Chicken or steak?

Boy talk is weird.

It's personally impersonal. I listen to it as I pick apart my chicken quesadilla, tearing it into little pieces. I listen to them as they talk about their canteens and how important it is to fill them for the long journey that awaits. I guess it's better to be prepared for those long and hot dry spells. The ones where the heat makes you sweat, and tug at your collar. Metaphorically speaking in this instance I think it’d be better to wait for the buzzards.

Different food, but the company doesn't change

And the breeze helps carry their words away as soon as they've been said. That should make this all better. It should make the summer air feel lighter but it's humid and weighs me down. We chose Qdoba for dinner instead of Sonic. There was no steak, which means that this tortilla isn't as good as it could have been but costs the same. I think I’m already irritated. In just a few minutes the conversation takes a turn towards future wifey lane and finding the right one boulevard. These aren't metaphors, they've turned into names and faces that echo in my ears, taking their time to leave my mind. 

Is she hot? Tell me how you really feel.

After weeks of dancing around it, we are confident enough to talk about dating other people now I guess. I am a spectator, back on the bench. We listen to how their dating life will be rich and plentiful until they settle down and have babies with the right one. What did we expect, I'm in the company of Mormon boys. I'm not alone in this, Sydney is sitting beside me and her face doesn't tell me what she's really thinking. But I feel like she can see the emotions radiating off of me like sweat. My legs begin to fidget but I stay regardless. I should go, I want to go, but the only thing worse than staying is showing how much I care by leaving.

I don't really have a ton of guy friends, so I'm not usually privy to these boy talks. I feel like I don’t have anything to contribute to this open, but censored discussion. The boy to my left begins to talk about dating nice girls and ones that aren't as nice. The boy to my right brags about how he did this and that back in the day with both. I wonder if I'm a nice girl, the kind that you bring home to mom. I remember when I did meet his mom, and how one day, I stopped meeting her. 

In comparison, girl talk isn’t done around the table, it’s done in far more cliché ways; the most popular for me being in the privacy of crying cars or at Kim’s house as we watch Legally Blonde eating chocolate chip cookies. 

Care to share? 

The wind blows hot and I take a minute to get more Coke, filling up my canteen, figuratively speaking. I don't care to share how I'm feeling, knowing full well that my face and fidgety feet already have said enough. Besides, I'm already all talked out. A breakup extended by clandestine car kisses, saying goodbye only to be the last ones to leave. 

Amid this nail-biting conversation, 

I look up only to see the face of my first kiss. I look back down, to the sky, to the side. I feel like it's all come around full circle. He enters the restaurant and I pray that he did not see me, or that if he did, he won't say hi. Fortunately, he is on a date with a tall model type. I think she is my salvation. I feel something fluttering in my stomach but it isn't butterflies. As model girl and first kiss exit the restaurant, I look back as they walk down the road. I whisper with Syd, letting out those first summertime secrets, releasing them into the night until they're gone. 

I think we've exhausted the topic 

but Qdoba's lights still shine on. I chew on chicken and cheese as the conversation shifts to more important things than dating; like politics or what it truly means to be cultured. We talk about how people can trip on acid once and how people can be third wheels always. I learn more about the new girls, the ones who are much younger, and how they play games that you stopped playing after 19. I wonder, when did 22 become the new 27, translating into the universal age of the old. I whisper that I'm old because I feel old, and Syd says that I’m not. I'm not 17, not as new or inexperienced as I probably should be. 

A car drove through Casey's that morning, 

and that's my cue to leave. As usual, this dinner goes on until someone has to pee. I don't know how people cannot like gas stations, but they don't, they don't so much that they can drive right into one and make the Monday news. That was probably the most interesting thing that happened in Missouri today. It segues ways into jokes about that one time, you know the one, or maybe you don’t. The first of this summers secrets and I get into my car and I don't wait for them anymore. 

I go to Emily's house, 

which is actually Nadia's house, and eat ice cream and watch Broad City. Dogs jump on my lap; potato chip crumbs fall into my chocolate fudge brownie ben & jerry's. We begin our girl talk and I feel like this is the right setting, if not the perfect setting, to talk about what best friends talk about, real and uncensored. I think that she is the only person that helps me stay grounded in this town of awkward encounters and sunburned necks.