Summer o7

it's time for a goddamn story.

i don't own a tv.

a year ago i didn't own anything but my car and a duffel bag of clothes. i sort of drove around and changed in the bathroom in the coffee shop and read books inside the bookstore and ate meals of free samples in grocery stores.

you see my house burnt down a year ago. lightning struck the gas pipe and sent the bed where my grandmother sleeps into a cindered oblivion. the emergency auto-call thing got knocked out but, strangely, the air conditioning worked fine and probably took pleasure in pumping soot to every corner of the house. my bedroom was damaged and goddamn if i don't wish everything in it had burned. i don't think i would have even missed all those letters he sent me, it's not like i miss him.

my sister and i were away. my brother woke up my parents. he saved the dog. he and my dad tried to put it out. they saw the smoke coming up from the vent and smashed bottles of snapple over it. it was the closest thing they could grab.

they called me. i was at the beach. mom said the house caught fire, that the family was safe. i was looking through the sales boxes at express. i wanted a pair of purple shorts. i wanted a pair that had pockets on the back so that i didn't look like i had a lumpy white girl ass. i didn't want to talk to my mom because i didn't want to have to get permission to buy anything.

the first thing i could think of was how it had finally happened. i was finally out of that house. that prison i hated. it was a box among boxes in the mind-numbing suburbs. it was the biggest box around, but it was still just a fucking box. it had all my shit inside it, but that was just shit. the fire took it and left the ashes. i was free.

that was the happiest summer i can remember. i mean, i've only had 18 summers. but still, there are some quality childhood summers that are in the running. there's something to be said.

we lived in a hotel and we rented a house (in an even more mind-numbing set of boxes) and all i wanted to do was be away from the house. we got a lot of stuff back, i got a lot of clothes and some books and some music. but starting over just felt so good. only having three outfits and four cds and a 20 in pocket and a full day ahead is the grandest feeling i can well record. hava java took me in and let me sit there for hours. he took me to missouri and let me sleep in every morning. the gap let me fold clothes every sunday for a couple bucks and some discounts on clothing.

my friends opened their arms.

that last week of summer was the best of all. we reverted. we were suddenly through with forcing intellectualism on eachother and gave into singing with the radio and sticking our heads out the window of the speeding car all the way to the drive-in.

we were teenagers. it was summer. life was good.

i'm back at that house. mom's slaved over the restoration. i have all my old clothes and old cds and old letters and old books. i looked forward to the books. not much else. there has got to be some way for me to survive the summer.

gas prices rule out treating the car like a steed to wander the countryside with. i live at the bottom of the world's goddamn biggest hill so biking around doesn't seem too appealing. my friends live far away. i don't have a job yet.

i need to endure. what will this summer bring?