The Spectacular Now

by Tim Tharp

  But she won’t answer the door. She’s in there. I can hear her music—loud and pissed off. Just because I’m something like thirty minutes late, she’s going to make me wait on the welcome mat punching the doorbell. After standing around for about three minutes, I go back to the car for my whisky bottle and take it around to the backyard. Sitting at the patio table, I freshen my drink and contemplate my next move. The big 7UP is a bit on the stout side now, but after a hearty swallow, an idea hits me. Her upstairs bedroom window is bound to be open a crack from her sitting up there with her cigarettes, blowing smoke out the window. She is crafty, but not as crafty as I am.

  Let me tell you, the climb to her window is not an easy one, though. I’ve made it before, but not without nearly plummeting to my death wearing nothing but a swimsuit. Luckily, I have plenty of whisky to steady my balance.

  Now the tree—being a magnolia with low branches—isn’t hard to hoist myself into, but climbing to the tippy-top with a big plastic 7UP cup clenched in my teeth is another matter. It’s tough. And then I have to creep out on this anorexic branch and let my weight bend it over to the rooftop. For a second there, I think I might just flop belly-first straight down onto the outdoor grill.

  Even when I make it safely to the roof, I’m still not home free. Her roof tilts up at an outrageous angle. I’d give the degree of it, but I didn’t do so well in geometry. I do have rubber soles on my shoes, so I spider-walk to the window without anything catastrophic going down. But sometimes I just can’t seem to leave well enough alone. I always have to go for a little bit more.

  I remove the cup from my teeth to take a good big victory drink, and wouldn’t you know, I drop it and there it goes trundling along the gray shingles, whisky and 7UP splashing all over the place.

  Of course, my natural reaction is to make a grab for it, which in turn causes me to lose my grip on the windowsill. Next thing I know I’m sliding down the roof face-first, trying to grab on to something, but there’s nothing to grab on to. The only thing that stops me from following the big 7UP over the edge is the gutter. I’d feel relieved, but apparently the gutter isn’t in real great shape. No sooner do I catch my breath, than it starts to groan. And groan. Until the groan turns into a shriek and the gutter pulls away from its mooring, and there’s nothing left to keep me from nosediving over the edge.

  Doom is imminent. My coffin flashes before my eyes. I wouldn’t mind a red one. Or plaid. Maybe one with a crushed-velvet interior. But then at the last moment, the miraculous happens—I’m able to latch on to the gutter with my hands and sort of swing down onto the patio. Still, my butt-first landing rattles my tailbone good and hard and causes me to bite my tongue on top of that. When I look up, there’s Cassidy, staring out the patio door, her eyes and mouth popped open in horror.

  She’s not horrified on my behalf, though. The sliding door shoots open and she’s standing over me, hands on her hips, that familiar “you-are-such-an-idiot” scowl on her face, and I’m like, “Hey, it was an accident.”

  “Are you crazy?” she shrieks. “That is not cute, Sutter. I can’t believe you. Look at that gutter.”

  “Aren’t you the least bit worried about whether I fractured my spine or something?”

  “I wish.” She surveys the roof. “What am I supposed to tell my parents?”

  “Tell them what you always do—that you don’t know what happened. They can’t bust you during the cross-examination that way.”

  “You always have an answer, don’t you? What are you doing now?”

  “I’m picking up the gutter. What does it look like?”

  “Just leave it. Maybe my parents will think it blew off.”

  I drop the gutter and pick up my empty cup.

  “Don’t tell me,” she says. “That was full of whisky.”

  “And a little 7UP.”

  “I should’ve known,” she said, eyeing the whisky bottle on the patio table. “But really, isn’t 10:30 a little early to be drunk again, even for you?”

  “Hey, I’m not drunk. I’m just a little fortified. Besides, I didn’t drink at all last night, so really, it’s like I’m getting a late start. Did you ever think of that?”

  “You know you made me miss my hair appointment.” She starts back into the house.

  I grab the bottle and chase after her. “I don’t know why you want to get your hair cut anyway. Your hair’s too beautiful to cut off. I like how it sways across your back when you walk. I like the way it hangs down on me when you’re on top.”

  “Not everything’s about you, Sutter. I want a change. I don’t need your approval.” She sits on a stool at the bar that separates the kitchen from the living room. Her arms are crossed and she won’t look at me. “They don’t like it when you miss your appointments, you know. It costs them money. But I’m sure you don’t care about that. You don’t think about anybody but yourself.”

  There it is—my cue to tell the story of Walter. By the time I’m done, I have drinks fixed for the both of us and her arms are uncrossed. She’s softening but she’s not ready to completely forgive me yet, so I set her drink on the bar instead of handing it to her. I don’t want to give her the chance to reject me.

  “Okay,” she says. “I guess you did a nice thing there for once. But you still could’ve called me to let me know you’d be late.”

  “Hey, I would have, but I lost my cell phone.”

  “Again? That’s the third one in a year.”

  “They’re hard to hang on to. And besides, don’t you think it’s a little 1984 to go walking around with a device in your pocket that lets people locate you at all times? We should rebel against the cell phone. You can be Trotsky and I’ll be Che.”

  “That’s so you,” she says. “Always trying to joke your way out of things. Have you ever sat down and really thought about what it means to be in a relationship? Do you understand anything about establishing trust and commitment?”

  Here we go. Lecture time. And I’m sure what she’s saying is right. It’s well thought out and insightful and all those things that make for a good grade on a five-paragraph essay in English, but I just can’t keep my mind focused on it when she’s sitting there right next to me looking like she does.

  Those colors of hers really begin their attack on me now, ripping through my skin, electrifying my bloodstream, sending sparks zapping around in my stomach. I take a long pull on my whisky but I can’t keep a hard-on from starting. I only mention this because I have a theory that the hard-on is the number one reason for sexism down through history. I mean, it is seriously impossible to really soak in a girl’s ideas, no matter how deep or true, when you have a stiffy coming on.

  This is what makes guys think of women as cute, cuddly airheads. But it’s not the women who are the airheads. The guys’ brains have turned into oatmeal, so they sit there staring at the girl with no idea of what she’s saying but assuming it must be cute. She could be explaining quantum physics, and the guy would hear nothing but some kind of cutesy-wootsy baby babble.

  I know this because it’s happened to me many a time, and now it’s happening to me again. While she’s delivering her perfect essay on relationships, all I want to do is lean over and kiss her neck and then take off her sweater and kiss along her breasts and down to her belly, leaving little red spots on her white skin like roses blooming in the snow.

  “And if you can just do that,” she says, “I think we can make it. We can really, really have a good relationship. But this is it, Sutter. This is the last time I’m going to say it. Do you think you can do it?”

  Uh-oh. Big problem. How do I know if I can do it? For all I know, she could have been talking about making me wear a cocktail dress and high heels. This is no time to submit my theory on sexism and the hard-on, however, so I just go, “You know I’d do anything for you, Cassidy.”

  Her eyes narrow. “I know you’d say you’d do anything for me.”

  “Hey, didn’t I just climb up on a two-story roof for you? I busted m
y ass for you. Look, I’ll stand on my head and chug the rest of this whisky upside down for you.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” She laughs and takes a swig from her own drink and I know I’ve got her now. I go into the living room, set my glass on the carpet, and kick myself into a headstand against the end of the couch. This causes some dizziness, but still it’s nothing for me to tip the glass and finish the whisky off in one upside-down swallow. Unfortunately, I can’t quite maintain the headstand and topple over into a pile like one of those skyscrapers they dynamite to make room for something fancier.

  Cassidy’s really laughing now, though, and it’s a beautiful sight to see. I shoot her my famous eyebrow tilt and big brown eyes, and she takes a drink and goes, “You really are an idiot, but you’re my idiot.”

  “And you are a tremendous woman.” I slip the glass from her hand, take a drink, and set the glass on the bar. She spreads her legs so that I can stand between them and brush her hair back from her face and slide my fingers along her shoulders. “Your eyes are a blue universe, and I’m just falling into them. No parachute. I don’t need one because I’m never going to hit the ground.”

  She grabs the front of my shirt and pulls me in closer. See, this is the other side of the coin. This is a girl’s downfall. The guy goes soft in the head and starts talking to her like a moron, and she wants to take care of him. He’s just her cuddly fool who can’t make it without her. She melts and he melts and it’s all over then.

  The best way I can describe Cassidy in bed is triumphant. If sex were a sport in the Olympics she’d win a gold medal for sure. She’d stand there on the tallest platform with her hand over her heart, crying to the national anthem. Afterward, she’d sit in the TV studio with Bob Costas asking her questions about technique.

  I know I’m lucky. I know being with her this way is like being a part of the deepest inner workings of the cosmos. But, for some reason, I feel a dark crack opening up way back in my chest. It’s just a hairline fracture but definitely something you don’t want to get bigger. Maybe it’s the ultimatum she gave me a while ago. This is it, she said. This is the last time I’m going to say it. But what is it she wants me to do?

  It’s stupid to worry about it now, though. I’m lying here in my beautiful fat girlfriend’s crisp, clean butterfly sheets. I have an extra-strength whisky sitting on the nightstand. Life is spectacular. Forget the dark things. Take a drink and let time wash them away to wherever time washes things away to.

  Chapter 4

  Okay, yes, maybe I do drink a little bit more than a little bit too much, but don’t go getting the idea I’m an alcoholic. It’s not some big addiction. It’s just a hobby, a good, old-fashioned way to have fun. Once, I said that exact thing to this uptight church girl at school, Jennifer Jorgenson, and she goes, “I don’t have to drink alcohol to have fun.” So I’m like, “I don’t have to ride a roller coaster to have fun either, but I do.”

  That’s the number one problem with these anti-drug-and-alcohol programs they shoehorn you into starting in grade school. No one will admit any of that stuff is fun, so there goes all their credibility flying right out the window. Every kid in school—except the Jennifer Jorgensons of the world—recognizes the whole scam is faker than a televangelist’s wife with a boob job.

  I’ve taken those questionnaires on the Internet that are supposed to tell you if you’re an alcoholic: Do you ever have a drink first thing in the morning to get your day going? Do people annoy you when they criticize how much you drink? Do you ever drink alone? That kind of thing.

  First, sure, I drink in the mornings sometimes, but not because I need to. It’s just a good change of pace. I’m celebrating a new day, and if you can’t do that, then you might as well be laid out with your arms across your chest studying the pattern on your coffin lid. Second, who’s not going to get annoyed when someone starts nitpicking at them? I mean, you could just have one beer and your mother smells it on your breath and she and your stupid stepfather start in with the good-cop/bad-cop interrogation routine, except there’s no good cop. What, are you supposed to enjoy that?

  And third, why is drinking alone so bad anyway? It’s not like I’m some derelict drinking cheap aftershave alone behind the bus depot. Say you get grounded and you’re watching TV or playing on the computer in your room—a couple of drinks can keep you from going stir-crazy. Or maybe your friends all have curfews on weeknights, so you go home and have three or four more beers sitting on your windowsill with your iPod before going to bed. What’s wrong with that?

  It’s all in the attitude behind your drinking, see. If you’re like, Woe is me, my girlfriend left me and God hath forsaken me, and guzzling down a fifth of Old Grand-dad until your neck turns to rubber and you can’t lift your chin off your chest, then, yes, I’d say you’re an alcoholic. But that’s not me. I’m not drinking to forget anything or to cover up anything or to run away. What do I have to run away from?

  No, everything I do when I’m drinking is about creativity, broadening my horizons. It’s actually educational. When I’m drinking, it’s like I see another dimension to the world. I understand my friends on a deeper level. Music reaches into me and opens me up from the inside out. Words and ideas that I never knew I had come flying out of me like exotic parakeets. When I watch TV, I make up the dialogue and it’s better than anything the writers dreamed up. I’m compassionate and funny. I swell up with God’s beauty and sense of humor.

  The truth is I am God’s own drunk.

  In case you haven’t heard it, that’s a Jimmy Buffett song—“God’s Own Drunk.” It’s about this dude who gets so wasted he falls in love with the world in its entirety. He’s in harmony with nature. Nothing scares him, not even the most dangerous of things, like a gigantic, whisky-still-thieving Kodiak bear.

  My father—my real father, not Geech, my stupid stepfather—he loved Jimmy Buffett. LOVED him. “Margaritaville,” “Livingston Saturday Night,” “Defying Gravity,” “The Wino and I Know,” “Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw”—my dad wore those songs out. I still feel good anytime I hear one.

  In fact, the first time I ever had a drink of alcohol I was with my father. This was before the divorce, so I couldn’t have been but six years old. We went to a minor-league baseball game at the old stadium by the fairgrounds, back before they built the new one in Bricktown. It was me and my dad and two of his buddies, Larry and Don. I still remember those guys perfectly. They were fun. Big and rowdy.

  My dad was big too—he built houses. And handsome? He was George Clooney–handsome, only with the same gap between his front teeth that I have now. Even though I was little, I still felt manly being around these guys. They razzed the umpires and jeered the other team and called players on the Oklahoma City team their “boys.” And they held tall, cold beers.

  Man, did I want a drink of that beer. I wanted to drink beer and stand up on the seat and holler at the top of my lungs. It didn’t matter what I hollered, I just wanted my voice to blend in with the men’s. Finally, I pestered my dad enough that he let me have a drink. “Just a sip now,” he said, and Larry and Don threw back their heads and laughed. But I showed them. I chugged down about half the cup before Dad pried it away from me.

  They all laughed some more, and Don said, “You are a bad, bad badass, Sutter. You really are.”

  And Dad went, “That’s right. That’s damn right. You are my badass boy.” And he squeezed my shoulder and I leaned into him. I can’t say that I got drunk, but I sure did feel warm. I loved that ballpark and everyone in it, and I loved good old Oklahoma City off in the distance, the tall buildings growing soft and cozy in the twilight. I didn’t throw up till the seventh inning.

  It’s not like I was ever some kind of Drew Barrymore, though, drinking my way through grade school and snorting cocaine at dance clubs before I even got pubes. I really didn’t drink much at all till seventh grade, and then it wasn’t like I was drinking every day.

  What I’d do was fold a paper
bag and stuff it down the front of my pants and then go in the grocery store, saunter very casually back to the beer aisle—they sell weak-ass 3.2 beer in grocery stores in Oklahoma—and when no one was looking, I’d pull out the sack and stick a six-pack inside, and then put on my most angelic Huckleberry Finn expression and walk out the front door as if I didn’t have anything but a sack full of Count Chocula and Fig Newtons under my arm.

  Me and my best friend, Ricky Mehlinger, made a regular routine out of this for about a month. We’d filch a sixer and drink it down in the concrete drainage ditch and let the Doberman chase us. The Doberman was one big, ugly, mean-eyed dog. He ruled three backyards. One day we were just finishing off our beer and looked up and there he sat on the corner of the brick wall looking down at us like an evil gargoyle. A split second before he leaped down, we took off running. Then here he came, snapping at our heels. I literally felt his teeth on the back of my shoe right before I scrambled up a stockade fence. It was a blast.

  After that, we always made sure to walk by his domain after we finished our six-pack, and without fail, he’d spring out from nowhere, wild-eyed and slobbering. Then one day I bet Ricky five dollars he wouldn’t try to make it all the way through the Doberman’s backyard and touch the wrought-iron gate around the swimming pool. He chugged the rest of his beer and said, “You’re on, dude.”

  It was hilarious. Ricky got about halfway through the backyard before the Doberman came tearing around the corner of the house. Ricky’s face went all Macaulay Culkin, and he took off at a sprint for the swimming pool gate, the dog chomping air right behind him. He tried to flop over the gate but got seriously hung up on the black, wrought-iron spikes. That’s when I saw it. The Doberman kept barking and chomping at Ricky’s ankles, but he never took a bite. He could’ve easily gnawed Ricky’s leg off, but when it came down to it, he was just like us—out for a good time and nothing more.