Budded. High, mastercharge, weed. we smoked it back in the day. Oh shit did we ever. I believe there was a canyon, a wooded area behind my high school. I never did get a high school diploma – but I did get high. We called it getting “Budded” and I guess there was more to it than that, but I cannot even remember, just hazy visions of cutting classes, matchbook covers split and made thinner in order to make funnels, where girls would turn joints of Thai stick, burning orange end bravely into their mouths, and blow the hot smoke out the other end into the lip-glossed orifice of the waiting one, like a mother feeding her baby bird. In the eucalyptus leaves, the fragrant forest, we’d turn up the Rob Base and play out this ancient feeling ritual almost daily. “It takes two.”
Never did the boys come with us, however there was one, who was technically a boy, but he was a she underneath the body he’d been born with. She was always allowed with us wherever we ran. She was a big girl too, as were we, with her big sweatshirts and hand-me-down Dickies and button down shirts from her cholo brothers, which somehow had the effect of making her look like a scary gangbanger, when she truly was more of a wallflower. She had a crush on an unattainable beauty – one we all longed for. I think the unattainable one was Xavier.
His name began with an X. I don’t know if he went to our school, but he had a girl who did, actually several girls, but they all looked similar, so it was hard to tell. All beautiful, bi-racial, lean and long legged, straight hair and straight A’s. Good girls, with impossibly huge Le Sport Sac bags hanging from their narrow dancer’s shoulders. What was in those bags? Leg warmers, math books, love letters, Dexatrim, gum, Lipsmacker’s in Dr. Pepper flavor, naturally, seemingly effortless beauty. Things we didn’t have. Them, not us. The girls from the dance corps, who would never be seen in the cafeteria, who stretched their matchstick limbs at their lockers and not once looked any of us in the eye, as if fat were contagious, as if bad grades was something you’d catch. But we were high, so we might have been more paranoid about things then.
Xavier had his harem, and he would bring them to dances. On a motorcycle. A purple motorcycle. “Purple Rain” had just come out and changed our lives completely, for there existed a place where we would go, the freaks and the weirdos, the sexy in-betweeners, bi-racial, bi-sexual, where maybe we’d belong. At least it was closer than John Hughes’ universe, galaxies away. Lake Minnetonka would baptize us one day, and Xavier looked exactly like Prince. I mean fucking egggggg-xactly!!!! Like they split an egg and one became Prince and the other became Xavier. And X of course, played it like it laid. I suspect he made his own clothing, as he had bell bottom pants, of purple velveteen, which buttoned up the leg, a golden trail leading up to his magic hips, that would ride any one of his girls thighs during “Darling Nikki” and mesmerize the budded wallflowers. The pants had matching tailcoat, and of course there was a white lace cravat involved. X did not play. Not when he was at his Singer sewing machine.
Something terrible happened, as “Let’s Go Crazy” blasted out of the gym loudspeakers. Maybe it was the girl. She had her back to him, and was dancing. But it was just for a moment, no longer. Maybe it was a memory, rushing into Xavier’s mind unedited, unanticipated. We will never know. He stood stock still, with his fingers still in front of his eyes, as they were mid- forehead, in the dance that we all knew was the mystery Prince eye dance. X was stuck. His girl turned around, and stopped dancing.
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
Xavier didn’t look at her. He didn’t look at anything, but something inside him, that he could see, but not with his eyes. His fingers were still in the air, but the motion had grown stale, and his face slowly revealed anger.
“Baby? What? What is it? Xavi? Baby?”
His girl kept asking, louder, then started crying, in her tight black lycra spaghetti strap minidress that had ruffles on the bottom, and polka dots, black on white. Like all of us. Black on white.
Xavier suddenly moved, held his girl’s arms and pushed her gently to the side, not looking her in the eye, as she never looked at us. He ran. On his homemade brocade Louis XIV 2-inch high heels, Xavier ran into the bathroom. He kicked the doors off the hinges, broke the mirrors with his fists, overturned the trashcans. When there was nothing left to destroy, he wet paper towels and threw them up at the ceiling. I saw him running out, blood staining the lace cuffs of the blouse he had made from a Simplicity pattern. He got on his motorcycle, girls running after him, and in the purple rain, Xavier took off, roaring.
None of us ever saw him again. The story became a legend, and maybe it was exaggerated in the way the others tell it, but then again, details get lost when you are high, and new ones are added for effect. I don’t smoke anymore, so I’d like to think my memory grew back, and it did, so I think I get the closest to the truth of the tale of Xavier. How we loved you Xavier. How we miss you. I hope you are well. Beautiful. Still sewing, still playing, still riding.