Daytrips into the city with Abby, which have all gone indistinguishable in memory. A montage. Her father would drive. She called him “girl.” She called everyone girl. I became “girl” in her address. I was interpellated. I didn’t know that word yet. Once or twice we took the bus. He’d drop us off wherever we’d decided to begin and then go—where? We didn’t wonder. We started in Hell’s Kitchen, at the flea market, where the woman told us about making costumes for Madonna. We were impressed. My MySpace display name was Blonde Ambition. It was there I bought the cropped green military jacket I loved, complete with epaulets, and the purple baseball jacket with yellow lettering that still hangs in my closet though it’s too small now and no longer my style. My first pair of motorcycle boots. Frye. I changed shoes right away—put my sneakers in the bag and pulled on the boots underneath my light wash bootcut Diesel jeans, which I’d bought at the local Marshalls back home and wore until they disintegrated in the thighs and even a little past that. That day was warm: I was wearing a pink tank top from the Juniors’ section of Walmart. On the front, in green letters, it said something like SUMMER PLANS: SUN POOL FRIENDS BOYS, with checked off boxes to the left of each item on the list. Around my waist I’d tied the white Members Only jacket I’d bought at the Salvation Army in Torrington. I remember what I was wearing because it was the first time I got catcalled, by a pretzel vendor. He wolf-whistled and said something I couldn’t make out. I loved it. I was fifteen. Like, a virgin. Later that summer, when I was wearing the same outfit but less like a virgin, a Marshalls employee would chase after me as I began to enter the men’s dressing room, calling that I’d gone the wrong way. I didn’t realize at first I was the “Miss” she’d mistaken. When I turned around, she apologized profusely. I wasn’t embarrassed, but she was. What can I get for you ladies? servers were always asking when I went out to dinner with a group of girls. Their apologies were what bothered me. At the Bus Stop Diner by the Port Authority, the old Irish waitress with the heavy blue-green eyeshadow thought we were precious. Abby told her the city her dad was from, the county where her cousins lived. I had my first BLT. Before any of this, we bought cigarettes. Right off the bus. Chainsmoking because we could, because we didn’t have to savor them, because we could buy as many as we wanted and had already bought two packs of Turkish Royals each. We went to head shops. We went to the Diesel store on Union Square, which had become an American Eagle by the time I lived two blocks away my freshman year of college. We went to the City Opera Thrift Shop, on East 23rd, where I flipped through CDs and bought one called The Red Shoes, by Kate Bush, whom I’d heard Tori Amos compared to. I loved Tori Amos and I knew that one Kate Bush song everybody knows (not the one on the hill, the one on the moors). I didn’t know I didn’t know anything yet. You already know my favorite song on the album. Here come the Hills of Time:
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