Paint the Moon

Don’t waste your time eating overpriced pizza with someone who would never consider you’d want to deface the moon. It’s better to sit behind an old gas station and smoke stale cigarettes with a boy that makes you think you can.

That’s a few of the sentences that have been in my head for a few months now. I can’t seem to make them any better. I don’t know how to punctuate them. I’m not sure they make any sense to anyone except me. I don’t know what to do with them and they won’t go away.

If you want to deface the moon, do not eat overpriced pizza with a man that would never consider it possible. You would do better behind an old gas station, smoking stale cigarettes, with a boy that believes the moon is within your reach.

A little better? No.  Aghh, Good enough. I suppose that’s the moral of the story.

Now for the story:

I was on my way to meet him for a first date. He was older than I was, but it was all right. My mom’s friend had set it up and he was from a good family. (By good I mean rich. I don’t want anyone to get confused because I was all moral when I started.) He wanted to go to the pizza place - the expensive one, not the good one. I was fine with that.

It could have been a nice date. We could have had a reasonably good meal and nice conversation, but that didn’t happen. He went and asked me what I was going to major in when I went to college. I told him I wasn’t sure, but I was considering architecture. He then informed me that there weren’t many good female architects. I informed him that maybe it was time for one. He laughed and made a comment about designing pink buildings. I think he thought he was funny. Maybe he would have been if I was actually studying architecture, or I was old enough to be sure about myself, or he was someone I trusted, but none of these things were true. I don’t think he realized how lucky he was my parents raised me to not make scenes in restaurants.

Let’s just say the date didn’t get better from there and I was happy to leave.

I stopped for gas on my way home. There was an old gas station just off the main road. I stopped there often because Kevin worked there. He was a friend that I trusted and he knew how to be funny. They weren’t busy, so we went behind the station to smoke a cigarette. The owner didn’t care if we smoked, but we had to pretend we didn’t want to be seen. That is a common theme that runs through small town living. As long as you are trying to hide it, it’s alright. If you flaunt it in peoples faces then they have to act upset. I’ve never understood it, but I played by the rules. We all did.

I asked Kevin what he was going to do when he got out of school. I already knew he was going to work on cars. That’s all he ever wanted to do, even when we were little. I tried to blow smoke rings and choked on the smoke. Feeling a little green, I sat down beside a pile of old tires and very quietly told him I was thinking about being an architect.

“You’d be a great architect.” He told me. “You’d build the tallest building in New York. Then you’d climb to the top and spray paint the moon.”

I sat there and giggled. “Do you think I should paint it pink?” I asked him.

He laughed like I was telling a joke, then he Elvis sneered me. We’d spent many hours of our childhood learning to do that. I sneered back. We spent a few minutes flicking ashes at each other. Then his boss started yelling and I had to go.

He left work that day to be with his girlfriend, soon to be his wife, and shortly after that the mother of his children. I went home and sat alone in a dark room and looked out the window. I was trying to decide what color I wanted to paint the moon. I finally decided I liked it just the way it was.

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