There is no neutral way to say I was fourteen
when I became a phone girl at the pizza place and the manager told me God,
you look way better with your hair up like that. Trust me,
the heat of a suburban plaza parking lot is bald,
humiliating, the rival of Mars.
And standing next to a pizza oven is like being licked
by the devil. But I felt I was just lucky
to be making money and becoming friends
with the seniors, their cars and secret freedoms,
tagging along to their parties where they made a game
out of getting me drunk, even if that meant sweating
all summer in a grey polyester polo taking orders
and wiping windows, squatting on asphalt breathing bleach. I was practicing
my new smile, so recently naked
of braces, I could still taste the glue of the brackets.
And everything was inaugural: a series of exposures.
Once I got so nervous ringing up
the university women's volleyball team
picking up six large for a seasonal soiree, beautiful women
in pink tanks, their lean limbs swaying
like the leaved curtains of willows,
that I punched in the wrong number and charged $9000
to their coach's credit card. My manager said, trying to reverse the charge,
That's quite the balance your coach has.
And one time the driver Cocaine Keith forgot a 2L of Pepsi
and after being scolded by the patron came careening
back into the parking lot, grabbed it from the fridge and shook it furiously
yelling I'm going to let it explode all over his face.
And sometimes I'd tell my mom
I had to stay late. And I'd sit cross legged
in the back of an older boy's pick up truck.
And he'd smoke a joint, and I'd shriek a little
when he let the ash fall on my thigh, a wretched
baptism. And he'd hold it out to me, the end
of it crumpling in flame, and I'd take it,
my whole body braced for experience,
and what he had to give me
was a set of instructions: breathe in and keep it there,
hold it in your lungs. What else could I do
but obey? I was fourteen, but I wasn't stupid: you really must believe
he was kind to me at first.
