by Aaron Niz
THE TRIP
By Aaron Niz
© Broken Table Productions, 2011
The girl from last night is sprawled out in bed next to me, the pale morning light streaming through the window and exposing every blemish on her face, even the tiny peach fuzz on her upper lip.
I grimace, both from the all too exposed view of my one night stand’s less than flattering features, and the god-awful taste in my mouth. A mixture of stale beer, stale vomit, and sleep breath.
The girl…what in the hell is her name…oh…right. Her name is January. Like the month. I remember her telling me that at the party last night, and how I started asking her if her sisters November and March lived in the area. She’d remarked that the joke wasn’t exactly a new one—but still—she laughed, didn’t she?
I glance over at her again. One large, bare breast is poking out from beneath the covers like an overripe melon. The nipple is long and pink, the areola a darker shade of brown.
This brings back another fragment from the previous evening’s festivities. I remember sucking on her nipple and she said to me, “I’m going give you the best blowjob you’ve ever had, Gabe.”
Did she keep her word?
Then another flash from last night: January fumbling with my belt buckle, so drunk that her fingers lack all coordination. After what seemed like an eternity, she finally undid my belt. My pants came loose and slid down my ankles. A moment passed and in the semi-darkness of my bedroom I waited for the oral sex to commence. That’s when I noticed that January wasn’t moving. She’d passed out while sitting on the edge of my bed. A second later she startled awake and resumed trying to take off my boxers.
That’s when I decided to call it a night. Something about it was just too sordid.
Taking advantage of a woman who might pass out mid-intercourse just seemed wrong, no matter how horny I might be.
Minutes later, she was snoring on my pillow and I was lying awake wondering what the hell I was doing taking part in yet another drunken one night stand.
I’m graduating from Dunbrook in a few months and the relentless partying is starting to get a little old. I never thought I’d say that, but somehow the allure of banging yet another girl at another frat party has lost its luster. I’ve started to want something more than this.
There’s a loud staccato knock on my bedroom door that jolts me out of my reverie.
Next to me, January doesn’t even flinch at the sound. The faint square of light from the bedroom window falls across her hand. She’s got her nails painted with the colors of the American flag for some reason. Maybe she’s just really patriotic.
I get up, still in my boxers, and open the door. My roommate Tyler is standing there with an expression that falls somewhere between annoyance and grudging approval as he takes in the girl lying in my bed. “Fun times?”
“As much as I can remember.”
He chuckles. “You were wasted last night. I’m not surprised you’re having memory problems.”
“No shit.” I run a hand through my hair. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” He stares at me. “You forgot.”
And then it hits me. “Shit. Trip is today.” I know I should be more excited, but somehow the thought of embarking on the yearly fraternity trip isn’t doing it for me right now.
I’d never admit something like that to Tyler, as he lives and dies for these occasions.
“Better get that chick out of here because we need to be on the road in about twenty minutes to pick up Neil,” he says, checking his cell.
“Yeah.” I blink the remaining sleep from my eyes.
“You need coffee, Gabe.”
“God, do I ever.”
Tyler glances through the open door into my bedroom and suppresses a grin.
“You might want to put her tit away, too,” he calls out, walking down the hall.
I wake January up. She seems embarrassed and slightly confused. I go to the bathroom and wash my face, brush my teeth and spray some deodorant on while she’s getting her things together.
Looking over at the toilet, another fragment from last night resurfaces.
Me, kneeling and puking up all the popcorn shrimp I ate at TGI Fridays earlier in the evening. The thought of it makes me feel sick and nauseous all over again and I contemplate barfing, but the feeling slowly subsides.
I glance at myself in the mirror and decide some hair gel is in order. Tyler always has the nice stuff, so I squeeze a quarter sized drop on my palm and run my hands through my hair.
I’m not too bad looking, I decide, trying to evaluate the man in the mirror as if he were a stranger. Short, but thick brown hair, dark eyes, and a strong chin. Some girls have said I look like a young George Clooney.
College has turned out to be what I imagined it might be in my desperate high school fantasies. Especially since I got into my fraternity, Zeta Gamma Gamma. I joined late, at the beginning of junior year.
Tyler was in it first and then he brought me in last year. It feels like a decade. As much as I’ve enjoyed the perks—the parties, the girls, the popularity—I feel like an aging rock star.
And so even though I’ve only been on one fraternity trip thus far, I wasn’t exactly counting down the days to the next one. Today I’m recovering from a hangover and the last thing I really want to do is spend an entire weekend pouring more alcohol into my already overtaxed system.
Thinking about the upcoming trip, I feel a growing sense of unease. Could I somehow find an excuse to back out at the last minute? I try to picture myself telling Tyler I just can’t go. Tell him I’m too nauseas, that I just shit my brains out, I feel a fever coming on.
The fantasy dies as quickly as it’s born. Tyler would overwhelm my feeble excuses with pointed logic and pure verbal aggression. It would take a strong resolve and an even stronger backbone than I currently possess if I was going to stand my ground and blow off trip at the last moment.
Whatever. I can’t stare at myself in the mirror forever. If I’m going, I might as well get my ass in gear. So I give my hair another quick once over, then leave the bathroom and make my way back to the bedroom.
When I open the door, I find January kneeling on the floor next to my pants from last night. She’s holding my wallet in one hand, eyes wide and mouth open—like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
I still can’t believe I’m seeing what I’m seeing. “What the fuck?” I say, the best I can do on short notice.
A crumpled bill falls out of the wallet and drifts lazily to the floor.
She drops the wallet and holds up her hands. “I’m so sorry, Gabe. I just—um—
I’m broke.” She’s standing there wearing only her jeans, and her breasts are bare. The nipples stare at me unabashedly in the pale light. I notice a set of pink scars high up on the wrist of her left arm. It looks like she’s cut herself badly in the past.
Looking at those scars gives me a strange, uneasy feeling in my stomach. And it’s not just the remnants of last night’s popcorn shrimp, either.
Who the hell does that to themselves? I wonder. What kind of person is this girl and how was I dumb enough to let her into my apartment?
“Don’t ever touch my stuff again,” I say finally, both of us knowing she won’t ever be inside this apartment again, rendering my warning moot.
“I’m sorry,” she repeats, like some kind of mantra. “I’m so sorry.” She puts on her shirt, gathers her things and pretty much runs out of the apartment.
A few minutes later I find her black lacy bra at the bottom of my bed.
It’s the final sign. No more drunken nights with easy girls. Time to find someone nice that I can really spend time with and maybe even settle down.
I try to shake off the bad vibes and quickly get packed up for the week
end. Tyler and I hit the road in his Toyota Rav 4. He just got it last month and it still has that new car smell.
We spend the first few minutes of the drive discussing January’s burst of kleptomania. Tyler doesn’t think she’s broke. He decides she’s just a “little whore who saw a chance to steal something.” I’m not so sure. Something about the incident leaves me with that gnawing feeling in my gut. Something about January was so desperate and pitiful that it makes me wonder how easily people can fool you about what’s really going on in their heads.
Last night January was just a wild party girl and this morning she morphed into a thief with self-inflicted wounds on her arms.
Eventually we’ve said all we have to say about her.
“You think Neil’s going to be ready?” I ask, switching the subject. Neil is another brother who will make the drive down with us. He’s also notoriously flaky.
“He better be ready,” Tyler replies, fiddling with the car’s Bluetooth. “I want to make it down in time to claim a good bed.”
“Always better to get in early,” I agree, even though secretly I couldn’t care less about getting dibs on a bed. All of the beds are pretty much the same at the cabin anyway. I sip the coffee we grabbed at Dunkin Donuts and eat some of a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. It’s greasy and lukewarm but good right now. I wipe my fingers on one of those little paper napkins.
Tyler turns some hip-hop on high volume and we’re hitting route 95. The traffic is light, the day slightly overcast, but I’m starting to come out of my beer-induced coma.
My phone vibrates and I pull it out. It’s a text from Neil.
Running late. Be out in ten minutes!!
“Neil just texted and said he’s running late.”
Tyler glares at my cell as if it’s the phone’s fault we got that message. “You’re kidding me.”
“He said he’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
“If it goes even one second past that, we’re taking off without him. I’m not joking, I’ll leave his ass home.” He takes a long breath and we don’t talk the rest of the way to Neil’s apartment.
Neil sticks to his word, bolting out of his building at almost exactly ten minutes from the time he texted me. He’s a funny looking kid, with long awkward limbs and thin, long hair whipping around his shoulders like some eighties rock god.
He’s also got Cerebral Palsy, which adds to the strangeness of his gait. He lopes to the car, tosses his tattered backpack in back with the rest of our stuff. Then he jumps in the backseat with a grin. His huge gaping smile is infectious and he makes a noise that falls somewhere between a laugh and a scream. Neil is also mostly deaf and so he moves, looks and talks differently than most guys our age.
Strangers tend to think he’s either drunk or retarded, and Neil’s always frustrated when meeting new people—especially women—because of this basic misperception.
“What’s up,” Neil says giving me a punch and then shaking Tyler’s hand.
Tyler gives him a limp version of our fraternity handshake. “You trying to make us late again, dude?”
“Nope.”
“Could have fooled me,” he deadpans, pulling away from the sidewalk and speeding down the road.
Neil’s eyes narrow a little and color blooms on his cheeks.
Unlike Tyler, Neil doesn’t do confrontation well. It binds him up even more than usual, as if the works get all gummed. Finally he gets out a thought, but it’s like he can barely say the words because he’s so mad. “I…had…stuff to do this morning…”
“Oh yeah? What stuff?” Tyler glances at him in the rearview.
Neil exhales deeply. “I have a paper I need to turn in first thing Monday morning.” His jaw works as if he’s chewing something that tastes bad.
“And whose fault is it that you waited until the last minute to do your paper when you knew like two months ago about this trip?”
“I didn’t say it was…anyone’s…fault. It’s my fault. I know that.” His nostrils flare.
The tension is almost unbearable now. I hate that we’re starting off trip like this.
But I’m used to it. Tyler’s a moody guy and ever since his ex dumped him a couple months back, he seems to have descended into a near constant state of cantankerousness.
“Have you heard from any other brothers?” I ask Tyler, just to redirect him. “Is anyone else on the road yet?”
His shoulders relax a little as he answers. “Vinnie’s group isn’t leaving for like another three hours because Jared has to work until noon.” Vinnie’s group is the biggest, travelling in a van that he borrowed from his dad’s rental company. There will be about six people coming in just that one vehicle, no doubt partying all the way to New Hampshire—most of them will be falling down drunk and stoned out of their gourds by the time they arrive.
Tyler runs through the list of other brothers coming from various locations, including a group of older alumni. One name sticks out from this group.
Dale Hetridge. The very mention of him strikes a pang of fear through my heart.
Hetridge is a small guy with the energy of Russell Brand on meth and he talks a mile a minute. He also does Iron Man triathlons and I heard that he once broke his collarbone during a competition and still finished in the top five. Dale Hetridge is not to be trifled with.
“Who’s bringing the treats?” Neil asks.
Tyler almost doesn’t answer him, as if he wants to continue to punish Neil for his tardiness. But then he relents. “I think Randall has them.”
“How much is he bringing?”
“I don’t know. A lot, seeing as everyone said they wanted some.” I shake my head. “Not me.”
“You should do it,” Tyler tells me. “Just have a little bit.”
“Treats” is the code word we’ve established for ‘shrooms, or rather, psilocybin mushrooms. For almost as long as Zeta Gamma Gamma has been in existence—or at least the last ten years—there have been gatherings of brothers held at a remote location.
It’s referred to as Trip for more than one reason. Not only is it an escape from college life, or post-college life for some, but also an escape from ordinary reality.
Hence the use of various stimulants or intoxicants meant to facilitate transitions into other universes.
“I don’t want to freak out,” I admit.
Tyler, on the other hand, has no problem imbibing. “You don’t truly get the real trip experience unless you do ‘shrooms. Trust me, it’s worth it.” The drive to Portsmouth New Hampshire is over two hours, and after the first thirty minutes we lapse into long silences broken by occasional chatter about girls we’d all like to screw, or a movie we want to see.
Tyler keeps his iPod on a steady diet of hardcore rap where faux gangstas describe drive-by shootings and drug dealing.
After some time on the highway, the tall buildings and city scenery of Boston and the nearby urban communities fall away and soon it’s just highway and trees, a few strip malls, and small towns. Once we cross the line to New Hampshire it will get even more country and eventually the houses will give way to barns and farms.
“Trip, motherfuckers!” Tyler screams out suddenly, as I stare glassy-eyed at the passing scenery.
He whips out a large blunt, a hollowed out cigar filled with marijuana. It’s brown and crumbly and smells strongly of tobacco.
Neil hoots and hollers and soon the two of them are passing the blunt back and forth as the acrid weed smoke fills the car.
I crack my window. They don’t bother asking me if I want any, since all my close friends know I mostly stick to beer. But I’m probably going to get a contact high just sitting amidst all the secondhand smoke. The car is filled with it.
“Trip!” Neil shrieks, laughing.
***
About an hour later, we arrive at the cabin.
It’s very isolated, situated nearly forty minutes off the highway, set far back in the woods. An ideal place for a large group of idiotic men to run around dr
unk, high, and maybe even hallucinating in the wilderness, without the authorities being called.
The cabin is also time tested, having been used by our fraternity for nearly a decade.
Last year, James DeSantos had a bad trip and stripped naked, threw his clothes (including his phone, wallet and keys) into the river, and ran through the woods by the cabin shouting something about the Anti-Christ and trying to kiss other brothers that happened to be unlucky enough to get close to him.
Eventually James calmed down, but had we been in a different locale, some concerned neighbor would certainly have put a call into the authorities.
On many different occasions over the years, this has been a safe and remote place for brothers to leave the normal bonds of reality, life and responsibility behind.
As we get out of Tyler’s car, I deeply inhale the fresh New Hampshire air. It smells of pine needles and mountains and dirt. It smells good and right and clean, especially after being trapped in a car filled with weed smoke for the last few miles.
“Trip!” I shout at the top of my lungs. The bad vibes from earlier have diminished along with my misgivings about coming here. I’ve decided to enjoy this weekend as my last hurrah before getting serious about life.
Tyler and Neil join me in my primal scream. The three of us stand there, yelling like numbskulls. When we’re sufficiently exhausted from yelling and acting like idiots, we grab our bags and head into the cabin.
Hanging on the front door is a sign that reads:
Drewland: A Special Place. Please Treat Our Cabin with Respect.
“Drewland, baby,” Tyler whispers reverently.
We don’t even know what Drewland means. Is Drew the guy who owns the cabin and rents it out to people through the year?
“Drewland,” Neil and I repeat, like it’s some mystical talisman.
We enter the cabin, an eight-bedroom affair, with two levels and a large deck overlooking the back yard.
“I call the master bedroom,” Tyler proclaims.
Neil and I exchange amused glances. Tyler is your typical alpha male in some ways. He wants to have the best bed, the best girl, the best everything pretty much. So he heads upstairs to claim the master bedroom for his own.