In honor of Throwback Thursday, here is an excerpt from the fall semester of my first year in grad school. That was around September/October 2006.
Every time he went to Club Oz, he was terrified that the bouncer would see right past his fake ID and all the way to what his sister called his 18-year-old kid face. He didn’t think he looked that young, but the moment he stepped in line with the others waiting, and saw the beards and tattoos and muscles (and these were just the women), he began to feel like a shit. There was no way he was going to stand in a queue that stretched way the fuck down to High Street, all the way across town, in the pouring rain, only to be turned away at the door. But there was nowhere else he could go that didn’t remind him of something he wanted to forget. And it wasn’t raining that bad. And if there was one club where they really didn’t care if you were ninety or two, it was Club Oz. Sure, they pretended to care, but they didn’t really. Take the bouncer, for instance. He didn’t look much older than twenty himself; he was a real speccy loser and not exactly the kind of guy you would expect to find trolling the entrance of a club. He just kinda glanced at Julian’s joke of a license and nodded. “You’re all set, kid.” As if he knew Julian was a fraud but it didn’t matter.
Inside, the place was an inferno. The lights were throbbing blue and red, pulsing along with every heart in the room, in rhythm with the bodies and the music, an awkward mix of eighties and nineties in the air. “Faux” eighties and nineties, Leila would say. The kind of stuff folks played when they wanted to seem hip and retro, yet didn’t actually want to have to resort to music real people listened to. His sister was a hilarious girl, particularly when she was high on drugs. Thinking - after snorting away in a bathroom somewhere alongside a couple of drugged out whores who followed her around as if she were Jesus Christ Himself- must have been, to his sister, like trying to drive with a busted headlight on a foggy night, yet the things she came up with. “I hate it when people claim to love eighties music,” she’d often say. “That’s like saying, ‘I love all French people.’ Bullshit. You may like some, but who in their right mind can even tolerate Gerard Depardieu.” And her friends would all laugh and talk about how brilliant she was because she knew the name of some hack French actor who, after whoring himself to Americans for the past decade was about as obscure as sliced bread. Oh Leila, I’d hate to play a game of Trivial Pursuit with you. I wish I was that intelligent and charming and witty and beautiful…And here he was, thinking too much, distracted from the night’s plan. The night’s plan was to forget about his sister, forget about his life, forget about Rory waiting at home, put it all behind him for just a few nothing hours. Tonight was an exorcism of sorts. And if he was lucky, maybe he could manage to pull it off again tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, because this was his life.
He didn’t leave the apartment with the intention of meeting anyone. He wasn’t the kind of guy who was unsatisfied with his girlfriend and so he went out hunting each night for someone new and interesting to fool around with. He wanted to get away for a few hours; he knew all he had to do was spend some time alone in order to appreciate how much he loved Rory and how ridiculous he was being, but at the moment he couldn’t think of anything beyond their argument. He didn’t want to think about it, and as a result it just happened that his eyes fell on the girl.
He got his first glimpse of the girl as he brushed past her; his elbow caught hers. He smiled. One eye locked with his before she spun away, not in time for him to miss the small smile that rippled along her mouth.
He made his way to the bar, tossing his jacket onto a swivel stool. He turned back to watch her dance. She had hair the color of peeled corn and it swung into her eyes; she would pull it away every two seconds, pull it back into a ponytail, then let go. She was with another girl but he didn’t much care for that one. The second girl reminded him too much of some bitch he hated in elementary school who used to steal his dessert from his lunch tray and laugh at him. As opposed to the blond one, who also looked familiar, he just didn’t know why.
When the song ended, she left her friend and threw herself down three seats away from his.
Julian slid onto the stool beside her. “Hi.” He stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and started to light it with his Bic. He placed the lighter onto the counter. She turned her head his way, her eyes scanning over the length of him and he felt the way he always did in the presence of women---like a turkey in November. “You come here often?” he asked.
She took slow sips from her drink.
“You look like someone I know.” Right away, he regretted saying that. He didn’t even know why he had.
She looked over again and smiled. It was just a faint twitch of her lips. “Huh.” She held out her hand for a cigarette. He gave her one without thinking. If he had thought about it, he probably would have been pissed at her presumptuousness. “Well, it must be someone else you’re thinking of because you don’t look familiar and I’ve never been here before.”
“No,” he said. “It is someone else…” He played with his lighter for a bit, offered it to her and she took it without a “Gee thanks”. Her hair swung as she turned away from him, brushing against his face, they were so close. He asked, “So…what’s your name?”
“Ellie,” she replied, but she didn’t look at him when she said it.
“Ellie,” he said. “I’m Julian. That’s your friend over there with that guy, right?”
She looked over her shoulder. “What guy?”
“That Latin freak. Julio.”
She blew a spiral of smoke into his face, stinging his nose. He coughed. She didn’t apologize. She laughed softly. “His name’s not Julio.”
“You know him?”
She laughed some more. “No. But his name’s not Julio.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you said that was his name.” She winked. “Which means it’s really something different.”
He wasn’t up for any shit tonight. “Look,” he said. “Do you want to dance with me or what?” Usually it would take a couple of beers to get him to the point where he could just come out and say that to a girl, but he was pissed at the moment, and he was in no mood for games.
She shrugged. “All right. Let’s go.”
“I hate her,” Ellie said when he asked about her friend. Delilah. Julian had never heard that name used in real life before.
It had been Delilah’s idea to come here; Ellie would have much rather gone to a movie or something. “I suppose it’s my fault for always letting her get her way.”
“She sounds evil,” Julian said under his breath. He was still thinking of Jennie from second grade. Jennie who stole his dessert. Jennie who would laugh every time her playground husband, for some unknown reason, called him Karen.
“No she’s not evil.” Ellie gave him the evil eye. She sighed. “Well, I suppose I sometimes act like she is, but we’re practically sisters. Do you have any brothers?”
He shook his head. He was going to speak up and say he had a sister though, so he understood the whole sibling rivalry thing, even if it was different when you were dealing with the opposite sex. “I don’t have any brothers, or sisters,” he said. “Thank God.”
“Well you’d have to have a brother, I guess, to understand. You know, she’s the older one. By only a month, but still, you’d think that month was the most important thing in her life. “
Julian knew. It was as if in that one short month, she not only took a fantastic ride down the birth canal, she was also elected president of the United States, saved a whole endangered species from extinction, prevented the destruction of the rainforest, found a cure for AIDS, ran for president again and was re-elected. That was Leila. That was Leila all over. Only replace one month with three years. The point was, his sister was barely past the pant-shitting stage when he was born and yet she had the nerve to get cocky with him. When he turned twenty-one, it would all change. It had to change. Really, once you turned twenty-one, what did it matter anymore who was three years older or younger? You never heard anyone say, “Oh, well I‘m twenty-six and you’re only twenty-three.” You hardly ever heard crap like that.
“And she’s the one everyone loves,” Ellie said. She was still talking about her stuck-up friend. “I mean, she is very beautiful, don’t you think?” Julian didn’t want to answer so Ellie added, “She certainly thinks she is.”
“That’s bullshit,” he said. “If I had a sister, I wouldn’t let her get away with that.”
“But you’d love her still. That’s kinda what it’s like.”
The song ended and Ellie looked around her, as if she were disoriented and was just figuring out where she was. “I don’t get it. I don’t get this place. I mean, what’s so nice about it. It’s just so…constricted.”
He knew what she meant, but he supposed it was different for him. He’d been to places like this before. To her, it was just a building, a very unpleasant one. To him, it was not so much a collection of bricks as it was a collection of past moments that would wash over him the moment he stepped through the door. Kind of like how his sister wasn’t really a person to him, but an amalgam; every memory stored away in his mind, even the ones forgotten, all dissolved into one another, creating something new that breathed and took up space and at the same time was representative of his life experiences. Rory was like that for him as well. He looked at Ellie and saw white light. Maybe it was just a sudden flash of strobe, but he felt alive. He felt as if the future was unraveling before him, and not just replaying itself over and over as if he were watching himself act in some esoteric foreign flick, the kind he had to keep rewinding in order to understand, and after the fiftieth time he’d done this, maybe he still wouldn’t have figured it out.
“You want to go somewhere else?” he asked. “I don’t want to be here either.”
He drove, not out of any chauvinistic desire to, but because it was part of a deal; they went to her place, he did the driving. It was better that way, what with his girlfriend at home and Ellie’s roommate still at the club. And besides, Ellie didn’t have a car. Apparently, Delilah was also the one with the car.
But Ellie didn‘t seem to mind the role of hostess. She didn’t even bother with the perfunctory “My place is such a mess” act, and he was grateful for that. He didn’t lie and say, “My own is infested with rats, otherwise I’d invite you there.”
It probably wouldn’t have made any difference to her.
When she opened the door to her apartment, he was greeted with a sight out of an OCD awareness video on hording. It was really bad. Cans all over the counter, but at least they seemed to be in some semblance of order: corn, corn, corn, corn, peas, peas, etc. The floor was covered with stack after stack of newspapers, most likely every Portland Press Herald that had come out since the early eighties. Boxes of junk, a refrigerator so crowded with magnets he couldn’t see white, and it went on. She didn’t apologize for being a nut. And normally he wouldn’t have cared. But suddenly it was all he could think about as he kissed this girl he’d just met. Ellie. Ellie who smelled like Red Delicious. But didn’t taste like it. He stared into her eyes, tried to keep his own from straying.
So they didn’t have anything in common. Nothing in common at any other moment in their lives but this one.
Was this what his life had become? Standing in a kitchen with a girl he didn’t even know, trying to look her in the eyes and seeing only a mountain of crap behind her; cans and newspapers haunting a home like old lovers and one night stands you only wish you could discard.
He pulled away. He said he was sorry. So sorry. He didn’t know when he’d gotten to the point where any little thing bothered him.
“Are you ok?” she asked.
“Fine,” he said. He left without further explanation, without looking back.
He left Ellie’s apartment around midnight. He didn’t know where the night had gone. He’d gotten his last image of Rory around seven o’clock. He couldn’t believe he’d spent the past five hours doing nothing. He had nothing to show for it. And there was the realization that hit him upon walking out the front door. It was tomorrow. Tomorrow had come as he was descending the stairs. I have to go home, he thought.
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And here is an excerpt from a story I started in 2008. You'll notice it seems a little familiar:
"We're going to Oz," Holly informed me when she called at 6:00. "Unless you want to go to Denny’s instead. That’d be fun, I guess. We could play the claw machine game until we run out of quarters."
"Hell no," I said.
I didn't bother to mention that we were only eighteen and you needed to be over 21 to get into most clubs. Trust my friend to have it all figured out.
"Here's the deal," she said. "You're 24 years old, and your name's Brian McDuff. I'm Brandy. Let's practice. I say, 'Hey Brian.' You say, "What's up, Brandy.'"
I didn't say respond.
"Brian?"
"Yep. Whatever."
It didn't matter anyway. If there was one place where they didn’t care if you were twelve or ninety-two, it was Oz. Oh sure, they pretended to care and all. But they didn’t really. There was the bouncer, for instance. He didn’t look much older than twenty himself; he was a real skinny loser with glasses and freckles and not exactly the kind of guy you would expect to find standing guard at the entrance to a club. I'm sure he had better things to be doing on a Saturday night. Levels of Dungeons and Dragons that needed defeating. He just looked at my joke of a license and nodded. "You’re all set, McDuff." It was as if he knew I was full of shit, but it didn’t matter.
What the hell was I doing here? We hadn’t even been in the Old Port for five minutes, and already I wanted to get the hell out of this godforsaken place.
The minute we stepped through the door, a smoking hot Alyssa Milano clone made her way toward me and I decided that maybe the Old Port wasn‘t such a bad idea after all. I smiled at her. She glared at me as if she wanted to bite the heads off babies.
I couldn’t believe it. I’d just been dissed, and by some chick I didn’t even know.
Yeah, well screw you, Miss Who’s the Bitch. Guess you won’t be getting any of this tonight. Your loss.
"Thanks for finally calling," I said to Holly as we made our way through the crowd. I had to practically scream over the techno crap blaring from the speakers. "When it took you forever, I thought I was never going to get out of the house."
"Is Leila still acting like your wife?"
I made a face. "What the hell are you talking about, Jones?"
"You told me she’s always nagging you---asking you where you’re going, when you’ll be back."
I’d forgotten I’d told her that. It sounded really bad coming from her. "No, it’s not that. You know how my dad is moving in two weeks? Well, if I have to listen to my grandmother talk about that precious cherry wood table one more time, I think I might just end up breaking it myself. Then she wouldn't have to worry about carrying the friggin’ thing out the door."
"She still talking about selling the rocker for seventy-five dollars?" Holly asked.
"Yeah. My dad tries to reason with her but she’s just nuts. It's too bad. We can’t take it with us to the new house. And we’ll probably end up tossing it at the dump because who’s going to pay that kind of money at a garage sale?"
"I don’t know. Let’s not talk about that," she said.
She’d made it clear when she’d called me up that this was going to be the night she got me a girl once and for all. This was her last chance to "save" me before she left for New York, and for some inexplicable reason that eluded even me, I decided to play along. I found her intentions utterly suspect. She appeared to be under the misguided impression that if she went out to clubs with me and got me shit-faced drunk, something would happen between us. She was on a mission, much like Lewis and Clark, only instead of trying to exploit the Pacific Coast for commercial gain, she was trying to end my virginity.
Holly shouted something but I couldn’t hear her over the noise.
"What?" I moved toward her but she just shook her head and motioned that I follow. She disappeared into the crowd.
A girl grabbed my arm as I made my way toward Holly. I froze and looked down at the ringed fingers gripping the inside of my elbow, then let my eyes travel up to her face. I knew I’d seen her before, but I couldn’t think of her name. She looked me over good before saying, "Sorry. Thought you were someone else."
Her friend tugged at her wrist. "What's going on?"
The girl locked eyes with me again. A small smile rippled over her mouth. "You look familiar. Do I know you?"
I shook my head and made my way toward the bar where Holly had already ordered two shots. She slid one of them my way.
"What’s this?" I asked.
"Roofie Delight."
I pushed the shot glass back toward her.
"Go on," she said, leaning close so that I could feel her breath on my neck. "Try it."
I shrugged and glanced over my shoulder.
The girl was now dancing with her friend. She had hair the color of corn fuzz, and it swung in her eyes as she moved; she would pull it away every two seconds, pull it back into a ponytail, then let go.
"You know, that blonde girl looks awfully familiar," Holly said. "That one over there? In the tacky orange get-up?"
"It's Jess," I said. "Jess Carroll."
She just stared at me.
"Ben's girlfriend. 7th grade."
Her eyes widened. "How the hell do you remember that?"
"It took me a moment," I admitted. "But she looks the same."
I had met Jess at our first middle school dance. Most of us had gone solo. Of course Ben Lucas had to be the one asshole who showed up with a date. Ben had introduced his girlfriend as some West Side chick. Those Portland chicks were a real pain in my ass. If you weren't careful, these girls would befriend your entire school when you weren't looking. Before you knew it, they were going on shopping sprees with your female friends or galactic bowling with your buddies. You'd hear about that time they tore up the Maine Mall, and you'd wonder what the hell you'd missed. But the Portland chicks knew all about it. If there was a time to be had, they were there. Who the hell went galactic bowling anyway?
Ben and Jess had dated off and on for a year and I'd seen her occasionally at parties. She hadn't changed much in five years.
"She looks like an evil troll," Holly said.
I had to admit the resemblance was uncanny. And yet, after the second shot, I was feeling a little bit more charitable. "Maybe I should go over there and say hello."
__________
I slid onto the stool beside her. "Hi."
Jess took a slow sip from her drink. "Hi."
My fingers shook as I stuck a cigarette in the corner of my mouth and then lit it. I used to never smoke. But lately, I'd been doing it a lot more. It was more of a nervous tic than anything else. My sister Leila knew but my father didn’t. It was one of those many secrets Leila promised to keep because I had been generous enough to listen to all of her problems without judgment.
I felt the girl’s hand on my arm, and I jerked at the touch. "Do you mind?" she asked.
I looked over at her. "What?" I gave her a confused smile.
"Do you mind?" she repeated, tapping the pack of cigarettes in front of me with her index finger. "I left mine at home."
"Oh. Sorry." I offered her the pack, though, secretly, I was a bit annoyed at her presumptuousness. It was the one thing I hated about smokers. They were always bumming off of their neighbors. I played with my lighter for a bit, offered it to her, and she took it without a "Gee thanks". I said, "So…your name’s Jess, right?"
Her eyes locked on mine, and I felt the way I always did in the presence of beautiful women---like a turkey in November. "Jessica," she said, slowly. "How did you know?"
"You dated my friend Ben in 7th grade."
"Ben?" She gave me a thoughtful look. "Oh. Ben Lucas. Yeah, I remember you now. You’re---"
"Julian," I said, when she hesitated for a second, wanting to spare us both the embarrassment.
"That’s right." She smiled. "How are you doing, Julian?"
"OK. How about you?"
She shrugged and took a drag. "About as well as one could expect, considering the fact that I hate this place." Her eyes searched mine. "Does that sound weird?"
"No. Not really." I wondered why she was there then. She’d seemed to be having fun just minutes earlier.
"My roommate dragged me here," she explained. "She says it’s the best club ever, but I think she’s just saying that because it’s where she’s been coming since she was thirteen or so. Good times, I guess."
I looked over at her friend who was now dancing with some Latino guy. "Yeah.
I‘ll bet."
"What?" She followed my gaze. "Oh." She laughed. "Figures. You know, I leave her alone for a second…" She flicked ash onto a napkin. "So, who are you here with?" She nodded toward Holly. "Is she your girlfriend?"
"What? No. We’re just friends. We’ve been friends since middle school."
"I think I've met her before, but I can’t remember her name."
"Holly."
"Oh, yeah. Holly. I remember now."
"I don’t know if I've ever met your friend before," I said. "Did you know her when we were twelve?"
And that was all it took to launch her into a five minute story about how the two of them had been desk mates in 2nd grade, neighbors in middle school and best friends for practically their whole lives. She got into all the little insignificant details, the petty rivalries, as if all of that had anything to do with their latest fight. And maybe it did. Maybe their relationship was just an accumulation of past slights, all linking together in this intricate pattern of hateful dependence.
If I’d known the simple answer I was looking for would lead to such a complex explanation, I might not have asked. But I had to admit that it was nice to hear someone talk and not have to contribute anything to the conversation. She never asked me for my opinion on anything. I would say "uh-huh" or "oh" every seven seconds or so and she would go on, even speeding up as if that was all I had to say to make her come alive.
"You know, I complain about her and all, but we're like sisters. Do you have any brothers?"
I shook my head.
"Well you’d have to have a brother, I guess, to understand. You know, she’s the older one. By only a month, but still, you’d think that month was the most important month in the world."
I knew. It was as if in that one short month, she not only took a ride down the birth canal, she was also elected president of the United States, saved a whole endangered species from extinction, prevented the destruction of the rainforest, found a cure for AIDS, ran for president again and was re-elected. That was Leila. That was Leila all over. Only replace one month with three years.
"Your friend sounds like my sister," I said.
"You love your sister?"
I thought it was a weird question at first. And a bit personal. I didn't know if I felt comfortable answering such a personal question when we weren't even on an official date yet.
Then I realized her point. I supposed she and her roommate really were like sisters. For a while, I was wondering why the hell Jess would put up with someone who was probably just a cocky bitch.
"But you know what?" Jess said. "If Emily’s just gonna dump me for some American Idol reject the first chance she gets, screw her, right? I should go over there and tell her she can meet me outside when she’s done. That's the great thing about the Old Port. There's always something to do."
I’d never really thought of it like that before. I usually thought, Shit, I’m in the Old Port. It brought back horrible memories of shopping with my grandmother and sister. Leila and I would sit out on the sidewalk and cry while our grandmother took hours sifting through things she really didn’t have any intention of buying in the first place.
"Come on." She stood. "Let's get out of here."
I turned to where Holly was sitting. Her eyes were locked on me. She looked pissed as hell.
"Are you OK?"
I turned back to Jess. "What?"
"You look a bit nervous about something."
"It's nothing." I stood up as well. "Let's go."
___________________
We walked about a block before I told Jess that I wanted to stop and call my friend. "I just want to let her know where I am and make sure she’s OK. Do you mind?"
"No, of course not."
We walked in silence for a few more seconds. "So, what do you want to do? Did you want to go somewhere in particular?"
"We’ll see. I don’t really have any place in mind. Like I said, there’s so much to do around here."
As we passed the window of an art store, she peered inside. "I kinda want to go in here for a second. Go on, go call your friend. I’ll only be about two minutes."
I stepped off of the sidewalk into the opening of an alley and dialed Holly’s number. She answered after the first ring.
"Hey." I thought I heard a smile in her voice, but it was a tight one. "Where the hell are you?"
Even though she couldn't see me, I lowered my head. "At some frigging art store. I just wanted to let you know that Jess and I are walking around the Old Port for a bit. Do you need money for a cab?"
"No. No, I‘m fine. I’m just going to stay here for another half an hour or something. Don’t worry about me."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I’m sure." She was silent for a moment. "Be safe, Jules. I love you."
I hung up and looked around. Jess was not in sight.
Ten minutes after we’d parted ways, I was standing with my back against the wall, the sign for Condom Sense flashing across the street from me. I looked through the window of the art store. She was all the way at the back, talking with some girl she must have known from somewhere. The two of them walked from one painting to the next, pointing and laughing.
Five more minutes passed, and I began to wonder if maybe I’d spoken prematurely when I’d had that talk with Holly. I figured I could go in there and remind Jess that I was waiting. But the more time I had to think about it, the more ridiculous this all seemed.
It slowly began to sink in.
Ben Lucas was a patsy. Only a patsy would put up with this shit for a whole year.
I dialed Holly’s number and headed back toward the club.
