Experience Junkie

Experience Junkie

                I fell in love with an experience junkie.

You know the expression, “Those who burn twice as bright, burn half as long”?  Well, that was her.  She got off on always doing something a little better, a little crazier, a little more dangerous than what she did the day before.  Immediately, I knew I was in over my head; if I didn’t keep up the pace, she would get bored and move on to the next guy, hoping he could fulfill her insatiable thirst for experience.

And yet, I’m not the kind of guy who just throws in the towel when the going gets tough.  Especially not with a girl like her.  She might have been wild, but to me, that was a good thing.  There was something exceedingly special about her, an untamed quality that had long been extinct in the human race.  She intrigued me.

So keep up the pace I did.  For almost eight months I kept up the pace, working tirelessly to find something new and exciting for us to explore.  I never would have admitted aloud how worn down I was from keeping such a frantic, unpredictable lifestyle, but the fatigue was definitely beginning to creep in.  I was certain it would only be a matter of time before it all caught up with me… or before she noticed my inability to keep up any longer and drifted away.

Then, and only then, did I make the jump from normal thrill-seeking to something new—crime.

Doubtless, our actions had always skirted the edge of the law.  Driving much too fast, skipping through skylane levels like they were green-lighted intersections, polluting the regulated-atmosphere by smoking cannabis down in the bowels of the Dive, brightening up the dour metal walls with colorful, if not entirely appropriate, graffiti… we’d even gone so far as to get some unlicensed body modifications.

But never once had we actually committed a crime of force, an aggravated assault per se.

“You wanna rob a bank tonight?”

She rolled over lazily until she was on top of me, heart beating achingly against mine.  Her skin was warm, slightly sticky with sweat, just like the walls of the dingy flophouse room, and her movement was tired.  Despite the languid motion, however, I could see the fire that had suddenly sparked behind her eyes.  Taking the hand-rolled joint from between her lips, she let a thin streamer of blue smoke trail out of her lungs.

Silence, other than the slow whisper of her breath.  It was something we had come up with, something just between the two of us.  Silence was often the best answer, when you couldn’t trust words to express how you felt.  I suppose it also could have been the worst sort of answer, when anger or hatred was too strong to speak… but I knew that wasn’t the case here.

So, without a word, I knew she’d said yes.

Then, voice hazy with smoke and the thought of a smile, she raised the stakes a little higher.  “An oxygen bank.”