28 May 2008

One Minute Michelle



When I was a freshman in high school, my p.e. class was in an annex about a half mile down the road (it was actually the old YMCA). For p.e., we all had to pile onto a bus for the one-minute drive to the Y. Despite the fact that it was only a one-minute drive, all the usual hydraulics and dynamics of teen life nonetheless transpired on that bus, which, in a way, was a microcosm of this savage, beautiful world.

Because I was the littlest freshmen in a sea of students, I was sometimes the first to get picked on, so I dreaded any social situation where I might come in contact with an upperclassman who had something to prove about the rigid caste system of top-doggery. The p.e. bus ride was fraught with these kind of upperclassmen. There was a ray of hope, though. Her name was Michelle.

Michelle was a junior and, for some reason, she was always cool to me. She seemed to actually like me (as opposed to pity), which was a little confusing because i thought she was really pretty and smart. She was also the only New Wave person that existed in the tri-county area. How Michelle managed to be New Wave in rural-industrial Georgia is the world's last secret mystery. It will never be solved.

She had piercings, wore ripped jeans and strangely sewn shirts, and had a sculpted coiff that looked, to me, like it was flown in from Paris every morning. I recognized her as too cool for Manchester High School, but nobody else seemed to. People seemed to like her, but she never palled around with anybody in particular. I guess you could say that she was somewhat of a loner. She also skipped class a lot. I remember that, because whenever she skipped p.e. (probably to get high with the shop-class kids), my day had a New Wave Michelle-shaped hole in it.

On days when Michelle did go to p.e., though, she'd always appear like an angel and come sit by me on the chemical-green bench seat. We'd sit and talk and all the upperclassmen that usually gave me shit would just sort of stare, trying to make sense out of us. It was a magical minute of a bus ride. Michelle was moron repellent, but she was also a lot more. She was a good person. One day, though, she stopped coming to school altogether. I later learned that she transferred to another school. I also heard that her parents had divorced and she went to live with her mom, over in the next county. I started to hate p.e. even more than I already did.

A few years later, when I was a senior, me and a handful of other "skaters" were at a house party in Greenville, Georgia. All the debutantes were drunk and football jocks were shaving off the eyebrows of the mere mortals who had passed out in the front lawn. It was late, AC/DC was blasting from huge speakers, and one had the sense that police involvement was imminent. I walked across the highway to get away from the madness, and also to use the payphone at the Giant Mart, when I saw Michelle. She was coming out of the Giant Mart with two or three other people. They were locking up for the night.

"Michelle?"

"Jonathan?"

We had an awkward conversation, during which she asked me if I had gone to the party across the street. I told her that, yeah, I had. "You don't want to go over there, though. It's a bad scene." I felt self-conscious. It occurred to me that, if you compiled all the minutes of all those bus rides together, Michelle & I had only known one another for about an hour and a half. The lights on the Giant Mart sign flickered off. After about sixty seconds, some guy in an IROC-Z pulled up.

"This is my ride," Michelle said.

I haven't seen Michelle since. For some reason, she only inhabited my life in minute-long intervals, like measured teaspoons. Like somebody somewhere had a tiny hourglass, keeping rural-industrial Georgia on an unlikely, brisk schedule. I do not know how this world works, nor do I understand time. It seems full of holes. I'm pretty sure Michelle actually existed, though. And she was cool.

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