65: First Night.

1.

Gregory and I drove the curving country road away from everything. Away from a year of loneliness, silence, and ghosts. The sun slipped in through the tint of his Bronco’s windows. It always smelled strange in the Bronco, as if someone had at one point done something terrible in it and then cleaned it hastily with the strongest smelling shit he could find. Or, it smelled like an elementary school’s art room. I could never decide. Gregory had just bought it used in Vermont, where there were no lemon laws. He bought it for a thousand dollars and it needed brakes badly. It squealed in pain at every stop sign we rolled up to. We kept the radio up loud enough to ignore it.

Besides everything else, I had hated living this far out in the country. It took a half hour to get to the nearest sign of life, a gas station. Slow, rolling hills the road curved around. Fucking pollen in the air year round it seemed, and I prayed for work days, when I could escape my allergies and the walls I had, in only a few months, grown to fear and despise. A friend had died there. A relationship also, and somehow, a large part of me. I was feeling daily more and more like I was staring at life and the world and happiness through a long telescope, miles and miles away from a stone tower, built high above the world with no escape.

We were listening to the radio. Gregory was quiet. I was moving in with him in his apartment. I was fleeing. He had lived there for a few months. His friend was the landlord and I had drank there a few times. Not that either of us could afford booze at all, but by some stroke of luck, the previous tenant had left a stockpile of strangely flavored vodkas in one of the cabinets. One of them said “Lemon” and tasted like raisins. I drank that one. I liked the lie. He said his apartment was haunted. I didn’t know. Maybe it was.

“Is this all of the shit you have?” He asked, glancing at the rearview mirror at the small pile of boxes I had packed into the back.

“Yeah.”

“I could have swore you had a lot more.”

“I did. I left it. I don’t need it. I just wanted to get out.”

“Was any of it valuable?”

“I don’t think so. I just left some shit in the basement. CD’s. A box of clothes. A few notebooks I think.”

“All right. Well, if you want to go back and get it later, we can, all right?”

“Sure.”

“You okay man?”

"Yeah, I’m good. Relieved, I think.”

“It’s going to be awesome,” he said. “Roomies. Never had a roommate before. You?”

“Not that I wasn’t fucking.”

“Well, you ain’t fucking me, partner.” He laughed.

The gas station came into view and the first red light. I was a cashier at Sears at the time and drove this road to work everyday. Each mile to the red light was never close enough. And each mile back burned up much too fast. I had begun to get out of work at night and drive around the town. Drive slowly past restaurants and bars. Wish I was inside them. Laughing. Living. I would drive to my girlfriends work to pick her up afterward, an hour, sometimes two, late and she would scream at me. She couldn’t understand why I needed to drive around. Why she wasn’t enough for me. Why I didn’t love the country. We lived in one of her parents spare bedrooms. Her sister lived in the other and at the time, twelve dogs, seven puppies and five fully grown, shared the common areas. It was a modular home and not large. It was paradise to her and I was impossible.

Gregory drove through town and I began to think about the future. Being single, I had less money now. Less money and more bills. I had no idea how I was going to afford it. I just needed to try. I had no car, but the apartment was only a couple of miles through town to work, and Gregory was a salesman at Sears, so if our shifts aligned that would help.

It could be fun, though, I thought. Two guys, just turned twenty one. Our own place a few blocks from the bars. It could be a lot of fun. It could be a shove back into normalcy. It could bring me right back to life. I smiled.

“No weird sex stuff though,” Gregory said.

“What?”

“I mean, like, I don’t want to come home from work and find people leaking out of your bedroom in like, leather straps and dildos and duckbills or something.”

“Duckbills?”

“Anything like that, you know. Weird sex stuff.”

I laughed. “You think I’m into that shit?”

“Well, I mean, I know you’re a little, out there sometimes, and I know some of the stuff you’ve done, so…”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, man,” he said. “like that naked girl at one of your last apartments. That whole thing. Three ways and shit.”

“I can’t have a three way?”

“Well, I mean, no, it’s not like that. If you can pull it off, have a three way, but you know, a three way is like a six on the level of fucking weirdness. Try not to go above six, or maybe seven.”

“Three ways are a six? Christ almighty. You need to watch more porn.”

"Fuck you dude. You know what I mean. Also, I’m hoping to have the internet hooked up next month.”

“We should get some groceries and cleaning shit before we get there,” he said.

“Good idea.”

The summer was coming to a close and I felt like I should be mourning my relationship, but I wasn’t. I wondered if that meant it ended when it truly had to. When it was supposed to. If I had done us each a massive favor. Or, if it meant that I was just glad to be rid of it and the mystery and promise of the future was overwhelmingly exciting. These things aren’t always clear right away.

n fact, I’m still not sure about that one.


2.


Later. The apartment was small and at one time probably nice. The kitchen, where Gregory and I were sitting, taking shots of leftover vodka, was the worst looking part of it. Painted an unsettling teal color maybe forty years ago, it felt like it was large. The second bedroom was off of it, and so was the back porch, which was the third of our porches, and really not a lot more than a garbage dungeon. The floor in the kitchen was warped like ocean waves and all of the wood in it was rotted, but painted over recently with white. The stove was old and sat alone in a corner away from everything else. There was one window by the fridge with a spectacular view of the neighbors kitchen window. A ripped vinyl shade hung over it.

I took my third shot. Dark would be coming soon.

“You going to unpack tonight?” Gregory asked.

“No, probably not.”

“Right on. If you want, I’ll take you to salvation army tomorrow or sometime and get you a bed frame and a dresser. See if we can dig up a bed for you too somewhere.”

“Cool man. Thanks.”

“No problem. You’ll be all right on the couch though for now?”

“I’ve slept on worse.”

He laughed. “Okay man.” He took another shot. “Night’s young,” he said. “We should be out celebrating. First night as roomies and everything. Shit, it’s your first night being single in how many years?”

“Three.”

“Three fucking years. Christ. Let’s hit the bar.”

“No money man.” I took another shot.

“I got it tonight, then you can cover me sometime when I’m broke. Fair?”

“Sure man.”

“Cool. I’m going to get changed then. Clean up. You need the bathroom?”

“No, I’m fine like this.”

“You don’t want to clean up for the ladies?”

I laughed. “The ladies? After this long I wouldn’t know how to hit on someone if I was walked through it. Besides, what am I going to do? Bring them home to my couch?”

“Sometimes a couch is all you need.” He smiled and walked out into the living room and to his bedroom at the other end of it to get changed. I took two more shots and began to feel a little dizzy.

It was good to be free. My own place. Drinking in the daytime. Maybe I’d fuck a stranger, maybe I wouldn’t. It was up to me. I smiled, stood up and fell over.

"You okay in there?”

“Yes,” I said. “Let’s go get drunk.”


3.


It was my first bar experience. There were people fucking everywhere. No light. The noise was so loud it was almost the absence of sound. A deafening silence. I sat on a stool next to Gregory and tried to flag down the bartender. A blonde woman who I would guess was forty or so, but was probably just a beat twenty something. Neon lights from under the bar made her look like a glowing double-D Skeletor. She kept walking past.

"What the fuck?” I said to Gregory.

“What?!”

“I said! What the fuck!?” I made a motion with my hand as if I were drinking.

“Oh!” He leaned over the bar and stuck a few dollars bills over it.

Skeletor came over and yelled something. I couldn’t tell what. Gregory flashed the peace sign and Skeletor nodded. Gregory sat down, and Skeletor handed us two beers. Gregory gave her cash.

“How’d you do that?!” I asked.

“What?!”

We drank our beers.

There were a number of women in the bar. Some ugly as fuck. Some gorgeous. Almost all of them looked great after our fourth round and the vodka from earlier. I kept staring at tits and asses and drowning in the scent of a thousand perfumes.

“I need a cigarette!”

“What?!” Gregory asked.

I made a smoking motion.

“Oh!” He nodded. We drank down the rest of our beers and left our stools, which were swallowed up by the crowd almost immediately.

We went outside and the world was so quiet. “Jesus Christ,” I said, digging through my pockets, looking for my lighter.

“What?” Gregory asked.

“Fucking loud in there.”

“It is a bar.”

“Fuck bars. I’ll drink at home.”

“No tail at home.”

“Like we’re fucking swimming in it now?”

“Good point,” he said.

"I think I left my lighter at home.” I looked around at the other smokers. A group of muscle-headed chest beaters. A strange kid in a leather coat. A group of two older couples, probably on a double date or something. Maybe swinging. A lone girl, somehow not already devoured by the Future Wife Beaters of America next to her.

She was thin. Straight brown hair. Heavy eyeliner. Built not so much like a woman, but like a girl who was in her final days of collegiate beauty. She seemed to know it.

I walked over. “Hi,” I said.

She looked at me, raised and eyebrow, then both. “Hi. What?”

Bitch, I thought. “Do you have a lighter? I must have lost mine.”

She examined me, tightened her lips down her face and looked at her purse. “Yeah, hold on.”

She opened up her purse and dug around, finally pulling one out and handed it to me. “Here.”

lit my cigarette and handed it back to her. “Thanks.”

“Yeah whatever.”

I looked at Gregory. He was shooing his hands at me, as if saying “Go for it man. Go!”

I looked back at her. “So, uh…”

She looked up at me. “Yeah? What? Are you going to hit on me or something? You aren’t doing too well.”

I took a breath. “Listen, I don’t do this often, and I’m already a little drunk, so, I think you’re pretty”

“Thanks. Is that it?”

“Um, no, well,” I looked at Greg. He was watching intently. I looked back at her. “My name’s James.”

“Great.”

I felt like I was fucking up.

I took another breath and tried again. “I think you’re good looking and I want to fuck you. How are my chances.”

She smiled. “If you lead with that next time, you might get somewhere. Good luck.” She smiled at me, kicked her cigarette into the street and went back inside.

I was astounded.

Gregory came up and I finished my cigarette.

“So?” he asked.

“I told her she was pretty, and she acted pissed off. I told her I wanted to fuck her and she said that if I led with that, I might get somewhere. What the fuck?”

“I have no fucking idea man, but I would definitely lead with it next time.”

"Of course.”

I butted my cigarette and we went to another bar across the street. I kept thinking about that girl. Some sort of messianic post-breakup pussy oracle. Showing me the way. I saw no one else I wanted to fuck that night. I don’t remember walking home.