Fucking the Mud

I roller-blade. A lot. It is kind of sad. So today I went roller-blade-ing for, like, half an hour. And I was going down this one street and there is this one guy on a skateboard, he is on the street, while I am on the sidewalk, as always. I can totally tell this guy’s looking at me, and not in a good way. I must say now that I look ridiculous when I roller-blade. I know this. I have this weird mini bright orange backpack with one strap that Velcros across my chest. And I wear jeans, which cover my extremely ugly skates, so I just look abnormally tall, with wheels for feet. And the wire that goes from my headphones to my Walkman is long, and it hangs in front of me and then goes over my shoulder into my backpack. And the worst part, I have an unbelievably ugly helmet that is totally huge and gray. So this guys skates on up to me, and is like, “Why are you wearing that ugly helmet?” This guy really knows how to subtly strike up a conversation.
So I am like, “because my mother wants me to.”
He laughs. “Do you do everything your mother tells you to do?”
“Well,” I say, “of course not always.”
And he is like, “then why are you wearing the helmet?”
I stare at him for a few lingering seconds. “Well,” I begin, “wouldn’t you? If you knew, when you look into her hopeful loving eyes, that one day you would have to tell her something that would crush all of her dreams? When you see your mother, don’t you ever just feel the guilt of all the things you have done, that you regret, and all the things you are, that you can never change? So when I imagine all the pain I am going to cause her, all I can think is, I better do everything she wants me to now, because some day, she is going to see just how bad things can get where I am concerned, and for now I want her to love me, for who I am, with no complications. I want her to be happy with me, and if I can now do it by just looking silly for a little while, I want to. Because later, I wont be able to fix the things she hates about me.”
The guy just looks and is like, “what have you done that is so bad?”
I lean in with a coy little smile, look around, and whisper, “I am a lesbian.”
He looks around and says, “right now I am not supposed to be outside, because I always get dirty, my mother hates dirt. So I guess that is something I will regret.” He laughs. “I am gay too.”
I stare at him. “Then do you know what I am saying?” I ask.
“Well,” he says back, “not really, I just want to get back at my mom for hating such stupid things about me, I mean, I cant help being queer, or liking to be outside where it is muddy. I really sort of want her to hate me sometimes. I have fantasies that one day she’ll see me fucking the mud.”
And I didn’t even ask what he meant. Because somehow, I completely understand.