Always welcome but never invited

I've learned to subvert my feelings because I'm fucking crazy
but I've learned so much control it's hard to tell what I feel
so when I take time off and drink until I can feel
it feels important
but I don't know what it is that I am feeling.

Tammy Golden

Things were...different. It's like I learned in an alternate universe.
Tammy Golden. She was the younger friend of Jen.
The story about them leaving the sign on the door "We're shaving" about killed me, on purpose
Gardner Bennet. He was smarter and ... not cooler but colder than most of us. He was "cool" but very aloof for our group. When I look back I'd call him unusually mature. It showed.

Tammy told the story that one night her mom and her friend were partying. Maybe it wasn't her that told the story. Her boyfriend's friend came to her bedroom.

Gardner dated her. We all told him not to - no offense, but the dude was in his twenties and "it would be like falling into a black hole." To us that was saving face at 13.

He didn't listen. We didn't understand.

In high school he dated Rachel Cisma. The douche crowd discovered she was "a babe" at beach week. Neither of them seemed phased by their compliments or insults.

The only thing more retarded than me remembering any of this is how I didn't see it for what it was at the time. My formative years.