Drinking Closer to Home

by Jessica Anya Blau

  “Mom’s such a slob,” Anna said. When she owned a car, there would never be so much as a cellophane wrapper from a pack of gum on the floor.

  “Yeah,” Portia said. “You know, I keep my room clean in Berkeley. It’s weird. I’m, like, the cleanest person in my house.”

  “Everyone who comes from a messy house becomes clean when they go away to college.” Anna declared this as if she’d already thought it through, had had the conversation a thousand times with a thousand different people, when in fact such insight had only come to her now.

  “Does that mean you’re messy now?” Emery asked.

  “No. Clean people are always clean people.” Anna got out of the car and shut the door. “But people who come from messy houses are so relieved not to have to deal with other people’s messes that they become clean people. It’s true. I swear.”

  As they were walking toward the house, Anna grabbed Emery by the neck of his T-shirt and pulled him toward her.

  “Listen, Father Junior,” she said. “Everything we just did is our secret, right?”

  “Got it!” Emery said, and he squirmed out of her arms and ran ahead into the house.

  “Do you think he’s gay?” Portia asked, and she steadied herself by clutching Anna’s forearm.

  “Emery?” Anna tugged her arm away. Everyone in the family touched her too much.

  “Yeah. I just get this weird feeling that he’s gay. I don’t know why.”

  “He probably is. He did draw penises all over the wallpaper in his room.” Anna opened the front door and rushed inside with Portia stumbling somewhere behind her.

  Louise was carrying the pot roast to the dining room table, a cigarette dangling in her mouth. Anna grabbed a trivet from the kitchen, then placed it on the table as her mother waited. The ash from Louise’s cigarette dropped into the pot, melting into the sauce. Louise put down the pot, stuck her finger in where the ash had landed, and quickly swirled it until it had thoroughly dissolved.

  “It’s like pepper,” she said.

  Anna tried to keep track of where the ash swirl was in the pan. Portia walked into the room, stood beside her sister, and stared into the pan.

  “Don’t have a shit fit,” Louise said.

  “Who shouldn’t have a shit fit?” Portia asked.

  “Your sister! Who has all the shit fits around here?”

  “You have shit fits, Mom,” Anna said.

  “Why do you think Anna’s going to have a shit fit right now?” Portia looked at her sister. Anna thought Portia’s eyes looked funny, wobbly, and wet.

  “She dropped ash into the pot roast,” Anna said. She tilted her head as she tried to remember the ash spot.

  “I think Father Junior might have a shit fit over that,” Portia said.

  Louise laughed. “Father Junior? Is that his new name?”

  “He’s one uptight little poindexter,” Anna said.

  “Well, at least he’s over the pot thing,” Louise said.

  “So Emery’s hitting the bong now?” Anna grinned. She figured he’d probably die an old man, never having tried pot.

  “Of course not!” Louise said. “But he’s fine with the plants in the backyard and he doesn’t leave the room when I’m getting high.”

  “What about when you’re shooting up, Mom? Or freebasing?” Portia asked.

  “Oh, please!” Louise tittered. Anna looked at her mother’s face, her long center-parted hair hanging in front of her shoulders, and thought it wasn’t hard to imagine her shooting up.

  Anna saw herself and Portia as cartoon characters: Anna spinning up dust like the Road Runner as she whirred around Portia, the slow moving, overly mellow Dumbo. As Portia cleared the table, Anna did the dinner dishes, cleaned the stovetop, cleaned the sink, ran the garbage disposal, and took out the trash. Then she asked her mother for the keys again.

  “Where are you going?” Louise was lying on the couch, a New Yorker magazine in one hand, a tightly rolled joint in the other. Buzzy had the ironing board out and was watching the news as he ironed a pile of dress shirts. Emery was kneeling on the floor with a giant pad of paper covering the coffee table in front of him. He had an open flat of colored pencils and was drawing a roller coaster that did loops, traveled backwards, and shuffled from side to side. He had shown his sisters the drawing earlier, and had also shown them the thirty or so other roller coasters he had designed.

  “We’re going downtown,” Anna said. “Portia’s going to meet up with her friends and I’m meeting up with Alice.” Neither Portia nor Anna had called their friends since they got home. Anna’s impulse was to lie even when it was unnecessary.

  “Okay. Don’t stay out too late.”

  Anna picked up the keys and Portia started to follow her, then looked back and yelled, “Bye!”

  “Where’re you going?” Buzzy asked, as if he had only then noticed his daughters.

  “OUT!” Anna yelled.

  “To meet friends,” Portia said. She tugged on her sister’s shirt to slow her down. Anna stopped for a second, then pulled away.

  “Don’t stay out too late,” Buzzy called after the girls.

  Anna drove to Flapper Alley, a disco on State Street near the beach. She parked by the railroad tracks, next to the only gay bar in town.

  Portia was wearing lizard-skin pumps she had found in her mother’s closet with a button-down dress shirt, taken from her father’s closet, as a dress. Her sleeves were rolled up, her legs were bare. Anna was already sick of hearing her complain about being cold.

  “Hurry,” Anna said, and she took her sister’s hand and pulled her along the dark, gravelly alley. Anna was wearing lace-up flat black boots that looked almost like boxers’ boots, black silk boxer shorts, and a lace camisole top. She looked over at her sister and realized that Portia, with her three-inch pumps, appeared much bigger than she. People often commented on how small Anna was, but she never saw herself that way. She felt enormous: a high-speed giant whirring through a world of lumbering dwarves. She did notice that most people, once they knew her for a while, forgot she was small. This was especially true after her breasts grew in.

  When they got to the line up at the door, Anna put Portia at the back, then cut two people ahead, lessening the chance that the repeated name would be noticed. Her plan worked, and they met up again at the long, open stairway up to the bar. It was so crowded inside, you had to move up the steps and through the room sideways, choosing whom you’d brush against as you walked past.

  “Do you have money?” Anna had to shout in her sister’s ear to be heard over the throbbing music. “I spent all mine at Jasper’s.”

  “This is all I have for my entire Christmas break.” Portia pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her breast pocket and handed it to Anna.

  Anna wormed her way toward the bar, checking out everyone near her on the way. The men seemed fully grown, filled out, confident. Her eyes lingered on the ones who stared. It was like clicking through a file cabinet looking for exactly the right thing. Anna could sense Portia behind her like a tucked tail.

  “Don’t leave me alone here,” Portia said, and Anna pretended not to hear.

  At the bar, Anna handed Portia a milkshake-sized glass filled with icy pink-and-yellow swirled slush. “It’s a zombie,” she said. “About seven kinds of liquor in there and enough shots to make you trashed after only one.”

  Portia took a sip, then pulled her head back as if she’d been shocked. Anna took the straw out of her own drink, tossed it to the ground, and chugged from the side of the glass.

  “Don’t barf,” she said, when she paused for air.

  “I’ll try not to.” Portia slurped up tiny bits of the drink. Anna suspected she was letting it slide down the straw and not really drinking it.

  “Are you drunk already?” Anna asked, smiling, leering.

  “No. But I can feel it already. It’s like a buzzing, fluorescent light’s been turned on in my head.”

  “Let’s dance,” Anna said.

>   The last time Anna saw Portia, she was being twirled by a smooth-dancing guy on the dance floor. Anna watched as each spin pulled her sister in closer and closer. But then she stopped looking because she couldn’t turn her head away from the tall, skinny, surfer dude who was whispering in her own ear.

  The next time Anna saw Portia was when she and the skinny dude pushed the bathroom stall door open to find Portia barfing up clean, virtually odorless Slurpee-looking foam into the bathroom sink.

  Another stall door popped open and a girl the size of a radio antenna walked out wearing strappy high heels and a flirty dress.

  “Gross,” she said, and she left without washing her hands.

  Portia remained hunched over the sink. She appeared to be waiting to see if more would come out.

  “What the fuck?” Anna said. The girls looked at each other in the mirror. Anna thought that if she weren’t so fucked up, she might be embarrassed by Portia. But now, Anna felt sorry for her. Poor Portia was a boneless blob of a human: couldn’t drink, walked at the speed of melting glass, talked in the slow drawl of a surfer who’d smoked a blunt.

  “I got sick,” Portia said.

  “I don’t know what her problem is,” Anna said, and she wiped her nose with her palm.

  “Coke?” the guy asked, and he held out a vial toward the back of Portia’s head.

  “Nobody barfs from coke,” Anna said, and she laughed.

  “I know,” Portia said. “But I don’t like coke. It makes my heart beat in my stomach and I feel like I’m getting electric shocks in my jaw.”

  Portia turned on the faucet to wash the vomit down the drain. Once it was gone, she rinsed her hands and washed her mouth out, gargling. Anna turned her face to the tall surfer and they made out against the open stall door. Whoever was in the third stall wasn’t coming out—a pair of scuffed black pumps sat in view under the door waiting, watching, still.

  “Here,” the guy said when Portia turned around. He lifted a tiny spoon from the vial and held it under her nostril.

  “I don’t like it,” Portia said.

  “Come on!” Anna said. “Don’t be such a lightweight!”

  Portia leaned her head down and took it up one nostril. The guy dipped the spoon again and she took it in the other nostril. Anna and her guy were already kissing again. He had one arm extended, holding the vial out as they stumbled—still attached, still standing—into the stall.

  “Thanks for the coke,” Portia said.

  “No problem,” the guy mumbled. Anna ironed her lips into his.

  “I’ll see you out there,” Portia said. She sounded so far away and small; Anna imagined her as a mouse about to exit through a crack in the wall.

  The coke-carrying surfer’s skin was hot. His body was as solid and flat as a sidewalk. And his hands were like giant vibrating paddles roaming Anna’s flesh. Everything beyond her body and the surfer’s body was a blurry, impotent background. Sometimes Anna thought of herself as an appliance. She was never fully operating unless she had the electrical charge of another body plugged into her. When someone was plugged into her, especially when she was high, she found a beautiful, dreamy timelessness where nothing was ahead and nothing was behind. Her life was only in the pulsating here and now: sensation, excitation, elevation.

  The guy had slipped Anna’s boxers down to the mucky half-wet bathroom floor and was sawing into her now—a fabulous, wet oblivion.

  And then he was out of her. And Anna was cold and the guy was pulling tufts of toilet paper off the roll and wiping his dick like it was a dusty piece of silverware he was about to lay on a table.

  “Can I have some?” Anna asked. The guy looked at her and she tried to focus on his face. She liked his nose—it was a perfect triangle. He handed her a few squares, then slipped out to the other side of the beige, metal door.

  “I’ll see you outside,” he said, and he was gone.

  Anna stood in the stall for a moment and watched as a white, almost-opalescent drip of something plopped onto the floor between her feet. She looked down, saw her boxers like a black hole near her right foot. Anna pulled the boxers up, stopped them at her knees, and then used the toilet paper in her hand to wipe herself clean. She yanked the shorts up the rest of the way, stood in the stall a moment, and thumped her head against the back of the door. There were two girls chatting at the sink—laughing, squealing. Anna tilted her head and spied on them through the crack. They were lithe, long, fresh-looking. Anna felt like a smudge of muck. She didn’t want to walk out and see herself beside them—a dark, viscous stain of cum and sweat and oil.

  The girls left, and Anna staggered out of the stall. She paused at the mirror for only a second. She needed to move on, to find the tall surfer, to plug him in again so she could glow and feel powerful once more.

  The music was thumping. Anna could hear it in her skin and it gave her small charges, pushed her forward, pumped her up again as she darted through the crowd.

  She found her sister dancing with a shirtless guy. His body was ridged, taut, sinewy. He was mouthing the words of the Kim Carnes song that was playing, snaking his arms around, fingers pointing alternately at himself and at Portia. Anna couldn’t bear standing there alone while her sister was uniting with someone who looked like energy and strength. She flipped around, scanning for her bathroom lover. He was at the bar, leaning on one elbow, the first finger of his free hand hooked in the back belt loop of a girl with brown hair as thick and shiny as a waterfall. Anna felt a chill screaming inside her. She felt her body shredding away like burning newspaper. And then she saw someone new. A boy with eyes like cameras on her. He moved closer and closer, bouncing with the music.

  “Hey,” he said, and he placed a hand on Anna’s hip.

  “Hey,” Anna said, and she waved her pelvis toward him.

  “Wanna go to the beach?” he asked. “It’s so fucking hot in here, I need a swim.”

  Twenty minutes later Anna was naked, breaststroking along the shoreline with the new guy. It was so dark out the water looked like ink. The guy appeared as a splashing shadow. Most of the bar crowd had tumbled out to the beach at two a.m. when drinks were no longer served. Anna saw the people more by the sounds they made than any outline she could decipher. Echolocation, Anna thought. Portia was probably out there somewhere with the shirtless guy she had been dancing with.

  Anna’s guy snatched her foot mid-kick. He pulled her toward him in one water-ballet motion. Anna’s legs wrapped around his waist—he could stand, but it was too deep for her—and he plugged himself into her, as if they both knew that that was the single purpose of their union. Anna wanted to pull her head back and see what he looked like—she remembered he was good-looking, but couldn’t recall a single feature.

  Anna slipped out of coitus and, with her legs still knotted behind the guy, she lowered her back like an ironing board against the water. She squinted and focused.

  “How old are you?” Anna asked. It seemed like an age might help bring his face in focus, might fine-tune the details she couldn’t make out.

  “Eighteen,” he said.

  “Me, too,” Anna lied, and then she did a sit up so she was upright once more. Anna kissed the boy and he slipped inside her again as if she were the nesting spot for his dick; penis memory. It wasn’t hard to cleave together but it was hard to create friction, as there was nothing against which either of them could gain purchase. So they fucked like sea turtles—weightless, without thrust—until they drifted closer to the crowd, at which point he pulled away, took Anna’s hand, and led her to a dry, flat rock underneath the base of the old pier.

  “Why don’t we go on the sand where it’s softer?” Anna asked. The boy’s hands seemed to have multiplied. He was somehow touching her everywhere at once.

  “Too sandy,” he mumbled, and he pushed his mouth against hers. “Lie down.”

  Anna lay down for a second, then sat up. The rock felt as jagged as glass against her back. She and the boy traded positions so that he was
on his back and she was straddling him, holding on to his dick as if it were a stick shift.

  “You’re so sandy,” Anna said. She hopped off, got down on her knees, and tried to brush the grit off his dick. Even when she was high, Anna still had the impulse to clean.

  The boy grunted and tried to nudge Anna on top of him again.

  “What is this?” Anna leaned closer and tried to see what was growing on the sides of the boy’s dick. She was thinking of tide pool creatures: a sea cucumber with tiny crustaceans all over it.

  “They’re scabs,” he said. “I got them from jerking off too much.”

  “Really?” Anna laughed, and mounted him once more. She imagined all his tiny scabs scraping against her insides and cleaning her out, like a bottle brush.

  Anna could make out the murky form of people approaching, but she didn’t slow down until she heard her sister’s voice.

  “Anna!”

  “What?”

  “We gotta go!”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “I’m Tim! I love your sister!”

  “You don’t love me!” Portia said. “Anna, let’s go.” They were close enough that Anna could see them now. She dismounted the boy and he ran off. The night was so dark it looked like he had actually dissolved.

  “Patricia, you are the love of my life,” the guy said. Anna and Portia laughed.

  “I’m Portia, not Patricia,” Portia said.

  “Man, and I was already comin’ up with all these nicknames for you based on the fact that your name’s Patricia.”

  “Do I look like a Patricia? What are the nicknames?”

  “Patty O’ Furniture, Patty Wagon, Party Patty, hamburger Patty, Pitty Patty, Patty in my mouth—”

  “And everyone’s cumin’?” As soon as Anna spoke, she remembered she was naked, but didn’t really care.

  “Yeah.” Tim laughed.

  Anna’s guy was suddenly back. He held both their clothes. It looked like he was on his way to do laundry. He tossed Anna her clothes and then he put on his own.

  “Can we give Tim a ride home?” Portia asked.