Tara

Tara was one of the handful of cute girls that frequented the PNP gas station/convenience store while I worked there. When you’re a single heterosexual working at such a place, you pay a bit more attention to the cute girls; even if they’re probably still in high school and you’ve just graduated from college. Whoever she was with, including her mom, always bought a pack of Camel Lights, and I intuited who they were for, but I respected the fact that she never tried to buy them from me. Then one day, much to my amusement, I watched her come into the store alone, while one of her usual accomplices (Lisa) waited in the car, and ask for a pack of Camel Lights. Curious, I asked for her ID, and she anxiously shuffled through her purse and eventually fished out a high school ID. Beginning to realize she was not altogether sober, I nicely encouraged her to find a federally recognized form of identification with a picture and a birthdate. She cowered back to her car, where she at last found her driver’s license. It was her 18th birthday.

Eventually, I started dating another cute girl who bought cigarettes all the time at PNP. Amy and Tara hung out quite a bit, and it turned out Tara lived just down the street from me. Some nights we convened on Tara’s porch and other nights on mine, not really doing a whole heck of a lot. I soon discovered that, much like my sister when we were kids, Tara was a willing participant in whatever geeky juvenile innocuous fantasy game I concocted, and soon she and I were running around the neighborhood pretending to be spies, probably working for the Yakuza Clan or something.

Tara was kind, spunky, clever, curious and insecure. As a people-pleaser who was easily intimidated, she could be easy to manipulate. I thought it would be a good idea for her to hook up with my friend Josh, forgetting how unduly jealous he was with his girlfriends. The four of us had some fun times together, but I was relieved when they broke up. I hoped she’d find a gentle, understanding guy to take care of her, realizing full well she wasn’t interested in gentle, understanding guys.

Tara became my second female friend that I began worrying almost incessantly about. There is perhaps no more intense a frustration than to look into someone’s projected future and wonder how they could possibly ever be happy; reminds of that Red Hot Chili Pepper’s song: “My friends are so depressed. I feel the question of your loneliness. Confide, ‘cause I’ll be on your side; you know I will, you know I will…. I love all of you hurt by the cold; so hard and lovely, too, when you don’t know yourself….”

I swear, I’d marry Tara in hopes that I could make her feel okay. But perhaps the reason why I’ve never worried in quite the same way about girls I’ve dated is that then their problems somehow tend to become my fault. Typing this makes me reflect that I don’t generally view myself as inhabiting a lot of empathy or insecurity, but to some extend that’s a lot of wishful thinking. It’s always easier to say “Fuck you, world!” when confronted with the helplessness of not knowing how to help those in it than to try to do anything proactive about it.

At the same time, sometimes it’s prudent to admit our limitations, throw up our hands in despair and let things be. The reality is that oftentimes all we can do is let life unfold and hope for the best. I’m a firm believer that there is a lot in life that you just have to give over to luck.

Please be okay, Tara. Please be okay. And know that you are quite possibly the most wonderful person I’ve ever met.