you to go, say, i think thats a great idea. give felix your phone number, walk outside onto sunset boulevard, and hail a cab. or get onto the bus, tell the driver your date is a prick, and get him to take just you all the way back home.
your bike gets stolen from the rack outside your apartment within a week, but you dont mind. the brakes didnt work anyway.

truth or dare

they are driving up the side of a mountain in santa barbara, sitting on ecah others laps amidst camping equipment, loose clothes, bags of junk food and a boom box. or rather, they are being driven, by robinson's friend from high school who is smoking a joint and bobbing his head back and forth to a nick cave tape. robinson's friend, who everyone calles wolf, lives on a "commune" that consists of a semi-circle of trailers, planted into the ground and unlockable. this was supposed to be a weekend for the two of them, parker is thinking again. they were going to save money and stay with wolf, since the wine tasting festival she had bought them tickets for was so near his "house." as soon as they pulled up, in the middle of a thursday night, she knew where it was all headed. robinson, thrilled to show off how adventurous, how spontaneous and young he is, delighted in the prospect of sleeping on a formica counter top covered in towels. she was angry, the second they arrived.
and now, after showering outside in a 3 walled stall that backed up to the "main house" (she insisted on wearing a bathing suit but robinson snuck in as she was shampooing and unhooked her bikini top, telling her to live a little as he squeezed her breasts) they are driving up the very rocky, unpaved side of a mountain to the natural hot springs that wolf said will change your life. next to wolf, in the passenger seat, is his trailer mate, a red haired carpenter named northrup who had been going to med school at johns hopkins but dropped out after less than a year. he is at least five years older than robinson and wolf, which makes him at least eight years older than parker. she thinks a lot about age, because it hasn't stopped being exciting to her that she is nineteen years old and dating an older guy who is a musician and who looks famous, somehow, and acts famous too, and she attributes the way he looks and acts almost soley to the fact that he is older, and thinks that when she is his age, she will probably look and act that way too. even though they've been dating for over a year, they met on the first day of her freshman year, its still exciting.
they had all gotten stoned in the main house before they left for the hot springs, with the people who created and ran the commune- a guy and two women, of various ages, and the parents of a two year old boy who ran around stark naked and only said macaroni. macaroni, macaroni, macaroni, over and over in different tones and intensities. everyone, especially once they were high, thought it was amazing, awesome, and hysterical, in an endearing way of course. parker just thought it was sad.
robinson had only smoked once before, months ago in l.a. in the vast and blindingly white loft of a british guy named will who claimed he was a lord of some sort. no one knew enough about british lords to press the issue, so they took his word for it and came to the parties he threw and DJ-ed at. they said, come to my friend will's loft downtown, you know will, the british lord. robinson smoked the joint that was being passed around on the backless black sofa, and immediately he turned green. though she was drunk and stoned herself, she drove them both home on the lonely expanse of the 110, took off his clothes and put him into bed. the next day he said he must have eaten something bad at dinner.
again, as she had expected, he is getting sick in the back of the pathfinder. he is clutching onto her arm and his eyes are closed, but everytime wolf asks him a question, or comments on the music, robinson jutts forward over the console and says, yeah man! yeah!
finally they pull up to the hot springs, which look like an above ground pool. there are a couple of people already in it, although the only light they have is that of the moon, which is low and orange in the sky. parker had been praying the whole drive up. she hadnt prayed in a long time, not really, and she wasnt even sure if what she did counted. it wasnt praying as much it was desparate begging, concentrating on the fear so hard that the fear itself shrinks. the road was barely wide enough for their car, and all she could see on her side was a jagged, infinite death, one that would allow enough time to realize what was happening. no one else seemed worried, or even aware, of the danger they were putting themselves in- wolf and northrup still smoking and trading disconnected comments, and robinson trying so hard not to vomit. when she felt got out and stood up she had to swallow the lump in her throat, the sweet suggestion that even stoned, even in a place far away from anywhere she's ever been, god was there.
they start taking off their clothes. wolf, she noticed from the first second they met, was gorgeous. he was tall and lean, blond and sunburned and there was dirt underneath his fingers. he was the hippie version of what robinson seemed to want to be- accidental. now he is taking off his shirt and the other boys follow. he takes off his jeans and so do they, in a way that doesnt make it obvious how in need of his leadership they are. parker, turned slightly away from them, is rummaging through her bag, trying to decide what to do. there is no way that she is getting naked. shes never been naked in front of anyone like that before- robinson has of course seen her with no clothes on but not like this, not standing up, not all of her at once. she glances over and sees their naked asses walking to the water. they havent brought enough towels and suddenly she is overwhlemed with anger again. she wants to be at a hotel, eating real food and sleeping in clean sheets. she doesnt want her boyfriends friends, who she may be very attracted to, to see her naked body walking towards them, to see parts of her floating in the water. she really wants to be able to do this, she really thinks that she is a kind of person who would be free and crazy enough to just, get naked! but she isnt, and after coming so close to death she is realizing that she doesnt have to be, that for right now shes not going to worry about anything because they made it up the mountain and shes alive and shes going to get in the water in a t-shirt and just try to have a good time.
as soon as she gets in robinson looks at her, growlingly. the last time he looked at her this way was when she called him baby in front of his friends. everyone saw it, but pretended not to, and she went to the bathroom and cried.
the two other people who are in the hot springs are a woman who looks about forty and a much younger boy. wolf and northrup have already started talking to them and sharing another joint. the woman glances at her as she is getting into the water, looks her up and down, and smirks.
an hour later and the woman suggests they play truth or dare. still parker has not figured out the relationship of the woman to the boy, though it seems somehow neither sexual or familial. they all agree, and the woman says, i'll start. she stands up out of the water and her nipples are huge and dark, and her breasts are lopsided and smaller than parkers.
you, she says, and points with one finger to parker.
parker smiles. "ok."
"truth. or. dare."
parker, keeping her eyes on the woman who is still standing above water, who is clearly loving that though its parkers turn everyone is looking at her, at her naked body, says, "truth."
without waiting for a second the woman says, "have you ever had sex."
robinson looks at parker. they've never had sex, because robinson wants to wait until he's married. parker has always thought that was a naiive idea, completely incongruous with the image he cultivates. he said his last girlfriend, who unlike parker had had sex before, became a slut after they broke up. when parker said, what does that even mean? he had said, you know what it means.
parker isnt sure what he wants her to say. if she says no, everyone will know that theyve never had sex. if she says yes. if she says yes.
"what do you think," parker asks the woman, who has now sat down.
"i think you dont even know," she says. and then, "your turn."