T.R.H
This is what makes us girls
We all look for heaven and we put love first
Somethin' that we'd die for, it's our curse
Don't cry about it, don't cry about it
This is what makes us girls
We don't stick together 'cause we put love first
Don't cry about him, don't cry about him
It's all gonna happen
The prettiest in-crowd that you had ever seen
Ribbons in our hair, and our eyes gleamed mean
A freshmen generation of degenerate beauty queens
And you know somethin'?
They were the only friends I ever had
We got into trouble and when stuff got bad
I got sent away, I was wavin' on the train platform
Cryin' 'cause I know I'm never comin' back
The summer I turned nineteen, I felt completely free for the first time in my life.
At the end of June, shortly following my birthday, my mother, during a particularly bad mental episode—which in those years, due to certain stressors, had become increasingly frequent and intense—accused me of doing drugs and kicked me out of the house. I had never done anything harder than weed or the occasional miscellaneous pill, but this was the perfect time for me to start.
I impulsively quit my job as a restaurant hostess and became a creature of the night, roaming the streets with my degenerate friends into the early hours of the morning, snorting lines and burning my fingers on pipes. I felt like the Wendy to my Lost Boys. Such was my short-lived Cat Marnell moment.
—
I was staying with my best friend, Z, and her mother in their condo. Z was my rock during this time and supported me emotionally through it all.
My boyfriend and I got caught in a web of misunderstandings and lies from malicious actors, which resulted in what felt to my underdeveloped brain like a tragedy of Romeo and Juliet-like proportions. His loyal best friend sat me down and, in his characteristically earnest fashion, advised me that due to my purported betrayal, he was disinviting me from a debaucherous 4th of July weekend trip to his family’s lake house. The night they left, whenever I tried to call my boyfriend’s phone, it went straight to voicemail. I called him about twenty times, sitting on Z’s bathroom floor, crying and crying, feeling that this was surely the end of everything.
The next evening, Z and I went to the park and came across two guys sitting outside of the multipurpose building which had been abandoned for as long as we could remember. After some introductory conversation and pleasantries, we realized we had mutual friends. They offered us a hit of their hash, to which only I obliged, and they invited us to set off fireworks with them in the middle of the desert.
We helped them push-start their broken-down jalopy and they left, with plans for them to switch vehicles and pick us up later that night. Z and I went over to the swing-set. I chain-smoked as I giggled and swayed.
We went home to get ready and texted our friend, asking if they thought we would get murdered. We briefly considered this possibility but nevertheless, when the time came, we got into the boys’ open-framed Jeep and zipped down the highway, wind rushing through our hair, until we arrived at our destination in the middle of nowhere. We drank beer, smoked, laughed, danced, and set off explosives in the dunes, lighting up the wide open desert skies and surrounded by nothing but sand as far as our eyes could see. At the end of the night we went to IHOP and sat and talked for hours over coffee and breakfast samplers (about what, I can’t recall a thing). We never saw them again.
When my boyfriend came home from his friend’s lake house, he told me he had simply forgotten his phone charger. This sounds like a bold-faced lie from a male manipulator, but it was unfortunately true. He was not one to use his phone, or to understand why this would be something anyone would care about, not even his girlfriend. I didn’t tell him about what I did while he was gone.
—
In August, I informed my aunt of the struggles I had been facing with my mom and she invited me to visit her, her husband, and my cousin for two weeks in a suburb of Dallas. She wanted to show me what a functional, stable, upper middle-class lifestyle could look like if I only went to college, as she planned for her daughter to do in the coming fall semester.
We went to many malls, dining and shopping at such esteemed establishments as the Cheesecake Factory, Cheddar’s, Brio Italian Grill, a Cinemark Bistro theater, the Apple Store, and Ann Taylor Loft. My cousin worked as a roller skating carhop at Sonic, so during the day when she was at work, I kept myself busy transcribing my grandmother’s old handwritten recipes or taking walks to explore the neighborhood. The first time I left the house I bravely navigated the pedestrian-hostile environment on foot to make my way to a Starbucks. On my way back, I started sweating bullets, both from the 100-plus-degree heat and from panic, realizing that I would never be able to identify which house was theirs because they all looked literally identical. I had to call my uncle and ask him to pick me up.
The official narrative was that my cousin had broken up with her boyfriend, but she confessed to me that they were still together and seeing each other in secret. Her mother and stepfather didn’t approve of him; at his young age of seventeen, he had a fairly extensive criminal record. He was legally emancipated from his mother and he now lived in his own apartment. He supported himself with a full-time job at a grocery store and, to his credit, had recently been promoted to assistant manager. He had one arm from a congenital deformity at birth; my cousin breathlessly confided in me that he would scale the flat brick exterior wall of her house, up to her second-story window like Spiderman, to sneak inside and ravish her.
I told my cousin about my dirtbag morally dubious friends back home. One night, she said, “You have to meet X. You’ll love him; he gets racist when he’s drunk.” Not that kind of morally dubious, but okay.
In Texas suburbs, front lawns are perfectly groomed to rigorous standards of conformity for the eyes of the front-facing public, but back alleys (as seen in King of the Hill) are where the action happens. We waited until my aunt and uncle were asleep one night, and under the cover of darkness, snuck out the back door and gate, into the alley, onto the street, and down the block to the corner to be whisked away by her friends, with the exception of her boyfriend, who I had yet to meet; he was working a late shift at the grocery store.
We drove to a park. I had only ever known parks to be a patch of parched grass with a playground in the center, but this was a wild, overgrown place spanning dozens of acres. It struck me as odd that we had to go so far out of the way to escape the watchful eyes of these kids’ helicopter parents. I lamented that I had no machete as we traversed through a pitch-black jungle of woody shrubs, spiderwebs, and branches beneath the thick tree canopy. All I could think about was what would happen if we came across some kind of wild fanged predatory animal, as my father had always told me not to trespass into nature after the sun goes down. We found our way to a wooden observation tower, climbed up, and sat in a circle to smoke weed. Rather than pass a blunt around as I was accustomed to, someone had brought a conspicuously large bong with them in a backpack.
Nearly all of my cousin’s friends were male except for her female best friend, who was also the girlfriend to one of the group. These young men were pale, light-haired, and grub-like, sporting graphic T-shirts and long cargo shorts. I would describe them individually, but they’re all a soft beige blur in my mind now. They grilled me about my fledgling relationship and asked me to twerk like Miley, a request which I declined to fulfill.
Of course, an evening out would have been nothing if it didn’t end at Whataburger, the epicenter of Texas nightlife. I ordered a patty melt and fries, shrunk into the corner of a booth, and avoided participating in any further conversation. I tuned out whatever the group was talking about and watched a throng of boisterous older frat boys drunkenly cavorting in their long-sleeved Oxford shirts, Chubbies shorts, and boat shoes.
My cousin’s boyfriend’s dealer had acid coming in from a chemist he knew, and she insisted that I join them for a group trip after we returned from an upcoming family excursion to Austin. She was excited for the further opportunity to bond and prove to me that she too was a wild child. So far, I was doubtful—her friends had come across to me as sheltered and childlike, and they were passionate about their love for The Big Bang Theory above all—but I like to always remain open to the possibility that I could be wrong.
When we went to Austin with my aunt and uncle, I hid my pack of Benson and Hedges cigarettes and hot pink lighter in the band of my underwear, sneaking smoke breaks whenever I could. We got brunch at Gloria’s Latin Cuisine outside of yet another mall. We wandered around the city streets in the sweltering 105-degree heat. I was used to excessively high temperatures in the Southwestern desert I called home, but that was more akin to being in an oven than the humid sauna of Central Texas. I feared I would perish and I ducked into a bookstore to recover.
I remember buying a rabbit-printed Erin Fetherston for Target dress with a busted zipper at Buffalo Exchange. It spoke to me, as in this time of crisis, I had recently adopted a discounted dwarf lionhead rabbit from the farmer’s market where I worked, seemingly on an impulse; I paid for him in tip money and spare change scrounged out of the cracks and crevices of my boyfriend’s car. (His name was Dale. He had beautiful blue eyes. I never got him neutered and he tried to have his way with my cat many times. He died a horny old man at the grand age of ten years old in 2022). Rabbits were one of my three “spirit animals” at the time, the others being rattlesnakes and moths.
I digress. The main event of our trip was my uncle’s family reunion at J. Lorraine Ghost Town in Manor, Texas. I had the social skills of a feral animal and had no idea how to talk to anyone who did not address me first, so I spent most of this night wandering around the dusty old buildings all on my lonesome. I sat, pensively reflecting in the old saloon with its anachronistic neon Bud Light sign. I cultivated a sunburn and got underage drunk on daiquiris. I did eventually find my way back to the group at around ten, and met a flight attendant who had recently married into the family and was obsessed with Goop; she referred to Gwyneth Paltrow on a first-name basis as if they were close friends.
—
We returned home. I accompanied my cousin and her friends to a southern food restaurant. A new face was in attendance; he was taller, blonder, and lankier than the others and kept picking up the phone to speak to his German immigrant parents in the harsh, guttural sounds of his mother tongue.
The group repeatedly referred to a place they called Genghis. I asked them what Genghis was and they gasped in shock. “You’ve never been to Genghis?” they asked incredulously, in a tone as if I were terribly uncultured and unaccustomed to the fineries of cosmopolitan society. They enlightened me, thank heavens, as I will enlighten you in turn if you are not intimately familiar with chain restaurants: Genghis Grill is a Mongolian stir-fry-themed bowl restaurant chain similar to Chipotle.
—
The plan for the night of the acid trip was to hang out in my cousin’s boyfriend’s apartment and watch Garfield: The Movie (2004). My cousin lied to her mother and stepfather, and told them we were going to sleep over at her aforementioned singular female friend’s house. Said female friend was not even in attendance at our gathering, and it ended up being an energetically hostile sausage fest.
The boyfriend’s apartment was in a rough area and resembled a seedy hotel. We ascended a metal staircase and turned the corner on the second-floor concrete walkway to enter his unit from the outside. He trauma dumped on the small group about his mother, who was a sex worker and would often see clients while he lay in bed in the next room. It was not a vibe.
I took half a tab to start and didn’t feel anything for a long time, so I took at least half a tab more. I continued to feel nothing until, sitting on the toilet to pee, my legs and arms were heavily distorted and appeared to be about a million miles long, my extremities so far away from me that it felt as though they didn’t exist. I pulled out my phone and frantically Googled my symptoms, diagnosing myself with Alice in Wonderland Syndrome.
I went into the living room as Garfield’s disturbing CGI visage flashed across the screen and I said I didn’t feel so good. I felt suffocated and went out onto the balcony for fresh air. My cousin’s German-American friend helpfully came out to sit with me and talked at me ad nauseum about all sorts of things, eventually divulging his sexual preferences. He told me about his love of cutting himself and/or whatever girl he was having sex with while in the act. I told him I wanted to be alone. After he went back inside, I fixated on a rabbit in a field in the distance and the moths buzzing around the balcony light. I knew they would protect me.
I came back inside and the exciting party was still raging as the Garfield movie was coming to a close. I looked up how to stop an acid trip and found Reddit posts about benzodiazepines being a helpful trip killer, which I did not have. But I had my barbiturate migraine medication, Fioricet, and using my best judgment, decided that this was close enough. I took two and fell into a deep slumber.
—
I awoke several hours later in the living room, dark, silent and empty. I called out and no one responded. I searched the apartment and didn’t find a soul. I didn’t know how I would be able to get home as I had no idea where we even were, and because my cousin had lied about our whereabouts, I felt like I couldn’t call my aunt and uncle for help. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to drive and obviously had no vehicle of my own, and this was before ride-sharing applications like Uber were even widely used.
I called my father, who I hadn’t spoken to in the months since I had been booted from the house, and my boyfriend. I sobbed as I loudly told them in separate phone calls about the situation. They were angry that I had been so reckless but they were mostly afraid for my safety. I told them I would call them with any updates.
I badly had to pee, and when I opened the bathroom door, I found my cousin and her boyfriend tenderly whispering sweet nothings to each other and writhing nakedly on the floor. For some reason, I hadn’t thought to check the bathroom in my earlier search of this small apartment, and they likely heard every uncharitable word I had to say about them. I interrupted them mid-coitus and said I wanted to go home. I excused myself to give them what little privacy they had left and shortly thereafter, her boyfriend drove us home in silence at the break of dawn.
I shut myself into my guest bedroom and went back to sleep until the early afternoon. I woke up, grabbed a bundle of cilantro from the refrigerator, put it in a bowl, and mirthlessly crunched on it in bed, sprig by sprig, as I hate-watched the newly released music video for Shake it Off by Taylor Swift.
—
I waffled back and forth over whether or not to tell my aunt and uncle about my cousin’s double life, as I felt that she was in a dishonorable crowd and was endangering herself on multiple levels with her lies. I also knew that she had been raw-dogging it with her boyfriend but her mom wouldn’t allow her to be on birth control out of fear of side effects, expecting her to be abstinent. I made the difficult decision to narc and told my uncle over my underaged margarita about what had happened at a taqueria lunch, just the two of us.
The young couple was separated with due haste and my cousin quickly grew to hate me over the remainder of the course of my stay. She suffered a compression fracture in her spine; she claimed this injury was sustained falling out of the shower but with my perhaps overly intimate knowledge of her predilections, I couldn’t help but wonder if she had hurt herself attempting to scale down her bedroom wall to meet her star-crossed lover. I had to take care of her during the day while my aunt and uncle were at work. We barely said a word to each other.
—
I was happy to come home. I reconciled with my twisted dysfunctional family, the first of many instances. My boyfriend and I distanced ourselves from our fast lifestyle over the next couple of months. I still remember the night we decided to stop doing drugs. We laid next to each other in bed holding hands until we fell asleep. We began using aluminum foil for legitimate purposes like baking. We took responsibility for our futures and started a new life together.
I never ended up going to college and I carved out my own path of professional success. I moved far from home and found myself deeply entrenched in the suburban lifestyle my aunt had envisioned for me, surrounded by malls and chain restaurants, ensconced in the beige comfort of my mass-produced pod. I had seen this as a benchmark of success, of proving that I’d made it, and have only recently realized I never even wanted this. I had been grasping for someone else’s idea of a beautiful, successful life. Now, I’m finding my way back to myself. I may have moved on to greener pastures, but my heart will never leave the glittering desert sands, purple mountains, and vibrant sunsets of West Texas. It was there where I was born, raised, and for a brief moment in the sun, took a walk on the wild side.
T.R.H. is an ardent champion of flyover state America.