V, Me, and Meg...

This has recently come to light in my mind, although the whole terrible mess of memories was buried deep inside with all the scum, torture, and broken glass. This is so bizarre that it has come into reality recently.

I have a BFF. For you lameoids, that means Best Friend Forever. She’s totally the Nicole Ritchie to my Paris Hilton; or probably the other way around since I was the one who became the doped out half black fat/skinny weirdo. Anyway, I still consider her my BFF, even though we currently don’t talk much and she lives very far away. We do continue to do bizarre, sisterly things like getting the same FTW tattoos without knowing about it, and basically Fucking up The World in our own separate cities.

I have always regarded V as a sister. Both of us being only children, we even went through a bizarre sibling rivalry thing when I was the first one to get my hymen broken on something other than a bicycle seat, and lose my Virge. She got all possessive and became my first “jealous boyfriend.” But those days are long gone. She went through and past her whole “I’ve got acne and my breasts are too big” (if that’s even possible) phase soon after my first sexual experience, and started spreading her legs just like me.

She never spread em as often, of course, as I was always the “reckless” one, who was already knocking on death’s door when I was fifteen and taking trains into ghetto areas of the city and staying out all weekend at raves on seventy different drugs, and then coming back and somehow succeeding at school. The bizarre part is that I was the one to finish high school, and then somehow college, and V’s longest job was answering phones for the local pizza parlor.

There is, I think, a reason for this. As terribly twisted and foul as my childhood and growing up experiences were, they were hidden. V’s were perhaps more twisted and terrible, and they simply could not remain a secret.

After V’s dad died of Lou Gehrig’s Disease when we were twelve, we got way closer. She was then forced to live only with her mother – also named Meg – and suffer the circumstances that some terrible twist of fate had put her in. After V’s dad died, Meg (V’s mother) got worse and worse. She started to smoke boatloads of crack, and soon, like any good crack addict, started shooting assloads of heroin in order to come down. The house got worse and worse. The clothes piled up, bugs came, and so did the eviction notices. While I was so busy trying to fake it through my honors classes in High School, while shoving any type of pill, liquid, solid, or gas into my body, V was getting shipped around the city to different relative’s houses, and different high schools. But the good news is we were still BFF through everything.

V’s mother was always close to me, and even though she could not handle raising her own daughter, she took me on as some sort of fucked-up, drug addled, surrogate daughter, and she started paying more attention to me than V.

I remember our lovely trips to the mall, where it would be V’s mom’s turn to drive and she would always swear the wheels were falling off of the car. I especially enjoyed her catch phrase greeting to me: “Meg, How the Fuck are Ya?” which didn’t even stop when I went and visited her in the hospital after one of her many suicide attempts. With tubes dangling in and out of every orifice, she managed to mumble, “Meg, How the Fuck are Ya?” and then passed out into her pool of drool.

This is all fun to think about and I could go on about my wonderful memories of V and Meg, but I must get to the point of my story – the reason why I, today, find myself the victim of a terribly incestuous relationship.

During one of Meg’s many visits to the local mental institution, she managed to finally find her match, penis included, so that the two of them could join forces and have the most fucked-up relationship ever. Just how it started is crazier than any soap opera writer or shock columnist could dream up.

Him: Toothless, brown, just going through a divorce, schizophrenic, insanely religious, often having delusions of talking to God. Committed to the institution for drinking a bottle of Drain-O after being told to do so by the devil. His name was Jim.

Her: Also toothless, daily crack and heroin user, widowed, trying not to get her teenage daughter taken away from her. Never been to church, swore more than a drunk Italian, had no income, and prime meat in the institution.

Yes, Jim and Meg had a whirlwind romance in the mental hospital. Where and when they fucked, I still wonder, but when they were both let out, Jim (now clean of Drain-O), and Megan (temporarily detoxed from crack and heroin) decided to start a twisted fairy tale life together. So, fresh out of the institution, they got married.

V never liked Jim. Whether it was because Meg was trying to replace Dead Dad with him, or the fact that he would often invite V to do sexual things with him was unclear. I think it was a combo of both. V became an emancipated minor at fifteen and moved in with some friends of ours who were drug addled military dropouts who would rob veterinarians for Special K, then sell it and pay the rent. V also dropped out of high school, and when I graduated, we both moved into our first of many – and I mean many – glorious, soon-to-be-destroyed-slum-shit-apartments in the city.

Her contact with her mother and Jim decreased greatly, except sometimes she’d get some love letter from Jim, or have some strange update on their union. Usually the update involved Meg being back on crack and stealing money from Jim or her.

Sixteen apartments, and four years later, V and I found ourselves living in a shithole in some crappy part of town with some crazy landlord. We were informed that we were getting new neighbors downstairs. Imagine our surprise when we realized that our new neighbors were her mother/my surrogate mother Meg and toothless Jim, which also meant crack and God and Satan and theft and the resurrection of all of the terrible memories and emotions V had buried for so long.

Yup, Meg and V were reunited, just like old times. Except now Meg had been off the crack and on some crazy psychotropics for a year or so and was a fucking whale. I couldn’t even recognize her. Her agoraphobia got the best of her and she became attached to the couch and sat at home for a full year and got bigger and bigger. She was pushing 300 pounds. Jim had not changed much, except he was quieter, lost another tooth, and seemed much more defeated and sad. He would often just stare right at me, in a terribly creepy way, half smiling. I was constantly wondering when the Drain-O drinking would recommence, but I of course never asked.

Meg was a changed woman. The days of “Meg, How the Fuck are Ya?” were gone, and she just sat on the couch and would yell at Jim. V and I would sometimes find her walking up and down our busy street, barefoot, in a house dress, often exposing her “bathing suit areas” without knowing it, and we’d have to guide her back into the house.

This new union, of course, became way too much for V, and she HAD to move… far away, to the east coast. This is when we sort of lost touch, but we always end up running into each other from time to time, and we still remain BFF.

Years have passed since I last saw V, and something terribly strange has happened. I’ve found myself hanging around with people way older than me. All artists and writers, mostly alcoholics or ex junkies, all very different and talented, but all broke as hell. A few months ago, one of my close friends started talking about this great guy that she’d met. “He’s really good-looking, smart, and has the brain of some kind of crazy genius,” she explained. “His name is Jim. You might know him from living in the neighborhood.”

It couldn’t be, I told myself. The only Jim I ever knew was the weird, pervy, Drain-O drinkin’, missing tooth, mental, old-as-fuck Jim. It could never be him.

Turns out, that’s exactly the gym I thought it was.

I now feel like two completely different worlds have collided. I have aged about 30 years without even having a single birthday. Jim is not only my BFF’s creepy, schitzo, wanna-be dad. He’s my new friend’s hunky, toothless, genius boyfriend. We’re in the same fucking social circle!

What have I become? Am I now on par with Meg, my surrogate mother? Sure, I sometimes fear the wheels are falling off of my car, but not that often. I did used to do a lot of drugs, but now I take psychotropics. Wait a minute… I like sitting on the couch. I’m a total tard. I’ve been institutionalized. I would totally date a guy who drank a bottle of Drain-O, and actually, I’m pretty sure I already have. I don’t think I wander the streets barefoot, but sometimes my boob pops out of my shirt without me noticing. What the fuck is going on here. I have BECOME her. I have become the other Meg.

I see Jim every now and then, and he still stares at me in the same creepy, eerily quiet way. It’s not quite as strange now. After all, I was a child when this man used to do this to me. But now he’s doing it and my good friend is consensually fucking him. I am now having an identity crisis and think I have turned into Meg. I have even used one of her catch phrases in my writing. “When I die, I want to be buried upside down so the world can kiss my ass”. I got that from her… old crack addict Meg. Is that what I have to look forward to… being fat and homeless and stealing everyone’s money, or am I already there?

Megan and Jim are still going through a divorce. Even though she got all of his money she instantly blew it on crack. She wanders up and sown the street we used to live on, now skinny as a rail, hustling day in and day out to get crack. Everyone knows where she is, but no one can ever find her. Or they just don’t try to. And me… I’m just worried I’m going to be like her someday. Maybe I already am. I can’t tell you how worried I am. In fact, I’m so worried I need to take a break from writing, take a pill, and sit on the couch so I can chill out.