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eyelashes, Moccasin boots, and a guitar.
    There he was that night, down in the snow playing “Suzanne.” Singing the night wide open. Me perched atop Buddy
Holly sort of cross-eyed, looking at stars and drooling on Buddy’s bronzed head. Even angry girls can be moved to tears.
    There are two reasons for us going busto.
    Reason one: I spent the entire year making poor beautiful Phillip break into strangers’ homes at night to fuck on the floor. I don’t know why. It did a real number on him, I can tell you. He’d get so terrified, but he’d do it, and I’d run and turn a light on and he’d nearly coronary leaping with his 6’ 3” lanky ass body to turn it back off. I’d break into whatever liquor I could find and he’d try to fill the bottles back up with water and replace the lids and restore them to their sanctity. I’d scavenge the medicine cabinets and he’d chase me around in the dark trying to rescue little white pills.
    And when we’d fuck I’d climb on top of him and ride the art of his cock as hard as I could, wishing I was his guitar and not some fucked up damaged girl so that his fingers would strum me to death, strum me clean, strum me calm, strum me into a woman he’d write a song for. My shirt off and my tits white moons and my head rocked back and my hair crazy. And he’d cum so hard I thought my spine might shatter - because those long and lean guys have huge cocks - and then we’d breathe and look at each other in the dark of a home we’d broken into and entered, and then he’d become terrified again and jump up and zip up faster than the speed of light, leaving me like sticky residue on a movie theater floor. Laughing the laugh of broken girls.
    God. Poor Phillip. I wish I could go back and apologize. He was never cut out for a woman like me with a rage in her bigger than Texas. Although I’ve since learned that extreme passivity has its own power.
    Reason two: he was too beautiful. Way more beautiful than me and way more beautiful than a beautiful woman. Have you met these men? His too beautiful voice and his beautiful hands and his beautiful cock. But the beauty went all haywire on the inside because he thought he was shit. And that thinking he was shit? It transformed him into the exact opposite of me - the
most passive man on the planet. Particularly around any kind of high energy or conflict. Which was basically me, in the flesh.
    And when my rage would come, he’d … well, he’d fall asleep.
    He’s the only person I’ve ever met who would fall asleep in the middle of an argument, his chin on his hand, his eyes closing just as you are getting to the moment of victory. I never saw anyone do that but him. Drove me crazy. All my mighty energy with nowhere to go. I nearly imploded or spontaneously combusted dozens of times.
    Phillip came from a big ass southern Baptist Christian family, all of whom sang. So there were a great many family Christian hymn sing-alongs on family front porches with family harmony rising and falling in their voices. And his father was the voice of god once removed, and his older brother was the voice of god twice removed, and the other three people besides Phillip were sisters, so that third removed god voice fell upon his slender shoulders. I mean how many goddamn times can you sing “I’ll Fly Away” or the dreaded “Amazing Grace?” No wonder he was so tired.
    And here’s why the micromovements of a girl woman’s sexual history matters. Phillip’s older brother had already been through the reject god, leave home, become a pot smoking musician, have a family, return to the fold and take on the man mantle chapters. But Phillip had just hit the reject god, leave home, become a pot smoking artist and carry around a guilt bigger than Texas. He was the outcast son, unable to join the hymns on the porch.
    And me, it was a secret shame I was carrying.
    When Phillip wanted hand jobs instead of fucking and I couldn’t do it and I couldn’t do it and I