Getting Rid and Writing

She ran the hot water to get it boiling. Hot water will bring it to the surface, she thought as she folded a washcloth up tight and soaked it in the blazing stream. If she popped it now, it would not be angry and red by the time she visited her boyfriend.

These things have to be thought through.

It was a good thing she was a Forward Thinker. Imagine the horror of leaving it another day or two--allowing it to get larger and more inflamed. At that point it would be too late to take care of. It would be a pustule-filled wet blanket on the weekend. She had waited too long to see her boyfriend. And she wouldn't be able to see him again for a while. She could feel the stress of a perfect weekend making her skin more oily.

He was a freshman at a college upstate 2 hours away; she, a junior at their hometown university. The age difference might mean something now, but when they were old and in their 30s no one would even care. She packed a few outfits she looked good in and her laciest panties and bra, put her bag in the AMC Hornet and tuned the radio to a local disco station. She planned to arrive when his classes were out at 2pm.

That night, fumbling in the dark in a drunken fog, he was having trouble getting the key into the dorm room lock. "I can't find the hole if it doesn't have hair around it," he said, and it had taken her a minute to get the joke. She was drunk too, making everything witty and so much more funny. She laughed, feeling included and popular, and part of something inside and dirty. The best. Included is absolutely the best thing to be. She was having fun. This is what people do. She was so glad she had come.

After more beer and a joint, her boyfriend crashed on his dorm bed--not enough room to even turn a phrase but she was fine on the floor. Everyone crashed around 2am in varying places and positions; his roommate passed out lying in the wrong direction on his own little cot. Her head--spinning like a tilt-a-whirl at the State Fair and that constant cottony ringing in her ears--just finally turned off. She dozed for an unknown amount of time.

When she awoke, she wet her lips and rolled off of her numb hip. The floor was cold and hard. The blanket was thin, inadequate. Above her she heard voices.

Her boyfriend's roommate was whispering. She could hear soft little kisses, saw the shadow of his hand push away a lock of hair from her boyfriend's sleepy face. She felt sick.

Hemingway said, "Write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." I can finally write that sentence now.

We are the sum of our scars, and it's the scars that make us beautiful.