Angela

This is my ode to a friend I used to have named Angela. She was a gangly kind of ugly duckling in high school, glasses and all. We had grown up attending the same schools and through the grapevine we came to be friends around 10th grade. We were never really that close. Insecure to the core to this day, she was obnoxious then and never thrown a care to the feelings of those around her. She was either loved or hated, even my apathy leaned towards love because of her guts. When we went away to college, much to my surprise, we stayed in close contact. She was a good person who always took my calls and did all the things good friends do. For four years we carried this friendship on like it was fucking unstoppable.
      Then I broke up with the boyfriend, Jimmy. I heard from her less and less. Before I knew it a few weeks had gone by and I hadn't talked to her. Her responses became more and more spaced out until, finally I hadn't talked to her in a month. Ok. We constantly made plans to hang out when she was in town, that she unceremoniously broke every time. While she was away at school she had developed a new and infatuous love of the drink, oh yea and a boy. Whenever the boy blew her off, which he did early and often, she fell more in love with the bottle. When I look back on it, realizing how much of a cliche all of this was, the fact that I desperately tried to save our friendship makes me laugh at how stupid and kind I used to be. She continued to ignore me and I continued to make rescue attempts, until now.
       Now she hangs out with a girl she hated in high school, Martina, because that's the only person left who will take her calls. Martina is still an ugly duckling but she is neither funny nor kind. She's a mean girl and the kind that believes she will feel better about herself as long as she talks smack about others. Angela and Martina have this in common. They're friendship becomes less of a mystery as I explore their twisted and exact similarities. I forgot to mention that Martina is the only person left in Angela's life who won't say "Hey, don't you think we should stay in tonight? It's the day after Christmas and its Sunday, let's just hang out". This kind of attitude is a problem for Angela. The only thing to take away her sorrow in that scenario is food and she's terrified of gaining weight. So, she drinks. Every night, all night now that she's dropped out of school, with her new best friend Martina. I forgot to mention, she will now sleep with any warm blooded person who manages to stumble into her bed. Well, the warm blooded part is optional now I suppose. Where she once enjoyed a life of dignified virginity she now wallows in her green sheeted sea of disrespect and cum.
      Angela is a person I will run into at high school reunions or in the grocery store when I'm home for the holidays ten years from now. She'll still be here, in all her manic absurdity. She will probably marry the first person who will have her and they'll buy a nice little house no more than six blocks from the house she grew up in. 2.5 kids and a dog, she'll do it all. I hope she'll be happy with it, its all she'll ever be able to do.