Some Sort of Holy or Some Sort of Whore

A very vague and unlikely memory

The thing about telling a story is that you’re basically bound to fuck up and lie. Accidentally. Our memories are shattered, shaky, unreliable bits of brain and firing neuroreceptors and perceptions and imagination and we so often see what we want to see that we neglect to see what was there, in flesh and reality. We are, at best, plagiarising our own stories, at worst, completely fabricating events to create meaning. The harder I work to remember, the more I wonder if I’m wrong.

You know that game, two truths and a lie? I am playing it, with myself, always and unconsciously. I'm tattooing the words on my body and then willing them to be true. I stand at this crossroads of life and adulthood but I cannot properly trace backwards the path that led me here. I don't remember. I don't remember.

When I was 16 I finished highschool, the summer of 2001. The world hadn’t ended the year before, as we’d all held baited breath and crossed fingers it wouldn’t and, perhaps un-inspiringly but vitally, AOL Instant Messenger was still working just fine - enabling conversations of meaning between horny teenagers across the globe. I graduated highschool a consummate virgin. I’ve always liked the way those two words work together and against eachother, and I was determined to spend my…