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    Weird Teen Romance
    Weird Teen Romance
    Weird Teen Romance
    Ebook275 pages4 hours

    Weird Teen Romance

    By Cameron Glenn

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    About this ebook

    Two young aspiring writers discuss their writing attempts and frustrations and then find files of poems and the beginnings of failed novel attempts in the school computer. A stream of conscience and poetic meditation on youth, writing, criticism, love, through lose short stories and poems cobbled together with an arch involving a young man named Max.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCameron Glenn
    Release dateJan 12, 2017
    ISBN9781370087624
    Weird Teen Romance
    Author

    Cameron Glenn

    Cameron Glenn grew up the third of seven children in Oregon. As a child he dedicated hours to the pursuits of basketball and cartooning, as well as waking up way too early for his paper route in order to earn money to buy toys, candy and comic books. He also loved to read and write, which he continues to do voraciously. He currently lives in Salt Lake City after having earned a BA in literature from Boise State.

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      Book preview

      Weird Teen Romance - Cameron Glenn

      Weird Teen Romance

      By Cameron Glenn

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2017 Cameron Glenn

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      WEIRD TEEN ROMANCE

      CHAPTER ONE

      Max

      2014

      "Dreams become dumb and moldy when unused, like a rubber band which melts into glue." I said that to Vicki while she drove us to Vegas. It took me courage to say it. I had spent time trying to conjure up some provocative sentence which would sound smart and impressive; something which would begin some deep meaningful conversation which would spur her to think deep and beautiful things she hadn’t thought of before which she’d share with me, and we’d bond and through the power of connecting on a mental, artful, intellectual level, she’d begin to find me cute. And then we’d have sex in Vegas. My first time. I hadn’t realized just how clumsy and goofy the sentence sounded with the unintentional rhyme of ‘used’ and ‘glue’ until I uttered it out loud. Just goofy Dr. Sues bad imitation junk; just burps. Annoying sounds less meaningful than the sound of wind seeping through a window crack.

      She’s all fireworks and fire and heat and coolness and crashing stars. She’s all everything.

      Restlessness bottled makes us mad in those like her; I thought that. Mad in a good way; let it out, have fun, live. It’s strange how much we want things without knowing what we really want; just what it all is; I want her but she’s a mystery. I want whatever it is she posses but I’m not sure what specifically or exactly that is except that it’s exciting and feels good and is deep and meaningful. We’re young so let’s get away with being stupid and free while we can; while we have the excuses. Wild; that’s the word. Is she wild? Am I? No, but I wish I were, wish we were; and I don’ t know exactly why except that the thought of it is titillating and pretty and makes me feel good; feeling good thinking about feeling good; everything just once removed; how do you get there, really there, and does this place even really exist?

      The sentence didn’t impress her. I’m sorry, that’s dumb, that makes no sense I said, the words fumbling clumsily out, and she said no, go on. So, I did. Like, they, the dreams, just become pathetic the longer they’re unrealized. Like, kids, teens, like us, are all aspiring actors, writers, fashion designers, movie directors, you know, they, we, have these big dreams of who they’d, we’d, like to be; what they’d, we’d like their life to be like. Ugh, can I be any less articulate? I thought while mumbling. You know, I continued, trying to salvage myself through more words, they tell you when you’re young you can do anything and change the world, indeed, the responsibility of changing the suck-y world and making it better is all up to you, in your hands, you and your generation who will one day take ownership over the world, and you believe all that crap as naively as a kid believing in Santa Clause… Adults tell kids the Santa Clause lie because it’s cute when kids believe in magic and kindness, you know, and being rewarded for good behaviors, and feeling there’s some magical fluffy and jolly being out there who loves them. Then the adults tell older kids the ‘you can do anything’ lie, because, first, technically, I guess it’s not a lie, or as big a lie as the Santa one, I mean, some people will have their dreams, aspirations, and hopes all realized, but adults, full of their own crashed and dashed dreams and piles of failures collected through all their years living, stewing in their lives of quiet desperations and rote routines, should really know better, but they don’t want to crush their children’s spirits, they want to prolong the hopefulness and naivety in their children for as long as possible; it’s like that Abraham Lincoln quote that goes something like ‘When disappointment strikes the young it is the most heartbreaking because they haven’t yet learned that life is disappointing yet’; or something like that, a rough paraphrase there. Oh my gosh, I’m such a yammering idiot, I thought right after spewing all that stream-of-conscious hot mush: you idiot, her dad just recently died, don’t talk about dashed dreams of old people, you insensitive idiot; she’s going to hate me; she’s so beautiful. The most beautiful. The coolest. Her skin looks like its glowing.

      Yeah, that’s funny she remarked, half listening, her mind somewhere else. The full blue sky and red desert ground provided the scenery blazing by; Sky Ferreira singing ‘You’re Not the One’ blaring out the car speakers. But the dreams I continued, are exciting and encouraged when you’re young, but when you become old, like my step brother, it’s just sad and pathetic to be an ‘aspiring’ anything anymore, other than an ‘accomplished’ something.

      So what, what’s the point of that story Vic asked.

      Maybe, those dreams are like a fish wanting to be a bird I replied. And when I said it I thought of myself and my dream of being Vic’s boyfriend. Being worthy of her. Maybe she’s a bird and I’m a fish. She belongs in the air, sailing through fresh unencumbered un-limitless sunny sky, up where everyone can see; I belong sunken in deep heavy water, away and hidden. And what am I doing here, how did this miracle happen, that I’m riding in this car with her on the way to Vegas, this fish with this bird, trying to have some deep conversation with her which just isn’t working; she’ll mock it when she talks about it with her friends, I thought. She has so many friends. I don’t. This is all some joke experiment. I don’t think she caught on that I was talking about myself and her. Like my older step-brother I said. Still trying to publish a novel after a decade of failure. Each new stab at it resulting in just another new self inflicted wound. Each new query e-mail to literary agents just more logs thrown on their burning slush piles. He told me that when he first started he tried writing boldly, following F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing advice of developing a new writing style because only a new style could capture the emotional outpouring close to his heart, or whatever, however Fitzgerald phrased it; then he just fell to chasing trends, writing about erotica, vampire romance, cancer kids, dystopian, whatever the trend was. Desperately chasing. Still writing in first person teen narration like he would a decade ago, although he’s now thirty two instead of twenty two.

      Why are you telling me this? Vic asked, sounding annoyed.

      I don’t know, I answered. Just…I mean… reality, you know? It can suck, I said.

      Reality is beautiful because that’s all there is, Vickie simply stated, although sounding unconvinced of the maxim she just uttered. Any real beauty can only come from truth. Some famous poet said that.

      Oh, I answered. She’s so cool, I thought. So much smarter than me. She’s a bird and I’m a fish. I love her.

      I got sleepy and my mind slipped into comfortable dirty horny thoughts while the sun burned into the horizon, like an arrow shot it and it’s a glowing egg which broke and spread and smeared all its glowing blood yoke over the sky as it sinks down into its grave just over the horizon, one last desperate breath and reach before all of darkness, death, consumes it. I thought of the last line of ‘The Great Gatsby’ which we had just studied in English class: So we beat on, boats against the current… something about ceaselessly looking back into the past while… something about the future. Gatsby: the ultimate self made man, achieved the American dream of wealth and success, all to impress a girl; everyone loved him when he threw his lavish parties, no one showed up to his funeral after he died. I thought of the letter ‘V’ the first letter of Vickie’s name, and how that letter, more so than any other letter, looks like the shape of a vagina, all cute and sloping down to a sharp little point of nothing. And you want to fill up this nothing with your exploding everything and from this nothing comes the creation of life, of everything. And is she clean and bare like a Playboy model down there, and what a thrill to see and find out, how cute they are and surprising when all exposed, bottomless, well, just wow. Dumb thoughts like those. Like, can women actually physically shutter and shake from the magnitude of the bliss of the anticipation of the taste of some sexual fulfillment, the way guys can; or, I can, I have, and it was great but it made me worry that maybe there’s something overly perverse about me, which might get me in trouble later if I’m not careful. Respect people, admire women beyond just appearance, don’t become a creepy old man pervert. I have to tell myself these things. Don’t become an old man. Vic wanted to listen to a lot of Lana Del Rey on the drive, along with The Cults and Sky Ferreira and the newest melancholy, but in a lush pretty life affirming way, Beck album. Good choices, cool music for such a cool girl. The car drove on, driving over desert, down devilish red-rock canyons, past wild horses, destinations of dreams of quick riches, blinking and blazing artificial lights, gaudy indulgences, winning and sex all awaiting. To dream, to dream, to dream…

      Vic

      So, I’m blazing through my senior year, all yahoo thrills, senior pranks, being too cool for school, throwing off the shackles of all the public education bull-shit, enjoying the phase of existing between the comfort and safety of parental control and responsibility and trying out total independence which will be our claim in just a few more short months, scary and thrilling as the thought is, when my dad decided to die.

      I won’t get into his death and my feelings real deep yet, but, you know, that sucks. And don’t worry; this isn’t going to be one of those endlessly sad laborious self pity party narratives. Count my tears: one, two, three, four, five… ad nauseous. Nope. I’ll try and be funny as well as truthful. Trying and doing are two vastly separate things of course. So, anyways, after my dad died I got into Lana Del Rey. There’s lots of layers to her and one of her layers is this weird rich daddy worship thing going on. Which, when you notice it, and you’re grieving your dad’s death, is both painful yet comforting, in that weird way pain can be comforting when you hurt. There’s also a lot of play-acting with her, as she takes on, through satire, the gauze and brutality of money and fame and love and danger and death and glory and America. Pretty fascinating stuff. Like she has this song I’m currently obsessed with called ‘Put Me in A Movie’ about this Lolita girl coming on to this sick old movie mogul guy which she sings ‘you can be my daddy’ to, and ‘you know you like little girls’ and at the end she whimpers, ‘you know I can’t make it on my own’ and then ends with the ‘put me in a movie’ refrain. The song wasn’t officially released, (made when she was still called Lizzy Grant) which is understandable, because despite being great and catchy, it’s pretty sick, and the satire might be lost on the dumb general populace. But once you get the satire, although her line delivery is usually soft and purring, you realize that her gauzy-gentle crooning approach actually masks this red iron almost violent type anger at the world, at the way people are, the way the games go. An anger which is currently really appealing to me.

      Love and hate are two sides of the same coin, and so because I loved my father I also hate him; I hate him for dying, leaving me during what’s supposed to be my blooming years, my pinnacle, when I’ll be, or was supposed to be, my most beautiful and most hopeful, reckless, optimistic, daring self; when I’m old enough to take my first steps of my own out into the world yet young enough to still have perky breasts, glowing skin, and wide eyed enthusiasm of what all is out there to really discover and taste. And he’s just gone forever now. Dad. Every Christmas to come a little bit tainted now. His last ‘gift’ being the middle-aged depression that middle aged people get when their parents die, bestowed on me, his seventeen year old daughter. I never knew what a selfish weak bastard he was. Now I’m forced to wonder how much of his selfish weak bastard juice he passed on to me. Despite all the times he called me his brave little princess. Just how many lies have you told me, dad?

      So with anger comes the want for revenge. But how to get revenge on a dead man. By doing something you know he’d hate. Another one of Lana’s great unreleased songs is called ‘Driving in Cars with Boys’. I decided I’d ride in a car with a boy. But not any boy. One my dad would hate. One who he’d say I was too good for. One I’d waste my precious time with (and ha, him lecturing me about wasted time). This creepy shy boy in my class named Max who’s had this hopeless crush on me since the second grade, at least. And I’m pretty sure he’s always been a pervert. When I’d wear skirts on the monkey bars he always lurked around, with this terse sweaty shamed yet piqued with interest face, which I’d later recognize, of a boy trying to conceal a boner; a face like that of a dog who just shit on the rug. He’d be the one. And maybe I’d let him penetrate me, if he wants. 90% chance he ejaculates before he gets inside me. Still, my dad would hate that. His precious little princess, cloths off, getting splayed by the sperm-y goo juice of some high school loser. His untainted precious sparkling jewel, fair and sweet, grossly debased, de-valued. He might rise from the grave to beat up poor Max after that happened. His ghost would lecture me about respecting myself and my body and all the things I’m better than which I should keep in mind before I ever decide to degrade myself again. And I’d just laugh in his stupid ghost face and scream at him, you’re a ghost dad, you don’t matter in this world anymore, you can’t do anything to stop me. I’m the one who decided to live, so I’m going to live, damn you. …Bastard.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Max

      I woke up in the car, no longer moving but still and idling, to Sky Ferreira singing ‘Japanese Jesus’. It’s this great song she wrote, I’m almost certain, while she was high on heroine; or pretended to be high on heroine; re-create, through music, what that pulsating feel good dazed rush might feel like. It has this rapid heart rate beat which she coos softly over, like someone in a hazy drugged out ecstasy bath, about a Japanese Jesus and wondering what a Japanese Christmas is like. Just a dumb thought, really, that filtered through this drug haze becomes like this inescapable dump of glitter over you, so that the dumb thought seems deep and shiny and profoundly beautiful and worth repeating like a mantra forever. Oh Japanese Jesus, come on. I heard the song while in my sleepy comfortable horny state in the car, but it’s impossible to fall asleep while that song plays, so I fell asleep during the last song on the album, about there being no more angles, and the night time is her time. ‘This album is beautiful and unappreciated’ I thought. ‘No one knows it. She should be huge like… Taylor Swift or… whoever. The world is wrong. They’ve gotten everything all wrong.’

      Get up, we’re here, Vickie said. Her real name is Victoria, her friends call her Vic. I’d been calling her Vickie.

      I looked around, out the window of her dad’s Ford Explorer which she drove. We were in the entrance in front of the Hard Rock Casino, its blinking Casino yellow blazing lights bathing us. I got out. Some loud cheesy rock song I didn’t recognize filled the area just outside the lobby. Crunchy guitar chords and some gruff singer barking orders. Rock on! I got my bag from the backseat; we’d be gone just the weekend, drive up Friday, drive home Sunday, so I didn’t pack much. She gave the car keys to a valet. We walked into the Casino, entering the magic which exists inside all large casino’s where time is a nebulous gas cloud circling a black hole; there are no clocks, the lighting and ambiance are always unchanged, unmarked, unspoiled, unaffected by the placement of the sun or moon or stars in the natural sky. Pretty artifice abounds. I’d been to Vegas with my parents before, but it had changed a lot since I’d last been; some big new swanky Casino built called The Delano (or maybe that was a hotel a part of this other new-ish Casino I can’t remember the name of, but it had women dancing on tables in it and the Casino floor areas looked like Gatsby’s mansion as envisioned by Baz Lurhman); a new Casino mall in Planet Hollywood; more of those creepy homeless street people in the bad arts and crafts homemade costumes of pop culture celebrities, cartoons and Muppets wandering or parked along the Strip: a raggedy Chewbacca legit made me scream like a little girl in a haunted house when I looked up surprised to see it growling right in my face. They want you to take your picture with them and then pay them for the privilege. My wimpy fright yelp made Vickie laugh anyways, which blunted some of the embarrassment; glad I could make her laugh. But I’m getting ahead of myself; that happened the next day. But I still got a kick from the Casino’s that paint blue sky on their ceilings and design sections to create the allusion of being outside in New York or Venice or Paris, all to create the allusion of timelessness and open space, in order to keep gamblers from ever feeling claustrophobic or aware of time; another trick the Casino’s use is to make the insides purposefully disorienting so that if you want to leave and get back on the Strip you have to end up asking some worker how to get there. They don’t want you to ever leave; that’s why they include shopping malls inside the Casino’s, so many fine restaurants, show rooms, hip dance clubs, spectacles, and so on. Stay here until you throw all your money away at us in the fantasy land (the adult Disneyland) we created to make you believe there is no time, you can be a winner, and what happens here stays here, you dumb gullible dreaming suckers. It’s fun for you to give us all of your money! So give in! Indulge! Escape! Eat and watch a magic show or French-Canadian acrobats, or Elvis and Madonna impersonators, or strippers.

      So anyways, while Vickie checked us in I surveyed the Casino floor. We’re too young to legally gamble, and I think I saw some security guy, disguised as some regular gambler guy, eyeing me suspiciously. Or maybe he was some old creep who saw me walk in with Vickie and he eyed me enviously, thinking: how’d that skinny ugly fish face end up with that beautiful bird; some guys are just stupid with luck, life isn’t fair.

      Rock songs filled the ambient air. She got our card keys. She took care of everything; the whole driving/direction/hotel business. She’s so smart, worldly and independent. We looked at displays behind glass cases of rock and roll artifacts: A Beyonce dress, A James Brown tracksuit and Michael Jackson and Mick Jaggar jackets. We remarked how all the celebrities look smaller ‘in real life’ judging by their outfits. Popular celebrities manage to portray a ‘larger than life’ persona. Vickie was that way to me too; otherworldly, a beauty uncontained by crude reality. Immortal. Vickie told me she had gotten tickets to the Michael Jackson Cirque du Soleil show at Mandela Bay for tomorrow night. Legit exciting. Sure, I’m a Michael Jackson fan. Why not. His daughter Paris Jackson is pretty rad and really pretty, and it’s a nice thought to think our tickets (expensive! She wouldn’t say how much, but I checked online and found out the tickets are around a hundred bucks apiece) bought her some earrings which would make her never try to kill herself again. I never asked Vickie how she paid for all of this: I was only able to give her a hundred dollars I had saved from a paper route when I was kid as my contribution to the cost of this trip, including hotel room and gas and that was pretty much my life savings.

      We walked through the hallway to our room. The light fixtures on the halls were behind drum cymbals. The rugs had note patterns over them. Clever decorating. We passed a window by elevators and I looked out. Below, although dark, I recognized the pool party club called ‘Rehab’. There used to be a reality show on Spike TV about ‘Rehab’ I used to sometimes watch. The bar maids wore skimpy bikini’s but were too plastered with plastic surgery to really strike me as sexy. Beauty is currency, probably no more so the case as in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, so girls there want to make themselves

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