...think back to when someone loved you.
In very dark times lately, I keep seeing Ginny's face peering into the stock-room of the K-Mart where I worked in Azle as a teen. I normally worked in the women's department out on the floor, but someone that day had told Ginny that I was back in the stock-room. She peered in, with her hair Vaselined, and wearing a sleeveless shirt that we'd both recently just bought from K-Mart, in different colors.
Vaselined. It was 1983, and we didn't know about hair products. The girl had coated her hair with Vaseline, and put on the sleeveless shirt, and come to show me. I remember her smiling face at the doorway, and me grinning back at her.
She later left me, but before she did:
One time I was at home suffering greatly from menstrual cramps, to the point where I couldn't leave my bed without throwing up; I even had a bucket beside my bed. Ginny came over. And the second she showed up at my bedroom doorway, a wave of what I now know as "endorphins" took over.... No more cramps, no more nausea. A miracle.
What else? Oh yeah, when I once spent the night with her as a teen, her parents' house had a ventilation system that blew air upwards upstairs: I accidentally stepped over the vent and my nightgown blew up... "I feel like Marilyn Monroe!" I quipped. It was funny; she laughed.
I dunno, a hundred other things. We went with her family to Georgia together. We stayed in a hotel room with her parents and watched "Endless Love" on cable, trying to be quiet.
Point is, she left me. Point is: Someone once loved me. Today, in my darkness, I remember how her happy face (and her terribly Vaselined hair) looked at the K-Mart doorway. I remember how she miraculously made my cramps go away. (I remember our car breaking down on the highway and the two cop-cars that passed us by without stopping to help; I remember our matching "Frances Lives" T-shirts bought from Ridgmar Mall in Fort Worth.)
Shortly after, I went off to college, thinking: "I'll experience many loves..." As it has turned out, I never experienced anything like Ginny. I came home from college for a summer or two, tried to re-connect with her... We watched "The Wall" together with her new love, Cindy, tagging along --- Ginny was horrified by the violence of the movie and left the theater; Cindy went with her. I stayed, admiring the film...
Once I was back in Austin, Ginny then came to visit me, trying to sell stolen CDs, and got busted... All a fucking mess.
She died in 1988, at 22, because she couldn't get a heart transplant.
Ginny didn't love me in the end, but... she did love me at one point. We wore intentionally matching shirts; we wore intentionally mis-matched socks. We slept in a hotel room watching "Endless Love" together with her parents in the next bed.
I have nothing in my life today, but I remember.
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