Lonesome women rarely make it out of Wichita, Kansas. Some plan on staying forever.
I worked at a barbecue restaurant that failed its yearly health inspection while servers rolled their tips from dinner rush in order to snort blow in the back kitchen. They would fuck each other without using protection after their night shifts and call out of work for planned parenthood appoints the next morning.
The manager’s hiring process was based on who was the most enjoyable to look at, despite being happily married. The most universally attractive employee was Jaime. He was tall, underweight, and had dark hair that always got the most amount of tips by using his vocal fry to seduce divorced cougars prescribed to xanax.
When the back kitchen got overcrowded, he would move you to the side by grabbing your hips with his delicate fingers covered in chipped black nail polish to get to his orders faster. You could feel his touch through the sewn cotton of your work uniform t-shirt that had ranch stains covering the rooster logo on it. The only hips he wouldn’t dare touch were Kayleigh’s.
Her party affiliation was “misunderstood republican” and she collected a pile of seven unpaid speeding tickets in her glove compartment. She studies the economy while supporting women’s reproductive rights. She has trashy auburn colored hair to debunk any bleach blonde allegations. We were best friends. She was the daughter of a well-known politician that made her get a waitressing job so she could have life experience.
Jaime pissed her off with his intoxicated rants about the fascism movement and was afraid she would file for sexual harassment just by making eye contact. When her balding father was preoccupied with vetoing a universal healthcare bill in Washington D.C. for the weekend, she would host parties at her McMansion in the nicest part of town.
Jaime was never invited, but Kayleigh’s incoherent boyfriend always showed up. Elliot was the lead singer of a Midwest Emo band that handed out unfinished demos to pretentious record shop owners instead of applying to real jobs. They would fight over political differences and make up in the backseat of his rusted pickup truck in a deserted cornfield. He was in love with a politician’s daughter and she hated listening to his music.
When you walked into Kayleigh’s overly decorated home, there were two living rooms that you could choose from. We chose the one on the left that had a taxidermy bull hanging on the wall with rigid horns long enough to dry your laced panties on top of them. Her country club luncheon mother chose a houndstooth wallpaper that clashed with everything. We took pictures in front of the dead animal and named him Harrison Ford after taking three shots of stolen tequila.
Kayleigh could get us any type of liquor that we wanted out of her mother’s cabinet that was locked with a six digit code to prevent the family’s lineage of severe alcoholism from continuing. She made her mom confess the numbers after promising to keep her affair with the legislature's office intern a secret from her husband. After a fifth round of Don Julio, Kayleigh would lock everyone inside her guest bathroom and sit on the porcelain toilet while shedding alligator tears declaring that her mother is the female Bill Clinton. We assured her that her emotionally abusive father was probably sharing a cigar with a gay escort right now and that they’re even.
We would play hide-and-seek to lift her blue mood, but couldn’t find each other due to how many spare bedrooms were inside the house. The backyard pool had a dramatic yellow slide where most of the fun happened. The morning shift coke addicts would skinny dip into the chlorine water to show off their rib cages and rusted nipple piercings. Kayleigh always said how trashy it was for them to go braless at work while they were busy kissing each other underwater. “They should come with a tornado warning.” Her best insults happened after midnight. She was good at talking shit.
The rest of us kept our clothes on and danced to a Modern Baseball playlist Elliot curated for her on Spotify. We line danced on top of the marble kitchen counters until we broke an array of crystal wine glasses that cost more than our weekly paychecks. We cleaned up the chards of glass as our waitress instincts kicked in while searching for a broom in every linen closet. “Don’t worry, the cleaning staff will be here tomorrow” Kayleigh murmured as if every household comes with one. Elliot would write song lyrics about Kayleigh while she judged intoxicated cartwheel competitions on the front lawn. He lets me read them as a thank you for being her only true friend.
“She’s making a run for it,
Miss Kansas can’t compete in pageants anymore
Her moods are wind patterns
That I’ll follow to any state line
I’ll be your storm chaser
seek shelter with me, my local weather woman'“
I wanted to share a crooked smile, but I couldn’t get past the first line. “Elliot, please tell me this is fiction. Why would she want to leave home?” He’s weary of my emotions and lights another paper cigarette. “Don’t tell her I showed you this.” I kept my word and never saw him again.
We eventually ran out of crystal wine glasses to shatter every weekend. The parties started to get busted by the cops as her neighbors would do anything to find evidence to use against her family. She still had a reputation to uphold in that unfaithful gated community of hers and the local newspaper was onto her mother’s infidelity. The hometown rumors wounded her spirit and she abruptly left Wichita in Elliot’s pickup truck six weeks later.
My life is empty. I would give anything to hear her fabricated right wing beliefs again. The summer months go by and I hold a funeral for our friendship. We were supposed to run away together.
Yet, not every story has to end tragically. It was the night before the autumnal equinox and I received an incoming call from a public payphone in Virginia.
“Hello?” I hold my breath.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore!!!”
It’s my Dorothy, living somewhere over the rainbow now.
essays and fiction written from the ink of a digital quill pen.