The outside walls were shiny chrome with circular porthole windows. It looked a bit like a Winnebago, but with a fibre-glass cowgirl standing by the door and the word ‘Howdy’s’ in magenta neon on the roof. It was either hideous or brilliant or just maybe both.
‘We shouldn’t be here,’ I said. ‘This is crossing enemy lines.’
‘Just come inside,’ Beasley insisted.
Polly, at my side, looked similarly dubious but we pushed through the front door. It was quiet, which made me feel pretty smug, but it was two thirty on a Wednesday. We were on holiday now. It should be full of tourists, but apparently they’d found all the burgers they needed at the McDonald’s in town. Good. I hoped it failed spectacularly, that they mowed the place down and turned it back into a golf course.
A surly girl in a kitsch waitress costume and prop pointy glasses swooped on us, menus in hand. ‘It’s OK,’ said Beasley. ‘Our friends are already here.’
We found Alex and Alice in a padded vinyl booth towards the back of the diner. A jukebox played, but it was playing ‘Rapture’ by Blondie. ‘Oh you’re here too,’ Polly said. ‘You’re all ******* traitors. You know that, right?’
‘I know this looks bad,’ Alice said, ‘but we came so we could tell everyone the food would give you tetanus. It’s pretty cool though.’
The interior wasn’t as stark or chain-restauranty as I’d imagined. The walls were lined with dark-wood panels and framed Kill Bill and Jaws movie posters. There was a life-size Darth Vader replica standing by the jukebox. Overall it didn’t look too bad, but I still hated it on principle alone.
‘You have GOT to try their hot dogs. Seriously,’ Beasley said. ‘And the milkshakes are amazing.’
The waitress hovered at our booth, no doubt bored stiff. ‘Hey, Beasley. You want your usual?’
‘She knows your name? How many times have you been?’ I asked with horror.
‘Once or twice,’ Beasley lied. ‘What? I had to bring Jack too.’
We all ordered hot dogs and milkshake and gossiped about who had been up to what during the holidays. I’d spent most of my time with Polly so there wasn’t really a lot to tell. Beasley was very much loved up with Jack and wasn’t shy in sharing his first sexual experiences. I would never do that. Ahem.
They didn’t really ask about Polly and me. I think they were scared because Polly had told them, in her usual subtle, understated fashion, to keep their noses out.
The waitress carried over a platter. The hot dogs were served in cute plastic baskets with French fries. I couldn’t deny the hot dogs looked good. ‘This is going to blow your mind,’ Beasley said.
‘It’s a sausage in a bread roll. How good can it possibly be?’
‘Oh. Oh, you wait.’
‘Holy ****!’ Polly exclaimed, taking a bite. ‘It’s like my mouth is having SEX with an ANGEL in HEAVEN.’
‘Told you.’
I took a bite. Well, it was perfection. This must have been what it felt like when the Wise Men first saw the Baby Jesus. ‘Oh man, that redefines both sausage and bread forever.’
‘Told you!’
‘OK, that’s better than crazy golf. I take it all back!’ Polly said and we laughed. Just like that, a new tradition was born. Hot dogs, milkshake and Denise the Disapproving Waitress.
I wanna get this right. It’s the big finish and I want it to mean something. All of my essays always end with a paragraph that starts, ‘In conclusion …’ so perhaps that’s a good place to start.
In conclusion, Nico Mancini from Action Station (SCREAM! HE’S SO DREAMY!) once told me that all of life is change. Everything changes, every day, whether we want it to or not. But I think changes are not born equal. A few are big and noisy and momentous and we all feel them: people arriving, people leaving.
Look at it this way: we all had a middle name ready for if we ever had baby girls.
Sometimes though, the changes are so subtle, so slow, it’s only when you look back at old photographs you can even see that a change has happened at all. You didn’t even feel it. All of a sudden you don’t even recognise the girl in the photo.
There isn’t a day in the diary I can circle with a red Sharpie and say that’s the day I fell in love with Polly Wolff, but at some point over that year it had definitely happened. There was once a leak in my grandmother’s attic that was so minute she didn’t even know about it until the whole bathroom ceiling caved in.
I was the same; I am flooded with love and it’s such a lovely way to drown.
And I do love her. I love her from the tip of her toes to the scars on her thighs. Right now I couldn’t be without her. It’s a different love to the one I had with Nico. That was a serene pond; this one’s more like a tornado. People call us lesbians, of course they do, but someone once told me that labels are for shit you buy in shops and she was so right. I’m Toria, she’s Polly and that’s all I need to know. Right now, it’s GOOD and I’m HAPPY. What else matters? When you take away our bodies and our names, all that’s left is the feeling. And the feeling is like warm honey.
I guess I started writing all this stuff down because I hoped it’d tell me WHO or WHAT I am, but, looking back, I think that’s a big ego trip I can’t be bothered to take. I’m no closer to finding the elusive real me, the tiny me who sits at the steering wheel in my brain, but I have so many memories of last year. So many pictures in my head. But I think it’s time to put them aside until a rainy day. I’m too busy living. It’s time to stop thinking and start doing.
So this is the end. Sorry it’s not neater, but that’s not really how it goes, is it? Yeah, there are loose ends everywhere, but life is frayed at the edges whether we like it or not. We’re all surviving something. I wish I could guarantee Polly wouldn’t ever cut herself again. I wish I could write a chapter where my mum triumphantly tips her wine down the sink or where Action Station got their number-one single or where Beasley came out to his mum, but they’d all be lies. They haven’t happened … yet.
So don’t you dare go thinking this is happy ever after. Spoiler: this probably won’t last forever. Right now, I’m typing on Polly’s bed, wearing her vintage Spice Girls T-shirt as a nightie. Polly’s in the bathroom, making her hair lavender blonde. Her parents are on holiday and we’re taking full advantage.
Mum says, ‘It’s a phase.’ Oh it’s all a phase! Everything, literally everything is temporary. Next year we’re all leaving Brompton, that is still the key directive for each and every one of us. I don’t know if Polly and I will change in the same direction or spin off in different ones. But for now we’re together.
I have literally no idea what’s going to happen next.
I’m fine with that.