Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 16:33:56 +0000
From: Hessa Meena <hessa_meena@hotmail.com>
Subject: Lesbian/High School, "Baby Vampire Made Me" (pt.2)

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. 2

That night at dinner her mom seemed tired. Not irritable, just tired. And
Dori wanted to make sure they didn't get in an argument. It didn't happen
often, but when it did they both regretted it.

"How was your day?" her mom asked. Dori forked the chicken fillet onto her
plate and tried to smile.

Sucked. "It was ok, yours?" She pushed her fork into the chicken and her
stomach turned, the food looked gross like she was tripping, but she knew
her mom had just picked it up. Her mom never had time to cook, and picked up
their dinners from a gourmet caterer who worked for all the television
studios. Mmmm, soap star food, she stabbed a piece of chicken with her fork.
Her mom was in the middle of a rant about her day.

"Then Claire, oh she's the new makeup girl, she threatened to quit, but
she's not part of the union yet, so..." She chewed on a piece of the
chicken. "How did that presentation in your Civics class go?"

Teacher freaked, Leo told me to stop acting like a dyke." Ok."

"What was it on again?"

Fuck me...  "I brought a song in that I thought talked about the media's
presentation of civil rights." Dori watched her mom's brow furrow. Dori was
used to tactfully omitting certain pieces.

"Oh." She looked in her daughter's eyes. Still, Dori could never tell when
her mom believed her, but thankfully she seemed too tired to pick a fight.
"And it went well?"

Why does it matter? I don't talk to anyone, anyway.  "It went ok," she
avoided her mom's eyes.

"Ok?" Mom sounded unconvinced. "Did our friend Leo like it?" For some reason
her mom liked Leo, and still asked about him.

Oh joy, here we go. "What do you mean?" Her mom looked over her glasses and
gave Dori an impatient look.

"I mean that you broke up with Leo last year, but maybe there's still
chemistry between you two?" She twisted her face into a hopeful smile,
reminding Dori that her mom started out as a comedian. "That's what I mean."

"Oh..." She didn't' know what to say. She didn't even want to go there with
her mom. She was still acting crabby since Dori said she was more interested
in dating girls. Instead Dori thought of Leo's sad eye routine, and
shrugged. It didn't bother her as much as it used to. She could ignore it.
"He's been whining at me a lot." Dori smiled at her mom, but thought she'd
save Leo's more choice temper tantrums for more objective ears.

"Ugh, whiners." Her mom snickered, and they were conspirators again, not
mother and daughter, but friends. Dori smiled. She wasn't going to eat the
chicken on her plate, but it looked like her mom wouldn't notice.

After dinner Dori cleared the table and went to her room to paint, if she
opened the window her mom didn't object to the smell as much, and Dori could
sneak puffs of pot. She put on Sleater Kinney's CALL THE DOCTOR and thought
about all the things she didn't tell her mom. Dori set her paints out, and
started sketching on huge pieces of butcher block brown paper. It was better
than stressing out about homework and getting into college next year.

Dori knew she'd get into a good college. Her grades were good, and her
attendance record was back on par. Then why does everything fucking suck?
After a peerless few years of high school she looked at college like a
utopia away from the confines of her mother's apartment. Dori tapped her
brush to the rhythm of the guitars and sneered at the lyric:

"I'm not waiting, till I grow up
To be a woman...

Honey baby sweetness darling
I'm your little girl
your words are sticky stupid
running down my legs"


The last time she had sex, and consequently hung out with Leo, she wondered
why they even bothered. He was too fucked up to concentrate, and she only
realized how boring it was once they were in bed.

"Ok, we tried, but we can't do this anymore, Leo." Dori stared at the
railing of the bunk bed he and his brother shared. His mom was at work, and
little brother was still at basketball practice.

"What," he tried to sound soothing, but it came off cold. "It took you, I
mean us forever to do it in the first place." Dori sighed.

You stupid selfish fuck. "That's it, last chance, we're over, Leo." She
grabbed her pants off the floor and put them on, she wouldn't look at him.
She felt numb, and the cold December air felt good on her skin. Traffic was
light on Amsterdam as she glided down the bike lane. It was getting cold
enough to need a sweater under her jacket, but there wasn't any snow yet.
Wipe his smell off me, please. She pushed harder, hearing her wheels on the
pavement, and the balance zone take over her body.

Dori wondered why she bothered with Leo in the first place. She knew she
liked Jenny Rodriguez more, but she was a senior and all they had done was
kissed.

Dori sailed through the red light and sighed, she shifted her weight and
took the corner, cars were thickening on Tenth Avenue and the sidewalk was
safer. She focussed on pushing herself fast enough so that the woosh bump
woosh of her wheels on the sidewalk just became a woosh and thought about
Jenny.