Exit Here.

by Jason Myers

  I rub my eyes, trying not to laugh, but the image of Michael saying that to Chris is making it supertough not to. Cheese Sandwich.

  And Michael goes, “If you wanna go to the hospital, fine. But I can guarantee you Chris would not do the same for you.”

  Dave takes the mirror and sets it on the table, and I look over my shoulder and stare at this wall-size poster of Kool Keith pinned next to the desk where the computer is.

  A knock on the door.

  “It’s open!” Michael yells.

  Dave does the line.

  And in walks this dude with full ink sleeves on both arms. Long black hair. Wearing a blue T-shirt, a pair of tight jeans, holding hands with this Latina girl in a white dress, black fishnets, a blond streak running down the middle of her black hair.

  Michael and Dave seem really stoked to see the guy. Dave sets the straw on the mirror, then hands the mirror to me, and I set it down next to me on the couch.

  “Trav, this is Tommy Hart and his babe, Heather,” Michael tells me, pointing at the both of them.

  I tell them hi, and Tommy and Heather squeeze next to Dave, and from what I’m understanding, Tommy Hart plays lead guitar and sings for the Jill Kelly Experience, the band playing the Karen O look-alike contest with Lamborghini Dreams. Tommy and Heather know Michael from that, and also through Kyle, who was Heather’s coke dealer.

  Michael hands both of them beers and Tommy asks him if he’s gone to court for the Jordan Knight thing yet.

  Michael nods. “Yeah. I plead guilty and paid a few fines.”

  “That’s it?” Tommy snorts as the Bronx turn into Blood on the Walls. “No celebrity scandal bullshit? No exclusive interviews with Entertainment Tonight?”

  “No way, man,” Dave sneers. “No one gives a shit about that guy anymore except for a few middle-aged queers with acne.”

  Everyone starts laughing and Heather goes, “I told all the girls I dance with about it and they all thought it was hilarious.”

  You’re a stripper? I ask.

  Heather nods. “I dance at the 540 House on Friday and Saturday nights. You should come by sometime.”

  I pick up the mirror and divvy out ten more lines and Dave goes, “What did the stripper do to her asshole before she went to work?”

  “What?” Heather snaps, like she’s all irritated and heard one too many stripper jokes.

  Dave giggles and wipes his nose and says, “She dropped him off at band practice.”

  “Nice,” Tommy says, reaching over and bumping fists with Dave.

  I hand the mirror across the table to Tommy and tell him to go first.

  “Hey cool, man,” Tommy says. “I like you. What was your name again?”

  Travis.

  “I like you, Travis,” he says, and Heather winks at me. She grins real sexy like. And Michael asks Tommy if he has a lot of Jill Kelly porn.

  Tommy sets the mirror on his lap. “Every single one she ever made,” he grins, then slams both lines.

  “So does Travis,” Michael tells him. “Travis has the entire Jill Kelly and Sydney Steele and Nicole Sheridan collections.”

  I look at Heather and she looks at Dave and Dave is looking at the ceiling, rubbing his nose really fast. He looks at his hand, then wipes off whatever is on it.

  Tommy holds the mirror in front of Heather. She picks the straw up and does both lines, then Tommy puts the mirror back on the table and gives Michael a hundred dollars. Michael gives him two grams and tells them about the party we’re going to.

  “Maybe we’ll meet up with you guys later,” Tommy says with a sniff. He wipes his nose. “We’re meeting some friends at the Glass Castle. Maybe we’ll see you guys for after-hours.”

  “Awesome, man. Call me,” Michael says.

  Tommy and Heather leave. And then Michael, Dave, and I finish the coke on the mirror. Pouring another gram onto the mirror, Michael goes, “Hey, Trav, I might know something that can cheer you up.”

  I’m not calling James Spader again, I tell him.

  “I don’t want you to,” Michael says. “I was gonna show this fan video on YouTube for the Shellac song ‘Prayer to God,’ but if you’re gonna be a dick about it, then I won’t.”

  I’m not being a dick, man. Let’s see the video.

  All three of us walk to the computer and Michael pulls the video up. It starts playing, and the words to the song, which is about this guy who wants his ex-girlfriend and her new lover destroyed, are making me feel really good. . . .

  “To the one true god above, here is my prayer . . . there are two people here, and I want you to kill them. . . .”

  When the video has ended, I’m like, That’s fucking awesome. I wish the fan boy who made that video was my friend.

  “I already like him better than I like you.” Michael points to me. “And you,” he says, pointing to Dave next.

  The three of us do another round of lines and Michael goes, “Check this live Sonic Youth video out for ‘Making the Nature Scene.’ ”

  That video pops on and Michael spins around in the computer chair and goes, “Are you watching Lee Renaldo play guitar, Dave? You see how he’s moving around the stage and putting on a show along with the music.” Michael says, “That’s what you and Rodney should be doing more of. You two need to be more active onstage. I don’t wanna play a show with statues, man. No one goes to a show to see a bunch of statues standing on a stage.”

  Dave takes another line. “Calm the fuck the down,” he says. “We’ve only played one show.”

  “I’m just giving you some friendly advice, man. We’re not the fucking Strokes.”

  “I know,” Dave says. “We’re better than that.”

  “Exactly.”

  We finish the rest of the coke on the mirror and call a cab and split for the party.

  • • •

  There are a lot of people at the party on Baltimore and Twenty-eighth. The music is loud, mostly hip-hop, and although most of the girls and guys are fully dressed, a few of them aren’t, dancing and running around in their underwear and some with nothing on at all. The whole place smells like sweat and beer and vomit.

  When we step into this room right next to the kitchen, this girl with purple and pink hair runs up to Michael and freaks out. She grabs his arm and screams, “Isn’t this the best party ever!”

  And Michael says, “Only if you were completely naked.”

  But the girl must not hear him or understand what he says, because the next thing she yells is, “I met Gwen Stefani last week in Minneapolis! It was my dream come true. I could die now and everything in the world would be right.”

  Michael starts laughing in her face. He yanks his arm out of her hands and goes, “Listen. I only want to talk to you if you have money and can buy the shit that I’m selling. I’m not giving out free bumps. I’m not giving you any free shit. You can either pay or you can get on your knees and suck me and my friends off.”

  The girl scrunches her face. Her cheeks get red and she runs past us and disappears into the crowd.

  “Fucking coke whore,” Michael snaps, his eyes darting back and forth.

  I rub my eyes and wipe the sweat from my forehead. I follow Dave and Michael and like ten other people into this bedroom with blue velvet sheets and large oil paintings of naked black girls hanging from the walls, the Liars blasting from the stereo.

  The door slams shut and Michael pulls his coke out and starts selling to these girls. Baggies getting passed around. Everyone yelling over everyone else. Some dude in a blazer telling me a joke:

  Dude: What do Pink Floyd and Dale Earnhardt have in common?

  Me: The wall was their last hit.

  Dude: That’s right. You’ve heard it before, huh?

  Me: You just told me that same joke ten minutes ago.

  Dude: Right.

  It’s all pretty chill until Dave turns to this guy Roger, who has a bandana around his neck, and goes, “Hey, man, what are you? Some kind of flute player?”

&nb
sp; And Roger choke-slams Dave against the wall, and when he lets go, Dave says, “Why the fuck would you do that to me, Roger?”

  And Roger starts breaking down and crying about his mother and growing up in Ohio, and this chubby kid, Denny, who beat him up in fourth grade, and when Michael sees this happening, he points at Roger and starts laughing, and I leave the room when I realize that one of the girls standing near me is the same one that sucked me off in her boyfriend’s bedroom two summers ago while her boyfriend was passed out on the floor beside the bed.

  I keep moving and pushing through the party. I get to this table that’s been set up in a corner and I give the girl in the red nighty standing behind it ten dollars, and grab a cup and fill it with jungle juice, and when the girl asks me how much change I want back, I go, “Change?” and pound what’s left of my cup, then fill it up again, and keep moving.

  I light a cigarette and realize how coked out I am. I walk to the other side of the room and lean against a wall. The new Bloc Party single starts blasting and I smudge my smoke out and light another one.

  “Got one of those for me?” I hear, and snap my head to the left.

  Natalie Taylor is standing beside me wearing a navy blue halter top and a pair of crotch tight Miss Sixty jeans that are tucked into a pair of black mid-calf boots, and she has new tattoos on both her arms.

  I hand her a smoke and light it for her.

  “Thanks.” She takes a drag. “I’m a bit surprised to see you here, Travis.”

  I don’t even know why I’m here, to be honest with you, but I am. I’m just here.

  Arching her eyebrows, Natalie goes, “I heard about what happened between you and Cliff.”

  Who told you?

  “Claire,” she says. “I saw her last night at Bottoms Up. She told me all about it. She also told me that you two almost hooked up.”

  I take a drag.

  Almost.

  Natalie steps into me. “I think she really likes you, Travis. You should try to make something work with her.”

  No. No. I don’t think so. Claire is too awesome and sweet and beautiful.

  “And what are you?”

  I’m not that. You of all people should know that. You should know that I would only destroy those good things about her.

  “Or maybe you’re just scared,” she says.

  Fuck you.

  I take a drink.

  What are you doing that’s so special?

  “I’m moving to San Francisco at the end of August. I’m selling the trailer, packing my shit, and leaving this stupid city.”

  Where’s Cliff gonna go?

  Natalie takes the last drag and blows the smoke in my face and tells me she doesn’t care. She tells me, “I kicked him out a couple of days ago. I don’t know where he’s at.” She drops the smoke to the ground and smears it out with her boot, then she pulls her shirt up just past her belly button. “You see that?”

  What am I looking for?

  Natalie points just above her belly button at this brownish scar. “Cliff did that to me while we were all fucked up. He cut me right before he was ready to come on me.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “I thought about pressing charges, but what would be the point? I’m moving, ya know. He’ll get what he deserves some day.” Leaning even closer to me, Natalie whispers, “We all fucking will.” Then she kisses the side of my face and walks away, her cell phone to her ear.

  I need to do more drugs. So I walk upstairs and look for a bathroom and find one that’s empty.

  Standing in front of the mirror, I look at myself. I stare at my dry lips, the dry skin peeling away just below my nose. I pull another gram from my wallet and set it down on the faucet and try to break as many of the clumps down to powder with the butt of my lighter as I can. Once I feel like it’s good enough, I hold the baggie in front of me and flick it quickly, back and forth, back and forth, until all the coke sits in one big block. Then I pop the baggie open and start keying out some bumps.

  I do four, five. I do a sixth one. And right after I’ve put everything back and wiped my nose clean and checked my nostrils in the mirror, the door bursts open and in walks these two girls, fourteen, maybe fifteen years old, very skinny and tan. Wasted. Giggling uncontrollably.

  “Do you have any drugs?” the one in the purple and black underwear asks.

  Nope.

  “Then what are you doing in here?” she screams. “Were you jacking off and watching yourself in the mirror?”

  I was doing the rest of my drugs and now they’re gone.

  “Liar,” her friend, the one in the orange underwear, snaps.

  I roll my eyes and begin to exit when the girl in the purple goes, “No, wait. I know you. I know your sister. Are you Travis Wayne?”

  I spin around.

  I might be.

  The girl in purple goes, “I . . . I mean we . . . we go to school with your little sister, Vanessa. We know Vanessa Wayne,” she slurs.

  “I loved her, she was like, the coolest, raddest chick in our whole grade,” the orange girl stutters. “Until we saw her the other night.”

  “Shut up,” the other girl snorts. “You’re talking about his sister.”

  I shut the door.

  What was the other night? I ask.

  “Nothing. My friend doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  “Bullshit,” her friend barks back. “She got fucked by this dude for some OCs at a party.”

  My face gets red.

  I don’t believe you. You’re full of shit.

  “It’s true, dude,” the girl in the purple tells me. “I saw it too. He had her handcuffed to a bed and was taking turns with one of his friends.”

  Who—I come at them with my fingers flying in the air—who was doing that to her?

  Both of them shrug. “Just some guy she wanted some shit from,” the purple and black girl says. “I don’t know his name or his friend’s name. We were both surprised. A lot of people were. Your sister used to be fucking gorgeous, but now . . .” The girl shakes her head. “She’s totally not. She looks worse than you.”

  I dig the rest of that baggie back out of my wallet and hold it in front of them.

  “You do have drugs,” they both say.

  I did.

  Popping the baggie open, I flip it upside down, and dump it on the floor.

  “What the hell?!” the girl in the purple and black screams.

  And I leave the bathroom and run right into this girl wearing a pair of emerald green underwear and a matching bra. She’s crying, telling this guy in a pink button-up shirt and sunglasses how she just threw up in someone’s bedroom and feels super, super horrible about it and the guy in the pink shirt puts his arm around her and goes, “It’s okay. Don’t feel bad. Puking is cool. Everyone’s doing it.” Then he shoves his index finger down his throat and makes himself throw up, but some of it spews onto the girl, on her chest and on her legs, and she starts screaming and smacks the guy across the face, and runs into the bathroom I was just in.

  Me, I shrug at the guy when he looks at me. Then I go back downstairs to look for Michael or Dave, but I can’t find either one of them. So I go back to the table and chug three more cups of jungle juice, and the girl in the red nighty is like, “Dude, is everything okay with you?”

  You don’t need to ask me that. You don’t care. You don’t give a shit that my sister might’ve fucked some dudes for some OCs and that my girlfriend fucked my former best friend, who is now into cutting chicks open while he’s fucking them.

  The girl stands there, staring, her mouth wide open. She goes, “Are you Travis Wayne?”

  This Cage song starts bumping.

  No.

  I flip around, knocking a cup to the ground, and think I see Dave standing near the kitchen, talking with a black girl.

  I push these two girls standing in front of me, who have no business wearing garter panties in public, out of the way, and I slide to where I think Dave is,
but it’s not Dave at all. This guy has blond hair and the black girl he’s talking to is really a white dude with long hair.

  I’m exhausted. I wipe more sweat from my face. I try to call Michael but it goes straight to his voice mail and I don’t leave a message.

  Craning my neck around, my eyes land on that Bryan with a y kid. He’s standing in between these two other hipstered-out kids with his shirt off, pointing straight at me, talking into the ear of the guy on his right, his bad tattoos exposed.

  And when the kid he’s talking to starts laughing, I move right at them yelling, What?

  What do you have to say?

  What do you have to give?

  Then this other guy pops out of nowhere and steps in between me and Bryan.

  I’ll kick your ass right now, I say.

  And Bryan squirrels up behind the guy holding me back. “Fuck you and your whore,” he says.

  I jab my finger at Bryan, just missing his face.

  Let’s do it. Me and you. I’ll fucking destroy you.

  Laughing, Bryan goes, “You can’t do shit to me.”

  Around us, a small crowd has formed. I push hard against the only person standing between me and this pie grinder, this pilgrim dick, and I yell:

  What do you got to give?

  “Fuck you, man!” Bryan screams. He slaps the side of my face.

  I swing back but I miss and then another guy comes up behind me and puts me in a headlock. “You’re outta here, faggot,” he rips. Then he drags me across the living room and past the front porch, and shoves me through the porch door.

  Once I catch my balance, I charge at him, but stop when I realize it’s like six guys, all bigger than me, blocking my way back into the house.

  You can’t kick me out and not him.

  The guy who dragged me out laughs. “Yes I can. See, we know Bryan and we like Bryan and we don’t know you and we obviously don’t like you.”

  Everyone watching starts laughing.

  Screw you then. You fucking steakhead.

  “Oh, yeah?” he says.

  Yeah, because I’m better than you. I fucking own you. All of you.

  I step closer.

  I own this fucking city!

  If only my father could hear me. He would be so proud.

  And the guy goes, “Do yourself a favor and go home.” He walks back into the party with his friends and I’m left standing there all by myself.