Rooftops - Julien Baker

The Factory Family

ALIZA

There it was in all its...What's the opposite to glory?... Shame?

A giant rectangular structure, pale yellow in colour, although chipping away to an off-white. Vines, wrapping tightly around the corners, climbing their way to conquering the building. A stony gravel that nobody had step foot or wheel on in years. Spookily overgrown trees, morphing themselves into shapes of monsters in the corners of your eyes if there was no light on them. 

My stomach felt weird, but I didn't want to scare Julien any more than she clearly was, so I kept quite as our footsteps crunched. "Let's rip off that board, it looks half off anyways." I point. She hums in response. I start hacking at the wooden plain, left of the main door. I manage to get a crack down the middle and from there, it's easy to snap the damp, cheap wood in half. I jump up and into the brown carpeted room, looks like an office. A desk, a chair, peeling wallpaper. It's eerily similar to a home study or a house. I turn back around to see Julien struggle again. "Take my hand!" I say, holding it out. She squeezes my hand as she pulls herself through, almost losing balance. "Oh." Julien realizes she's forgotten to let go. I smile timidly. 

"Let's explore, eh?" I suggest, pulling my sleeve over my hand to turn the knob, I know why this factory closed and I don't want to be part of that, even just a fingerprint. We enter a hallway and walk towards the biggest room I've seen. The doors have been left open. The eeriest thing is that there wasn't a lick of spray-paint or signs anyone had been here since it closed. It felt unwelcoming, like we were intruding...well, technically we were.  A huge conveyer belt, lots of levers, buttons, wires everywhere. "Let's set up camp here." I grin at the high ceilings and vast space. I begin unpacking my little backpack and sleeping bag. Julien is unusually quiet, making a strange expression with her mouth where it's all pushed to one corner. "We don't have to stay if you're scared." I consider the daftness of following a new friend into whatever this is. "No, no it's...fine." She assures me, unpacking. I feel like a dick again, I tend to be selfish when it comes to doing things I want to.

We settle down, talk about abandoned places in Julien's old town and graffiti. How drawing dicks on things are ugly and unoriginal, how vulvas are prettier and more 'artistic'. We talk about experience, or lack thereof, with these parts and how inaccurately they are depicted in graffiti. How Julien's never been with someone properly, or at least someone she actually likes. "I've only dated one girl, when I was like...15." I admitted. "Girl?" Julien echoed. The room felt so loud, with nothing but wind peeking through.

"Oh... yeah sorry, I forget being gay is like... not the norm sometimes. I'm bisexual." I explain. She went quiet but couldn't stop smiling. "No, I'm... I'm gay too, I came out a year or two ago." Julien didn't surprise me at all. The baseball hats, the stretched gauged lobes, the way her hands moved, she screamed lesbian. "Oh, how were your parents about it?" I ask, not knowing what else to say. Her whole face crawls into a wide beaming smile, all her teeth on show, "Surprisingly well." 

Silence fills the enormous room now. What do I say? Maybe I'll offer to tell her about the factory, to pass the time, I open my mouth-

SQUAWK 

We both jump with fright, even though it was clearly a bird. Although my heart is pounding a million miles an hour because I thought I was being attacked, I play it cool. I laugh it off as she fills the silence with my dream question: "How did this factory get left like this, anyway? Wouldn't it have been good economy for this shithole?" Julien asks curiously, laying down with her hands behind her head. I lay beside her but facing her. "The year was 1975..." I begin. She giggles. 

"Nah, I don't know what year it was but, basically, there was this huge family. Something like 16 siblings?" I question myself. "More like sperm factory, damn! Keep it in your pants!" Julien jokes, making me smirk. "Anyway, the dad buys a plot of land here, to start a business, industrial revolution and whatnot." I begin getting into the story.

"Wow! Smart girl!" Julien teases, I feel my face getting warm, the only thing warm in this room. The windows are busted, and wood isn't a good insulator, obviously. We can't start a campfire, that would be just plain dumb. "He's like, Gee whatever shall I produce in this time of producing shit? and-" Julien cuts me off with a cackling laugh. "That's a direct quote!" I add. 

She turns to face me, so we're like two halves of an apple, hugging our knees to catch a break from the chilliness. We look at each other for a minute. I forget about the factory, and the fact ghosts are watching, and that our parents will kill us, and that I hate this town and that I'm cold, and that we're sleeping on glorified blanket-on-concrete by choice. 

All I can remember, all I can see, is Julien. 

Her eyes, her lips, her nose, her cheeks. Her breath, like a tide, pulling me in and out. Then the wave washes over me, the revelation. 

"What are you looking at?" Julien pulls me back to reality. "Uh.. nothing." I clear my throat, looking up at the ceiling, the sleeping bag below my back rustles as I turn.  The flashlight illuminates everything, I took my dad's good one, I pray the batteries are full enough. I had a lighter and a candle too, if all else failed. "I can't believe I followed your grape ass here." Julien sighed. "What fruit are you then?" I question, in my own world, examining every inch of the ceiling. "All of them." She made a gay joke, but it was true.

She could be ripe and smooth like a mango, or tough and cool like an apple, or even sweet like in-season strawberries. The revelation earlier, the thing I discovered, was that I might-

"Anyways get on with the story Ali! I want to know what ghosts I'm working with!" Julien pestered. "Oh, right. So at first he produces canned foods but then a couple years later he expands to meats and spam, not super important. So, a lot of people in this town have family members who worked here because what else was there, y'know?  This guy got greedy and started to pay the employees less and less, so the employees banded together to start a... revolution... I guess? The machinery conveniently had a freak malfunction a week or so later. that condenser/presser thing." I pointed to the pole of metal with a heavy circle of shiny steel that would seal containers, with one missing sharp prong from it. 

"It was supposed to go Du...du...du..." I demonstrated with my hands, clapping at a slow beat. "But then it started going dudududu." I clapped rapidly. Julien raised an eyebrow, not sure if she could laugh.  "There was a guy my dad knew relatively well working in that section... Tom something...everyone heard a loud bang and saw sparks flying from the machine. He realized that something had gone wrong and tried to turn off the machine. But it was too late, and one of the blades had broken off and flew towards him. He was sliced in half like- right in his stomach." I nod, telling the final details. "Fuck, man." Julien sighed loudly. "It obviously closed down a while later, but the company guy never got in trouble because it was a 'freak accident'" I explained further. "So we're up against some bitter ghosts." Julien nodded with a grin. She seemed so interested, it made me feel so heard for once, even if it wasn't my gruesome story.  

We laid in silence again. 

Too much silence, the cogs in my brain rubbed together again.

The revelation. 

I think I like Julien.

Fuck, man.