Meeting the Girls

[A rough draft.]

I was asleep.  No, that’s not right, and I begin much too many stories in that manner.  I was showering.  No, that’s not right, because it’s not entirely honest.  I was asleep in the shower.  There we go.  I was multi-tasking.  Asleep with my head resting against the wall, until startled awake by a door thrown violently open and heavy, excited steps across the bathroom linoleum.  A silhouette, rushing dark blue towards the bright blue shower curtain, yanked the curtain wide open, and showed it’s wide-eyed human face–the face of a roommate.

"What the fuck, man!" I yelled, turning away from him, hands covering myself.  "Are you insane?"  Stephen reached down and flipped the water from hot to frigidly cold.  I yelped, grasping desperately at the knobs.  My feet slipped, and I nearly cracked my head open on the spigot as I fell forward on to all fours.  Laughing, he switched the water off.

"Get dressed, my man.  I’ve got a mission for us."  He slid my green terrycloth towel off the curtain rod, and tossed it on me.  "And stop falling asleep in the shower.  It’s a waste of fucking money."

"Why don’t you go…" but he was already though the door, slamming it shut.  I sighed as I stood, toweling myself dry.  A mission?  The only mission I have is to find a new place to live.  That was ridiculous.  Kinda funny, but mostly ridiculous.  Knowing Stephen, I was fairly certain that this "mission" had blonde hair and a vagina.  I pulled my clothes on gingerly, slowly sloughing off the sleep.

"You coming, man?" Stephen asked through the door.  Why should I go?  Why should I reward his boorish behavior?  I was minding my own business, enjoying my shower…I wasn’t asleep…dozing…half-asleep, really…when that son-of-a-…"Yeah, I’ll go."  Because I was starting to feel good.  The laundry recently done, I could wear the clothes I pick out when I have the whole wash at my disposal.  Deep blue jeans like a bruised black, nylon socks, and lightly scuffed laceless black shoes.  Western-style plaid shirt with the shoulder seams pushed forward, faux ivory buttons up to just below the convergence of my collar bones.  Pubic hair trimmed where not removed, neck shaved, beard trimmed.  Scentless deoderant and Aqua di Gio cologne.  When I put myself together, when I pick the pieces and trace my fingers along the watertight seams, I move and act and breathe like an alligator in a public pool.

Stephen was hopping on one leg outside the door, an impatient, sugar-high child begging for another lolly.  He gave a low whistle.  "Golly, Howdy Doody, aren’t you bessied up.  You’re a bona fide Dapper Dan.  Where are your cowboy boots?  The lame kind, not the super-lame gatorskin shit."

"Bessied up?  Dapper Dan?  Thanks, Gramps.  Stop barging into the bathroom when I’m naked in the shower.  I’ll start to wonder about you."  He followed me down the stairs and out the door.  August nights are a little chill in Wisconsin, and my ears and nose buzzed briskly in the cold.

"You ready for this, man?" he asked me enthusiastically, running his broad and callused hands together.  Stephen is a short man, built like a steel keg of beer that had sprouted arms and legs.  When he became excited, he tugged at his long-lobed perpetually pink ears and tousled his own coiffed, tawny hair.  At that moment, I thought he’d pull his ears off of his head.

"What, what, what, man?  What?  What has got you so excited?  Besides seeing me naked, of course."  He laughed a little sheepishly, his cheeks flushed.  "Yeah, sorry, man.  But these girls I talked to a few weeks at the bars called me out of the blue, and…" he trailed off with insinuation.

"Yeah, I get it.  But I swear by everything you hold dear, including your very impressive and very disturbing collection of condom wrappers, if her wingman…wingwoman?…wingwoman pukes on my shoes–you know, like the last one–I’m fucking leaving,  I loved those shoes, and now they look like a fucking macaroni sculpture." 

"Yeah, we ate macaroni-and-cheese before we…"

"I wouldn’t give a shit what she ate, Stephen, except it ended up all over my feet."

He giggled like a hyena choking on a cork.  He didn’t want to piss me off, because we were still close to the house; litte time lost in turning around right then. 

She considered me on the bench before her.  Liquid eyes sodden, my coordination clumsy, my words assumptive and occasionally preposterous, but mostly just words.  Who would leave six years behind for this drunken fool?

My heels clicked as I came to an abrupt stop before the crosswalk.  Stephen came marching by, and I snagged him by the collar as a taxi sped by, it’s light switched off.  "Really, Stephen?  What do you look at when you walk?  You can’t hang out with these girls dead."

"Sorry, man.  I’m a little out of it.  Didn’t get much sleep last night.  Frank was blacked out drunk in the living room, screaming and crying…"

"God.  Again?"

"Yeah."  That unpleasant seed of a conversation went un-watered.  A PT cruiser passed by swiftly, and we stepped off the curb and into the street.  Stephen spoke.  "Hot damn, those cars look stupid.  Leave it to an American car corporation to remake ’20s aesthetics as plasticine and alien-looking as possible."

I chortled as we stepped up on the curb and turned down a new street.  "Totally agree.  I think it’s straight out of Jay Gatsby’s worst nightmare."  A medium-sized dog–snow white and long-haired, probably an American Eskimo–trotted along a fence beside us, the only sound being her padded feet on the crabgrass and dandelions of the unkempt lawn.  "That’s ridiculous," Stephen opined.  "Why would it travel forward in time?"  He jumped up and broke a branch off a birch tree.  "I wanna move to West Egg.  Go to those parties.  Toss it in Daisy Buchana…"

"Why don’t I stop you right there?" I interrupted him, and he took a baseball swing with his greenwood branch into a "no parking sign" standing guard above the street.  "Really?  Playing with branches?"

"Yeah," he replied, "bend over."  Campus was deserted, and the bustle of summer construction projects slept with the sun.  We raced each other down the handrails, the soft leather of my shoes hugging and gripping the metal.  I slipped near the end, tumbling head-first into a cluster of blooming daylilies.  Stephen’s shoes made a sound like sandpaper as they deftly landed on the concrete.  "Nice dismount, " he mocked me as he poked me in the ass with a toe.

I reached up a hand, and he pulled me to my feet.  As we walked through the downtown, we noticed the moving trucks in the driveways.  The school year was imminent, and the lease periods were commencing.  "Where you wanna go?" I questioned.

"Let’s go to The Happy Beaver."  I burst out with an aggrieved sigh, and he dodged out of the way as I kicked at him.  I complained, "Why do you always wanna go there?  It’s full of douche-bags, and it’s name sounds like a fucking sex toy."  He cackled–when something was really funny, he cackled like a witch in stitches.

"’Cause it has a dance floor, and women love to dance."  A raccoon and her kits scrambled across the street, contorting their bodies through the grate of a storm sewer.  "You ever wonder what they do down there, Mitchy?  Raccoons in a storm sewer?"

I furrowed my brow and brought my finger to my lips, pondering his question.  "I’m pretty sure they have some sort of subterranean city.  You know, a Rats of Nimh complex, for like, raccoons and shit."

He nodded, assuming a thoughtful, intrigued look.  "Seems reasonable to me.  What’s it called?"

"Raccoon City, of course."

Stephen came to quick stop by a fire hydrant.  "Wrong!" he announced, and then resumed walking.  "It can’t be Raccoon City.  That’s the name of the city in Resident Evil."

"Oh," I said.  "I should’ve known better than to forget about your encyclopedic knowledge of all things Nintendo."

"It was Playstation, asshole."  He playfully pushed me towards the hedges on the right.  I skidded on my right foot, just barely maintaining my balance, avoiding the tipping point.  "Anyways, the rightful name of the subterranean city located in the storm sewers where a massive population of super-intelligent race of raccoons live should be more creative than Raccoon City.  We’ll figure it out, I’m sure."

The shrieking bells and whistles of the amusement park to the left crescendoed as we approached the downtown bar scene.  A hodge-podge of flashing signs and makeshift stalls, it through light on the lake like a handful of confetti.  It arrived once a year, and the unwashed hawkers and barefaced charlatans invited one-and-all.  I lost my virginity under the branches of a willow tree years ago, the curiosity of kids and the excitement of life in startling symbiosis.  I haven’t attended that carnival in years, although when I traverse town, I can’t help but look at that willow tree.

We ducked through the front door of The Happy Beaver, nodding to the bouncer.  He, naturally, ignored us.  Grabbing a seat at the bar, we ordered tap beer and waited.  Apparently, these two girls were supposed to meet us there.  We talked.  When talking became tiresome, we watched television, always alternating who bought the round.  I occasionally asked Stephen where these women were, and he always responding noncommitally.  Approximately an hour and a half after arriving, I finally demanded the obvious.

"These girls either aren’t coming or don’t exist, correct?"

Stephen grinned.  "I figured it was the easiest way to get you out on a Wednesday night."  I was considering in which way I was going to murder him, when a hand on my shoulder grasped my attention.  Jake, an old friend and a regular at my preferred bar, was regarding me somberly.  "Mitchy.  Did you hear?"

I instantly sensed it.  "What?"

"Stacy’s dead."  We talked, and he left.  I barely knew Stacy, but it was saddening.

When they left, she was alive.  Curled up on a pile of blankets near the muted television, her body like a teepee, tanned hides stretched over brittle sticks.  Hair slicked with sweat, whispering to herself, fingers on the veins of existence.  It sped up and slowed down and sped up and slowed down until it was too slow and then nothing…

Just a harmless bit of fun, brown powder with teeth.  They lamented her death.  They said she was "pretty," which never made much sense to me; is death, are consequences to our actions, undeserved by the attractive?  And they buried her on a Saturday, amidst nice words about who she was and what she could’ve been.  Mostly, though, we choose how and when we die.

A voice behind us: "What a stupid bitch.  Who the fuck does heroin?"

Trouble.

Stephen spun about like a hurricane on to a boat, his face wild as an unleashed wind.  "What the fuck did you just say?"  Now, in these situations, tradition dictates that I stand behind my friend, a de facto statement declaring that should fisticuffs ensue, that I would participate.  These statements, naturally, are laughable when it’s a whipcord boy who hasn’t thrown or received a punch since 1998.  But I stood there, a dutiful friend, quietly brainstorming my way out of this unavoidable beating.

The transgressor, a tall boy in immaculately matched clothes spat on the floor at our feet.  "Yeah?  What the fuck are you going to do about it?  I said, ‘What a stupid bitch.  Who the fuck does heroin.  I wonder who wants to have their asses beat tonight.’  That’s what I said, you fucking queef."

"Perhaps there was a miscommunication here," I interjected.  "We’re not defending the use of heroin.  Really, heroin is never a particularly a good idea.  What we’re saying is…"

"Fuck you, queer," he interrupted.

Okay.  This was inevitable, so I decided that I should cultivate some bravado, as well.  "You don’t want to pick this fight, my man."

He stared at me, his hazel eyes in a face drawn tight by belligerance.  "Yeah?  And why the fuck not?"  He gestured to his friends, a collection of athletic-looking sycophants, obedient and at his heels.  I shadowboxed between us, then did a few mock karate chops at invisible foes.  "Because our cause is just," I responded, "and Athena, goddess of wisdom, will faithfully guide our blows."  When I’m nervous, I resort to humor.

One of the friends behind him–one of those pockmarked kids who lift weights desperately to try to mitigate his bad complexion–opened his massive, fireless lantern of a jaw.  "Fuck you, you fucking fag."

"No, I will not go out with you," I shot back.  His hands snapped up and out, pushing me backwards.  The bar barked a hollow thud as my head bounced off ot it, and I quite suddenly hada box seat view of a sea of legs resting on the rungs of stools.  Hmm.  What now?  I realized the bartender was shouting and the music was shut off, giving us shots to "get the fuck out."  I’ll do some shots.  My head shot up, and I made eye contact with Sam, the bartender.  "I’ll do some shots."

"Jesus, Mitch, what the fuck?  This isn’t like you."

"Yeah, sorry, man, but…"

"Can’t talk about it now.  Gotta get you all cleared out, but you can come back in a little while.  Probably tomorrow, since it’s almost bar time.  Shots?"  He raised his voice, trying to be heard by Stephen and the collection of hooligans, who were doing the I’m Going to Get Really Close to the Other Guy Like We’re Going to Kiss but We’ll Instead Look Really Tough routine, which is always a good time.  "Hey!  Fuckers!  I’ll give you some shots to get the fuck out!"

Which actually broke through the seemingly inpenetrable fog of alpha-male pheromones.  They walked over to the bar, keeping a close eye on one another.  I was still on my knees, so the bar was a few inches above eye level.  On my left, a blonde with a purse like a burlap bag of potatoes eyed me distrustworthy, inching her stool away from me.  I started to wonder about a bar whose patrons would so blithely dishonor the dead, and then ostracize their defenders.  Fine.  Whatever.  "Goldschlager, please."  He poured everyone a shot, but poured me three.  He put his lips near my ear, muttering, "Just get ’em the fuck outta here, man.  Please."  And he turned and walked away.

I did the shots in rapid succession, before turning, grabbing Stephen by his lapels, and dragging him through the back door.  "Alright, Stephen, we’re drunk," I firmly informed in the alley behind the bar.  "Let’s get out of here, because I sure as shit don’t feel like spending the night in jail."

He stumbled over to the brick wall of the bar and kicked it hard, showing no signs of pain.  He was more drunk than I’d thought.  "Fuck those guys, Mitchy.  Fuck ’em.  They have a beating coming."

"I totally agree, Champ.  I really do.  But their beating will come from larger people in greater numbers, ’cause let’s face it.  I’m fucking useless in a fight."

He took a deep breath, showing remarkable restraint for a man so inebriated.  "Alright.  I guess you’re right.  Let’s go."  And he started weaving his way towards the house, his feet tracing indecipherable shapes on the sidewalk.  The windowed storefronts of downtown glittered faintly in the orange glow of the streetlamps.  After a couple blocks of quiet, I spoke up.

"Thanks, man, for taking that so well.  I didn’t think there was any chance you’d forgo that fight."  I turned to smile my gratitude at him, but he was gone.  "Where did you go?"  Which is, naturally, a stupid question to ask someone who isn’t there.  I saw the flash of his garish shirt across the street, disappearing around the corner, and back toward the bar.

Fuck.  I pumped my legs awkwardly, my coordination rollicking on a sea of drink.  People stared as I flew by like a model rocket corkscrewing in a windstorm, arms flailing, hair flopping about willy-nilly.  As I turned the corner back towards the bar, I spotted him out front wrestling with the offending man from earlier.  Two of the other guy’s friends were running from across the street, shouting a collection of stale, barroom threats.  Opening my mouth to shout too, I took off at a dead sprint.  Hollering nonsense, my thoughts raced my feet.  What am I going to do?  I’m not a fighter.  Close my eyes, swing my fists, and take my lumps?  Will the demands of friendship be satisfied if I’m just there to also receive the beating…my eyes forward, I didn’t see the ornate loops of the street bench until they reached up and grabbed my foot.  I fell like only a drunk person and an egg from an airplane can fall, smashing my face flat into the sidewalk.  Damn.  If I wasn’t drunk, that would really, really hurt.

I regained my feet and reevaluated the situation, wiping the blood away from my gushing nose.  The two friends had arrived, now, and were kicking Stephen in the back.  Really?  I guess chivalry is dead.  Alright.  Time to do this, Mitchy.  God, I hope no one important to me is watching.  Screaming bloody murder, I started throwing everything I had at them.  They were initially shocked, as an already-bleeding banshee emerging haloed by the streetlamps like an urban avenging angel screaming, "Why am I doing this?" was decidedly unexpected.  After the surprise dissipated–and it dissipated quickly, it should be noted–they made up for wasted time.  I counted three blows to my face, but there were probably more.  The combination of inebriation and repeated, violent blows to the head had rendered my grasp on consciousness as tenuous at best.  Suddenly the scratchy sensation of bedraggled weeds pushed at my hands and the tattered threads of my thoughts.  I could hear police sirens in the distance, coming closer, calling out unpleasant promises for the future.

Stephen was heaped on my left, knocked unconscious by several sets of hands and feet.  "Steve.  Hey, Steve."  I slapped him across his bruised face.  Nothing.  I punched him in his swollen eye. 

"Outh." he groaned with an obvious lisp.  "That hurt."  He rolled away from me, almost as if I was a bedmate bothering him at the wrong hour of the night, nagging for a glass of water or worried about hidden monsters.  "Well, why don’t you answer to your own name, STEVE.  Come on, dude.  We should go."

"Go?  Why go?  Thith athphalt and ith thards of glath are oh tho nithe."  We slowly stood up.  Steve considered our surroundings, before suggesting, "Leth run into the amuthment park.  Loth of thtuff to hide behind.  Pluth the ligth are pretty."

We ran across the road, dragging our bruised and battered bodies like shacked prisoners drag their ball and chains.  On the outskirts of the flashing and fleecing and the proselytization of the star-eyed masses, nominally included in the premises, a host of trailers in which the workers slept rested, empty, windows darkened and curtains drawn.

We crawled beneath a decrepit trailer surrounded by other trailers; a beige that was once mustard yellow, trimmed in mustard yellow that was once brown.  We laid there sodden, fervently swimming in a desire to be elsewhere.  As I settled in to a rough semblance of a comfortable position, I noticed Steve’s deep breathing and fluttering eyelids.  Recognizing that Steve was fighting what was probably an impossible fight, but needing him to stay awake for practical reasons and for simple comraderie, I nudged him with my elbow.  "Steve.  None of that.  Come on, man.  We gotta stick with it, ’cause those cops have gotta be pissed."

We were both asleep within minutes.

The birds woke us up.  An angry moan rumbled from deep within Steve’s stomach.  "Thethuth Chritht.  What kinda bird ith that?"

"Pretty sure it’s a red-winged asshole," I rasped.  It was still dark, but just barely so.  Dawn was no more than a half-an-hour away, and I’d never had such an urge to be buried in blankets atop my own bed, or simply comatose.  It felt like the pressure in my head was going to pop the eyeballs out of my skull.  A few seconds stretched themselves into minutes, and I imagined that we were both gathering the courage to move, to speak aloud, to do anything.  I was painfully sober.

"Hey.  Ithn’t that meteor thower tonight?" Steve asked, as he swatted at mosquitoes and itched at the bites.  "Never really got out to thee one.  Alwayth been kinda curioth."

"Yeah, I think so.  Can’t tell through the dormant amusement park phantasmagoria, though."

"Phantathmagoria?"

"I can’t tell through the amusement park cluster-fuck of strewn-about shit.  Nor can I see through this trailer directly in front of us."  A hangover drastically shortens a person’s patience.

"Oh.  Got it.".  He rolled out from beneath the trailer, and then slowly stood.  Stretching, he barked out something between a laugh and a groan.  "Shit, man, we’re gonna be miserable as fuck tomorrow."

I wiggled my way out after him, attentively listening to my bruised muscles scream.  "It is tomorrow.  I can’t imagine the cops are looking that hard for us anymore, but let’s not let two beat-to-shit boys dragging their chewed-up dog toy asses all the way home get arrested now."

"Yeah, fair enough."  As we limped through backyards and hidden alleyways, the sun rode its sister stars to its celestial station.  "Thanks, Mitch, for running after me.  For throwing yourself into the fight."

"No, thank you.  Opportunities to be brave are few and far between.  We’d all feel better if we felt courageous, ya’ know?" 

He shook his head, confused.  "No, not really."  We walked in silence for awhile, watching the shooting stars become harder to see with every moment of increasing light.  "Wanna go out tomorrow?" he asked.

And we laughed.