Little Punk

I remember the night we burned the living room couch. Maybe it was winter. I was roughly fifteen years old and my mother had already left. The carpet had been pulled up from inside the house and sat unfinished for years, mismatched plywood and particle board. We started smoking inside then on the big leather recliners. I guess there was no more need for the couch. After all, couches are for families. Our backyard faced a country road and beyond that was a large field of cows. It was that horizontal line at the farthest end of that cow farm where I’d watch the sunset every evening. The sun would cut into the edge of the earth and fade slowly while I’d feel the ache of time wasting away.

We set fire to the couch in the dirt of the backyard. We were careful. The only sacred plot of dirt was near the fence. That plot belonged to them, the beloved animals who’d gone too soon. A cemetery adorned with homemade tombstones made of broken desks and discarded objects. Names and dates written with markers and glitter paint looking dried and dissolved in the light of the flames. It was a massive fire. It burned for what felt like forever, as we drank and danced around it like feral children under a moonless sky.

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We were trapped in a place where house parties paralleled themselves alongside the winter months. Binge retreats. Cigarette packs scattered the concrete of the garage, boxing matches in the living room, skate ramps built out of boredom and trash. Anything became an escape from the cold, an escape from reality.

This particular party house was four houses down from mine. The walk was but a moment and yet the distance was immeasurable. Opening the door into the island of misfit toys. The only harm to befall you would be in your control. For once. That alone was soothing. We were miserable youths in a town forgotten. Kids without a need to fight amongst each other because we’d already had enough with our mothers and fathers and those who’d sworn to protect us. We were all sick of feeling something and this was the time to go without, if only for a night.

I remember the party floating into months, an endless stream of nights spent drinking, dreaming, smoking cigarettes out in the freezing cold, ready and waiting for the moment we would all find better things to do. Imagining the days we would leave to real cities and make something of ourselves. The artists of the night becoming someones in the real world one day. Standing huddled, communing in passionate conversation and wild adolescent thought. This was before we had computers in our hands. When we couldn’t “look it up” we had the power to romanticize the unknown. Speculation turned into dreaming that turned into wanting. Sitting dazed in the middle of nowhere, yearning for a purpose and a place. Hoping the spool of life would unravel and lead us to our destiny.

As usual it didn’t take long for the girls and boys to mingle. We all knew we were free. It was magnetic. It was nature. I’d make out with my girlfriends, upper class babes with longer hair who drove. We’d kiss boys, too, of course, but when we kissed each other it was safer. That way you didn’t risk ending up on the couch with someone you’d have to see in the halls.

I broke away from the girls one night, I remember. I met a cute guy who said he was from Maine. I fell in love with him in that moment simply because he was from somewhere else. He had a soft black multi-CD case that zipped open. He’d ripped the plastic disc holders out to keep his pot and pipe in. I smoked pot for the very first time with him because I thought he was cool and wanted to soak up his “not from around here” energy. And I did, and then never saw him again.

I’ve always known what it feels like to want something more. The wanting is real. I’m just not sure the more is. One night the lights finally went out on the party house for good. Of course, no one knew it then. It evaporated like most things; unceremonious. Like all the times before I walked slowly in the blushed blue of an Idaho winter sunrise. Every dazed step pushing off the seconds a little more until making it to my door. I’d light up whatever I had left in my jacket pocket, a Camel or maybe a lucky upside-down Marlboro Light. I’d wait for the smoke to hit my lungs so I could breathe deeply again. I walked down the sidewalk towards the house that didn’t feel like a home and into the rest of my life.