Roger: Atheists in Foxholes

It’s Saturday night and I’m in a fantastic mood. Cat got put in Franklin Detention for shoplifting and I don’t have the money to bail her out. As I am the only one she knows who ever has a dime it means she’s stuck. She had 2Gs of merch from a fucking Kohl’s when they caught her. How someone tries to hide $2,000 in shitty department store clothing on their body I haven’t the foggiest. She told me it was bullshit but I just assumed it wasn’t because she thought her personality mattered to me. If I fuck her after this she’ll never get the hint.
So, why am I ecstatic over my steady vagina ending up in the jail? Find me an easier way of never seeing someone again than them going to jail. Besides, it’s hard to keep steady fresh. I can only spend so much time paying attention to conversations that don’t mean anything. On the first date I’m like Sherlock Holmes when it comes to details. After a few months I’m not gonna remember what the words tattooed on your back mean or what your dad said to you that made you cry. I guess it means I’m leading them on. I’m not a good person
When I told Eli and he saw my face I knew he was jealous. I knew this because he just instantly started getting ready to go out, his tell-tale sign of displeasure. I also know this because he told me.
“I spent three hours in a church parking lot trying to keep Lauren from beating me up. Why couldn’t she have just stolen some shitty clothing?” Eli says with the sincerest of inflections.
“Fuck cares. It was about fucking time and you know it,” I replied. He knows it because I told him. I started to think of the weirdest thing I had ever done in a church parking lot for three hours and this made me smile even more. I would tell Eli about it but it would only make him more upset.
Eli tried to insist on driving, but after I pointed out that I would probably have to drive him home anyway we had might as well take my car. He doesn’t like my car because it is ridden with empty cigarette boxes and smells of a cross between smoke and rotten fruit. Only one of those smells is my fault. We loaded ourselves into the car and began the drive to one finds themselves in such an attractive disposition as mine: the Blue Danube. A sort of home away from home, the Dube as we have learned to call it, satisfies all my egoistic tendencies. We would know nearly everyone in there, and everyone else we could easily ostracize.
Walking into the bar is an event into itself and certain rules apply. We must first find our favorite waitress and have her motion us towards her table. It’s all too often that we are fought over; as we tip well and have a habit of making the people around us drink more than usual. After taking our seat and throwing back a shot we begin to peruse the scene for people we wish to see and those we wish to avoid. This is much easier for Eli, as his enemies are restricted to those who dare disagree with him in class. If only my life was that simple.
The Dube has the amount of cliques in it equivalent to a high school cafeteria. All tend to stay to themselves and disputes rarely occur in house: a kind of throw back to the concept of hallowed ground. The majority is made up of hip college students valiantly defending their positions on an assortment of unimportant topics. They alternate pumping quarters into the jukebox, in some sick competition of who can play the most obscure song. As much as I despise these people, I have somehow become one of them. At least I’ll never be as bad as Eli. The man would suck Bob Dylan’s dick if given the opportunity too. He’d practice ahead of time too ensure satisfaction. And what a sight it would be.
“Hey boys haven’t seen you in a while. Where ya been?” The waitress asks us. We had been there on Monday. It was Wednesday. I hoped she was just drunk. “Jude we got some new shit on the jukebox. You think you can find my new favorite song?” I asked this girl out once, she’s never gotten over it. Too bad she’s married and has morals.
“Looks like more of a Tom Waits crowd tonight. Not making much money I take it.”
“Nah, but we started drinking early so it’s all good. We got specials on Miller Chill but it’s shit. Order draft Pabsts and I think I can hook you up.” Pabst Blue Ribbon is the official beer of Columbus. I have no idea why.
I indulge her and get a whiskey as well. Eli gets a shot and chocolate milk. Separate, of course. They fucked that up once. I was high on uppers and couldn’t stop laughing for several minutes.
Tyler doesn’t notice the dime piece behind him turning and giggling at us. I don’t recognize her which is for the best. He neglects the scenery and goes into the important stuff.
“I see Nick Cave’s got a new album. How does it feel to have an artist that does nothing but satisfy every aspect of your life?”
“My life is way too complicated to be defined by a single artist.” This isn’t true. Complicated or not, I wasn’t going to be able to win this argument.
“Oh, really? The guy has been writing about how much getting laid all the time causes him a seemingly infinite amount of sadness. He speaks as if there was a Great Gatsby and he was a god. He faked his own assassination at a concert! You would kill for that kind of attention!” I would. “For fuck’s sake the album’s called ‘Dig, Lazarus, Dig!’. You wish your tag was as good as that!”
He’s referring to the use of a figure from Christian mythology in an ironic sense. The concept gives me an intellectual erection. I always said the whole Christian doctrine plays as a sweet action movie (Tom Cruise plays the role of Joshua). Back when I used to paint I tagged Longinus. It’s the name of the Roman centurion who stabbed Jesus in the ribs with a spear to make sure the poor bastard was dead. He pierced the divine. That’s me. Un-fucking-stoppable. “Lazarus ain’t got shit on me.”
We don’t talk about Longinus much anymore. I don’t like taking anything seriously so when people started getting too hyped up I walked away. Some of the older fuckers decided to start disguising the fact that Columbus is more about love than being hood and got power hungry. At first the old crew tried to stand up for themselves, but we learned right quick the divine can’t do much in a dark alley behind a bar when firearms are involved. I’ve heard that there aren’t any atheists in foxholes. Maybe that’s true, but when you’re picking up the pieces of your best friends you start to have questions.
The Danube was one of the only places the crew could meet. Nobody brought any shit in here. People here were too intelligent and snobby to deal with other people’s drama. This isn’t the place for name dropping your crew and talking about godfathers and shit. I fucking love this place. Status doesn’t exist here. Just beer and shit food and art. It’s like walking into a hot spring. Hard to get into at first, but eventually you never wanna leave.
We both get drunk and laugh with the folks around us. We joke about Keanu Reeves and Ian MacKaye not being dead. We laugh at the thought of Henry Rollins performing poetry. A couple of guys get heated over semantics concerning Post-Modern charcoal drawings and I use this as an opportunity to flirt with the ladies they’re with. I play footsy with the one across from me without ever really looking her. I talk to Eli but steal a glance from time to time. It’s all about balancing your emotions. The cold demeanor, the sense of not really caring, pressed against the rare moment of intimacy. The drastic change can bring down just any wall you can build in front of me. I learned that from Sergei Eisenstein. Twelve grand a year to learn how to make a girl’s panties drip. Why the fuck not?
I only notice the smoking ban when it’s winter. All the democratic politicians around here do is take shit away from me, be it taxes or the warmth in my prick. Columbus has some of the worst weather in the country. Colder than shit in the winter, hotter than piss in the summer. Snow angels and sweating gets real old, this I can tell you. Footsy girl had followed me out. She was wearing Eli’s coat.
“You look like a dirty old man,” I told her with no edge of a smile on my face.
“Whatever I love flannel, it’s warmer than shit. What else matters in December?” she replied. Yeah fucking right I believe this broad actually has that intensive sense of pragmatics. She looked kind of cute though. She wore her eye make up all wrong and she had a bit of a snaggletooth but she looked…I don’t know. Nice?
She told me her name was Alicia, but like A-LEE-SHE-A. I wondered if her mother knows that’s how she introduces herself. Maybe she doesn’t have a mother. I wasn’t really listening to her; I was kind of drunk.
I came around at the end of the story she was apparently telling me; “—so yeah my teacher was totally just staring at my tits the whole time and the he was just like all ‘sure you can turn it in late’ and it was like so gross.” She talked too fast and she didn’t look at you when she did. That’s probably why she didn’t notice that I wasn’t paying attention. “I have to pee so bad. Can you hold my cigarette?” she asked me. There was maybe a drag left. I hate it when people do that. I held on to it and waited for her to turn around before I threw it in the street.
“Hey man can I bum a smoke?” some kid asked me. He looked familiar enough so I obliged him. “Shit music in there tonight, eh? It’s like the fixed-gear kids got a hold of the jukebox tonight.” I love what small talk is like here.
“Yeah how many times do I have to listen to the Liars and Mars Volta when I am allowed to publicly get annoyed without anyone looking at me like the anti-Christ. I mean I loved At the Drive-In just as much as the next guy but that shit was what a decade ago,” I replied. It’s not that I didn’t like the bicycle kids, they were just a bit too faggy for my taste.
I went home with footsy girl’s number and a pretty decent buzz. Tyler talked to some broad about teaching and the education system and a bunch of other nonsense, even though about five minutes in she told him she had a boyfriend. I would have hope he would have learned more from living with me by now, but after I heard him refer to a certain movie as being “poop-dick” I appreciated that I was making headway. I drove home and had only minor trouble in the snow.