he drives a black skateboard riddled with blue spray paint and splattered with his dead dad's dried blood. at the time i drove a '96 camaro. it was 1999. now i drive a black jeep wrangler with the smell of dead pig still slathered on the leather seats. he still drives a black skateboard. anyway he taught me how to ride a skateboard that summer that i started shaving. my legs were plucked free of any lingering hairs and so little spots of dried up blood and scars that healed within less than a week lay on my knees and ankles. the tender spots he always used to kiss behind.
he always kept his hands wrapped around my waist when we did it ( i mean when we rode his skateboard ) and he would whisper hexes and love spells into my ear to get my feet to pound harder against the concrete and accelerate. when the spells worked, i could feel us lifting off of the ground, like his skateboard was a hover board lifting up dazedly into the meringue clear sky. each time he whispered his nonsense chants and rhythms to me i could always hear a distinct snap fizzle pop in my ear, mostly only when they worked.
he taught me how to undress myself properly. pretty girls didn't wear shoes, only when they were in olympus, painted in the sky with sandles hugging their ankles and cutting off their blood circulation, for a chance to run among the incestuous gods. so i ditched the shoes that whole summer and walked around my neighborhood barefooted, and the glass in the sidewalks plunged through my feet and the skin grew iguana textured, smooth and crackly. they always bled but they never hurt because i was under all his spells. since real pretty girls didn't wear shoes, or pants, all i had to do for him was slip and slide out of my flimsy nightgown-like dress and writhe around on the bed tempestuously as he got his pants off and got into mine. that was all he had to do. he never had any of those tedious rules for undressing guys, and he still wore skater socks in bed, with teenage mutant ninja turtles printed all over them.
he taught me how to kiss. one hand on his cheek, his hand around my throat, choking me like the pendulum he bought me for my birthday, the one that swung from left to right on my neck when i was around him, and the one that burnt my skin when i felt his touch.
one time he pushed me down the hill next to the abandoned house right next to the cult lodge that worshiped some insidious high priestess. he had no magick on his tongue, only whiskey on his lips and three beats pounding from his heart as he yelled at me to fly, to ride, to go, until his screams descended into nothing but sweet nothings that in effect, weren't so sweet, and hurt more than nothing would've.
blood pooled around my ankles and my feet and i wasn't deemed a real pretty girl again, just the child that i was with abnormally scraggly leg hair and constant bruises that drifted into scars. and he never taught me magic and he never closed his circles, so at the top of the hill lay only his shoes and a puddle of warm urine, he'd been swiped by the sky.
he never learned how to drive a real car and he never got his license. he skated everywhere and he even skated into oblivion. see, he forgot me along the hastily made trip. he'd always laughed about how "skater boys don't care about anything but skateboard" and i laughed along until the unattentive laughter morphed into sweet sobs escaping from my cherry lips. i remember him as sweet, but really, all demons are sweet until you look at them up close, something i never did (i never got the chance).
