It was roughly 11 PM, or a rough 11 PM depending on how you looked at it, on a Friday. I had been tacked onto and dropped into a party by my new and similarly drunken roommate. We had only lived together and known one another for about a month. All I knew really about him was that we both liked bad metal, bad beer and bad movies. That alone was enough to be comfortable with one another in the house, but when introducing someone into your social circles it may not have been enough. Things can go bad as we all may or may not know. Luckily for him I wasn’t a sociopath or a sex offender, and lucky for me his friends weren’t sex offenders or sociopaths, so things went pretty smoothly on that front.
We drove, possibly illegally considering the empty malt liquor cans we left back on the kitchen table, whilst some Norwegian black metal circa 1999 blasted out of one-and-a-half speakers in his… Celica? Accord? Whatever it was it had seen better days and as far as I could tell under his watch had never had a proper cleaning. Candy wrappers and various and sundry crumpled energy drink cans were scattered within the limited hither and yon of the compact.
We got to the house and things appeared to be in full swing. That perfect moment in a party when things are at full steam, all of the accelerating is done, and the come down, that long slow glide into finally trying to get everyone out of your house at some unholy hour, had not yet begun. The music was loud-ish, not offensive. Token 80’s tracks mixed in with some White Stripes, Lil’ John, and the occasional sappy sing along like “Easy” by Lionel Richie or “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” All of the songs that at the very least weren’t complete crap, and at best had at least 5 people holding up their drinks and yelling in celebration at the first few notes.
Luckily, with things being in full swing, there was none of that group glancing at whoever came through the door. Everyone was well drunk and involved in whatever ridiculousness they were indulging in: things to be bragged about, or embarrassed of, or forgotten, or used as blackmail or social destruction at a later date for reasons large and small, mistaken and perfectly valid.
Right as the door shut behind us Steve let out some hellacious yelp that did its best to scare me to death. This occurred seamlessly with him sprinting blindly through the front room, with no apparent concern towards the safety or longevity of furniture and/or bodies, and into the backyard. I assume he saw something or someone that needed immediate and drunken attention. He can be forgiven for ditching me not a split-second after bringing me to a house of packed with strangers, as he was intoxicated. I did, however, realize that he shouldn’t have been driving and filed away in the back of my head the chore of figuring out either A) how to get back home, or B) where to sleep until the sun came back up and the busses started rolling.
I was strangely at ease. Typically I freeze up and bolt from things like this when I know no one, but as everyone was… whoops, someone just vomited all over the hallway, and most people laughed… yes, in this environment social pressures are next to nil, so I could walk the scene anonymously.
The first order at hand was to find a drink. On the dining room table was a bucket half-full of ice, half-full of melted ice. In it were floating all manner of beers, so I took the one in the biggest can and wondered if the condensation ring that this thing was going to leave was going to destroy the finish of the table.
Probably.
From another room in the house came the sound of splintering wood. This party was a bit out of hand. I looked around and everyone was roughly my age, so why this was as rowdy as a high school party was beyond me. I didn’t mind, it was just funny, bringing back memories of those poor kids whose parents left for the weekend and got the fool idea of inviting some people over. Said kids ended up finding that they had a lot more friends than they were aware of, and that sometimes people that call themselves friends are actually bastards. Invariably, those kids were in some deep shit come Sunday night when the parents returned.
I walked into the kitchen and leaned against an anonymous fridge whose contents I neither cared nor wondered about, though by the clues left throughout the house I assumed that some sort of organic and whole foods type products would be present, maybe some kale, maybe even a beet salad with pine nuts or some such shit. Funny, for a presumably organic and green household, I would expect a mellower crowd.
So I had a beer, something in a can. It was of no quality, as things in tall cans aren’t made for delicate balances of hops and chocolate, but at this point I couldn’t be bothered to care. There was sound, and motion, and the barely grasped awareness that there were people moving through and throughout the room. Luckily, everyone else was as shithoused as I was so I relaxed knowing that I wasn’t “that” strange guy who showed up cross-eyed drunk and then proceeded to get fucked up. If anything, I would volunteer myself as a driver before letting anyone I had seen so far take the wheel.
I absently reached back over my left shoulder and hooked my finger under a large magnet that was bothering my peripheral vision. With a small flick it landed on the floor halfway across the kitchen, slid another seven or eight inches, and immediately was stepped on by an anonymous shoe.
Then there was a face in front of me. It was framed by some dark hair, had a pair of eyes, some lips, a nose, skin… an unconscious part of my senses told me that this was a female, and another, deeper yet easily confused part of my brain kept trying to insist that it was an attractive one. I had no idea what to think. I trusted the fact that it was a female who had a face that was fully covered in skin, but I was wary of whether or not she was actually attractive.
Before you label me a shallow turd, I will tell you that I was sure that her brain was doing the same exact thing, and knowing my face, I knew beyond a doubt that if she was as drunk as me, and she was being told that I was possibly attractive by her brain, then her brain was a liar who had anything but her best interests in mind.
She swayed into me and I assumed that she merely wanted to get into the fridge that I was using as a support. That or I was about to get a reaming for knocking something off of the fridge. Women, attractive or not, that initiated eye contact or conversation with me always threw me off. I stepped aside and apologized, my vision clearing just a bit along with my brain.
“Who are you?” she slurred. She was buzzed, heavily, but not completely to the floor. I was in the same boat, sober enough to wonder why a girl was talking to me, yet buzzed enough to wonder if I we were going to make out.
“Uh, I came with Steve… I don’t really know anyone. In fact, I don’t know whose this house is and, now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t even know what neighborhood I am in.”
It was true. Belmont? Hawthorn? Down the street from my place? It wasn’t a big worry as I was game for sleeping in a doorway if I had to these days, but still, it helps to know which part of town said potential doorway was in. It provided a specific peace of mind that I was fond of.
She laughed and told me that she didn’t know who Steve was and better yet she didn’t know where we were either, and that she kinda figured we were somewhere in the vicinity of Mississippi. That brought it all back and I remembered—we were indeed in the Mississippi area. Damn, not very good doorways in these parts.
“My friend dared me to come over here,” she blurted out.
“Well, bully for you. You’re here. I hope you won something special.”
“Well, no.” She was as steady on her feet as I was, like we were both on a small ship that was in mild seas. That point when your equilibrium starts to leave town but your mind is still able to perform most of its usual functions like talking to strangers and knowing that pissing on a hallway carpet is a bad move, regardless of how bad you have to go and how long the two girls have been tittering and doing coke in the bathroom as you wait patiently for them to finish.
“She got sick of me telling her how cute you were, so she told me to shut the fuck up and come tell you to your face.”
She was drunk enough to blurt out something like that. I have never been that drunk. Quite honestly I would most likely projectile vomit blood and pass out in a dumpster before I get up the Dutch Courage to tell a girl I think she is cute.
I had no response, as I have no game. This was wide open, and I was pretty confident in the fact that I would fumble it like a grease-covered piglet.
“Well, uh… cool. Thanks.” I focused on her soft, girl-like features as my mind went sideways and preoccupied itself with silliness, primarily wondering… no, hoping that she was over 18.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” I ventured.
There was an uncomfortable silence and I reached back over my shoulder again to try to find another magnet to inadvertently destroy.
“Now what?” She was honest and straightforward and I liked that, but as I said, when it comes to talking to a girl as opposed to just being a sarcastic dick, I was at a loss. It was like I was a 33-year old who was still 7 years old throwing rocks at girls I liked. I had no tools to utilize in such situations, no reference points other than bold and somewhat premature declarations of love and sap that I gleaned from various 80’s flicks. I had only “known” this girl for all of 15 seconds. I couldn’t blurt out any shit about wishing to start every day of the remainder of my life waking up to her lovely face for at least another half and hour or so.
“Well, you’ve stumped me. You brought this on yourself, so really the question goes to you.” I said this as she took a long pull off a tall boy that had the same color scheme as mine. This prompted me to do the same, owing to the similar properties of the contagion factor of a yawn. This amount of verbosity was well out of my league and I felt as though I was going to swallow my tongue.
She finished her swallowing, which had emptied her can, and threw it blindly over her shoulder. It hit some blur of a person who didn’t seem to notice and clanked to the linoleum.
“Well, I don’t know. This party,” and she did the rabbit ears motion at the word party, “sucks. Let’s make out.”
I blinked. Twice. Maybe I blinked out Morse code for “Uhhh…”
This was a first. A fistful of emotions flew through my head: flattery, terror, hesitation, suspicion, adoration, and the one that tended to lead me throughout each and every day—self-deprecation. Not an emotion per se, in most people. I considered it one, though. Accordingly I acted as I always did when someone showed any interest in me: I shot myself down and talked too much.
“Look, that’s cool. Any other time I’d be game. I mean, as you could tell with me drinking alone in a roomful of strangers against this fridge, my calendar is open. And yeah, you’re cute, you offered, and it would indeed make this otherwise 2-dimensional gathering of strangers memorable for me, so if I were a selfish person I would totally take you up on this, but I hesitate as I would feel safe in assuming that you had been drinking tonight and that, well, as we all know, beer goggles are a formidable force that has been know to ruin lives… possibly civilizations.”
This all came out as one word, I included spaces and punctuation for your sake. Miraculously though she seemed to be able to translate it without any problems.
”Well, there is no denying that, but tonight is tonight, and tomorrow is tomorrow, so all I can really say is, don’t be a pussy.”
Once again, I blinked, but I smiled too. She sold me with that request. I have never been able to make the first move though.
“Look, I’m really flattered, but I got to tell you, what with you women all liberated and shit these days, I don’t even know how to make a move. Really, this would all be a lot easier if you just tackled me. I would know then, without a doubt that…”
And then there was an explosion of movement, unadvertised, violent, and me knowing that I was falling but not capable of using my arms to pad my fall as they had reflexively embraced whatever it was that had flown into me. It was strong, and warm, and soft in all of the places that a woman is soft, yet the main part of my brain refused to accept that some strange, bold girl had just sacked me in some strange kitchen.
Another part of my brain knew exactly what had happened. But it wasn’t talking, either to protect me or because it wanted to cherish the memory of a full-frontal assault of lips, tongues, hands, and arms from some mystery woman who I would probably never see again.
I woke up back at home the next morning, before the sun came up, torn between getting a glass of water or pissing. I knew that without getting both of them simultaneously I would surely die.
Then blackness again.
Later that morning, as in ‘late morning,’ I woke up in my bed, sore, and with a hickey on my shoulder. Upon further inspection I discovered a pretty wicked scratch down my left side that was almost deep and red enough to qualify as a cut or a slice. There was also a formidable knot on the back of my head.
I tried to piece together precisely what had transpired from my roommate but he claims not to remember anything and considering that he spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out where his car was, I am inclined to believe him.
-23 February, 1978
6:10 PM
