Not too long ago, I met a girl. Mutual friends brought me to her apartment, a high-ceilinged, wood cavern of old records and kitsch artwork and pecan-rolls, freshly baked. She was a sweet and accommodating host, passing the resin-coated bottle with one hand and juggling a shedding cat in the other. Outside on the porch of the old building, she laid on the wooden bannister, pizza parlor signs a fluorescent, smokey halo against her. And from meeting her just once, I immediately knew she was someone who legitimately didn’t give a fuck. She did whatever she wanted, when she wanted, and how she wanted. Only it wasn’t in a defiant, teenage rebellion sort of way. She was actually just… her, in her own universe. Others simply didn’t matter. They existed, but not in the way they do to you or I. She was probably one of the most stripped-down and genuine human beings I have ever met. She was almost magical. And yet, something about her was just so…tragic.
