Free Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales From a Bad Neighborhood by Hollis Gillespie

you how many times during our friendship that Grant and I have laughed so hard it felt like we could cough up our shoes. We’ve cried together too, and faced the terror of the truth together, but we have never slept together. I love him, but who doesn’t? He’s so awful in the most irresistible way.
    But he’s been on that island so long that he’s getting his memories mixed up. Either that or he’s taking his inner evil out for a little exercise again. “You mean that wasn’t you? I could have sworn it was you,” Grant tells Lary to tell me. So I tell Lary to tell Grant to come here and tell me that to my face.



Welcome to Heaven
    I decided to go to Isla Mujeres myself, especially since Grant called recently and said he’d found God, which is funny because I had always thought he was God. But Grant’s version of God is a nineteen-year-old Mexican sailor boy named Jesus, and to pronounce his name correctly you have to bark out the first syllable like you’re trying to stop a purse snatcher: “Hey!” And then directly following that you say “Zeus,” which is a different God altogether. But “Hey Zeus” is how you say “Jesus” in Spanish. “I have seen the coming of the Lord,” Grant proclaims.
    So there I was, on my way to Isla Mujeres so Grant could introduce me to Jesus. I begged Daniel to come with me, and I couldn’t believe he turned me down, because I felt it was pretty essential that the three of us got together again. I worried that our bond was fading. We used to sit together on top of the Telephone Factory lofts in Poncey Highlands and belt back wine. It was the perfectplace to watch the sunset, and we’d toast the mirrored buildings of downtown, which reflected the light and looked like big, beaded evening gowns in the distance. “It is our duty,” Grant would say solemnly, “to catapult each other into greatness.” Now Grant is gone, and Daniel and I aren’t great yet. Daniel is getting there, though, now that his art is selling at a hearty pace. “Daniel’s got a new car,” I e-mailed Grant, “and this morning he bought my breakfast! You’ve got to see this!”

    Isla Mujeres
    But Grant stayed put in paradise. He’d been saying he was going since I had met him, not to Mexico exactly, but simply said that one day he was going to take off his shoes and “just walk.” Daniel and I knew that meant Grant was leaving. We should have known it would be the day after his daughter graduated from high school. That day, Grant boarded a plane with nothing but a backpack containing little more than eight pairs of prescription sunglasses and a mysterious small fortune accessible by an international ATM card.
    It had been four months since he left, but it felt like an eternity to me. I’d seen pictures of him in the meantime. Daniel had taken some when he visited him and they sailed toward Cuba on a catamaran, an adventure that was supposed to include me, but I had to work.
    They never made it to Cuba; instead, they were sidelined by a storm, and I have to laugh now that I know they survived. I can justsee their sissy asses clinging to the yardarm, completely useless if the captain had clung to the ludicrous hope these two could help keep the boat afloat. If that had been the case—if Daniel and Grant had been expected to help pilot the boat as if they were on one of those “barefoot” cruises—I would have flown straight to Miami and waited for them to wash ashore. But, thank God, the crew was competent, and all Grant suffered was a badly sunburned chest, or at least it looked that way in the picture. “In the future,” I e-mailed him, “please try not to die.” He told me he couldn’t make any promises.
    “Come with me,” I implored Daniel. “The three of us need to be together again.” But for Daniel, it was not the time. He said the following spring would be better, when the three of us could go to Peru and climb a mountain. I have never climbed a mountain before. People