Pink Flamingos

Eddie

The music was distracting me again. It started at nine in the morning and finished at ten in the evening, but no matter what time it was, it was always incessant. A good music taste was only so forgivable.

Sometimes it came through the tinny radio. Sometimes the sound of a good quality vinyl record drifted through the trailer park. I could always tell because of the quality. To me, it was a surprise that no one had complained about the noise yet – “They probably enjoy the music too,” Mama Chelsea had said at dinner the night before, “so don’t be such a downer.” I looked to Mama Heather for support, but she only nodded in agreement.

So, it seemed that, like most things, the music was irritating to me and me alone. I stared down at the blank page of my notebook in dismay. The desire within me to immediately write down something beautiful and eloquent became increasingly more demanding, but the only words I could think of were the boys’ stupid song lyrics. I didn’t quite know what I wanted to write, but I knew I didn’t want it to be something that The Eagles didn’t think of first.

At least, I figured, I finally have someone to blame for my writer’s block besides myself. “Yes,” I said to myself, “when I learn what’s good for me and give up on my dreams, I will write a grand letter to the world as my swan song and I will list them as one of the reasons why I failed in life!”

“Did you say something honey?” Mama Heather called out from the kitchen.

Startled, I yelled back, “Nothing, Mama.”

It felt like there was a bass drum pounding inside my head. There wasn’t enough air in the room, there wasn’t enough silence. Everything was closing in on me and the f*****g music just would not stop. It wasn’t just the music – suddenly everything was amplified.

The clanging of dishes and my mother’s whistling from the other room made me jump. The strings of hanging beads in the doorway that separated the two rooms wasn’t enough, could never be enough, to block out the never-ending noise. The conversations, the soft conversations, that could be heard through the walls of the trailers beside us seemed to echo throughout the whole park. Even the sounds of my own breathing and swallowing made me shift uncomfortably on my bed.

Before I knew what I was doing, I jumped off the bed and pushed the front door open, ignoring the way that it crashed against the side of our trailer with an uncomfortable metallic clattering noise. Standing strong in the doorway, I shrieked, “Turn the f*****g music down!”

To my surprise, there was only one boy hanging around outside the trailer. Not at all to my surprise, he was still wearing one of those stupid Hawaiian shirts. He sat in the sun in a fold-out deck chair, next to the vinyl player.

My chest was heaving. Half of me wanted to apologize. The other half of me just felt awfully awkward, and so I said nothing. All I did was watch him.

And he watched me too. He seemed largely unimpressed. When he slid his dark sunglasses down onto the bridge of his nose, I swore I saw a sparkle of amusement in his eyes. But apart from that, his expression didn’t change at all.

Ever so slowly, he languidly reached over and took the needle off the record, all while keeping his eyes on me. The scene was kind of eerie with the sudden absence of his tunes. The only soundtrack accompanying our staring competition was the whirring of the electric fan set up next to him, blowing his hair to one side.

“Happy?” He asked sarcastically.

“Course,” I said, equally sarcastically.

I stared at him for a moment longer. He didn’t move. Unsure of what to do, I retreated back inside my trailer, letting the door slam behind me.

The music only stopped for a few hours, but, when he turned it back on, it was quieter. I considered it a small victory.

He sat out there every day, nodding his head and listening to his music. Sometimes he brought a book out, sometimes he just watched the record spin. Sometimes he was with other people, the boys that I had seen earlier or a few older girls. Most of the time he was alone. His fascination with his own solitude fascinated me.

But that didn’t mean that I liked him.

The boy seemed arrogant to me. When I passed by him each day, he didn’t say hello – the irony of me complaining when I never said hello either wasn’t entirely lost on me, but it was his mannerisms that got under my skin. I felt his eyes follow me while I walked past. If I ever looked over, he would smirk without warmth. There was something decidedly unnerving about him.

“Maybe he’s just trying to make friends with you,” Mama Chelsea said when I complained about it to her, “but he doesn’t know how.”

I snorted. “Yeah, right. That’s definitely it.”

“Don’t sass your mom,” Mama Heather said. “Boys are kinda stupid, especially when they’re young. They just don’t know how to socialize.”

I didn’t doubt that that was true. But it certainly didn’t make me sympathize with him. He certainly hadn’t offered up many reasons to like him. Gender roles were, as always, a reason but not an excuse.

It was hard to stay open-minded when I felt him openly staring with his detached pleasure. The idea that I was amusing him in any way made me feel sick to my stomach – what was wrong with me? I wondered. Was it the way I talked, looked, walked?

Though I suppose I had no right to complain – we hadn’t spoken since I had yelled at him. The music had been quieter since.