Blue is finally stepping out of her father's shadow and slowly inserting herself into the elite "Bluebloods" group at the high school. Inevitably, the question of sex comes up. Blue, now nicknamed Wretch after an unfortunate and very dramatic reaction to drinking cocktails, is asked about her experience:
“You’ve never gotten laid, have you, Retch?” Jade accused one night, deliberately ashing her cigarette in the cracked blue vahze next to her like some movie psychiatrist with switchblade fingernails, her eyes narrowed, as if hoping I’d confess to violent crime.
The question hung in the air like a national flag with no wind. It was obvious the Bluebloods, including Nigel and Lu, approached sex as if it were cute little towns they had to whizz through in order to make good time on their way to Somewhere (and I wasn’t so sure they knew their final destination)."
I love the second paragraph. It's filled with awareness, distance and intelligence but no real emotional attachment. Blue is an observer of her own life.
She's also an observer having difficulty knowing exactly what's she's looking at. Two of the Bluebloods, Jade and Leulah, take Blue to a distant roadside dive where they choose middle-aged men to take into the women's disabled toilet for sex. Then they drive home, elated. Blue's reaction is an unsuccessful attempt to categorise their behaviour:
"when Jade was speeding back to her house, crisscrossing between semis and Leulah screamed for no reason, head back, hair tangling around the headrest, her arms reaching out of the sun-roof as if grabbing at the tiny stars sticking to the sky and picking them off like lint, I noticed there was something incredible about them, something brave, that no one in my immediate recollection had written about—not really."
Then she admits defeat and decides:
"I doubted I could write about it either, being “the total flat tire in any bar or club,” except that they seemed to inhabit a completely different world than the one I did—a world that was hilarious, without repercussion or revolting neon light or stickiness or rug burn, a world in which they ruled."
This captures perfectly the great divide I, the one who ends up at the kitchen in parties or reads bookshelves or alphabetises the vinyl albums, feel between me and those who REALLY party. They enjoy ruling a kingdom I can't even see.
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