by mcdavis3
When my mom met Allan he starting coming too. I wasn’t happy about it, but it was still fun. Time passed, my mom got sicker and I got less interested. We had to stop going in my teens, because of her weak immune system and all the germ carrying children.
Then, one fortunate October, our local department store decided it would be a brilliant idea to offer tractor hay rides around their big parking lot for Halloween. We just had to go. For old time’s sake. Unfortunately, my mom’s grand plan fell on the same weekend that she and Allan had forbid me from going on a camping trip with a group of popular kids. The group was going to the natural hot springs and I knew for certain, if I went, Mia was going to secretly seduce me for kicks in the steamy, rocky water.
It was going to be a cold day in hell they got me on that hayride that weekend. But what’s a hayride without a son? I kicked and screamed but they threatened and coerced me into going.
Once my initial tantrum was over, the silent treatment began on the car ride there.
My mom wasn’t even phased by me, she was looking out the car window enjoying the little things that only someone who’s suffered can enjoy.
The hayride was pitiful, we were driving around a big empty parking lot, the only decorations were four tacky hay stacks sporadically placed around the pavement. I knew this was going to suck, I thought.
“Isn’t this fun, Marcolino?” I wasn’t speaking but my mom kept talking to me anyway.
“Remember when I used to take you every year, Marcolino? Which pumpkin patch was your favorite one?”
The driver began heading for one of the tree islands in the parking lot. “WABLAM.” The tractor ran over the side of the island sending me bouncing a few inches up out of my seat.
Whoa, that was unexpectedly exciting.
My mom was alarmed, “I almost fell, Allan, he’s not going to do that again is he?”
I hope he does, that was the most exciting part by a mile.
The tractor turned around for what looked like another pass. “Oh no he’s gonna do it again Allan, tell him to stop Allan. Tell him to stop! STOP!”
“WABLAM.”
I can’t actually remember her screaming and writhing in pain, the mind blacks out certain things for a reason.
I remember the only thing I said to her as she lied on the tractor floor. “I told you this was a bad fucking idea. You deserve this.”
And then the ambulance came for the bazillionth time and she was gone again. A few broken ribs, a fractured back. She’d only been out of the hospital a month or two.
I waited for my dad for three hours at the department store. Playing the same level on repeat at the video game demo stand. Ever vigilant to make sure no one I knew saw me there alone. When my dad got there I was furious with him for taking so long. He was so so sorry, he offered to take me anywhere I wanted to eat, take me to any movie, buy me anything. I just wanted to go to my friends and get high. I wasn’t even that upset, I was glad she was in the hospital again, I was already planning my next open house.
Of course I tried to get high and drunk again. It wasn’t the same, even after I could recognize and dismiss some of the panic and anxiety the drugs induced. I’d have a few beers and feel the inebriation, but there was no euphoria, just fear. Uppers, downers, nothing.
I should have died driving under the influence, driving through red lights at 2 in the morning while laughing about it. Overdosed, I had an out of body experience once, watching myself hovering over me. My destiny was to be a drug addict, but god intervened. He let me live, even keep some of my dignity. But he left a big invisible scar, he took my fearlessness away that summer. My innate understanding that everything was going to be okay. My ultra-confidence to make the best of every situation.
35. The Party (Winter 2006)
Breath in, 1, 2, 3. Breath out, 1, 2, 3. I desperately scanned the ten faces packed in my kitchen for bulging pupils, fidgety movements, the kids that looked the most high. The one’s on e, coke, robotussin. I couldn’t be near them, get touched by them, breathe the same air as them.
A strong bare arm wrapped around my neck, it was Tysen. I squeezed out of the headlock so quick I pinched my nose. I searched his eyes, they were drunkenly glazed over. Was he on anything? No probably not Tysen… I’m okay. A rush of relief hit me but I still pulled my coat sleeves a little further over my hands.
“Marco, this party’s crack-a-lackin buddy.”
“Always good to see you, Tysen.” I couldn’t say it enthusiastically enough.
“This is my friend, Jonny,” Tysen’s friend stuck his hand out to me, I briefly tapped it with my coat sleeve. The gesture caused him to look at me kind of funny. I gave him a cold, dark-eyed stare back with “I’m the host of this big f-ing party” intenseness. Who are you?
“Did you hear I asked Oakley to prom?” Tysen asked me. I’d heard, he’d single handedly saved my whole world. For months the frontrunner to take Oakley to prom had been Avi Miller. Out of everyone it looked like Avi was the only one with the guts to do it. I’d heard he wanted to ask her so he could tell his kids he went to prom with “the cool girl.”
The best I could manage to stop Avi’s hair brain scheme was to send him a nasty text message. “Why don’t you ask someone you actually have a one in ten thousand chance of sleeping with, Avi?”
“I heard you asked her the day before Avi was going to?”
“Ya man, so he was setting up this whole scavenger hunt for her, and everyone’s saying, ‘You should ask her, Tysen.’ That’s all I’m hearing, ‘You should ask Oakley, Tysen.’ So I went home that night and told my mom what was going on and she said, ‘Tysen, make that girl a cake right now.’ So she helped me make a cake with frosting that said, ‘Will you go to prom with me?’ And I gave it to her the next day.” Tysen giggled wildly at the whole affair.
“Best laid plans…That’s so cold man,” I joked.
“Ya, it sucks. Well shit, it’s Oakley. I figured if she was gonna say yes to Avi, she’d say yes to me.”
“Well, anyone but Avi…” I said with an honest and heavy frown.
“Are you going to prom?”
“Maybe.” It didn’t matter anyways, Oakley wasn’t sleeping with Tysen[15] or Avi.[16] I left Tysen to move rooms. I loved him, but I was for the party.
[15] I got Tysen drunk for the first time. We talked him into taking four shots of 151 and he spent the rest of the party totally naked in the bathroom throwing up. These days, I see kids talking about partying with the same excitement I used to have when I’d talk Tysen into trying new drugs. It’s not the same anymore, after everyone knows what blunts are. After everyone learns how to party. Once more and more kids start to figure out advanced social skills. Once everyone’s good at sex. When that crazy time you and Tysen took mushrooms together isn’t fun to reminisce over 15 times later. When you watch Tysen get into drugs and more hard partying in college, when you tell him
[16] Avi got a scholarship to Dartmouth. He wrote for their newspaper–he’s a good writer. Better than me. He just got into the most prestigious graduate program for writers in the U.S. That absolute dork kinda beat me in life, can you believe that? Avi got head for the first time from a crockadillapig, he couldn’t stop laughing the whole time, she thought he was really weird.
People noticed me as I move through the crowd. I spotted Mia, Isa, Janae and Kate all giving me a respectful stare from a corner in my dining room. Mia was back from college for winter break. Janae was back from traveling. For every face I recognized there was one I didn’t.
I spotted the familiar back of Jonsen ahead of me, talking with Tim and London Keyes, a girl from Shorecrest who used to date Duncan. I came up behind Jonsen and stood on my tippy toes to poke my head over his shoulder.
“Oh hey there buddy.” He was unstartled by my attempt to be awkwardly funny. Jonsen looked good. He’d been clean off of meth for a year. He just started a construction job he got through the JobCorps program.
“Just seeing what�
�s going on over here.” I said.
“London’s gonna start stripping at Juicy’s when she turns 18.” Jonsen doesn’t sound judgmental but his gaze carries some weight.
“Ohhh really?” I exclaimed in my best Jim Carrey-esque fashion. “I thought you were gonna go to beauty school, London? That’s all you used to talk about.”
“My parents kicked me out of the house.” London was asian but she sounded like a white valley girl, a fascinating phenomenon of being adopted. “I’m gonna start stackin’ that paper. I need to make those fat stacks.” Her updated vocabulary caught my full attention. I scanned her pupils, they were big enough to set off my alarm system. I immediately stopped breathing.
“Isn’t it a rip off? How much does the club take from you guys?” Tim asked.
“You pay the club 100 a night and 7 dollars for every lap dance. But the real money’s in the private parties, once you’re doing VIP parties you’re set.” I inconspicuously ducked my nose into my shirt real quick and took a big breathe through the fabric.
“There’s a one foot rule at Juicy’s,” Jonsen chimed in. “Plus, they don’t serve booze. So you shouldn’t get too many guys trying to slip you a finger.”
“Heho,” She let out a rapid burst of high pitch, quick London laughter. “Hey Marco, remember when you almost got arrested?”
“Swear to god I still have the bowling shoes I stole from that night in my trunk,” I said excitedly. I turned my head over my shoulder for a breath, it was more risky, but I couldn’t be caught taking another shirt breathe. The farther away from her I could breathe the better.
“We went bowling and Marco was doing a bunch of coke and kept offering it to me even though I kept refusing.” Her eyes lit up at me when she said coke. Is that what’s she on? Is that what’s funny?
“I was trying to impress you, London.” I shouted in my defense.
“We got too messed up to drive and I had to get home for my curfew. So I asked my friend Allegra to drive Marco’s car back to my house. But she didn’t have a license, she’d actually just got her driver’s permit. Hohe, and the poor thing forgot to put the lights on. So we got pulled over, and Allegra started crying. And when the cop asked Marco for his ID, Marco started screaming, ‘She’s a DD. We’re using a DD. We’re doing the right thing.’ And the cop started screaming at Marco back, ‘She has a permit. You’re a loser you know that? You are a low life piece of crap for putting this girl in this position.’ And Allegra was still crying. And then the cop finally said he’d let us go if Marco apologized to Allegra, and Marco said, ‘I’m sorry you forgot to turn on the lights, Allegra. I’m sorry this cop’s such a dick, Allegra.”
“Hey if you don’t have principles, what you got?” Jonsen remarked.
Everyone laughed, “So what happened?”
“He let us go.”
I took another quick breathe from under my shirt and ignored the awkward glances. I stood there trying to put together a jigsaw of experiences in my head that just didn’t fit. A cloud of panic attacks made the memory impossible to label. As I looked at London’s bulging pupils I couldn’t help but feel a wave of fanciful guilt for that miniscule night in her life. [17]
“God, there’s a lot of cute girls I’ve never seen before here, Marco.” Tim observed. “You should probably go talk to one, it’s your party.”
“Ya’ll heard the one about the old bull and the young bull?” Jonsen asked. “So these bulls are standing on a hill, and the young bull looks down and sees a herd of cows. So he says to the old bull, ‘Let’s run down there and screw us a cow.’ And the old bull looks over and says, ‘Well, let’s walk down there and screw all of them.”
I laughed with everyone, even though as usual with Jonsen, it took me a second to get it. [18]
[17] London Keyes went on to become the most famous out of any of us, google it.
[18] jonsen’s one of my best friends. He makes some of the most money out of any of my peers. Jonsen! Even though he loves to refer to himself as a “high school drop out.” After high school, he channeled all of his regret into a sadistic work ethic. Waking up at four in the morning, six days a week, no vacation days. Construction’s hard on the body and there’s a culture of verbal abuse that goes with the territory, too. But he just bought his first house. It’s so great to see him doing so good. I was there for the hard years after high school too, when he’d talk about killing himself and bring his gun into clubs. Cut himself.
I headed down the hallway to the master bedroom. I opened the door to a petrified, shaking poodle staring forsakenly at me. I picked him up and hopped on my mom’s bed to comfort him. My mom’s death had left me with a step dad who left every weekend to go hiking and “find himself.” Combined with my nostalgia for the great parties of old it was only a matter of time until I threw a spody for old time’s sake. I walked into the bedroom bathroom and filled my beer can up with more water. My mom had ironically taught me the trick during one of the “drug talks” she’d given me. “I did it all the time in college Marco, you can too when your friends pressure you.” I’d thought she was such a dork.
At first I didn’t even pretend to drink when I started going out with my friends again. I’d spend whole parties arrogantly without anything in my hand, confident I could innovatively handle all the “Why aren’t you drinking?” questions. I experimented with, “Everyone drinks,” or “I spent my last 500 weekends getting drunk,” and finally “I just don’t feel like drinking tonight.” Eventually, I admitted defeat and just started pretending.
You have to hand it to the alcohol companies, I laughed to myself. They got everyone eventually, the metal heads, the gangsters, the nerds, the jocks, the hippies, everyone. Petting my dog one last time I headed back to the party.
Back in my living room I saw a reunion group of the skinnies. It was the first time I’d seen Kristine and Katie since they left for college.
“Marco!” We all hugged each other fondly. Katie looked like a skeleton. I wasn’t paying attention to what anyone was saying, I was staring straight at Katie’s arms, she def had anorexia.
“Marco..? Marco, stop being a space cadet. Are you going to prom, Marco?” I looked over at Kristine. “Maybe.” Kristine had that drunken stare. Like one of my uncles. People got like this now, every weekend. Blacked out. I hated it.
“I want to go again, last year wasn’t even fun. Take me.” The convenience of the proposal was too good to be true. And the idea of telling my dad and brother I was taking a college girl to prom had a ring to it.
“Ya, let’s do it.” Why is no one addressing the fact that Katie has anorexia? I thought. How ironic that one of “the skinnies” actually developed anorexia.
“So Katie, what’s new with you?” The way I said it made everyone’s body language tighten up.
“It’s crazy being back home.”
“Katie, you look anorexic.” Everyone glared at me except Katie. I’d disturbed the social harmony. I could only assume they’d already talked to her about it.
“Anorexia’s not hot. You know that right?” I went further out of bounds.
“Oh f you guys, I’m not going to not say anything. Katie, you know I’m only saying something because I love you.”
“I know,” Katie said. She took a second to put together the right words. “There’s a lot of pressure at college, starvation is like…the best drug ever. My mom’s having me go see someone.” [19]
“Alright, alright.” I put my hands up in a “I’m backing off” motion. “That’s all I wanted to hear.”
[19] Katie kicked anorexia’s ass. She’s awesome, an amazing writer and social worker. Check out her blog: Seattlesnacker.com.
Big-Pacey-Style came up to greet me. “This shit’s poppin, Marcqizzy.”
I pulled back my hand to block the incoming dap-up and instead patted him on the shoulder from a distance. He gave me one of his famous eye raises but I couldn’t have cared less.
“Wouldn’t be a party without you, Pac
ey,” I said heavily.
The last great secret had come to Shorewood, Oxycontin, we’d reached the end of the line. Carol, Jay, Jon, Alia, Jeff, Danny, Mike, Ross, Kate… Pacey was one of the first. He’d been crucial in getting the others.
The pied piper’s face is sickly thin and pale. He must have known what he was getting into, already addicted to 3 or 4 drugs, watching his lessers go off to college. The first lifelong social climber to realize he couldn’t see the summit anymore.
“Yo, you going to Nickatina next week?” He asked me.
I brushed him off and kept walking, knowing that I would have followed him off the edge too. [20] Last I heard Pacey got locked up. God help him the day he turns that arrogant look he wore on his face for 18 years on himself.
I walked by Danny O, dangling semi-consciously in the crowd. He’d been in the same spot for an hour. Incoherently muttering nothings. “Punta…Punta…” A haunting statue to my 7th grade ambition.
I walked out onto my deck, “Marco. Come over here.” Mark, Chris and Morris were standing around with some other people. “You have to try this cigar.”
“I’m straight thanks.”
“Come on, try it, it’s Cuban seed, from…”
“Nicaragua.”
“From Nicaragua.”
I could get a contact high from their saliva, I panicked. The cigar’s probably laced. This is all some big joke to make me smoke some hallucinogenic drug.
But all my anxious thoughts weren’t stronger than the peer pressure of Mark’s hovering posture. I puffed on the cigar while horrific memories of bad drug trips ran around in my head. After a few puffs I felt nauseous and my head was starting to spin.
You’ve been drugged! The drugs are kicking in. This is a panic attack, Marco, I tried to reassure myself. You’re gonna be okay. You’re just having a panic attack, you’ve had plenty. They always pass. There’s so many cigarette butts everywhere. The whole deck is covered in cigarette butts, you’ve trashed your house. This was the worst idea ever. Now you’ve been drugged and you’re gonna go crazy in front of everyone and pass out.