Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 16:29:50 +0000 From: Hessa Meena Subject: Lesbian/High School, "Baby Vampire Made Me" (pt.1) This is another few pieces from a book I was working on... Love yourself, love your sexuality and $uport these archives if you can! Hugs kisses and all that good shit. hessa_meena@hotmail.com Lesbian, High School BABY VAMPIRE MADE ME, pt. 1 Dori blew another bubble and put a CD in the stereo. Her assignment was to sketch a stranger from memory, and the guitarist who just left the store would do. A stranger you'd like to know her better. She looked like Carrie Brownstein from Sleater Kinney, and had that fashionable nerd look down. Dori put one of the new releases in the stereo and dug in her backpack for her sketchpad. Up until then, the day, and school had stunk like a turd. Dori had to give a presentation about a political issue, and she brought in Tribe 8's "What the Papers Didn't Say," to talk about the presentation of gays in the media. Her teacher, Lee, was one of those ultra liberal types who let the students get away with anything as long as it was constructive, but noticeably paled when the song started. "The papers said `The boy shot himself in the head yesterday with his father's deer rifle....' Why do you think he did that, Dad? Oh, you don't know, but there was so much brain matter, body tissue and blood you had to blow his room to kingdom come. You always knew he was gay when he hated to play football..." Dori imagined the classroom scene unfolding like a panel in a comic book. Most boys squirmed and a few girls sneered about the football line, but Lee looked at Dori with worried, guidance counselor eyes. "Well," Lee sighed, reminding Dori of her mom. "Very evocative selection, Dori, how it actually fits into specific political events, I'm not sure, but..." the bell rang and the roar of the in-between limbo erupted. Lee's words were lost in the teenage shuffle, and he gave up in frustration. Dori knew she wouldn't get in trouble, it was still the first month of school, and happily took any opportunity to freak out the sheep people in her classes. "Yo Dori," Calvin boomed, he stood a foot taller than Dori and liked to palm her head like a basketball. "That was some fucked up shit," he winced down at her as if he had burned his throat. "That song was nasty." He walked off with his UPenn sweats pulled up on his right calf. "Do you have to keep harping on this dyke shit?" Leo stared at her with puppy dog eyes from under his bangs. He looked high, but she could never tell. "I mean..." he surveyed the hall, he followed her towards the stairs. "It's one thing for you to break up with me, but I don't need everyone saying my ex-girlfriend's a fucking dyke." Dori couldn't tell if he was trying to seem hurt or menacing, and eyed him, warily. "Whatever, Leo." He kept going towards the stairs, but she stopped at her locker. If she left now, she'd cut Math, and if she missed any classes this semester her mom would make her quit her job at the record store. Please shoot me, Dori sighed and opened her locker. Her skateboard was in there, beckoning, but she couldn't. If she didn't have her job at the record store she didn't know what she'd do. She stopped hanging out with the Leo crowd when they broke up last year. It had been her only way to get out of the house besides skateboarding, so now she felt even more protective of her job. The record store was great, she loved the unending supply of music and the calm feeling of order when she put the new releases in the right bins. She'd been working there since the end of her freshman year, and now the owner trusted her to be there by herself. But it didn't fill the strange nagging she felt, she wanted more choices from her social life. I want a girlfriend. The guitarist chick was cute. She wore a button down cardigan and a collared shirt underneath. Her jeans were clean and dark, and her shoes looked like wingtips. Dori squinted at the drawing, it looked a lot like her. Who are you? Dori asked the charcoaled lines.