My Best Friend
It was an unassuming weekend. After work one particular spring evening in May, Jay was having people over at his parent’s house while they were away on a trip. It was one of our many two day events where we all came and went as we pleased. It was mostly the same crowd that usually attends these things. There was however, one exception. A girl named Carrie that Jay new from his vocational classes he had attended was in attendance. She was sitting next to George on the couch when I arrived and everyone was watching television. I sat on the floor nearby and the night mostly went on without incident. That was until a clip of Paul McCartney appeared on the television. Someone said something and I had added a comment that in his old age, his voice wasn’t as good as it used to be. Carrie got all defensive and told me to never speak ill of Paul McCartney. Being the Beatles fan that I was, I would not back down from my statement and frankly, was insulted that my opinion on the matter was even questioned. I readily admit that I did not find her remotely attractive, but now I looked upon her with complete indifference.
Some of us thought it was George that brought her, but later we found out that it was indeed Jay. She had asked Jay to her prom, but he declined. Rather than just subject her to the rejection, he did offer to introduce her to a bunch of eligible guys at his house this particular weekend. Jay informed us of this fact afterwards but still, none of us bit except for Paul.
Jay worked full time during the day. Once a week, on Wednesday, Paul drove Jay around town so he could do errands, and Jay would buy him lunch. Jay had also invited Paul to this weekend’s festivities as well. Up until this point, most of the rest of us had very little interaction with Paul since we graduated High School.
Paul never had a girlfriend and the next time he drove Jay around on errands he told Jay that if Carrie still needed a prom date, that he would go with her. So essentially, Paul asked her out through Jay.
Carrie accepted, or at least agreed to go on a pre-prom date with him. I heard all the detail, but I forget, or blocked it out, or just never cared enough to listen. Within days, however, Carrie went to her friends and said that there was a whole bunch of really cool guys she had met.
Denver was the first one to be dragged into the web. A group of them went bowling and the next thing we knew, Denver found himself on a “double date” with a girl named Laurie. Within the week, Denver was now telling us we needed to hang out with them.
I remember that we showed up at a Taco Bell parking lot that had a mini-golf course on the other side, and met Carrie’s friend Allie and Allie’s little sister Laurie.
Laurie was a young, short, heavyset, hippie girl that had really big boobs. Her sister Allie was short, had shorter, darker hair than Laurie and was generally a negative person.
Dan was back for the summer and within seconds, Dan made a sexist remark as a joke and Allie became irate almost immediately. Dan seemed to take pride in offending her as fast as he did. I tried being a mediator between them to no avail. Over the next couple of weeks, Denver was trying to get me to hang out with this new group of people from “Bay Shore” while I tried to juggle my time between our old friends and new friends just trying to make everybody happy.
The following weekend, Denver asks George and I to come over to Laurie and Allie’s house to play games because they are having a small get together. Upon arrival, Laurie introduced us to her “best friend,” Jean. Jean was going to be sleeping over Laurie’s house tonight.
I wasn’t there long before I got the feeling that something just wasn’t right. It turned out that Laurie’s dad was bi-polar or just had anger issues, or was just generally unstable. He was supposed to be working overnight, but ended up coming home because he wasn’t feeling well. It pretty much ended up with us stuck hiding in the basement afraid to make noise. Hanging out with these girls was seriously becoming a chore.
With both my car and Denver’s car out front it didn’t take long for their father to come down and look for us. He kicked everyone out, by now it was close to midnight and this poor little 15 year old girl that we just met told George and I that she couldn’t go home at this hour because she was supposed to be sleeping over and if she got dropped off by a couple of guys at 1 AM, her mom would freak out. I understood that because I was not about to bring a 15 year old home to my parent’s house at 1AM to spend the night either.
In the end we had just driven around until daylight and were pretty much forced to get to know one another. It turned out, she was really cool. Upon my initial meeting I found her to be energetic, impulsive and a bit of a tomboy. I think she was really
happy because it seemed to her that we genuinely liked her. What we didn’t know at the time was she was going to become my “best friend.”