"What the hell are you doing?" As the car screeched to a halt I held the bottle in the air, turning its nose toward me to hedge against the G-force that would otherwise slam the liquor through its neck, spraying the stuff all over the windshield and dashboard. "Do you know how sticky this shit is?!"
"The stop sign's hidden behind that overgrown tree." Chris turned down the stereo, looked around, then accelerated toward the bridge. "They need to prune that shit... It's an accident waiting to happen."
"I saw it fine."
"Of course you did." He rubbed his eyes and focused on the road. "It's easier from your angle." The explanation was nonsense, but I didn't bother to press. Never question the driver... Just be happy it's not you.
"Why'd you turn down the music?"
"Excuse me?"
"Why'd you turn down the music? That didn't cause you to miss the sign."
"I don't know. It just seemed the proper thing to do." Chris was partly right, and partly wrong. His reaction didn't "seem" anything. He'd turned down the music out of fear... A fight-or-flight response - one of those senseless idiot tics we default to in an awkward or heated exchange, like darting your eyes around the room or saying "Excuse me?" when someone asks a question you don't want to answer. He was buying himself a moment, to gird for police, ponder what he'd say if a patrol car pulled out of an alleyway and clicked on the sirens. "Can't be too careful, considering..."
"I understand... Better safe than sorry." I pulled the lever below my seat and slammed it back. "Here, it's your shot."
"Hey! What the fuck?" Martin barked from the backseat. "You just knocked the fucking bowl all over me."
"We should smoke this anyway." Stu held a joint in the air. "That thing's all clogged."
"Can you wait until we get there?" Chris snapped back.
"Why?" Stu flicked his lighter.
"So we'll be able to speak to these chicks, for a few minutes at least."
Chris had a point. Outside a Phish show perhaps, nobody's ever gotten lucky based on the fact that he was really, really stoned. When you're loaded you're happy - a charming rogue of sorts. Whacked on hallucinogens you're an explorer - strong enough to give up "control," check out your inner wiring. That and you're helpless, playing to the "Florence Nightingale" gene so many women hold. Stoned, on the other hand... Well, stoned is a different story. Blazed out of their gourds, most people are dull - deep in thought below, retarded on the surface. In the typical social setting, "hyper-baked" is rarely engaging or witty, and never charismatic. You're slow and silly and chitchat seems impossible. And though you'd probably like to think otherwise, believe it, brother - there's no such thing as "small-talk," particularly with women. A smart one - the kind you really want to fuck - isn't making idiot chatter. She's testing you, kicking the tires... Seeing how fast you can shift from one subject to another. How well you'd relate to disparate varieties of people. Out-of-our-skulls high, most of us fail that exam.
In many ways, baking before you go out is deciding to not even attempt picking up women. You might make an effort, and you might even think you have a chance. And yes, on any given night, anyone can strike it lucky. But generally, globally, getting high is the last thing on the planet you want to do to land a chick. Think of all the stoner characters in movies or TV... Slater from Dazed N' Confused? Spicoli? Do you recall these characters having girlfriends? Sure they're ridiculous stereotypes, but they weren't crafted out of thin air.
"You are such a fucking cramp." Stu wouldn't let it go.
"Humor me, will you?" Chris was getting whiny. "Just this once... I'd like to try to maybe, just maybe, get laid."
"By getting all fucked up on Jager?"
"You think I'd do it sober?"
"You don't have to hit it, Chris." I tried to "split the baby" to end the dispute.
"If we light that, I'll wind up out of my tree."
That was always the problem with baking. When you're bored, you want to be baked. Until there's something better to do, when you suddenly don't want to be baked anymore. Problem is, by then it's too late. And nobody ever gets "just a little high." It comes on sneaky, slow and lethal. There's nothing to do, nowhere to be. No looming deadlines or people to see. You take a few hits. Then you take a few more. Then you start thinking, I should have a few more, just to make sure I've had enough. Every "few more" leads to another "few more"... Forty minutes later you're watching an infomercial for "The Garden Weasel," wondering if there's ice cream in the freezer and it hits you - Shit, I'm retarded... a goddamn mongoloid. And there's no way out. All you can do is deal with it.
Add a bottle of liquor to the mix and you're cooked. From immigrant miners drowning the misery in Seagram's and Lucky Strikes to hippies cannon-balling joints with rotgut wine to the modern day "Masters of the Universe" chasing Churchills with Johnny Walker Blue, smoke and liquor have been our national speedball since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Cigarettes, cigars, dope - they all taste better with whiskey. And the more you have of one, the more you want of the other. The "joint and shots" mixture is a crippling, incessant cycle. The tar burns the throat. The shot kills the burn. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Three or four in, you start feeling niiice - pleasant, careless and clueless. Seven or eight in you're numb - lucid and coherent, but not really there. Ten or twelve in you're Gone - bigger than your being, immortal and impervious, all knowing and all seeing. That's the peak, of course, the ledge before the drop. Anything more than that that and you're fried, blathering and staggering, in that helpless, wretched state where you find yourself picking up a candle instead of the bottle and filling the shot glass with melted wax. And then, suddenly - SWAK! - Here come the spins... Ohhhh... The whole room is moving... So fast... So dizzy... I feel like I ate bad fish... Somebody, please, stop it. Cry all you like. Bury your head in the couch. The more you close your eyes, the faster the revolutions.
"Shit, Chris." Stu snapped from the back. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"What?"
"Let me know if you're going to take a fucking turn that fast."
"That's not my fault. The road did it."
"I just poured a shot on my forehead... It's in my fucking hair!"
"So what? It's just sugar and alcohol."
"Exactly. This shit's going to harden."
By the halfway point, the whole car stunk like licorice-y cough-syrup, like a jelly bean on wheels, everything inside soaked in that awful Nazi liquor. I remember wondering, Why? Why is this so difficult? The plan wasn't complicated. The route was two roads, rural and mostly free of police. Chris would stand on the gas and I'd do the bartending. If all went to plan we'd be on _____________'s campus in an hour and some change, faster than Randal, basking in our victory, hitting on this "Amy" girl and her friends.
Everything was in our favor. We had the easier liquor, the faster car and Randal's team had Otto, the worst drinker of the bunch. Otto was young for his year, and he looked like he was fifteen, with a round baby-face and gangly, tenth grade posture. A cross between Ralphie from A Christmas Story and Michael Anthony Hall's character in Weird Science, only loud, aggressive, with a dwarf's liver and the "drinking maturity" of a cheerleader on senior week... The sort who got blasted on four gin and tonics at sorority cocktails and knocked over the hors d'oeuvres table.
I figured Otto would hold Randal back, get sick on the ride or force them to pull over to piss. Still, we couldn't take a chance. Thirty miles from _____________ I threw the shot-glass out the window. "Why'd you do that?" Chris shouted.
"Excuse me?"
"The shot glass... Why'd you throw it away?"
"It's bad luck." That wasn't really true. The simple fact is, you can't serve shots in a Volvo, particularly on an old rural highway. I felt like a stewardess on a Tilt-A-Whirl, spilling more than I was pouring. With those rigid church pew seats and that stiff, taut suspension... The car rolled like a tank, but we felt every turn, bump and groove in the road. BANG! The frame would slam and shudder with the slightest divot in the blacktop.
"Bad luck? What the fuck are you talking about?"
"You don't want to get pulled over with something like that. It's paraphernalia... Sends all the wrong signals."
I had the right idea about getting rid of the shot glass. Once we started swigging it the Jager went faster, and whether it was consequence or coincidence, the trip went smoother. We knocked off the bottle with time to spare and pulled into Amy's place ten minutes ahead of Randal, who'd taken a back route that looked faster on paper but was filled with traffic lights.
Amy was cute, and she had cute friends and a cute place - large enough that we could technically crash in the living room, small enough to invite the suggestion that a few of us would rather stay in beds. We were buzzed, happy, our team had won the bet and everything was going to plan, except for one nasty problem - Otto. He was shitfaced, plastered - out of his mind... Chugging wine he found in the girls' refrigerator, stumbling about the home and "soft-molesting" the women - hugging them, putting his arms around their shoulders and petting their backs and arms. "I really liiiiike eeeeyyooouuu. Yooouuu've got a graaay place heeere. You nee sommmm-uhhh help cleaning anything up?" Otto could be awful in his cups - the sort who'd get in close and hang on attractive females, working that pathetic "friend" angle to cop some cheap, desperate feels.
"What the fuck happened to him?" I grabbed Randal in kitchen as we watched Otto guzzle from a bottle and fall sideways through a pair of French doors.
"Izzz alright." He pulled himself on a table holding a fish tank, sending a ripple of water toppling over the front. "I juss loss my footing."
"Don't pull on that!" A pixie in a headband darted across the room and braced the table to stop the tank from shaking and tipping under Otto's weight. "They're extremely sensitive fish! They get scared and don't eat and then they die."
"He baked himself silly on the ride, I guess." Randal cracked a Yeungling. "He was in the back, holding the sack."
"Your friend's awfully drunk, and uh... ripe." I could hear one of Amy's roommates commenting to Chris. It was true. I'd noticed Otto's stench the minute he took off his jacket in the kitchen. For a small man, he smelled something terrible - one of those pungent, putrid body odors, as though his pH were askew or he was badly, fungally diseased. And it seemed to come out of nowhere, when there was no good reason for a person to reek as he did. It was the middle of a frigid January and Otto stunk like he'd just come in from a three hour soccer practice. Back at the house that wouldn't be a problem. He'd blend with the surroundings. But here, now? This was a chick pad. These girls owned a vacuum cleaner. They washed their dishes and burned scented candles. Otto stuck out like a soiled sweat-sock in a basket of freshly cleaned sheets.
"He's going to fuck this up, Randal." I watched Otto grab the fish-tending pixie, all but putting her in headlock, half to grope the girl, half to gain his balance. "Yerr a cool chick..." He gestured, spilling a puddle of wine on the floor around them. "Have some zinfandel... Izzz like white and red... at the same time."
"I don't like zinfandel."
"Why?"
"Can you please let me go?" She squirmed out of his grip. "I have to check the filter."
"He'll pass out." Randal brushed me off. "We'll put him on a floor somewhere."
"If he hasn't fucked everything up by then." The women in the house were "proper," an Anne Taylor and "bob cut" crowd... The sorts who got high, drunk and fucked, but followed all the Methodist strictures on the surface. Image was important, and Otto was killing ours. He was an oaf and he smelled and there was no divorcing him from the group. Otto colored the lot of us, like a drop of ink in water.
A road trip's a statement. The people you ride with are proxies, reflections of the self - the types you chose to sit with for however long the ride. You're a unit, parts of a shared consciousness, as strong as your weakest link. Like it or not, Otto was us. And we were him. As far as Chris was getting with Amy or any of us with her friends, we'd only get as lucky as Otto would allow. College women are rigid pack animals. Where a man would ditch his friends for pussy in an instant, women consider the group, subjugating their wants to maintenance of the social fabric. I could see the conflicted look on Amy's face as she and Chris talked. If I hook up with Chris, Otto will probably wind up spending the night here. My housemates will have to take care of him. They'll hate me for it for weeks. They'll ostracize me.
I knew that look, and the machinations in her head going on behind it. I'd seen the exchange dozens of times before and I've seen it dozens of times since. How many conversations go on every evening at bars all over the world where women who want to do nothing more than run off with the man they're talking to don't because they're with a group of other females or chained to an "adversely-gifted" friend? God, I'd love to cut loose and go to some other place with this guy. But what'll I do with Carol? He's got a friend with him, but that guy's clearly not interested in her. They never are. Just look at him... He's folding cocktail napkins into origami swans to avoid making eye contact with her. Dammit, I hate this... Why doesn't she do something about that lazy eye? Get that mole removed and have the gastric surgery already? I can't count the instances where I've observed the phenomenon, barely fighting the urge to pull one of these women aside and drop the obvious science. Look, if you all really want equality - if you want to be treated exactly like men - you've got to stop serving everybody else. Put Carol and her goiter in a cab and go for your own.
But I know, true as that advice might be, it's not my place, and it'd only get me slapped. You can't sell logic like that to the average tribal creature. They get bent, offended - pissed at the strength of the argument. We've all got our allegiances, and I guess in the end, as damaging as most of them can be, it's probably not a bad thing. Nobody wants a guy quoting Nietzsche sitting next to him as their plane makes an emergency landing.
"Son of a bitch! Chris! Chris! Get over here!" It was an hour or two after we arrived. I was standing in the living room, talking to one of Amy's friends when I heard the screaming.
"What the--?" We looked at each other then darted, with everybody else, in the direction of the noise. In a bedroom off the hallway was Amy, standing in the doorway, pulling her hair and shouting. Chris was standing behind her, one hand on her shoulder, saying "I'm sorry" over and over. In middle of the room was Otto, splayed across a long Persian rug, moaning, drooling, covered in vomit.
"The rug's destroyed." Amy snapped at Chris. "And the bed cover's ruined! Just smell it. It's disgusting."
The room stunk of peptic acid and half-digested whiskey. The once white comforter was smeared with the usual mixture of red and green food particles, mucus, saliva and bile, with a trail of the mixture running down the side of the bed, onto the floor and the rug, then up the side of Otto's jeans and all over his shirt. You could see the streams of it under his nostrils and the smears of it on his cuffs, which he'd clearly used to wipe his face.
"I sooo sorry. I had the s-s-spins." His voice was cracking between a grunt and a high pitched whine. "I -- I... I juzzz wanted to sleep for a second."
"Get out. Just get out." Amy had no forgiveness in her heart, and I couldn't blame her. Use all the cleaners, soaps and solvents you can find - that acrid stench of vomit is impossible to kill. Otto might as well have bludgeoned a skunk in her room. "You all have to go. Now."
"I'll clean it up." Chris assured her.
"No. Just go."
"Hey. Hey." Stu tugged at my shirt from behind.
"What do you want?" I barked as he pulled me into the living room.
"You want to smoke this joint now?"
"Do you have any sense of timing?"
"You'd be a lot less of a douche if you baked more, you know that?"
"God, you stink like licorice."
"Fuck you."
"...With just a hint of Nyquil. Excellent bouquet."
"You can't blame this on me--" Chris was still pleading with Amy in the hall. "I didn't know he'd do that."
"Come on..." She sneered. "How many beers has he had?"
"None." A voice came from the peanut gallery. "He was drinking bourbon."
"Thanks, Randal." Chris was fiddling with his cigarettes, realizing he was dead in the debate, if you could even call it that. "Thanks for that clarification."
"You bring two carloads of drunk people and a twelve year old with alcohol poisoning into my house and expect to crash here?" Amy kept rolling. "That was your plan?"
"We weren't that drunk when we headed out."
"What?"
"Forget it." Chris waved off her question. No use in discussing the "race." That'd only make things worse.
"You didn't think about how you'd get home?"
"Not... specifically..."
Think about getting back? What the hell was she talking about? There's no planning in these things. There's angst and boredom and wheels, the adrenaline of Just Going. Plotting the return? If you're going to do that, then why the hell leave? The point of the trip was forgetting, for however long you could, that there ever was a Start, or somewhere calling you back. That you could simply keep driving, as far the engine would go.
But that's just a fiction of course, and a fragile one at that - far too flimsy for the scene. These women had serious problems - real, concrete issues. They had stomach acid stains in a fine Persian rug. And panicked, terrified fish. We'd revolted and repulsed them, abused their hospitality. Mostly by association, the wages of one bad apple... But that didn't matter much. The night was a total loss. No use in getting profound, in trying to explain the "purpose." It wasn't a linear thing. You have to understand... There's no start or finish, only back and forth - forward and further and faster, but always round and round, a horrible, hideous loop... That'd never make sense. She'd only think me mad, probably whacked on acid. And anyway, Amy was right. We had to return - to our house, basement and routine, the rubber room for our kind.
We were ten miles out of town when the car suddenly swerved and Chris slammed the brakes, jarring me from a daydream. "What the fuck was that? Are you alright?" I'd been watching the pines rolling by, staring at the mountains and thinking. What kind of animals were out there? Bears? Foxes? Coyotes? What was alive and conscious in this cruel frozen night? Roaming, hunting or fleeing in that endless carpet of trees?
"I hate when that happens." Chris was furiously sucking a cigarette, squinting at the highway and checking the speedometer.
"What are you looking for?" I turned down the radio.
"I thought I saw a cow."
"A what?"
"You heard me. From a farm or something, walking near the road."
"In the middle of January?"
"Probably a deer. Your eyes ever play tricks on you like that? You know... You see a shadow and then it looks like a person or animal running across the road?"
"Excuse me?"
"It's probably my contacts or something. I swore I saw a stick figure darting over a highway divider a few miles back. Happens a lot at night."
"Right... Hey, 'Licorice-head.'" I leaned back and slapped Stu's leg. "Is there any of that joint left?"
"Oh, so now you want to hit it?"
"Yes. Yes I do."
To be continued...
Posted by PhilaLawyer at 11:15 PM