Megan:I’m on it!
I reach into my purse and hand Mark some cash and a Visa gift card. “This should be enough for some fresh clothes and another week at the hotel just up the street. My friend, who is apainter, is looking to hire more people for his crew. They paint houses, mostly during the warm months, but he’s expanding to do interior painting. Since it’s September in New England, that means it’ll be cool soon. More projects for you.” I tear off a piece of a footlong receipt and write down my number and my friend’s number.
Mark shuffles his feet. “You think I could be a good painter?”
“No doubt, my friend.”
Megan Madonna has already replied that she’s so all over this. Mark is now in the good hands of my gracious and compassionate followers.
When I’m Nineteen
Patrick’s off-campus apartment is a haven during our college years and our favorite place to chat. We are away from the crowds, the noise. A chance to just be with each other. Our favorite, cheap meal is sautéed garlic, tossed with soy sauce and macaroni. “’Ronis.” It’s probably not very good by most standards, but it is at least something the cafeteria doesn’t offer, so it tastes fantastic to us and something a bit different from typical ramen noodles because we make it ourselves. Such chefs! We routinely scarf this up as we pour out our hearts. It is hardly healthy or filling, but the fact that this sad meal is better than the food from our cafeteria? College food miseries are the inspiration for me to start my social media accounts, hoping to help us students eat things that maybe have some actual nutrients, protein.
Checking out local places, hearing from other students and what they had to work with in their cafeterias and their favorite affordable eateries is now my thing. My little posts seem to blow up in the best way. Road trips to other colleges and checking out their on-campus and off-campus food, become routine.
Still, even as my following started to grow, Patrick and I always found comfort in his place while eating ’ronis. A stupid silly meal that still tasted so damn good because it was a me-and-Patrick meal.
Now, we’re hovered over the cramped table in his kitchen and inhaling this goodness when I get a text that makes me groan, and sigh, and swear, and my furious replies clearly become irritating, Patrick jabs me with his spoon.
“What’s up?”
“Boat issues. Nothing interesting.”
He jolts back and laughs. “I’m sorry, did you say something about a boat? You have a fucking boat?”
I glance up and nod rather weakly. “Um…I do.”
Patrick smiles broadly.
I come from a wealthy family, and he may have suspected this. My fancy little Audi sports car is usually the first and most obvious clue, not to mention the clothes I wear. I’ve tried to resent that car because it represents a tie to my deranged family, but, damn, she is beautiful and doesn’t deserve to be the object of my contempt.
I scramble some more macaroni into my mouth and try to play off the boat thing as nothing. But Patrick persists.
“When I was growing up, going to the lake was a main activity. Not exactly many to choose from. Most of the affluent families had boats, pontoons, Jet Skis—that sort of thing. When we got older, most of us got our own ski boats. I know it sounds ridiculous and excessive, but it was just our way of life.”
“Wait, so you know how to drive a boat?”
“A ski boat, yes. It’s actually not hard. And we didn’t do anything complicated. Pulled people on skis or inner tubes, just cruised around the lake. We’d meet in coves, tie off our boats, and just swim and float and drink. Harmless fun.”
Although, actually, it wasn’t. Looking back, I know it was reckless and stupid. It’s amazing that any of us remained unscathed or otherwise not scarred for life.
Patrick’s face tells me he’s at a loss. Which is why I don’t talk about this crazy shit on purpose.
“And what? No one stopped a bunch of drunk kids in ski boats? No police showed up?”
I shrug. It’s a life that is hard to explain when you didn’t live it. “Nah. Game wardens were in charge of everything on the water. They sometimes came around, but they went through the motions and left us alone. Asked for our boat registration, made sure we had the right number of life jackets. We knew them; they knew our parents. We weren’t dealing drugs; we just didn’t have anything else to do,and that was what our parents offered us. So, they didn’t bother us unless someone was acting stupidly crazy. It was all bananas.”
“But sort of awesome. Total freedom to drink and party!” Patrick finishes his macaroni with a smile.
“Sounds fun, doesn’t it?” I agree. “Most of the time, it was. Until something happened that reminded us that our parents were letting teenagers run around in boats, drinking underage, with no good sense, just so the parents were free to do what they wanted to do. We were supposed to appreciate all the material things and not want anything more. Like, God forbid we wanted or needed some sort of real nurturing or emotional support.”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I was given an expensive sports car for my fourteenth birthday. All the girls got them. The boys got massive, fancy trucks. We couldn’t even legally drive them, but that was just the standard.
“It was a small farming community. Farming makes people think of rednecks and tractors. But there are tons of money in multigenerational farming, and it is actually a sort of oddly glamorous existence. Especially in small-town America.
“We drove around as we pleased. Mostly on dirt roads with no speed limits or road signs. Drinking and blasting music. There were a few cops in town. They would sometimes feel obligated to pull someone over. But none of us feared real consequences. The cops would just make us pour out our alcohol, or they would take it with them. We just smiled to ourselves and knew what that meant. The cops knew who was who, just like we did. In a small town of distincthavesandhave-nots, it wasn’t hard. In retrospect, it could’ve been a quirky little Netflix reality show.”
