I took a shot of Gordon’s Extra Dry Gin, chased it with a bite of fresh juicy lime and then oral sex. “Well, I’m sorry”—I had to apologize to my company—“but I’ve had quite enough of that and I’m getting too drunk. Also—and trust me, it’s not that you aren’t kind people—I find this party lacking in some critical department. I think it’s best that I mosey along.”
“But we were just about to play strip-Scrabble!” Jaclyn protested, resting her hand lightly on my side.
“Eh, not interested. There can be too much of a good thing, and I literally wrote the book on strip-Scrabble.”
“I know, I just finished reading it last night!” Jaclyn was a sweet girl with a flawless body and a cheery disposition, but I found that she tried too hard.
“Yes, and I’m thankful for my readership, but that doesn’t change things. I must go.” I removed the conic party-hat and zipped up my pants, bowed to the five of them and exited the room.
I descended the curving wooden staircase into the place of after-dinner retirement. “Miguel, Tomas—it was truly a pleasure.”
The two of them were kneeling on the ground with their heads bent over a glass coffee table. “Sir, surely you’re not leaving already! We have barely made a dent in this kilo!”
“I know, I know…my absence will all but ruin your evening. But it is getting quite late and I have a breakfast-date with my publisher tomorrow morning.” This was obviously a lie; I never eat breakfast until the late afternoon.
“Sir, rail one more line? Please?”
I left the party in a rush; the evening was slipping away and I had just insufflated a gram of cocaine. I walked briskly to the Casey’s General Store en route to the next party and browsed the wine selections: Yellow Tail Shiraz—$9, Ravenswood Zinfandel—$13…ah, Andy Sauvignon—$76.92; I had located my favorite of the cheaper-wines. The night-shift attendant, Marcus, is a personal friend of mine whom I’ve helped in extraneous business ventures, so he allowed me to leave with the wine in exchange for a smile and a wink.
I sauntered aimlessly (in cold temperatures I prefer to saunter rather than walk; I find that its phonetic relation to words like sauna and sultry helps maintain my core temperature) and happened upon a brightly-lit chateau suspended gracefully in the branches of a large oak tree. Drunken young women in four inch heels were clumsily ascending and descending the rope latter and the song “If You Gotta Go, Go Now” by Bob Dylan was reverberating in the tree roots. This looks like a fine party, I thought.
I was standing on a leafy overhang that served as a makeshift balcony, watching steam on my breath melt snowflakes in the air—and looking past that, beyond the tangled branches and the blurred horizon, somewhere into my future. I sighed; is all there is to life a series of tree houses and cocktails, cocaine binges and balloon rides, while jumping from lover to beautiful lover? And then I saw her, five-foot-eight-one-hundred-twenty-six-pounds, sharp classy cheekbones, breasts and ass that would make any father proud and eyes bigger and greener but less veiny than the leaves underfoot. Once again, I sauntered.
“All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you,” I sang along with the music and then I spoke to the girl, “From across the room I couldn’t help but notice your good child-bearing features, so I think we should entertain an idle and meaningless conversation to function as an adequate segue to animalistic copulation.”
She didn’t even blink. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Oh?”
“Not at all. I have read your work and I am very interested in that blissful state you so crassly call ‘perpetual orgasm,’ as well as many of your other statements and profundities, particularly in regards to metaphysical masturbation.”
“Ah…you mean ‘transcendental jacking-off.’ It’s always a joy to speak with a reader, and a fellow thinker…especially when they have such a lovely physique as yourself.”
“Funny, Mr. Marshall—I would have thought you’d have a better eye than that. This is not my body but a latex body-suit that clings to me like a glove and helps deter the sleazes and scumbags from hitting on me. Under this, I have a far sexier figure.”
In the bedroom I learned it was true. She had a body that God himself had molded as some kind of perverted auto-erotic toy and then dropped to earth, panicked, when his mom walked in…now it was mine. And I had never before encountered a sexual partner who could keep pace with me—in fact sometimes I would wind up miles away and realize a girl had fallen off—but this was no girl, this was a woman. It was after ten minutes of furious fornication, as we were simultaneously enjoying our respective eighth apogees, that I heard the dreaded word “cops.”
I heard a stampede from beyond the thick botanical curtain which had granted us lovers seclusion and peace of mind; upon hearing that word, everyone in attendance had entered a frenzied state of confusion and terror. I rose calmly and dressed with fatalistic resignation, for I had captained the party and would go down with my ship.
I marched to the door and opened it. “Hello, Cops” I said mock-cordially.
“Hello, Andy,” they responded with a sneer. “Have you been drinking again?”
“Allow me to respond to that question with myown inquiry, cop: have you been breathing air?” I looked the lead-cop dead in the eye; many battles of this nature are won or lost in staring contests.
“I’m gonna need to see your I.D.”
I presented my fake I.D. and waited for the verdict. It is my cousins I.D. and it seldom works; she looks nothing like me.
“Okay Andy, you’re gonna hafta come with us.”
I followed the cop to his car, which was of a hackneyed and derivative black and white design. “Cool car” I said, voice dripping with sarcasm and saliva.
“I’m going to ask that you handcuff me against the back of the car and then put this chew-bone in my mouth,” the cop instructed. I did has he had asked and by the time his mistake was realized I was in a bathtub full of Andy Sauvignon with my love and a pound of brie.
On Saturday night my friend Ed told me about a house-party on Washington and, though still recovering both physically and psychologically from the night before, I was bound by a self-imposed social obligation to attend. It was like any other party of its kind, a compromise of carefree frivolity and premeditated masochism, and I was in the mood for none of it.
I sulked in a corner with a can of Busch Light. In drinking, as in athletics, there are days when you set out with vigor; a positive resolve to go the distance—6 beers, 8 miles, 10 beers and so on until your body gives out. And then there are the very-next-days, when you wake up sore, chafed, and stumble out the door for a short jog or a single drink. It was a very-next-day: the Busch tasted at once bitter and watered-down, I had no interest in getting drunk, and the drunks around me, presumably no worse than I’d been a day earlier, were acting like idiots.
I took comfort in silence, in solitude, and in a couch far-away from the keg and the music and the crowd. I lay nearly supine, with just my neck against the back of the old beige sofa, glancing over my left shoulder at a suspicious brown stain. I was lost in thoughts, mostly bitter, and wore a glazed, far-off scowl. Anyone who happened through the room wrote me off as either stoned or an asshole and nobody spoke to me. Some parties have a way of making me feel most alone and, getting down on myself, I made up my mind to leave.
Using great force of will I stood up, looked in the direction of the mass of people, stretched my neck slightly and rationalized leaving without speaking with Ed. I left through the back door onto a wooden porch and there, on the top stair, sat a fresh pack of Marlboro’s glowing as if God had just given them up. I snatched them and headed around the side of the house, casting paranoid looks behind me for anyone who might accost me for stealing.
“Whoa—don’t.” A girl called out from inside a bush in my path. “Oh, shit” I apologized; I pivoted 180-degrees and returned smartly to the back porch. I had encroached upon the privacy of a girl pissing outdoors. And I was certain that I felt a harsher pang of embarrassment than she did; she was reacting out of physical insecurities while I was being profiled as a pervert, a creep, a sick kid. I stood waiting awkwardly until the girl appeared from the side of the house. She was practically expressionless, but a slight quiver above her eyes and around her mouth revealed she was anxious and sheepish.
“Are these your cigarettes?”
“No, I don’t smoke.” She spoke in a quiet monotone voice, with rehearsed, syllabic words—but it was an affect of nervousness, not an effect of alcohol. She had long brown hair and thick lips, and wore a coon-skin hat.
“Oh, me neither. I just thought you might’ve…left them, you know.” I was scratching my temple; I was nervous because I found her attractive. She said nothing and looked at the back door of the house, after all, what was I saying? She does not smoke cigarettes; I had nothing to offer and nothing to say.
“Is it a good party?” she asked, “I just got here.”
“Yeah…yeah I mean, it’s alright. I just came out to,” don’t say smoke a cigarette, “to piss in a bush.”
“Hey, shut up. It’s kind of nice.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong; I never joke, I never kid, and I never lie. I even sleep standing up.” Oh shit—I’d just said the dumbest joke ever. Shit shit shit shit. I looked at the ground to the right of my foot.
“I’m going to go inside” she said.
“Oh, yeah uh, see ya.” I smiled and as a courtesy so did she. She went into the party and I went off to piss, but I didn’t piss, I kept walking and after a block struck a cigarette. And I thought about the pretty girl.
The next day she had become the most beautiful and intriguing girl in the world. I told a hung-over Ed about the encounter and he feigned interest as I talked about what a nervous girl in a coon-skin hat can do to me. In my most manic and kid-like mood I embraced the fantasy—the outlandish assumptions I was making—and I quoted Bob Dylan; I called her “the would-be dream-lover of my lifetime.” So I was incredulous and excited when I saw her the very next weekend, at the very same house, in the very same hat.
She was sitting on the very same couch I had laid on. She was with a boy who had his arm around her and I didn’t know her name but, my confidence buoyed by spirits, I said ‘It’s you!” the moment I saw her.
“Oh…wait, the boy from the peeing?” she asked. Then she smiled.
“Well, that’s what some people call me.” I had a stupid grin on my face and felt a little off-balance, and finally I stopped to think about the situation; I looked at the girl and the boy and all around the room. The boy was a crew-cut “bro” and looked annoyed with me for interrupting his-moves, but the girl, my girl, was leaning forward, away from him, and beaming at me.
“Do you want to take a shot?” she suggested. Her eyes, though bright, were a bit low and her cheeks were red-rosy. She was obviously a little drunk.
“Yeah, I’ll take a shot” I responded, looking at her breasts for the first time. I pinned the shot-glass to the coffee table with my left hand and tipped the handle carefully with my right; I did not want to spill vodka and embarrass myself, but in my conscientious pouring I nearly toppled forward—I’d forgotten about my feet and the floor and gravity. “What’s your name?” I asked coolly.
“Olive.” The liquor was harsh and for a few seconds I thought I was going to throw-up on my new friend, Olive.
The other-guy spoke for the first time. “What? You said your name was ‘Rhiannon.’” Olive blushed, “It is…I was just kidding.”
For a few seconds I thought I was going to throw-up on my new friend, Rhiannon. “If it’s Rhiannon, that’s perfect!”
“Yeah.”
“Have you heard the song ‘Rhiannon’ by Fleetwood Mac?”
“Yeah,” she said—one word. I was saying dumb things, but it was true what I had said—Rhiannon was the perfect name. I caught myself and stood in forced silence.
“Do you want to take another shot?”
I accepted graciously, sat beside Rhiannon and the other-guy left with a fed-up exhalation.
“I liked that boy,” she said matter-of-factly, not watching him go but looking directly into my face.
“Really? He seemed like kind of a dick to me.”
“Sure, but he gave us a handle. What is your name?”
“Oh shit, it’s Gene. Sorry I didn’t say…I m—yeah-whatever-sorry.” I contorted my face in self-conscious agony and looked away from her; I pretended to study the monochromatic rug. Then a lumbering boy staggered violently into the room and fell to one knee.
“He’s drunk,” she said quietly.
“That guy? That guy actually has an inner-ear problem.”
“Yeah?” And what about his eyes?”
“Cat farmers. Yeah, cat farmers—he’s terribly allergic to cats but was born into the wrong family, it’s tragic.”
“Oh, so you really know this kid?”
What, I thought, is she serious? “Yeah, you mean you don’t?”
“Maybe, I think I saw him in the pedmall playing guitar but he had a beard then, and was a lot more black.” I didn’t know what we were talking about anymore but I was starting to love her.
The drunken kid had worked himself into a strange position, with both knees and hands just inches apart on the floor, fingers flexed as if to grip solid wood, and his butt sticking up toward the ceiling. He was rocking back and forth and seemed completely unaware of his surroundings. A kid wearing a purple and white plaid shirt, tight faded pants, Vans sneakers and backward-facing Vans cap walked into the room and looked at his friend with too-much-concern on his face.
“Dude Charles,” dude a prefix, “get up man, come on ya gotta get up.” He tugged on Charles’ shoulder and Charles fell sideways into the fetal position. Vans looked at the two of us on the couch with what was supposed to be a friendly yet serious expression. “Hey can you guys help me get my friend home? He smoked too much, I think. He just lives like literally two houses down but if you can’t it’s whatever.”
Was there really any choice but to help the kid? I shrugged in resignation, but Rhiannon next to me looked genuinely happy to assist.
“Thank you so much. He just took like three bong rips. My name is Justin.” Vans was intoxicated and an idiot.
“Oh, well I’m gonna call you ‘Vans,’” I said, “Where does this cat live?”
“Not far, like literally a block away.”
Dude Charles lived a mile away and got heavier as he got closer to home. Rhiannon appeared to have taken on the chore wholeheartedly, as in a mission, and Vans kept saying “Dude Charles c’mon, walk, walk, you’re alright,” while I suggested we call a cab, or a tow truck, or just stash him in a bush.
We were passed by police cars and required to steer Charles as normally as possible, with his head held straight and his feet moving forward; passing him as being of able capacity like we were FDR’s staffers. When finally we arrived at Charles’ door my arms were dead-tired and Charles had sobered to the point where he could be described as looking at something. He tripped through his doorway and onto a doormat where he laid as lifeless as the pair of Vans beside him. Vans shut the door and turned to us.
“Thank you so much,” he said, speaking to Rhiannon, “what’s your name?”
“Madeline Moth Mackenzie-Smith” she answered automatically. I grinned and looked at Rhiannon knowingly, but she was good, she didn’t reciprocate.
“Wow…” he said, and he looked deeper into her eyes. Then he turned to me with disinterest and asked the same obligatory question.
“I’m Andy.” I said the first name that came to mind.
Vans looked back at Rhiannon without responding. Good for him, I thought; he had turned his attention from an inebriated Charles to an attractive girl. And Rhiannon was in fact appearing more and more comely. “Are you going back to the party?” he asked.
“Maybe. Do you want to take a shot?” she asked him excitedly, and I looked at her. She had abandoned the handle at the party.
“Yeah, duh!” he said, and watched expectantly as she produced a tin flask from her back pocket. “What is it?’
“Whiskey” she said as she handed him the flask. He unscrewed the cap and with the expression of an experienced alco-maniac, he practically threw the top down his throat. Then he gagged and regurgitated onto Charles’ porch. In the night-light his mucus was neon-red.
“What the fuck was that?” he asked hysterically. Rhiannon was covering her mouth with a hand and laughing.
“Whiskey.”
“Was that fucking hot sauce?” Vans was smiling a bit now, chuckling, having caught on to the girl’s prank. “You are crazy, you know that? Let’s go back to the party, I need a beer now.”
We began retracing our steps to the party. I had gone very quiet and somber—I was trapped within my own head—and Rhiannon was silent too. Vans dominated the “conversation,” by repeatedly calling Rhiannon crazy and saying “You can’t just do that to a guy, you know, my stomach’s gonna hurt for a week,” as if she’d tricked him into drinking a gallon of the stuff. She probably could have.
And then she turned and ran away, leaving me and Vans to stand there, baffled, looking from her back to each other’s faces. Thinking as little as possible, I started after her. Vans called out “What the fuck? You’re crazy.”
I did not think Rhiannon was crazy, I thought she was unusual, and it appealed to me. So I ran after her and let the fun of the full-sprint return me to kid-dom. I was gaining on her quickly and shouted “I’m going to rape you.” (I used to say this quite often until the first persons had sex, I hit six-feet tall, and people got damn touchy about it.) Rhiannon stopped and turned to face me, bearing the flask like a knife or a can of mace.
“Whoa—don’t” she cried, grinning.
“Oh shit!” I played at fear and backed down from her weapon, stumbling backward and falling onto a front lawn. “Where are you going?” I asked.
“I’m going on a walk. You can come if you want.” And I did, so I stood up and the two of us continued together, this time at a conventional pace.
I was happy with myself for having pursued her so far and I brightened up and became very talkative. “Can you believe Vans said his friend got like that from three bong ‘rips’?”
“Yeah, that kid was kind of boring.”
“Yeah, I hate a kid who says ‘it’s whatever,’ or ‘yeah, that dude was pretty chill’…it’s like, why are those good things…I like a kid who’s incredibly anxious and paranoid and quirky and high-strung, because, I mean, why wouldn’t you be? I mean in this life where you are going-to-die, where we’re so alone, where so much is left to coincidence and there is no meaning, why should anyone be confident?”
She did not answer. Perhaps I had become too morose for her, or too anxious, paranoid, quirky and high-strung. And once again I grew self-analytical and quiet as we walked in no particular direction. I almost offered her a cigarette but then I remembered that she does not smoke, and I don’t, either.
I wanted to kiss her. I kept looking at her, casually glancing, and becoming more and more nervous; burying myself in the negative thoughts I’d cultivated since the sixth grade. She was wearing a white button-down collared shirt, a black coat, milky-blue jeans, brown boots and, of course, that captivating coon-skin hat. I wanted to kiss her, but I asked a question about her life instead.
She was studying English at the University and played guitar and sang. She listened to Iron & Wine and Modest Mouse and a lot of other almost-really-good artists. She had read Nine Stories. She felt that there was a moral and ethical difference between stealing a candy bar from the store and stealing a television from a person’s home. She was atheist. She loved her family.
I told her about myself in fast-paced nervous rants, with lengthy prefaces and frequent non-sequitors, and I must have sounded borderline insane; to a kid like Vans, at least, I was crazy. But Rhiannon seemed to relate and listened with interest and amusement. I told her about my education, how I wanted to go to school but was not enrolled, and how “When out for a walk or just sitting around drinking or something, I try to steer the conversation toward more intellectual topics, maybe philosophy or high-brow humor…that way I can better myself without ever having to see another human being.” She thought that was funny, though I hadn’t meant it that way.
I had realized that it wasn’t drugs or lust that was making me so nervous and dictating my interest in Rhiannon. There was something very special about her, very unusual, and it was good, and I liked it. I was bent on kissing her which, overanalyzing everything, seemed an immature focus. I had not forgotten about her smile and her breasts and her lips and her coon-skin hat, but more importantly I believed in Rhiannon, I found in her a meaning and livelihood that was missing most everywhere else—and a gesture that’s by itself “meaningless” does in fact mean a lot when it’s a manifestation of the way you feel inside. I asked myself if Rhiannon wanted me to kiss her, and I thought about every indication both positive and negative she may have given throughout the night that would answer my question, calm my anxiety. For every time she’d told me a personal feeling or anecdote there was a time she'd run away, and for every time she’d offered me a drink there was a time she’d lied about her name. I was left without certainty and I thought it has to be this way. I thought of the Bob Dylan lyric, “What drives me to you is what drives me insane.”
Maybe romance is finding a balance between what do you want and I want you.
“I need to go back to the party; my friend’s waiting for me.” She spoke in a quiet monotone voice, with rehearsed, syllabic words. They were the first words that had been said in a long time, and it was the first time I had considered our location. We were only a few blocks from the party now so I reasoned she had been wordlessly directing us the entire time.
“Yeah okay, I’ll walk with you back there…and then I’ll go home.” It was and anyone but me would have had sleep on their mind. We walked in silence and with each step a feeling of empty dread and early regret spread throughout my body. When we were two houses away from the party, which was dying, I stopped and turned to face Rhiannon.
“Listen Rhiannon I just want to say that I kind of can’t help but like you because I think you, you know, look good and I really love your coon-skin hat and you’re so cool with music and you listen and you say interesting things and you’re fun, and I think you’re funny too and this wholetime I’ve just wanted to make a move and to kiss you and maybe you’d be into that I don’t know but I like you Rhiannon.” She stood there with a vague smile and a spark in her eye that was both disastrously pretty and disconcerting. I couldn’t stop my mouth, “But it’s like why am I even saying this? I mean, if I like you so much and I want to touch you then I should do it, I mean that’s romantic right, when you don’t even care because you want it so bad? And maybe I need to stop thinking, when it’s all thought out and it’s getting nowhere—what am I saying, ‘it,’ what’s ‘it?’ But anyway maybe if I can say all this and just think all this—no, if I can think this I shouldn’t say anything. If I can view it (again, ‘it’) like this, and agree on principle, why don’t I just do the things that will make me happy? Why should I bang my head all the time thinking and never get anywhere? It’s like I said earlier about ‘why would you be confident,’ but it’s the exact opposite! We’re all going-to-die and it’s all meaningless and coincidental but isn’t that a wonderful reason to express yourself and your feelings and do whatever the fuck you want? I mean thank God there is no God! You know, I just want you.”
I held her and I made as if to kiss her but she was laughing, and I drew back hesitantly and felt like an idiot. “What?” I smiled uncomfortably.
“My name’s not ‘Rhiannon.’”
What the fuck, I thought. I was stunned. “Olive?”
“No.”
“Madeline Moth Mackenzie-Smith?”
“No.” She was still wearing the smile, still had that gleam in her eyes. Just like before there was no way to presume what she was thinking.
“Ashley! Hey! Let’s go!” A girl I had never seen called to “Rhiannon” from the sidewalk outside the dead party. Rhiannon smiled at me, said “Bye,” and then turned to leave. I stood dead-still and dumbfounded and watched her go. When she reached her friend she turned and gave a small wave before leaving in the other direction. I lit a cigarette and I hoped her name wasn’t Ashley. I hoped to hell her name was not Ashley. Ashley is the worst name for a girl.
Panther is a designer drug made popular by the kids’ TV show “Doug.” It is most often found in the form of a fine white powder that’s been chafed from the rectum of a venerable religious figure. Most users choose to insufflate the drug, while some elect to inject it intravenously and others enjoy it on cottage cheese—known colloquially as “wildcattin’.” Panther was first used recreationally in 1983 and has since become the fourth most popular street drug in the U.K. and a favorite among 18th century aristocracy.
History
Panther was discovered by chemists looking for a cure for boredom and listlessness in the early 1980s. Its use as a “party drug” was immediately realized and it became common fare at high-society events; usually baptisms and funerals. By the 90s it had become popular throughout the United Kingdom, particularly among blacks and Greys. This was in the midst of the “British Invasion” by Grey Aliens, before their leader had a bad trip in which he thought he was human, and subsequently pulled the plug. In 2002 Panther was named “Best New Drug” by High Times magazine and honored at a special ceremony, where it famously gave the shortest speech in event history. Recently, President Obama admitted to allegations that he injected Panther when the NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers visited the White House.
Effects
The subjective effects of Panther are often described as a compromise of LSD, Cocaine and Ecstasy, though Ecstasy feels short-changed in the agreement and becomes bitter and angry for the rest of the “trip.” Users reliably experience an increase in energy and alertness, euphoria, and a sense of weightlessness; harnesses and ankle-weights are recommended to prevent injury. Visual patterning is common and certain preexisting patterns, such as plaid, become all-white and highly flammable. Some users report hot and cold sensations in certain regions, “As if existence itself were sucking me off.” The void between the user and his surroundings has been known to dissipate and then reappear in the form of a taco pizza. “Ego Death” is possible and real death is not unheard of. Hallucinations are mandatory, as the panda in the fedora will tell you. And nobody eats.
The United Nations has deemed Panther a Schedule II drug, meaning one may use it only if they’re having a really great time. In the United States, you’re probably not, but legislation on the table in California would make Panther legal for all majorities—that is, not minorities. Prospects of Senate approval are dampened by a recent inexplicable spike in SADS—Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.
Myths
Although Panther is no more harmful than tobacco if both are used once per day, a lot has been made of the dangers of the drug; 1 in 6 new users commit suicide and, rarely, genocide has been reported. There are several myths regarding the dangers of Panther. A Mississippi man named Wallace O’Maclahew claims to have bitten his sister, but the sister swears she bit herself. Similarly, one man has become permanently convinced he is Joan Baez, but, as Ms. Baez assures us, he is not.
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Wednesday, October 6, 2010
On the sometime of Sometime the sometimeth, Eddy (or anyway, that's what It was called) was going or coming someplace. Somebody passed before him. But it wasn't just Somebody, it was Beth, and she was riding a bicycle. Eddy did not know what she was called, and even if he had he could not have found the words in time. Maybe they were trapped in another dimension.
Eddy watched her go away and stared after her, wanting desperately to shout at her, to explain some deep knowledge or truth. But there were no words to form it--none that she could recognize, anyway--and Eddy wasn't anymore.
He just wasn't. I do not know what his final thoughts were, naturally, because he wasn't around to tell me. But I imagine that as soon as he realized how pointless it was to be personal, he and everyone and everything he knew ceased to be at all.
I said to Somebody, "I can't shake the feeling that we are teetering precariously upon a plane of existence--subjective reality--that is bound to dissipate," and Somebody said "what the fuck?"
