i always need more time.
I only miss Brandon when its just the two of us, or when he texts me.
He’s really not that great or sweet or interesting otherwise. He just sits and obsesses over video games; it’s a new game every week, this week was borderlands. He doesn’t want to hang out with our friends or go to parties with me. He just wants to sit at Joey’s house and watch pirated movies and play various video games.
To understand this, I have to give you an illustration of Joey’s house.
Kingshighway is a long highway that connects Cape Girardeau and Jackson. Halfway down the highway towards Cape, there is a small alley that is between two car lots and it goes down a hill into a trailer park with several empty lots surrounded in a chain link fence. The speed bumps are massive-spaced only about ten feet apart. Joey’s trailer is the first on the left: a beige aluminum exterior with gaping holes on each side of the uneven wooden staircase. Our cars must be parked across the street in a gravel curb area. The neighbor hates us. His carport is lined in Japanese Ornamental lights and the lattice sided stairway is decorated with kittens of various colors peeking through the cracks. He once threw a match at me. He is strange. The direct neighbor on the side of Joey is addicted to something. I’m not sure what, but she is tweaky. Her dogs bark loudly when we park across the street. Each time she rushes out to grab their collar like they are going to run after us. Little does she know, the dogs are already on leashes. She continually apologizes for her loud dogs while grinning so wide that my own cheeks begin to hurt. She’s a very generous neighbor though. Very generous…
Inside Joey’s the wood panel floor matches the walls. The curtains are maroon and floral, the miniature coffee table is littered with miscellaneous bongs and incense burners and cluttered ashtrays. The living room and kitchen are divided by a small countertop where the wood panel floor changes to yellowed linoleum. The linoleum has detached from the floor and curls upward in the corners. The refrigerator is decorated in nearly one hundred lisa frank stickers covered in glitter. The sink is full of dirty dishes on any given day and a broken aquarium crowds the counter space. The couch is yellowed and disfigured. The cushions bend and sink into the frame and the fabric covering is ripped and frayed. Various game console wires litter the floor surrounding the television. The hallway is shoulder width and the bathroom door has no hinges anymore, or doorknob for that matter. Depending on what time you choose to visit, there may be several strangers passed out on the rug, the couch, recliner, or even an air mattress on the kitchen floor. I can guarantee there will be someone awake with their eyes transfixed to the television screen, thumbs moving wildly around an xbox controller.
Brandon loves it here. He is living there, free of charge. Joey and Dan are compassionate and hilarious, but I can’t feel comfortable there.
He told me he never stopped loving me today. I don’t want to hear that. Not yet, anyways.
This is his new crowd. They are all nice and funny, but not much fun. Just crazy about W.O.W and fable 2. There’s nothing wrong with that.
