by Jason Myers
“Yes,” Michael says. “The guy is completely fucked up. I heard that he went to Iowa City all cranked up and had sex with some girl and talked her into letting him cut her in the side with a knife.”
Don’t make shit up, man.
“I’m serious,” Michael says. “The dude is out of his mind. He’s done some bad shit.”
Who here hasn’t done some totally bad stuff? I ask.
No one says a thing.
So let’s not talk shit about him when he’s not here to defend himself.
“Wow,” Michael snaps. “A little edgy tonight, aren’t we?”
No. It’s just . . . ya know. It’s just not fair, man.
Claire comes back into the room and grabs a beer from the twelve box.
“Come on, Trav,” Michael says, rising to his feet. “Let’s bail.”
Right now?
“Right now, man. I’m loaded. And if we don’t leave, we’ll probably end up at the Inferno with these guys or just sitting here blowing rails all night listening to the same songs and trying to talk over each other.”
All right, man.
Kyle does a bump and gives Michael back his drugs and keys, and then Michael walks over to the far wall in the room and kisses the large Joan Jett poster hanging on it.
“Good luck,” is all he says, and I follow him out of the front door after telling Claire that I definitely, for sure, promise to call her later.
“No matter what,” she grins.
No matter what, Claire.
• • •
The party we go to is in a large duplex and there are a lot of people there. Michael and I walk down this very long and narrow hallway crammed full with kids and crappy art and cigarette smoke and make it into the living room, where it’s even harder to move.
Michael stops briefly to talk to this girl with a skunk stripe going down the middle of her black hair and she points toward somewhere and Michael turns to me and goes, “The kegs are out back.”
The two of us push ourselves past small groups of girls and boys, and I notice a few girls shooting Michael some really nasty looks, and also hear these two girls talking and one of them goes, “Isn’t that Travis Wayne?” And her friend goes, “I think it is,” and the girl goes, “He’s not like drop-dead, Johnny Depp gorgeous anymore. He’s more like Joaquin Phoenix cute now.”
Once we’ve made it out of the living room, we enter this really small kitchen, then move to the back door and down some steps into this courtyard.
Right away, Michael runs into Dave, the bass player in Lamborghini Dreams. He introduces us, then goes, “Nice shirt,” pointing at Dave, who’s a wearing a white T-shirt with the words: “I killed your parents” written on it in red marker. He’s also wearing a pair of black jeans rolled up to his mid-shins, and a black hat over his thick, curly black hair.
“Thanks,” says Dave. He goes, “This party sorta sucks. I say we get some people together and roll down to the studio.”
“No way. Not yet,” Michael shoots back. “We just got here.”
I look across the courtyard and see the kegs and walk over to them. Pay for two cups and listen to this guy with a handlebar mustache and black blazer tell this girl in a black dress, with black hair cut crooked across her forehead, that he heard Jack White is going to be playing a solo acoustic show somewhere in the city this summer. And the girl goes, “We have to go. If I miss that, I will totally die. I just will.”
I walk back over to Michael and hand him a cup and light a cigarette.
“Sweet,” he says, taking a sip.
I’m superhigh and really paranoid, feeling like everyone at this party is staring at me and knows I’m tweaking, so I decide that I need to start getting really drunk, and I stay where I am when Dave and Michael walk to the side alley to do key bumps.
Finishing one beer, I fill my cup again, then take a swig from a pint bottle of Royal Gate Vodka that some guy, who swears he knows me, hands me.
He goes, “Here, Todd,” handing me the pint.
I say thanks and finish another beer and this is when I see her.
Laura.
Standing in a small circle of people by the stairs, holding hands with some guy I’ve never seen before with shaggy black hair, a thin chinstrap of hair around his face, wearing a plain brown vintage-style suit.
My first thought is to run away. To fade.
I’m embarrassed. I’m by myself. I’m fucking alone.
This wasn’t the way I wanted to see her for the first time again.
Making a quick move to my left, I try to blend in with a group of kids next to me, but I don’t do it soon enough and I hear Laura shout my name. “Travis!” Her voice momentarily freezing my heart in midbeat.
Shit.
I look back at her and all of the people she’s with are looking at me.
Damn.
“Travis,” she says again. “What are you doing?”
My face feels like it’s on fire.
“Travis, come here.”
I can’t do it at first. I cannot make myself walk to where she’s standing, wearing pink lipstick. Fixing her hair. Looking at me with her blue eyes. Adjusting her black minidress.
But I do it because I can’t help it anymore. I move closer to her.
“What are you doing?” she asks again.
Not much. Just hanging out.
“When did you get back?”
Yesterday.
“When did you decide to come back, Travis?”
A few days ago.
The guy that Laura is with extends his hand to me. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he snorts.
I do not shake his hand. I just leave it hanging there and say, No we haven’t.
Laura, whose face looks flushed, jumps in, saying, “Bryan . . . Travis. . . . Travis . . . Bryan.”
“That’s Bryan with a y,” he says.
With a y. Right.
I look at Laura and she looks at me and I want to tell her how sorry I am for the way everything turned out. And how we should be working all this shit out. And that she’s pretty much all I’ve known and had for the past five years and that I need to get back to that so I can have something again.
But I can’t say any of this. My lips will not open.
“So how do you two know each other?” Bryan asks.
“We went to West together,” Laura quickly snaps.
“Oh, so you’re one of her old high school pals,” Bryan starts. “I’ve met a few of you since we started dating.”
Good for you, man.
I look back at Laura and I have that anxious, butterfly feeling, and I don’t like it and wish it would stop.
“How long are you back for?” Laura asks.
I’m not sure. Maybe for good.
“Where are you back from?” Bryan with a fucking y wants to know.
I don’t know.
“You don’t know,” Bryan laughs. “That’s really weird, man. Sounds, ya know . . . interesting.”
It’s really not. Definitely not as interesting as your choice of facial hair.
“Travis, don’t,” Laura snorts. “Don’t.”
Bryan puts his arm around Laura’s shoulders and kisses her cheek. My heart is in my throat, practically choking me.
I’m sorry about that.
“What?” both Laura and Bryan spit out at the same time.
Sorry.
“What?” they both ask again.
I’ll see you around, Laura.
“Will you?” she asks.
Looking right into her eyes, I say, I hope I do. I really mean that.
Turning around, I walk up the stairs and cut past a bunch of kids waiting in line to use one of the bathrooms, kicking out these two girls who are in there fixing their makeup. . . .
It’s not helping anyway, I think I say before splashing water on my face. Over and over and over again. Then I grab the baggie of coke from my pocket and my keys and start scooping out bump after bump until someone starts po
unding on the door.
I’m busy in here, you fucking asshole!
“Open up,” I hear Michael say. “It’s me and Dave.”
I close the baggie and open the door.
The two of them walk in.
“We saw you talking to Laura then head up here,” Michael tells me, rubbing his nose.
Fuck her and fuck that guy she’s with.
“Dude,” Michael snaps. “Don’t start getting all emo about this shit. You guys are done. You’ve been done since you went to Hawaii.”
I don’t say anything.
“Besides,” Michael continues. “That dude she’s with is a real turd burglar. He thinks he’s like king of the hipsters and shit, but he’s lame. He’s like twenty-five, he doesn’t work, his band sucks, and he’s way too into the Strokes.”
I light a cigarette and Dave pulls out his cell phone. He goes, “Here, man. I gotta number in my phone that will make you feel a million times better.”
Whose number is it?
“James Spader’s.”
Really?
“Yeah, brah, we got James Spader’s phone number,” Michael says. “Dave’s cousin was partying with him in LA one night and got it. You should totally call him and leave a message. For some reason it makes you feel better. Like really good. It’s like . . .”
Pause.
Michael looks at the ceiling in deliberation, then looks at me again and goes, “Have you ever seen that video on YouTube of those retards just completely losing their shit to that transgender sludgecore band at the disabled home?”
No, I laugh.
“It’s like that, man, but better. Completely mind-blowing, dude.”
“Here,” Dave says, shaking the phone in my face. “It’s ringing right now.”
Taking the phone from him, I put it up to my ear and hear “This is James, leave a message.”
Sweat the donkey, I say for some reason, then hand the phone back to Dave, whose eyes are wide open, and he goes, “What the fuck does that mean, man?” And I go, I’m not even sure myself, dude.
Someone else starts pounding on the door and Dave pounds on it back. “We’re giving each other hand jobs, okay. Five minutes!” he shouts, putting his phone away.
I take a deep breath.
I think I’m gonna go home, guys.
“Don’t be stupid,” says Michael. “Let’s go to the bar.”
“99 Bottles,” Dave says. “I know a ton of people who are going there tonight.”
But I feel like going home.
“Fuck that,” Michael snaps. “Don’t let that cunt ruin your night.”
She’s not a cunt, Michael. Please don’t call her that in front of me.
“Whatever.”
I’m serious.
“Cunt,” he says again, mockingly.
Fuck you, Michael.
Michael rolls his eyes and I slide past both of them, walking out of the bathroom, back through the living room, down the hallway, out the front of the duplex, stopping at the street corner to wait for a cab.
“Trav,” I hear Michael yell from behind me. “Come on, man, let’s go to the bar.”
I turn around and Dave and he are coming toward me.
“We can walk to 99 Bottles from here. It’s like three blocks up,” Dave says.
I know where it’s at.
“Come on then,” Michael says. “Let’s keep the night going. It’s only eleven thirty.”
Pause.
“Come on,” Michael pleads once again.
Fine, man. Whatever.
So we turn back up and head for the bar, and on our way we duck into an alley to piss.
With Michael on my left, and Dave on the other side of Michael talking about making a smiley face on the garage door we’re all peeing on, I tell Michael that I’m sorry if I was being an asshole back there.
It’s not that I’m mad at you or anything, it’s that I’m dealing with a ton of shit. Internally. I’m totally strifed, man.
“It’s cool,” Michael says, tucking his dick back into his pants. “I don’t care or anything. It’s just that I’ve never seen you care about anything in your entire life.”
I zip my fly.
And Michael goes, “I mean, I’ve watched you spend your whole life not feeling bad about anything you’ve ever done.”
I say nothing and we continue to the bar.
4.
THE WHOLE BIG TRIP TO Hawaii had come about when my cousin Seth, who lived in New York but was about to graduate from college in Paris, called me in November and asked me to go to Maui to celebrate with him. And I was so fucking into it.
Beaches.
Booze.
Blow.
I talked to my father about it and told him how badly I wanted to go and that he should get the ticket for me because I’d done well in school and stayed out of trouble. And he agreed. My father bought me my plane ticket as a Christmas present, but two weeks before the trip, my cousin got busted trying to bring mescaline back into the States with him, and he was forced to cancel on me.
At first I was going to cancel my ticket also, but then I thought, Fuck that! Earlier that semester I’d read a book called On the Road, and then I’d read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and I figured maybe I needed my first great adventure, so I decided to do it by myself after talking my mother and father into letting me, and arrived on the island of Maui on the morning of December twenty-six.
Travis Wayne
5.
I WAKE UP IN THE morning, gasping for air. It’s like I’m suffocating. Drenched in my own sweat. I’m still freaked out from the dream I had—the exact same one I’ve been having since I came back from Hawaii.
Peeling my eyelids apart, the first thing I see is Michael sitting across from me, blowing his nose. When he’s done pushing his bloodied snot out, he crumples the Kleenex into a ball and tosses it on the coffee table in between us with the other like fifty bloodied Kleenex balls, and goes, “My nose is so fucking raw.”
I sit up and wipe the sweat from my face with my shirt and rip my tongue from the roof of my mouth and look around the room.
I’m at Kyle and Chris’s pad.
“You all right, Trav?” Michael asks. “You look a little freaked out.”
What happened last night?
“Dude, you got kicked out of the bar for taking a piss on the dance floor, man, and when we walked to Whiskey Red’s to meet Kyle and Emily, you told the bouncer that you’d been doing coke with James Brown all night and then showed him your baggie, and he was like, ‘Get your fucking friend home now,’ so the three of us brought you here.”
Patting myself down, hoping to find one last cigarette, I go, Thanks. I guess. That woulda sucked to have been arrested. I don’t think my dad woulda liked that too much.
Kyle and Emily walk into the living room. They wanna go eat, so the four of us bail and head to Taco Bell, and while we’re there, Kyle asks Michael, who’s been scratching at his balls since we left Kyle’s crib, “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“What do you mean?” Michael asks back.
“Why do you keep scratching at your dick?”
“’Cause it itches,” says Michael. “What the hell do you want me to do?”
“Get checked,” Kyle laughs. “You probably caught something from one of those nasty meatpits you slayed a few weekends ago.”
I start laughing, and Emily goes, “God, Kyle, you don’t have to be so fucking gross about it. I’m eating.”
“I’m just joking, baby,” Kyle grins, then kisses her, and Michael looks at me, and goes, “Maybe I should get tested.”
Maybe, brah.
Back at Kyle’s an hour later, we pass a bowl around and watch a Saved by the Bell rerun, the one where Zack Morris gets wasted and smashes Lisa Turtle’s mom’s car against a pole.
“That’s so rad,” Michael says. “But Screech is such a little bitch.”
“Dude, don’t forget about AC Slater,” Kyle says. “Remember that
episode when he put on that spandex leotard and danced like a ballerina across the classroom?”
“Yeah, what a faggot,” Michael smirks.
“’Fraid so,” says Kyle.
Two episodes later, I finally get Michael to drop me off at my house again.
6.
THE NEXT NIGHT I CAN’T sleep at all. It’s after three in the morning and I call Laura and am so surprised when she answers her phone that I almost hang up.
But I don’t.
“Hello,” she says.
Um. Hey.
“What do you want, Travis? You’re not like really high and strung out right now are you?”
No.
“Good,” she says. “What do you want?”
To talk.
“Okay what should we talk about? Oh, I got it. How about we talk about you blowing me off for three months and fucking me over.”
Hey, I’m not the one who ended it. You’re the one who called me in March and left a fucking message on my phone telling me it was over, Laura.
“Don’t turn this on me,” she says. “It was over a long time before I made that call.”
You’re right. I’m sorry. It was. But I still thought I had you. I was going through some crazy shit and I didn’t think I could talk to anyone. I was scared.
“What happened?”
Pause.
“Are you still fucking there, Travis?” she asks.
Yeah.
“I don’t understand any of this. Why are you calling me?”
I had to.
“What does that mean, Travis?”
I don’t know how to explain it.
She sighs into the phone. “You really embarrassed me at the party, ya know that, don’t you?”
Who cares? Fuck that guy. You’re way better than that trend hopper.
“Travis, you don’t even know what you’re talking about. This is complete bullshit. You can’t just come back and wave a wand and try to make everything the way it was.”
But I have to. I want to fix things.
“Well, you can’t. Too much has happened. You had everything and you disappeared. I loved you and you destroyed my fucking heart, Travis Wayne.”
Can we at least meet face-to-face and talk?