I’d been reading Kerouac’s On The Road for several weeks at the suggestion of my good friend Elliot and, like most people, it greatly influenced how I thought about several things. Namely, through On The Road I realized that I fucking hated Jack Kerouac. What a pretentious piece of shit he was. It was during one of my more violent fits of literary rage that I decided to call Elliot to let him feel my anger. He answered, “Eli, buddy. What the shit is going on, man?”
“I’m reading On The Road and I’m half way through and...”
“Isn’t it incredible? It is so incred…”
“And my life hasn’t changed yet so what the fuck? When does my life change?”
“Wait, what? You don’t like it?”
“It’s terrible. I get angry when I read it. Like really, literally mad.”
“But it’s perfect. He’s a genius and it’s perfect.”
“Jack Kerouac is a bitch.” I decided to remember that line for throwing around at a later occasion. It had quite the ring to it.
“The man was…”
“A bitch. Jack Kerouac was and forever will be a bitch.” It was therapeutic to say that after wasting so much of my time on his awful prose.
“I don’t think you understand, man. He led the Beat Movement. The last great advance in American literature.”
“Fuck the movement, it didn’t mean shit to me. No, no, fuck it all. I refuse to read any author from now on that had anything to do with any movement. Fuck progression for the sake of progression. It’s meaningless.”
“What about The Lost Generation? The first Expatriates?”
“Shit.” I was hoping he wasn’t going to go to Fitzgerald. He knew I loved to talk like I was a thesaurus. I felt I’d made my point and also felt that I needed a drink to calm my blood so I made my way to the kitchen for a mug of wine.
Elliot noted the defeat in my voice and changed the subject, “So check it out. I just moved into my new place with Andi. It’s right across from Shi-Sha on High and Patterson. It is fucking three stories and huge.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, it’s incredible.”
“Jesus.”
“Right? Anyway, we’re throwing ourselves a little shindig to get everyone acquainted with the place and you should probably be there.”
“Well when is it?”
“Tomorrow night. Come whenever. Oh, and bring your cheesy potatoes.” I made exceptional cheesy potatoes. The trick is lots of butter and bacon. And for god’s sake, cube the potatoes or its just ridiculous.
“I can probably do that.” I needed some potatoes.
I yelled out to my roommate Jude to see if he wanted in on the festivities. His response was nothing if not charming, “Bitches?” Jude often wondered why he could only attract awful women. I thought it was obvious.
“Yeah, there’ll probably be more girls than guys even.” In all the years I’d known Jude there was only one girl that he went around with that was halfway respectable. He dated her shortly before we moved in together so I was far from knowing everything about her but what I did know was fairly promising, at least for one of his girls. She had no addictions, warrants, or significant others which was more than any other girl he slept with could say. Also no diseases I think. Jude said they broke up because she was just going through some rebellious stage and it was just getting too ridiculous. But I knew it was because she wouldn’t give him head. I think that’s a perfectly fine reason to end things, I just think he should be honest with himself about it.
“Alright, I’ll see what I can do,” and for the next twenty-four hours I cheesed the hell out of a bag of potatoes.
The next day I gathered my immaculate cheesy potatoes and Jude and I headed to my car. I carefully secured my entre via seatbelt while Jude selected the music. Over the speakers I heard the opening squeals and clangs of LCD Soundsystem’s anthem about the perfect party and we danced and we sang and all were merry until some fucker cut me off and put the life of my potatoes in peril. All would have been lost if not for the seatbelt. There’s a moral but don’t worry about it.
We parked behind Elliot and Andi’s place, which turned out to be this palatial brick house right on High St. just short of North Campus. No twenty two year old needs a three-story house unless of course they throw a good number of parties. Luckily, Elliot threw a good number of parties so everything was copasetic. Out of the car and before we even made it to the back door Elliot was out to greet us literally with open arms, “Eli! Jude! My brothers, how are you?”
Jude was the first to respond, “Good, good. How’s the party going? Are there many people inside?” He was focused, mostly on the aforementioned bitches.
“Oh, yeah. There’s a bunch of good people here already but more are coming. All in time.” Then his eyes caught sight of the potatoes, “You son of a bitch. I’ve been waiting all day.”
“I told you I’d bring them, didn’t I?”
Jude lit a cigarette and peered inside to see a bounty of women, “Tonight will be good.” He inhaled and blew out a cloud of plague, “Maybe.” Jude sometimes acted as though a camera crew were following him around. Said camera crew did not exist. We went inside.
Through the threshold and past a bathroom and we were in the middle of the kitchen and the party. There were a good deal of familiar faces but mostly new ones. Beyond the counter were some barstools and then their table, at which Preston sat with a surprisingly attractive blonde who seemed to be enjoying what he was saying. It was as if she couldn’t stop giggling. I looked at Jude and his eyes were already rolling. We made our way through the crowd to greet Preston and his lady. I offered my hand for shaking and he took it, “Preston, how the hell are you? You look good.” He was simply glowing. It was like he was pregnant or radioactive.
“Yeah man. I’ve been going to the gym lately. Hey, you guys remember me telling you about Carly, right?” He held his hand palm up and with a sweeping motion, presented the blonde.
I caught the look in Jude’s eye that said he had no fucking clue so I spoke up, “Yeah. Hi, I’m Eli. We’ve heard good things.” We had, I guess. I didn’t know.
“Oh, yeah? I have, too.” She pointed to Jude, “You’re Jude, right? Preston said you do film stuff and…” At that point I eased my way back into the crowd. I could tell that my participation in that conversation was done.
I found Elliot by the fridge just as my throat was parching, “I’m going to need something to drink, buddy.”
He turned and smiled, “For you, anything. Lets see, we’ve got some wine, PBR, Guinness, milk.”
He kept looking but I had an idea, “If I get the wine is there anything I can Irish it up with?”
“SoCo?”
“That’ll have to do.” I took my bastard child of alcohol out to the first of two den type areas. I found refuge in a recliner by the mantle and checked out the rest of the room. Several girls used the center of the room as a makeshift dance floor which visibly made the majority of the rest of the room feel awkward because there really was no cohesive way to dance to Bob Dylan, any Bob Dylan. I couldn’t help but wonder if they meant to go to another party. To my left and across the face of the mantle was what looked like a couch from the Industrial Revolution upon which sat two semi-attractive girls who kept whispering to each other and one hapless guy who couldn’t get a word in. Despair and red lines overwhelmed his eyes because he knew that if you couldn’t even talk to a girl it was very hard to convince her to sleep with you. It’s been done, it’s just hard. On the other wall was another couch with about five good looking girls on it. As my eyes swept the couch I noticed Andi at the very end who immediately jumped and ran over to me, a beer in each hand, “Eli! Drink this fucking beer so I can make it through the night. I’ve been drinking since, like, four or something. Hi!” She tried to hand me a Nati Light. No fucking way.
“I’m good, actually. I’ve got a drink but thank you. How’s it going?”
“I’m good but, no, you’re awesome.” Andi was a lovable drunk. “Hey, have you met Lucy?” She didn’t let me answer but instead turn back to her couch and yelled, “Lucy, come here. Meet Eli.” I’d never actually met Lucy but I knew who she was. In forthright terms Lucy was unobtainable. First and foremost, she was the longtime girlfriend of the lead singer of a fairly popular Columbus band so that sucked. Second, she was incredibly good looking. She was of indeterminate descent with some definitive Asian heritage but beyond that it was all mystery. She had short brown hair and a perfect smile and I basically had no right talking to her but in her drunken state, Andi thought I did. So Lucy came up, smiled with an unreasonable amount of sincerity, and shook my hand, “Hi. I’m Lucy.”
“Eli” was all I could muster. What the fuck? My face may have already been turning red but Lucy didn’t seem to care so all was well. I knew I had no chance with her but my awkwardness cared not for situation, it came and went as it pleased.
Andi finished one of her beers and put it on the mantle like some kind of trophy, “Eli you motherfucker, since when are you shy?”
“I don’t know. I just need to drink more.” I looked down at my drink and decided I needed something stronger and if it was harder, better, and faster I’d be set.
“Then do it, for Christ’s sake.” She turned to leave and grabbed Lucy’s arm, “More drinks. Come on.”
Before they got too far away Lucy turned back to me and laughed, “It was nice to meet you, Eli.”
“Yeah.” And they were gone. I sat back in the recliner and tried to reflect on how bad I am at communication but got caught up in demolishing the rest of my drink. I perused the room again to see if there was anything of interest to me. To my left were still the two girls on the couch but their boy was nowhere in sight, probably somewhere drinking away a bad night. I couldn’t blame him. Across from me the couch was still filled with girls but none of them caught my eye. The dancing girls had stopped most movement and settled for just standing and talking.
I checked out the scene in the second of the two large gathering areas and was decidedly disappointed. It was mostly annoying guys and ugly girls and fuck that. They were the guys that get to a party and immediately hunt down an acoustic guitar and play Green Day’s ‘Time of your life’ until some desperate girl finds them attractive. They were no worse than the girls though. If the girls stopped paying attention to the idiot guys then they wouldn’t be idiots and it was basically a vicious cycle in which there were no winners, just a bunch of losers. A big bunch of losers. I play with words, you’re welcome.
I left my recliner and headed back to the kitchen to find myself another drink. I found Elliot behind the counter tending bar and he found me coming belly up, “Elliot, you need something stiff. I can see it in your eyes.” To be fair, I always looked like I needed a drink.
“Yeah, that’d probably be good. What do you have for me?”
“I can make you a mean White Russian.”
“Sure, heavy on the Russian.” I waited to see if that made any sense.
“What?” It did not.
“I don’t know. Make it strong.”
“You got it.” Elliot pulled his best Tom Cruise impression and started mixing my drink, “So Lucy said you two met. Pretty nice, right?” He had a big goofy smile on his face, something was up.
“We did. She was.”
“Ohh yeah?” He sported a bigger, goofier smile this time.
“What the fuck, man? What are you doing?”
“You’re going to talk to her some more, right?” Something huge was up his sleeve. Elliot had a fucking behemoth up his sleeve.
“I guess I could. I hadn’t really planned on it.”
I was lucky at this point that I had no liquid in my mouth for if I did I would have spit it our a la every movie ever created. Elliot delivered, “You know she’s single, right?”
I immediately looked around to see if any other guys overheard the good news. I turned back to Elliot, “For real?”
“Yeah and she said she thought you were cute and now that I see you in this light I can kind of see where she’s coming from. You look like a strapping, young Larry King.” I did. I don’t want to talk about it. The important thing was Lucy was one step closer to being obtainable. All I had to do was get past my fear of everything. And I was cute? That was unreal. Mostly because of the whole, you know, Larry King thing.
“Hey, thanks.” I stuttered, “For the drink, I mean.” I turned around and felt like I was opening some magical door. Everything seemed a little brighter and far cheesier.
I had only moments to bathe in my own contentment when I saw one of the girls from earlier. She and her friend had been whispering to each other on the couch, completely ignoring that guy with no chance in hell. She was standing with her back to me yelling at someone sitting in front of her who was apparently ‘a complete dick.’ Deep down in my soul I knew at whom she was yelling but my curiosity won out and I peered beyond her to see Jude blowing smoke nonchalantly in her general direction. I knew there were only three things they possibly could have been fighting about because Jude had well versed arguments in three major areas.
First was film. Anything that made a shit ton of money was good. Anything French or Italian was good. Zombie movies were bad (Zombies were a serious concern for Jude, poor thing). Disney movies were the devil.
Second was video games. Xenogears was perfect. Penny-Arcade was the holy gospel. Final Fantasy was epic minus XIII and if you even brought up the knife-gun you were dead to Jude. Pokémon will never be not cool (if anyone argued him on this I was quick to point out that Gengar was the most badass thing ever conceived).
Finally, Jude was prone to arguing politics. He was raised in a hyper-conservative household. He never voted. He was liberal on most social issues. Oh, and he was a staunch communist so he was just a nice grab bag of political ideals. I caught the end of one of his retorts to the girl, “The World Bank isn’t a charity. It’s a fucking bank. It works just like a real bank because it is one. Where am I losing you on this?” Ah, politics. I imagined she was having fun with that.
I was in no mood for fighting and luckily I had friends at the kitchen table. I pulled up to the table next to Andi and across from Lucy, Preston, and Carly. At the table I entered into a far more pleasant conversation. Lucy looked me dead in the eye and I prayed my blood would continue to flow, “Ok Eli. What’s your all-time favorite song?”
Lucky for me I had thought this question over many times and I always come to the same conclusion. I set my hands flat on the table and made my declaration, “’Kaite Come True’ by Son, Ambulance. It’s absolutely perfect.”
Preston tilted his head to the side, “Aw, that’s pretty. That’s a pretty song.” Carly giggled more and nuzzled herself under his arm, good for him.
Andi was drunk and shameless, “Eli, that’s not a real song. That’s a fake song and I’ve never heard of it and it’s not real.” Lucy and I, the soberest two at the table looked at each other and laughed which was more than enough to make me giddy but then her right hand came to rest on top of my left. It was like the first time I ever kissed a girl. Without fail blood rushed to my face and I blushed like mad. I looked over to see Carly’s eyes fading in and out and Preston sitting tall, proud of his catch. She must have known she was going quick because she grabbed his hand, stood up, and whisper rather loudly to him, “Come upstairs with me.” He could not even begin to hide the excitement on his face and I couldn’t blame him. It’d been at least two years and, dammit, he earned it. They were gone before anyone could even say their goodbyes.
With just the three of us left and Lucy’s hand still resting comfortably on mine, Andi finished a drink and looked at the two of us, “I was fine being a fifth wheel but I’m too damn good to be a third wheel.” And she got up to go to the counter for more booze. It was as if fate were throwing Lucy at me. She took a firm grasp of my hand and spoke, “Come on, let’s go.” And I followed her and I didn’t care where we were going.
As it turned out, we were going to a couch in the other room. The den area was much less dense than it had been before which was fine by me. There were no dancing girls. There were, however, the whispering girls from before on the other couch and the one who had been arguing Jude looked none too happy. Lucy sat me down and made herself comfortable. I, on the other hand, had more important things to worry about than comfort such as monitoring the stupid shit that usually came out of my mouth. I figured my best option was to speak as little as possible and maybe I’d luck into seeing her again.
Before she could start any real conversation Preston walked in front of us, actually, ‘sulked’ is more accurate. Preston sulked in front of us. I was in shock. I couldn’t imagine what could possible stand in the way of him ending his drought. I had to know, “Buddy, what are you doing? Did something happen?”
“She threw up. It was pretty bad.” My heart ached for him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think she was that…”
“She was.”
“Yeah, I would say so. What are you doing now?”
“I think I’m going to go home and chalk tonight up. I’ll see you guys later.”
Lucy sympathized for him, “Goodnight Preston. Drive safe, ok?” He couldn’t even answer he just raised his hand in half acknowledgement, half wave.
I let our a sigh, “Well, I’m pretty happy I didn’t drink that much tonight.”
She smiled and put my arm around her, “It’s a good thing, too.” Beg pardon? What in the fuck was going on? I processed her statement in my mind as fast as possible. Was she glad that didn’t drink that much because if I threw up it would have gotten in the way of sex? No, there was no possible way. There was no way she could be completely unobtainable in the evening and in my bed by the morning. Things did not work like that, especially not for me. I was speechless and I think she caught on, “So I’ve heard all these wonderful things about you from Andi and Elliot but you’re still sort of mysterious or something. Tell me about you.”
First of all, what were these wonderful things because I needed to capitalize on them as much as possible. And thinking I was mysterious? I liked whiskey and sex and just about everything I did was with one of those two things in mind. I was far from mysterious but if that’s what she wanted that’s what I was going to give her, “Well, I’m somewhat of a recluse.” She laughed thinking it was pure comedy. I played along, “Yep. And I read and I write and…”
“Oh, ok. The important stuff. What are you reading right now?”
“Well, I just finished Blankets by Craig Thompson and I’m starting in on some Faulkner. How about you?”
“Lullaby by Palahniuk. It’s about the third time I’ve read it.” Ok, now I had something to work with. She liked one of my favorite authors but unfortunately it was his worst book not including Invisible Monsters. I never, ever included Invisible Monsters. She continued, “Ok, past the reading, you write?”
“Yeah, I’m trying to. It started with a bunch of short stories but I’m pretty sure it’ll come out a novel. If it comes out, I mean.” I hadn’t really spoken to any girls of interest about writing and I hoped I wouldn’t come off as a pretentious asshole. Being an asshole was fine, it was the pretentious I was worried about.
“Holy shit, that’s so cool.” Score. “How far are you?”
“I think I’m closing in on twenty thousand words. I think.”
“Is that a lot?”
“It feels like it.” It did too. It felt like tons.
I saw Elliot eavesdropping on the two of us, “Actually, Elliot’s read some of it. He could tell you about it. Hey Elliot.” I waved him over and he pulled up a chair in front of us.
“Alright, so is he any good.”
Elliot looked to the ceiling, deep in thought, “Well, he hasn’t returned my calls in a while so I’ve been sleeping alone, dreaming of him.” She liked that and I did too but he moved on quickly, “well, he gave a pretty good description of that bar Mayne that I liked.” I did, that passage was fucking great.
“I’ll have to read it sometime. Actually, this might be a stupid question but do you have anything you wrote on you?” I was pretty sure she was setting me up to invite her back to the apartment. I mean, who keeps that shit on them at all times?
“Not on me, but back at my…” I couldn’t even finish my delivery before Carly came down the stairs in a heap. It was amazing and a true testament to her equilibrium that she didn’t fall face first down the flight. She was a mess. Her hair looked like she’d been electrocuted. Her shirt was wet and, more importantly, on backwards and her cheeks had streaks of black tears.
She looked up to Lucy and started crying more, “I need to go home.” Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Lucy, being a damned good person, jumped up and put Carly’s arm around her so that Carly didn’t actually fall and I stared in awe of Preston’s luck and mine. What are the odds? Elliot rose from his chair and picked Carly up Bodyguard style leaving Lucy to come back to me but not with good news, “I’m so sorry. I’ve got to take her home but I really would like to see you again. Can I give you my number?”
“Yeah, of course. We’ll do something, no worries.” I got her number and a hug and a few more ‘I’m sorry’s’ before she and Elliot got Carly out of there. I remained motionless on the couch until Elliot made it back and plopped down beside me where Lucy had just been. It had all happened so fast from her sitting down with me to Elliot sitting down with me and I was a little confused. Elliot seemed much happier about the entirety of the situation than I, “So it was a good night for you then, huh?”
I checked his tone for sarcasm but it wasn’t there. Then I retraced the steps of the night in terms of Lucy’s status in regards to me and things didn’t seem that bad. She started out unobtainable, moved to on the verge of having sex with me, then quickly leveled out with a phone number. So I came out better than I started, “Yeah. I think I did alright.”
We sat on that couch and waited out most of the rest of the party. Unfortunately that meant waiting for the rest of the acoustic guitar kids to get done making fools of themselves which took a while. Eventually Jude came out of the woodwork and sat with us. He looked tired in just about every sense of the word, “Where have you been?”
He finished off whatever liquid was in his cup, “Around. I’ve been around.”
Jude and I were some of the last to leave Elliot’s. On the way to the back door from which we first entered we passed Andi on the bathroom floor hugging a toilet, “It was good to see you guys. Make sure you go ahead and drive safe, ok? Ok? Ok.”
I turned to Elliot, “She going to be alright?”
“Eventually. Probably eventually.”
In my car and it was silently decided that there was no need for music. Driving down several alleys and finally on lit roads I asked Jude, “What’s your favorite Chuck Palahniuk book?”
“Choke was good. So was Fight Club.”
“Least favorite?”
“Lullaby was pretty bad.”
“Not counting Invisible Monsters, right?”
“Right.”
“Right.” It just seemed like common sense.
