The Stranger

Chapter 6

This one comes out of left field and I don't know if he's here because of you or because of me.  This one is dark, and handsome, plays bass in a punk rock band called The Tortured Intellectuals.  He is a graduate student studying Ancient Civilizations, Athens, Greece, Sumer.  He is what I imagine you would look like if you went to college, and polished your rough edges.  He even has a tattoo on his right arm like you, but his isn't of a skeleton.  His says, Carpe Diem.  Sieze the Day.  He tells me he got it when he first kicked heroin. 

We meet at a lecture on the film The Hunger, an eighties noir thriller about vampires starring David Bowie, Catherine Denueve, and Susan Sarandon.  The lecture is being given by my friend Suzan who is looking at the vampire through the lens of addiction.  I can tell this guy is mesmerzed by her lecture, practically at the edge of his seat, and at first I think he has a crush on my married friend, but afterward as we're mingling about the wines and cheeses, he says, "Fucking Brilliant lecture, eh!"

I take it you liked it?

I always liked that movie, but I never thought about how well it works as a metaphor for addiction, but when I think about David Bowie growing olds so quickly, his hair falling out, and all that.  I thought fuck, that is exactly how I felt when I was addicted to meth.  Like I was growing old pre-maturely, and I needed the drug to stay young.  He eats a large chuck of chees and adds with his mouth full, Fucking brilliant.

My mother was an addict, and I guess she kind of grew old before her time as well, I tell him.

What's your name? he wants to know.

Anna, I say.  What's yours?

Lorenzo Vasquez. 

Is that a hispanic name?

Yes, my mother was Italian and my father was Mexican, but I am 100 percent American. 

I'm not sure what that means.

You know what it means, Anne.  It means that I believe too much in television, junkfood, superheros, and the American dream.  I even drive a Harley Davidson for God's sake.  I mean what a fucking cliche.

I laugh, and for a moment, as I look into his eyes, you're competely gone, and there is only Lorenzo.