Oh baby, you’re a classic,
like a little black dress.
-Fall Out Boy

I’ve come back to my life feeling relaxed for once. My impromptu trip to Seattle was just what I needed. Most of the time spent there was with my family, but on my last full day I decided to this girl I used to like, Lana.

Ever watch “A Walk to Remember” with Mandy Moore? Lana kind of reminds me of Mandy Moore’s character, with less frumpy clothes.  Sort of. I’ve known Lana for years, back when she still lived in Hawaii.  I liked her for a better part of the summer when I was just 18 and I’d like to think that she might have liked me too. Nothing really happened between us, apart from flirting and sexual tension, but from time to time after she moved to Seattle she still crossed my mind.

After she moved, she joined a church there and became very religious, like one of those people who found ways to talk about God and the Holy Spirit in trivial conversations about food. I saw her once before about five years ago while I was visiting my parents, but she was too pushy about me going to church with her while I was there and it just killed the conversation.

For that reason, I usually avoid meeting up with her while I’m in town. I like the idea I have of her from years ago when she’d reach for my arm while we walked together. This new, almost religiously fanatic Lana is unfamiliar to me, and I don’t know how to act around her, so I usually just avoid her all together. This time, though, I felt like I wanted to see her.

“I have this whole adventure planned for us today,” she said when she picked me up. “I know you take pictures, so I chose some good places for us. Take any good pictures while you’ve been here? What have you been doing?”

“Sleeping, mainly, and eating. It takes up a lot of my time.”

“Oh, I can imagine,” she smiled. I like girls like Lana because you can hear it in their voice when they’re smiling, as if her mouth lifted up the words before escaping her lips.

We drove to this park that I’ve never heard of, which overlooked a bay and the Space Needle in the distance. We walked to the top of a butt-shaped hill and sat together in silence on a rusted bench. I snapped a few pictures of the landscape, but tried to take a few of Lana we talked. I had forgotten how pretty she was, with her bubbly personality and smile.

I asked her what she had been up to since I last saw her and she told me a lengthy story about God and moving out of her parent’s house. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I know you don’t want to hear this stuff and I don’t mean to sound like I’m preaching.”

“It’s fine,” I half-lied, after about 45 minutes of listening to her story. I wasn’t really interested in her story, but I liked hearing her talk. She was kind of cute when she was passionate, even if it was about God. She smiled in a way that made me feel a bit like we were on a date, but I quickly reminded myself this was exactly the opposite.

“Do you remember that night I slept over your house?” she asked, turning to see my reaction. “You know, I always thought I’d end up with a girl.”

That caught my attention. “You never slept over! I slept over your house once, but that’s it.”

“I did sleep over!” she argued. “YOU never slept over!”

“Well, obviously our time was amazing if it’s running a blank for you,” I said sarcastically.

She laughed. “I did sleep over your house. I remember.”

“Well, I slept over your house,” I countered. “I remember because the next morning I woke up hours before you did. The sun was shining right into your room and it was hot as all hell.” Oops, I said hell. “Do you remember our would have been date?” I asked, quickly changing subjects.

“We went to dinner, right?” She used her hands to unwrinkle her skirt. “But I think your ex-girlfriend came too!”

“Oh God,” Ooops. It’s hard to filter my language. “She insisted she come along and I remember  she was pissed when I decided I wanted to sleep over your house that night.” The breeze hit us then, so I jammed my hands in my pockets and leaned my face into my scarf.

“You’re so cute,” she said.

I didn’t know how to interpret it, so I just smiled. “So you thought you’d end up with a girl?”

“Yeah, when I was younger I always thought I’d marry a girl,” she said, in a very matter-of-fact tone. “That summer after we met and I moved to Seattle, I was really confused. I had dated a bunch of guys, but I always felt…I don’t know, just ‘eh’ about them. So I thought, I must be a lesbian, because I don’t believe in being bisexual. I feel like, you have to choose, you know?”

“So what happened?”

“I asked God if I was a lesbian and he said, ‘Lana, you’re not a lesbian.’”

I waited to see if there was more to her answer, but she didn’t say anything. “That’s it?” I asked.

“Yeah, just about,” she laughed.

I wanted to ask more, but I felt it would bring the conversation in to a really weird place. So instead, I let her lean against my shoulder and we sat together until the breeze got too cold for us to bear.

“Can we stop by my house?” Lana asked while walking back to her car. “It’s not far from here and I think my friend might stop by. I want you to meet her.”

Lana lived in this cute townhouse tucked away in a seedy neighborhood near downtown Seattle. “This place, right here, is my favorite,” she said, pointing at a fenced off area of concrete and tall, brown weeds.  “I don’t know why, I just think it’s beautiful.”

She unlocked the door and took her shoes off inside. When I turned around to close it behind me, she was right there. She just looked at me for a moment and then sighed, locking the door.

She led me to her bedroom (which was downstairs, surprisingly), took off her sweater, and tossed it on her bed. Her bedroom was practically empty, except for the bed, a tiny end table, and her laptop on the floor. “Haven’t really gotten a chance to settle in yet. You can sit down on the bed. I’ll be right back–do you want something to drink?”

“I’m good,” I answered, balancing myself to sit down on her bed. She disappeared upstairs and I tried to make myself comfortable.  Honestly, I always feel uneasy sitting on someone’s bed. It feel like it’s always a set up for sex, even if it’s not.

She came back to the room and then sat on the bed beside me. I tried to sit up straight so I wouldn’t look so frumpy. “I can’t believe you don’t remember when I slept over at your house,” she said.

“I remember other things,” I offered.

“Like what?” she said, crossing her legs and turning to face me.

“Remember that night we went to dinner and everybody ended up coming along? At one point you asked me to go with you to the bathroom. It was one of those one-stall places and you had me face the door while you peed. I remember it being super cramped and after you were finished and washed your hands, you tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned around and wanted to kiss you.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Dunno. Scared, I guess, and I just let the moment pass me by.” This would have been the moment that I would try and kiss Lana, but I was too scared. I couldn’t read her body language.  She looked as if she were waiting for something to happen, but before I mustered up the courage to follow through, someone knocked at the door.

“Must be Janey,” Lana said, touching my hand when she stood up from her bed. “I’ll get the door.”

I fixed my shirt and then followed Lana back upstairs to the main floor to see them hugging.  Janey was average looking, at least at first glance, but she was really friendly.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” she said, walking over towards me. I extended my hand, but she wrapped her arms around me and gave me a quick squeeze. “Jesus loves you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What? I mean, oh, thank you.”

She guided me to the couch, staring intensely at me as I searched for Lana, who was filling glasses of water.  “So how do you and Lana know each other?”

I paused. “Ah–through a friend. What about you two? Church?”

“How did you know?” she said, hitting my shoulder.

“Just a guess.”

Lana sat next to me on the couch, our legs touching, putting the three glasses down. “In case you’re thirsty.”

“So tell me all about yourself!” Janey said to me. “What kind of work do you do?”

I didn’t know how to answer. I figured I don’t know this girl well enough to offend her. “Um…well…”

“Don’t lie!” Lana scolded me. “Tell her the truth.”

“Um.” I took a long gulp of my water. “I work for a porn company.”

Janey didn’t respond right away, so I was afraid I had offended her. “My goodness!” she exclaimed. “That’s hilarious. Like on camera stuff?”

“Oh, God no,” I said. Oops, didn’t mean to say that.  “Just behind the scenes stuff. Marketing.”

“That’s hilarious!” she laughed. Phew. “I know, let’s play a game so I can get to know you better. It’s called two truths and a lie. You go first.”

Why don’t I just tell you three things about myself? I was too lazy to think of a lie, so I tell her three true things in hopes of making things go by faster. Lana brushed against my side, our shoulders touching.

“Okay, my turn,” Janey said. “First thing, I didn’t cut my hair until I was a junior in high school. Second thing, I’m allergic to pineapple. Third, I hung out with hookers in Las Vegas.”

I shrugged, not really wanting to know which one was the lie.

“Well, I’ll tell you the last one…is true!” she answered.

“I want to hear that story!” I added. Big mistake.

“Well,” Janey started. “My church group and I went to Las Vegas to start a church.” I immediately tuned out then. Janey’s story lasted at least 45 minutes and Lana left the television off in the living room so I had nothing to look at. The basic gist of the story is that Janey makes friends with a hooker in Vegas that can’t find a church to join, until she finds Janey’s church. This hooker wants to get out of prostitution and get others out, so she makes little goody bags of chapstick, pads, earrings, etc. and searches the Strip looking for other hookers. “Jesus loves you,” the hooker tells the other hookers, giving her a goody bag. Apparently this was a big thing and the hooker called herself Hookers 4 Jesus. That was about all I could handle listening to, so I started counting the fine blond hairs on Janey’s arm.

Finally Janey took a breath. “Lana, are you crying?”

I shot around to see Lana wiping tears from her eyes. “It was just so beautiful.”

I obviously missed the cue to cry and it was too late to fake it, so I sympathetically patted Lana on the knee. “You okay?”

She nodded yes and then clutched her chest. “That really shows you the power of Jesus.” I figured at this point getting anything from Lana would be out of the question.

We hung out for an hour or so and then Lana offered to drive me home so I could have dinner with my family. Her and Janey were going to youth group later that evening, but I told them I’d pass. Janey rode in the backseat when Lana drove me home and I had to listen to a long discussion about I don’t know what.

When I got home, Lana got out of the car to say goodbye. She held me longer than I thought necessary and I felt obligated to stand in the driveway and wave at her until her car pulled out. I went inside the house, had dinner, and then unloaded my pictures from the day on my laptop. There was a candid of Lana from sitting together on the bench on butt hill that made me really wish I kissed her then.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

1 Comment » Posted: November 28th 2009
Filed under: My Life is Strange, The Crazy, The Good
Tagged In: are you serious, hookers 4 jesus, seattle, so much is left unsaid