8 posts tagged “college”

Okay, so I haven't written anything substantial here in awhile.  Boo hoo.  I was assigned to write a piece of fiction for a class I am taking, and honestly, I don't much like it.  I use Mark Twain's philosophy of writing uncontrollable characters into wells.  Except, this time, with no desire or time left to flesh out characters, I use the opposite of water. 

The Sink at Sunset

Hunter Caldwell

 

           Tonight is the end.  Tonight I am drinking 151, stumbling around into girls telling them I am emotionally vacant, swigging and instructing people to keep lit cigarettes outside a two foot radius of me—I am a gas pump.

     After pulling out of the one girl who actually does burn me with a cigarette, I stumble through my room looking for clothes. My brain rattles in its cage.  The room is dimly lit by a draped door of light.  A light rope hung on pre-existing nails from the guys before us.  I spot my dad’s boxers and shamble toward them.   I have them because of a mix up in laundry.  Mix-ups never happen anymore.  Not now.  Not with my mobile home of a heart. 

    The girl in my bed, Tamra, sleeps heavily now.  Whistling with her “sivalent ‘s,’” she tosses, undisturbed by my steps.  Through the darkness, I see a faint mark on her face.  Earlier, I describe her boyfriend as Voldemorte and her, Harry Potter.  This cheers her up and she sleeps with me.

    One line, one phrase can disarm someone.  People think of themselves as separate from the equations, the numbers and variables that envelope them, but it just takes the right phrase.  An abstract input for a specific output.  Tamra’s red lace panties dangle from my bed-post and I begin to think highly of myself: how many girls have I disarmed with one single phrase or action? 

    There is this girl who always speaks of her dead brother, who laughs at all her own jokes, who strives for loud.  Who irritates the shit out of me.  Who, if you listen to for long enough and pretend is funny, she will like you.  Oh, and a reluctant sympathy for her family’s loss—the golden key to her heart.  But to get her to stop talking, there is only one key that fits. The only strategy I have for shutting her up becomes sex.

    There is this girl who rides bikes everywhere.  I make the mistake of letting her ride me one night.  I wake up the next day, groggy and unable to see clearly.  I look at my hands.  Red viscous gunk covers both the palms and backs of my hands.  Is this blood?  Did she fucking bleed all over me?  It is more applied to me and less bled on me.  I notice black on my arms.  I think for a moment of chain-grease.  Perhaps it is make-up, and perhaps this is her way of marking me.  Claiming me.  This disturbs me.  I scramble for my clothes and, not seeing her anywhere make my exit as quickly as possible. 

    Second thought mentality settles.  These are not proud memories.  Especially not with Nel.  She always said, “I love you.”  I always said, “You know how I feel.”  I know Nel for six years before she gives me this check to cover my rent.  I figure I deserve some help, all those nights I sat next to her crumpled body of tears.  A repetition of, “Everything is plastic, the world is plastic.”  The world is plastic.
     
     I walk down my stairs, guided by my railing, my wall.  I am exhausted, dehydrated from a night of excess in all faculties.  My preference: burn out rather than rust out.  Parched, I know I must reach liquid-refreshment. The refrigerated Thirst-Rockers, flavor blue that my roommate Tom purchases, seems a good solution.  That childish corn-syrup.  I swing the paned-window-door to the kitchen wide open and flip the switch.  On the refrigerator door, there are two of four checks needed for rent due three days ago.  Raiford’s check is absent.  My (borrowed)check—absent.  We can do it tomorrow.  Always tomorrow.  

    Before I reach the syrupy blue nectar, I hear someone yelling.  The yelling continues for a moment and ceases.  The voices come from the street next to my yard.  My shitty yard, surrounded by flimsy chicken wire and filled with a series of empty paint cans, a slouching bench, a heap of branches and timber, and a broken skateboard. 

    I insert my index and middle fingers through a crack in the blinds and separate them.  Three figures stand staggered, yelling at the window.  Or the person behind it—me.  I step outside, half naked with people yelling, “GET THE FUCK DOWN HERE!” 

    I open the door and struggle with an orange alley cat.  Raiford is constantly badgering us about adopting it. I sweep the cat with the side of my foot and hiss at it.
    Hsss!
    “Meeeow,” it pleas.
    “No, goddamnit.”
    I close the door behind me and look to the street.
    “What’s the deal?” I ask.  One of the guys is especially pissed.  The other two stand and shake their heads. 
    “You called us fags, man.”
    “No I didn’t, what are you talking about?”
    “We saw your eyes!” he spits, feeling he has me nailed me with a reference to my peering through blinds.  Now I take offense. 
    “Did you see my eyes call you a fag?  Because it wasn’t me, so calm down.  Why would I do that?  I’m with a girl and I’m getting booze, I don’t care about you.  I don’t even know you.”    I feel entitled to boast half truths and show them some blunt sincerity.  After all, an imposing chicken-wire fence stands between the street and my yard, protecting me from the stupid things my drunk, sex driven mind conjures.   The group’s majority turns to the alleged “fag” and convinces him to leave. 
    I suddenly hear my name.  I look around for the caller.  And once again, someone loudly whispers my name.  I look up and my roommate’s head pops out of the window above me.  It is Raiford. 
    “Hey man, I called those guys fags!” flashing a Cheshire grin.
    I shake my head and enter the house.

     I drink the rest of the blue swill and crawl into bed next to Tamra.  I look at her sleeping face, its scarred eye-brow, and think I am a decent person.  Even Raiford will not hit a girl, much less break a guitar over her face.  I drift with thoughts of fidelity and begin a descent into ethereal.

     The corporeal behind me, affecting me, my mind turns to Raiford’s girls- Tina and Heather.  Tina and Heather have never met, though they share the same man.  Raiford wanders from one to the other, taking advantage of free meals, cheap love, and cigarettes.  Without trying to hide his behind-the-back, under-the-table, stab-you-between-the-eyes-and-leave-you-to-bleed-all-so-I-can-prosper attitude, he manages to avoid detection.  “Monogamy isn’t in my genes,” he tells me.  Raiford, that prairie vole.  Prairie voles are monogamous—sort of.   When other vole people aren't looking, they're fucking whoever they want.  Only in a social setting are those little vole fathers raising their kids with their lovely stay at home vole mothers. 

For caste when eyes present. 
For pleasure when eyes absent.

     And here I am, doing the opposite, wanting that private life back.  I remember Raiford screaming at his phone one night, telling a mutual friend that we are at some huge party.  I arrogantly shake my head, lay an open palm on his shoulder and say, "Stick with me, and this is every night,” so proud of my provincial party planet.  My ears pulse, pressure building.  My cracked rib from another drunken night, it's there, wrapped tightly and bound with a bourbon/Budweiser cocktail.  Muted from notice, like my connection to Nel.  What she could say now.  She could scoff at me for getting sick, for being this thin, this unhealthy. 
     A trip to Patient-First really nails this sentiment.  Hacking up hard chunks of mucus with red streaks, throwing up bile or coagulated blood in the sink at sunset.  The summer sound-- the cicada--crescendos with the dimming.  I decide I should go to the doctor.  His office is closed, so I must endure Patient-First.  I do the insurance bullshit and step onto a scale.  Beep, beep, beep.  Three digital lines do 'the wave' where I expect numbers. One final beep.  Electronic scales don't lie.  A year ago, I weighed 185.  Now, with my current lifestyle, I weigh a mere one-hundred sixty-three pounds.   

     The sun stains my bay windows.  My eyes squint and filter the distant blaze.  A jackhammer goes off somewhere in my brain and I rise.
     I walk downstairs to the living room.  It is a mess.  “I’m sorry, dude,” a voice sags from the couch.  Tom leans with his head floating somewhere between his neck and his lap, swaying.  The broken LCD on his phone illuminates his crotch.  He stares downward into its splintered lightning bolt.  Little dots of light like stars scatter across his screen, his little galaxy.  A red dot, maybe Betelgeuse, blinks in the northern hemisphere of Tom’s hand-held constellation. This informs him of a missed call. 
      “I tried calling you last night after you ran off with the bottle,” I tell him.
     “Man, I’m sorry.”
     “It’s okay.”
     “No.  No it’s not,” he gargles. 
     Last night, Tom pummels the right side of my head with his fist, screaming,
     “You can’t just go through everything like a fucking bowling ball, you cock!” 
      As I carry Tamra’s beach cruiser up the stoop in the front of our corner house, I plow Tom’s face with the front wheel as he sits sipping his beer.  His hand drops his phone in pursuit of becoming a weapon to use against my face.  This is why he is sorry.
     “It’s not a big deal, it just hurts when I yawn.  Or move my head too fast.  Or when I cough, or speak too loudly.  I guess it’s kind of a big deal.”
     “I just had a really bad week, a lot of things happened at work to piss me off the other day.  My brother got suspended from high school.  Those things aren’t your fault.  I’m sorry.”
     “It’s okay,” I breathe.  “You didn’t hit my face.  My beautiful face.”
    He laughs and stands, saunters over, and hugs me.

    All things broken, mend.  Though shaky for a few hours last night, our friendship remains, not ruined by tire treads or slight abrasions.  It stands above the matted living room carpet and piles of cheap beer. It stands above the broken glass and the cardboard boxes in the corner from when we moved in and shattered a lamp.  The corner of the room that promises to, even after four months of mess, one day become a dining room.  The compacted, inch-thick dog hair from previous owners sticks in the cracks against the walls.  This wasted house still stands, undivided.  Undestroyed.

    “Do you smell that?” I ask Tom, looking over my shoulder to the front door.  I see droves of people pass through grimy windows, drawn by magnificent force.  I head to the door and exit.  I pass an impassioned phone-bound neighbor down the brick stoop.  Several cop cars swerve down the street to my left, squealing.  I walk, staged in front of several dozen, shirtless.  Though a player in the act, I am no main attraction.  Two groups of younger adults pass without notice or mention of my no shoes, no shirt policy. 
    Cinders and ruin swim through the air.  I fall in line with everyone else, bunched and huddled, seeking excitement.  Seeking something beyond the monitor, the speaker, and the bottle.   

My pilgrimage ends halfway down the block.  Police swarm.  Little spiders spinning yellow silk.  “Caution,” they warn, is advised in this area.  Beyond the heap of timber and puddles of shattered glass, the alley leads to an abandoned warehouse.  Where all eyes lie, an inferno lords over the towering trees.  The fucking warehouse is on fire three houses from mine. 
    “EVERYONE GET BACK,” a cop yelp-yelp-yelp, yelp, yelps.  His hands, open and forward, grasp at an invisible wall which hobbles us backward.  Backward against brick, the encroaching flame in front of us. 

    Minutes pass and my house is inaccessible, taped off by the yellow ward.  I hop the single-beamed “fence” and bolt inside.  I need clothes if I am about to lose everything else. 
In a rush, I yell and scream for everyone to get out, to leave, to hustle.  To hurry up and make their peace.  Abandon all objects and vain pursuits of material happiness.  Save yourselves!  A quaking belch rocks the house.  I hear cries of desperation from shattered windows.  A gas line has erupted.  I grab a shirt and sandals from the living room floor.  These sandals I once lost in the river.  Somehow they wash up on shore and I find them. 
   
    I run outside and a cop yells at me.  My roommates scream my name.  I am escorted over the yellow line like a wrestler out of a ring. 
    “Is everyone out of the building,” a cop inquires.
    Yes, I say, everyone is out.  Everything that matters is right here.
   
    Hours later, our house remains skeletal.  Wooden doors to ash, glass windows to solid goo.  The news interviews Tom and edits the profanity.  The news speculates.  It is arson they say.  Maybe.  It was a group of teenagers, drunk and wily.  Maybe.  We call our friends, establishing new places to stay.  I call Nel, the only person I can rely on.  She lets me stay at her apartment the first night.  This first night away from my new home I get a call from Raiford. 
    “Dude,” he stops before I say hello.  “Dude, the cops just called.  They found a body in our apartment.”
    They find Tamra’s charred corpse trapped underneath roof beams.  And I am responsible.  No annoying dead brother, viscous red gunk on my hands, no debt.  No reason to deserve this.  I am a Bacardi 151 gas pump.  Tom’s bowling ball. Tamra is dead, and, I, responsible.  An object in my bed, a toy for my penis.  Yesterday, nothing more.  Yesterday’s today, nothing more.  Today’s now, I tremble.
    “Are you there?”
    No.
    “Hello? Dude, did you hear me?  You left her behind.  The girl in your bed.  The cops said you’re not in trouble for forgetting her.  They want to know why she had contusions, though.  They need to talk with you.”
    And I have not remembered a single one of them, for romantic or logical reasons, since I lost my battle against the world of plastic.
    She stands in the kitchen, washing dishes.  Her back, wide from years of besting swimming peers.  She has a boyfriend, reserves her emotions.  I have no one and spill.
    “Nel,” I whimper.  The phone slides from my hand and crashes to the floor.  It bounces, lays down.  An uneasy voice trails to the floor with the phone.  Nel turns her head and her careful hands halt, suds sliding off of flesh.  Accumulating.  Amassing in metal.  Her frame  faces me. 
    “What’s wrong?” she asks, a concern in her voice, like a mother addressing a wounded offspring.  My scraped elbows and knees, over the years, I think she realizes, are nothing more than cries for something I miss.  Not now, with the merciless, irreverent moon, spinning madly on in the panes behind her.  Not now. 
    “I love you.”  I plead, longing for reciprocation.  My last sensible sniffle of the night. 
    “You know how I feel.”

     Nothing is as difficult as the decision to answer or ignore incoming calls.  For me at least, it had been this way my whole life.  Until recently, a new path flattened the hazy overgrowth around me, and I was set in forward motion to an unknown destination.

     It started about three months ago.  I was at a party with some friends, a college somewhere northwest of where I am now.  It is pretty hazy.  All I remember is drinking my fourteenth beer and then blood-- blood everywhere.  Something had broken, some sort of glass structure.  I didn't fully understand what, but I knew it had been my fault.  In earnest, I gathered the splinters with my hands, some piercing my skin.  Blood poured out on tile flooring and two silhouettes told me it was okay, and to stop. 

    I didn't stop.

    Blood kept pouring until my hands were red, and someone grabbed me by the shoulder, picking me up and hustling me to the bathroom.  In my beer-full dream, I wept as someone picked little shards from my palm. 
    "I'm worthless," I told the person, and believed it. 
    The person helping me was my friend, Parson.  He reassured me I wasn't worthless, that I was worth something, but I persisted. 
    "I'm a horrible waste," I kept saying, "A horrible piece of shit, worthless, worthless, worthless."
    No, he would tell me, you are my best friend.  Whether that was true or not was the least of my concerns.  What happened next is most important.  After cleaning out my wounds, Parson left to tend to what I later heard was a broken hookah.  By "tend to," I mean he paid the guy for it.  He was going to sell it to us anyway.  But now it was broken.  A false, empty purchase, like the day I was birthed to my parents, I had in my head. 

    Parson was full of money.  He drove a nice car that he had replaced after totaling his first.  He paid for the damages, but it was ultimately with the backing of his mother, a banker, that pulled him through.  On the other hand, there is me, alone in the bathroom with only a sad, depressed version of myself, filling myself with horrible thoughts. 

    I look down at the ripples in the toilette.  My tears are falling in with the rest of the waste.  I'm Poor, my drunk version told me.  I'm Poor and I'll Never Amount to Anything.  My Girlfriend Won't Love Me.  My Parents Have Abandoned Me.  None of it true, except for right now.  I reach in my pocket to grab my phone.  To talk with God or who knows, but I grab my phone.  It fumbles from my pocket and hand, spins through the air and splashes right into the middle of the toilette.  Water spills up onto my leg, and this is the grain of rice that tips the scale.  I actually begin crying. 

    I bend to fish my phone out and reach for some towels.  Parson comes back and walks me out.  The rest is a blur.  All I remember is crying for what seemed like an hour while some girl desperately tried to study in the far corner.  I must have been in some study hall.  The study desks, four linked desks, looked like swastikas from above, up on the stairs.

    Somehow Parson managed to drive us back-- a two hour drive-- somewhat drunk.  He asked me questions all the way back, wondering how to contact my girlfriend and tell her I was in bad shape.  He called people to message her online since he couldn't get in contact with them. 

    God, she was fucking worried the next day.  She felt waste. 

    Waste is something unneeded.  Like worrying about nothing, she would tell me.  Like wasting your worry, your feelings expecting something much, much worse than just a sad, sad drunk.  But expectations narrow your reality-- which is why dropping my phone in a toilette was a blessing.  My view-screen is permanently fucked up.  I could break my two year contract with those miser-y bastards and get a new one, but this is a sign.  A sign to answer every call.  My view screen is white.  Just white.  A harsh, clinical whiteness.  And I have no fucking clue as to who is calling me.  As to what is coming my way.  So I let it come.  I accept everything. 

Sometimes I let it stay. 

And sometimes I let it go.  

I
  Lasers scanning, barcodes booping.  The conveyor belt conveying items.  Boop.  Bananas.  Boop.  Milk.  Boop.  Bread.  Boop.  Boop is the sound of you spending money to feed yourself.  Input, output.
     Next in line is a WIC costumer.  WIC stands for Women, Infants and Children, and WIC cards help all mentioned.  They are sort of like food stamps, but better.  People usually squander food stamps.  Food stamps were meant to provide for those who couldn't provide for themselves.  You would boop items like bread and milk, or maybe cooking items.  Cheap stuff.  And lots of it.  Instead of getting thirty dollars of legitimate food stuffs, however, people tend to go for thirty dollars of Doritos, M&M's, maybe a magazine, and a lot of toilet paper. 
    With WIC cards, everything you can buy is right there on the card listed out for a cashier's convenience.  You're supposed to have it ready for the cashier, that's me, when you get in line, along with your information packet.  Your life. 
    The government provides food stamps, WIC cards, that sort of thing because the government is made up of people who generally need its help.  That's why they're here, in this government.  If they didn't have to be, maybe they wouldn't be.  It is like the universe.  The universe is everything.  It is one.  It is whole.  There is no inside or outside with the universe.  The universe is like a government, in a sense, made up of very many facets, but unlike governments, which are beyond the scope of most people, the universe is infinitely beyond the capacity of anything.  Because it is everything.  Governments are more powerful entities than individuals, in considering their weighed input into the universe, but against the universe, a government seems insignificant. 

    I scan the last item listed on the WIC card.  Kix cereal. 
    "Mam," I say, staring down at the card clasped in my money handling hand.  Covered in trace amounts of cocaine from twenty dollar bills, no doubt.  Everyone's a criminal.  "Mam, I think you have to get store brand cereal.  It's just as good though."  That other stuff is just overpriced.  You're just paying for the name, I tell her.  She gets her kid to go switch the boxes, and I ring them up.  The kid is complaining to the mom, tugging on her shirt, stretching it.  He says he needs to get home.  He needs to beat it.  My first thoughts go to either masturbation or the Michael Jackson song, in either case generating a disturbing emotion.  He says it again. 
  "Stoppit," she says, turning and slapping his hand away.  She twists back to me and smiles, Thank You.  They go to leave, and the automatic doors, built for your convenience and for feng shui, slide open.  As the seamlessly glide through, unhindered by the world around them, the mother says, "Those games will rot your mind, child."  She says this and I know exactly what she's talking about. 

    Video Games were my life.  At age five, my best friends were an Italian plumber that was a chronic shroomer, and a little blue hedgehog that heroically fought the mechanical revolution.  One year, when I was in kingergarten, a brand name cereal sponsored the new Sonic game.  I got my mom to cut the blue hedgehog from his cardboard prison, to free him.  And I took it to school.  I raced him up and down the halls, jumped him over classmates, and into my cubby hole.  After recess that day, I came back and he was gone.  My friend, Ted, had taken him, and was parading him around the room as his own.  Too young to see this as a sign, I got angry, and later that day fought Ted for a cardboard shape. 
    My parents, seeing that I had an addiction to video games, sought to course correct.  To realign me with my destiny.  Video games were ruining my chances at my own life.  Imprisoning me.  In order to play video games, I would have to read an hour for every thirty minutes I wished to play.  They were trying to help me.  But I was too young to realize this, and often times would just go in my room for an hour and play with toys, come out later, and say I had read when I hadn't. 
    My fixation on video games was so great, I abandoned all else.  I had to buy more.  And more.  To feed the fire, I had to throw more and more characters into the furnace.  I had to consume, faster and faster.  Every plastic box was another pandora.  And then came the age of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.  And it all went spiraling from there.  Up to that point, I had some semblance of balance with the real world.  My eyes were half opened to reality, maybe blurred.  But the image was still there, allowed in my brain.  Just fuzzy.  When I got into MMORPGs, I lost hold of it. 
    I would wake up at 6:45 in the morning, just in time to throw on some clothes and catch the bus.  I would spend my  six hours in hell, half awake or sleeping.  After the sixth hour, I would ride the bus home, and quickly walk from my stop to my house, where I would get some food and immediately sit down at my computer and log on.  For many months, friends came over.  They stood behind me and carried the weight of a conversation, and left.  For the most part, I wouldn't even realize they were gone until I would get up to use the bathroom.  For many more months than I would like to recount, no one visited.  No one called.  No one messaged me online, except those who I played the games with.  In school, much of my life revolved around these online games.  At lunch, all my table spoke of was which guild we were joining, how many people we killed, or what new staff we got.  Like it was important.  Like it was meaningful.  Like it wasn't a total goddamn waste of our time. 
    Something inside me always knew it was a waste of my time.  My core, my inner child, willed this electronic-centric life to end.  It willed it to end in the form of lightning.

    Boop.  Boop.  Boop.  About a year ago, the universe dealt me a new hand.  Gave me a second chance.  My computer was struck by lightning, and exploded.  No, seriously.  It caught on fire.  I was so absorbed by my game, I couldn't tear myself away from it for the duration of a thunderstorm.  No, I was going to ride it out.  Maybe it was my obsession.  Maybe it was my core banking on the chance of a new life.  Either way, I was free.  For three months I had to find something to do.  Everyday was an adventure.  Eventually, I settled into a new way of life.  I read to read.  I ran.  I lifted weights.  I started eating real food.  My once concentration-camp-victim body was bulking up with muscle.  I was big, like I was when I was a child.  Like I was meant to be. 
    I was providing for myself.  This is what the universe wants, I thought.  I took trips down to a nearby creak.  A beautiful area surrounded by sheer cliff faces and boulders.  A forest and train tracks.  And I enjoyed it.  I remember enjoying the outdoors as a kid, and I did again.  I was on a new journey.  
    My computer was later repaired, but I never returned to play games on it.  The universe had been looking out for me, and was going to give me a second chance.  And I wasn't going to waste one second of it. 

    When I got to college, I met a kid named Alex.  He lived right across the hall from me in the dorms.  When I met him, I knew exactly who he was.  He had posters of video game characters, a library of video games, and a ninja sword.  He wore all black.  All he did was play video games and complain.  He was an elitist.  A little bitch.  An asshole.  Selfish.  He was me. 
   

The last sane story I will tell begins with four guys walking twelve blocks in the cold to get to a party.  A party that isn't going on that night.  So, four more blocks over, to a party where some girl we'll call "Jill" invited Theft.  "I'm bringing someone" he told her.  Someone(s), it turns out.  When we get inside, Chocolate, Theft, Roman, and myself all mingle at the door before spotting the keg.  I am immediately ahead of everyone, leaving my friends behind.  There is a couch against the wall, next to the keg, and in front of the beer pong table.  People are sitting on the couch like it is a fucking riser for the beer pong game.  Their legs hang over the edge of the couch and form a gauntlet to the keg.  This gets increasingly irritating as I drink more.   

The next thing I know I have five solo-cup sized beers in me and I am out on the porch negotiating with Tony, a kid from my dorm, to give me some of the liquor he brought with him.  He has major OCD and won't let me drink out of his bottle.  I tell him this is probably for the best, since, you know, I have aids from all the buttsex I have.  Apparently I say this very loudly, because a group of people turn to stare at me.  The girl in the group is hot and I decide saying "Yeeah, you heard correctly" is the appropriate response.  I don't say anything else, as I am back to bargaining for liquor, the devine nectar of the gods.  The girl turns around and giggles.  Tony agrees to pour some of his draft into my red cup.  He tells me it is Bacardi 151.  I tell him I love him.  We throw back together.  He wretches and I lick my lips, telling him I am indebted, and that 151 is delicious. 

I head back inside for more beer since I have no more liquor.  I pass Theft on the way inside and shake my empty cup in the air at him.  He takes a second to register this, turns, and asks, "Dude, you're going back already? How many have you had?" 
"Like five," I tell him. 
"Let me catch up!"
I smile and walk away, tripping over the gauntlet of feet stretched casually across the floor.  This pisses me off so as soon as I get my beer I chug it and fill up for a seventh.   With my seventh beer in hand, I head back to the porch outside.  The porch rests on the second floor of an apartment building.  I want to test its integrity, so I give Theft my beer and begin jumping up and down.  Because, testing something with YOURSELF that could lead to your DEATH is an awesome idea.  Theft is saying something to me, but I am too busy testing the strength of the pillars below.  
Theft: "Dude, it's concrete"
Hunter: "That just means we'll fall faster, right?"
Theft: "Uh, what beer are you on?"
Hunter: "Mmmm, like.. like seven... and some 151 that Tony gave me."
Theft: "Jesus man, I'm on like four, give me a chance to catch up with you."
Hunter: "I knew a guy that ate just ketchup.  It was gross."
Seeing that I was 100% capable of sustaining a real conversation, Theft takes this time to introduce me to "Jill," the girl that invited him.  She is cute, with short brown hair, bobbed, and piercing eyes. I shake her hand and she smiles. I am not revolting to her because she is probably more drunk than me.  Distracted, she shambles off into the party.  I ask Theft if he is hooking up with her.  I must have almost yelled it, because he's giving me the buldging eyes, slice-across-the-throat hand movement.  "Oh," I say.  "Nice." 

I head back inside and pass the couch.  This time, I step on everyone's feet.  Someone calls me an asshole, but I tell them they are impeding my intoxication.  I get an eighth beer and Chocolate and Roman say they're headed out.  I am giving them high fives and hugs like they're departing for some long journey that they'll never come back from.  I turn around and some random guy is behind me, so I high five him too.  I am a happy drunk tonight. 

Terror strikes.  The keg is dry.  I almost begin weeping, because I am no where near as drunk as I want to be.  Jill sees that I am distraught and comes up to me.
Jill: "There's another keg in the place behind this one.  Just go around back, outside, and take a left."
Hunter: "You are my hero."
I end up following her to the next apartment where she waits outside to smoke.  You know, on one of those ancient fire escape things, the pitch black metal and what not. Inside, I am packed between two fat dudes that smell like shit.  Luckily a girl entertains me while I wait to get to the alcohol.  She asks me if I'm Hunter.  Hunter Caldwell.  I say yes, and ask her why the hell she knows me.  I am enamored.  I feel famous. "You went to James River, you were in my graduating class. I guess you didn't see me much."  It just got scary.  I have never ever seen this girl in my life.  She tells me her name as she exits and I tell her I'll look her up on Facebook sometime.  I immediately forget her name. 

I finally get to the keg, fill up, and leave.  I go outside and my current entertainment, Jill, is gone.  I decide to drink this beer as fast as possible and go for another.  I do, and a guy from my dorm comes up behind me saying, "Nice."  I turn around to see who it is.  It's some kid that absolutely zero people like.  I've never had a problem with him, but think that fate has given me a means to my own entertainment.  I talk to him for awhile, making sarcastic remarks about his leather outfit.  Before I go for another beer, he asks me what my name is.  Not being very creative in my drunken stupor, I tell him my name is James.  That's my first name, so technically I wasn't lying.  Throughout the rest of the night I would tell him my name was Fred, Jason, Jackson, Jefferson, Earnest, Bunsburry, and Captain Kirk.  I think he finally got it by the last one. 

After several more beers, I am out on the terrifyingly high fire escape.  Jill is sitting on the stairs leading up.  I guess to the roof, there aren't any third floor apartments.  She's smoking a cigarrette, and I ask her for one.  I am not a smoker, but when I drink, I do smoke.  The nicotine-alcohol concoction is nice for a head rush.  We sit out there and smoke, talking.  I am not going to lie to you, I remember nothing of the conversation, and I'm not going to pretend I do.  She asks me to hold on to her cigarrette and heads inside to use the bathroom.  The kid from my dorm comes by and asks my name.  I think this is somewhere around the use of "Jefferson."  "Cool," he says, and I head inside, leaving Jill's and my cigarrette behind on the rail. 

After awhile, I am drinking another beer out on the porch, talking to Theft, when Jill comes up.  She asks me if I have a girlfriend.  I am honest, so I say yes.  I kind of wish I didn't right now, because the question is not subtle at all.  I tell her yes, and am surprised to hear her explain the friend zone. 
She says, "Oh, because you can climb the 'Friend' ladder or the 'Fuck' ladder."  Ooo, girlfriend means "Friendzone"!  I'm not a cheating bastard, but am disappointed to have been put in a less-than-awesome category.

The rest of the night between that and getting back to the dorm is unimportant.  We did go to another party, but it was totally lame.  The last thing I remember before getting back to the dorm is riding on Theft's back down the street. 

So, I get to the dorm, sloppily swipe my card a few times, and rush upstairs.  Yes, stairs.  Even drunk, I have a four-floors-or-less stairs policy.  I live on the third floor and I refuse to be that lazy.   I have to take a hurculean piss, so I go to the bathroom.  I see two shoes sticking out from under a stall door.  Somebody has been partying way harder than me.  It kind of reminds me of the Wizard of Oz, and I wonder if the shoes will curl up and disappear. 

I am willing to ignore the person, take my piss, and be on my way, but then the groaning starts. 
Hunter: "You alright in there, man?"
"OoOOOARH!"
Hunter: "Dude, you don't sound so good, you need some help?"
He starts puking, "BLAAAARRRH!"
I finish up and look under the stall.  There is dark, viscous liquid coating everything.  The toilet, the floor, the wall, his arms and shirt.  It is fucking gross.  I reckognize him.  It is "Somedude2" from my story "Drunk People."  We'll just call him "Toilet" in honor of his submission to the porcelain god. 
Hunter: "I am so getting you some water man... it's like. . . a cure-all"
Toilet: "BLllaaargh"
I go to DasBox, knowing he is the only other person awake at four in the morning.  I ask him to help me.  I don't know for what, maybe moral support.  Or maybe because Toilet is a fucking tank of a person, and immobile to someone like me. 
We keep supplying Toilet with water and he keeps throwing most of it up, or just pouring it on himself.  Toilet has been arrested before on campus and is on the verge of getting kicked out of the dorm, so I can't leave him in good concience.  We decide to move him.  But first we get a trashcan so he can throw away his shirt.  It is literally caked in brown and black throw up.  I don't know about you, but the second I start throwing up black shit, get help for me, please.   We get him to his room.  I walk inside, and try to get Greez off of Toilet's bed.  I tell him he has to move.  And he doesn't listen to me.  This pisses Toilet off and he says something to the effect of "I'll fucking kill you."  I don't really remember, but I recall it being commanding.  And besides, this guy is an ox and could destroy Greez.  Greez hears him and springs into awareness, moving to the floor.  Some random girl is on his bed. 

I mention the last part, about Toilet, because that may very well be me soon.  Heading back out into the drinking world, beyond my limits and what not.  My friend Luke is coming back this summer, and let's just say I can drink a lot, but not like it's my job.  Like, if you're in the military, you kill people for a living.  If you're Luke Koftan, you drink bitches under tables for a living.  This man keeps drinking after he has won drinking contests.  People actually tell him, "You don't have to drink anymore, you know." 

"FUCK YOU," is his response.  So, I have some catching up to do.  With a family history of alcoholism and my Irish heritage, here's to the last sane story I ever tell. 

Hunter: Oh man, cold pizza.
Jeff: Greatest. Food. Ever.
Hunter: I see my first slice.

Music ceases for a moment as the car is turned off and then on again. We're back from Sheetz and sitting in the parkinglot. It's an uneventful night, but we're both high, so we're both enjoying being in our heads.

Jeff: I got strawberry daiquiri flavored Sobe. That might be a little bit fruity.
Hunter: Haha, yeeeah, you might've just grown a tiny mangina.
Jeff: Eh, I tried all the other flavors and figured I'd try this one.
I laugh at him, he's a funny kid.

Jeff: Getting high is so weird.  Life is all about your verbal melee-ing skills.  If you can talk, you can dominate people.
Hunter:  Let's not start that shit.

I know where this is going.

Jeff: No, it's totally social engineering.

Yep.

Jeff: That's the essence of it right there.  But the point is, my getting high inhibits my ability to do that.  Like, if words are my power, it takes away my power.

At this point I figure Jeff is bashing pot, and I'm afraid he's delivering his farewell address.  This is a radical paradigm shift. 

Jeff, in the most pseudo-profound tone he can muster, says, "Getting high takes away my power.  I think that's supposed to be a profound statement or something."  He thinks wrong.

Hunter: Takes away your power?
Jeff: Does getting high take away your power, Hunter?
Hunter: Not in a bad way.
Jeff: See, I think it takes away your power temporarily, but as a whole person reinforces you.
Hunter:  I think so too, because that taking of power let's you sit back and let's your life--
Jeff: Degenerate?
Hunter: No, I mean, you view it instead of participate in it(not necessarily what I meant), and that's a different perspective. So when you come back, when you revert, and you remember that... you've discovered something about yourself or the universe.  So, no, I don't really think I'm losing something so much, when I'm getting high.  I just think I'm altering something so I can gain a different experience. 
Jeff:  Here's this.  Your yes-no binary system thing... it's true, it exists.  You have a plethora of options that are either in one of two states: active or passive.
Hunter: Yeah. Or "accepting" or "rejecting."  Any two opposite terms.  That's why I find the yin-yang fucking incredible.  Like, that is a symbol that says ONE thing about the universe that is so fundamental and true.  That controls the universe, that is the symbol of how things work.
Jeff: It also says to us that the Chinese were smart as shit.

This is where the conversation regarding duality stops being interesting and degrades into me saying, "Symbols are understandings."  Jeff gets his turn to make fun of me.  I deserve it, as my statement was true, but far too basic for its context. The next that happens is awesome.  We reaccess music, a CD I had burned specifically for the night, packed to the very edge with some of the greatest high songs ever.  The song "Charlie," by Red Hot Chili Peppers begins playing.

 

Jeff: You know why this CD is so good?  It's amazing blazing music.
Hunter: I know, that's what this CD is.  It's stuff that sounded really fuckin' cool when I was high.  Like, I make different compilations and listen for specific types of sounds--
Jeff: I'm talking about the Chili Peppers CD.  The double album.
Hunter:  Hahaha, I'm sitting here just sucking my own dick, complimenting myself and everything. 
Jeff: Hahaha, I don't care, I just love when we realize things like that. When I was hanging out with Mike and a couple of those other kids, we were talking about our experiences on acid.  I go, "Dude, the carpet at Chris Pelatir's  was just like... it was swirly."  And then one of the other kids goes, "I TOOK SHROOMS ONCE AND THE LIGHTS WERE BRIGHTER."  And the juxtaposition of that and how ridiculous it was made me realize how dramatic I was being.  I was like, "Oh."

We start talking about sports next.  Jeff says they're awesome, but regrets not being able to participate in them.  I tell him I haven't been high enough to want to watch sports.  I restate what I mean and say that I just haven't been the right mindset, and sometimes smoking allows that for anything.  This can be a good or a bad thing, depending.  But, then again, I don't believe in "good" or "bad."  These are human constructs.  There are things that are harmful and detrimental, but even these terms only scratch the surface of the true nature of things.  It all goes back to duality, the core of the universe.

The next part I'm excluding because I don't like it.  It deals with him and a girl.  I'm not only excluding it for his privacy, but also because it's kind of stupid.  His views on women may be true to some extent, but my experience tells me he is wrong, and that things are not necessarily one way with everyone. He thinks getting his car taken away will lead to him failing miserably and having no chance with said chick.  I say that's not true, just that he would have to try harder.  He talks about how to work the game, and I tell him he can just make the girl like him by being confident and comfortable with himself.  He sees it differently, like she is a means to his own happiness.  Disagreeing, I tell him it can be mutual.  It is possible.

 

One of my favorite songs ever starts playing--"Final Cut" by Coheed and Cambria.  It is a perfect background for the next part of our conversation.  The song sets a sober, if not depressing mood.  The conversation leads to the subject of death:
Hunter: I think there's real stuff in college(talking about relationships).  Like, at that point you're developing different sentiments.  You know what I mean?  A lot of people anyway.  I think that's called maturing, in a way.
Jeff:  I agree.  Yeah, I know.
Hunter:  And I like that maturity doesn't have to change you, but at the same time, I'm only 18 right now, maturity could ruin me.  I just have to mature to a certain point, you know? Where I'm happy. 
Jeff:  You have to be at the right place at the right time for you.  Those kids that are like 15 and getting into the kind of shit we're doing right now.
Hunter:  You know what it helps me realize?
Jeff:  What?
Hunter:  That helps me realize the phases in age, also realizing that I am getting older.  And I will die someday.
Jeff:  You're not invincible.
Hunter:  Grasping that concept is kind of sad.  That's when you give up man.
Jeff:  You don't really capitulate(I love hanging out with Jeff, he's one of the few people that can challenge my vocabulary. I will be honest, I did not know this word, but I did understand it. In case you don't know, it basically means to give up. ) until years later.  I mean, you'll contemplate capitulation to yourself.  But it's the moment when capitulation became a certainty.
THIS IS NO BEGINNING, YEAAHH YEAAHH, THIS IS THE FINAAAL CUUUT, OPEN UP!
Hunter: No, I hate that, it's like the brain was meant to accept death.
Jeff:  It was.  That's just how the human species works. 
Hunter(disgusted):  I hate that.
Jeff:  Like, what if every ant-drone spent its life trying to prolong itself instead of working for the hive? (This statement really actually worries me.  Jeff, if you read this, which I know you will, we need to talk, man.  That's the most terrifying statement you've ever made.  Like, c'mon, we are not ants, there is no hive.  To some extent, fuck humanity, I am living for myself.)
Hunter: That's why I respect people who've broken the triple digits.  It's like, damn, you have an incredible fucking will to hang out.

The conversation makes its way to:
Jeff: Our parents always make fun of us, like, "YOU THINK YOU'RE INVINCIBLE"
Hunter:  Haha.
Jeff:  I mean, why not?  We should at this point.
Hunter:  Yeah, because generally we are.  That's why we need to take more risks at this point in our life, because this is when we're choosing what we want in the next phase.  In the next universe of our understanding. 
Jeff:  You could become like a motivational speaker for high people.

I make my way to explaining that every action is the precursor to subsequent actions, and thus, determinism. 

Hunter:  Honestly, I wish I had never learned about determinism.
Jeff:  That's why I've never actually taken the time to learn about it. 
Hunter:  Like seriously, that is just an avenue you don't want to explore.  Like, you are a logical person, and if you start knowing certain things... I'm just saying, some ideas can break a person. 

And then.

Jeff:  This is gonna sound really gay, but I've been reading a great book called Healing the Shame That Binds You.  It's all about family systems and stuff.  And how people end up, like,  fucked up.
Hunter:  Like interactions between people?
Jeff: Yeah, like how interactions between people fuck us up.
Hunter:  Isn't it weird how we kind of mold eachother?
Jeff:  Yeah. It's kind of crazy. 
Hunter:  It's kind of sad, because we're molding eachother and we don't have any choice in it. 

The music-box like ending to the song is playing. It's melancholy, which I think is why I was.  Music can totally set a mood while high.  I usually avoid depressing shit when I'm high.  But then the blue-grass-esque ending kicks in and I'm set.  I go into Coheed and Cambria band lore.  He has no clue what I'm talking about and it's all one-way conversation:
Hunter:  Damn, I hate trying to explain fucking esoteric shit-- bullshit that no one should know. 

The car starts playing "Salieri Strikes Back," by Warmen.  Everyone is happy.

 

Jeff rants about something for awhile, but I stop listening and start doing air-keyboard to the song, because the song kicks ass and I can't resist.  He laughs at me, and I tell him I'm good at anything involving moving my fingers really fast.  It's true. 
Jeff:  No, I just realized what just happened.  The orchestra played me out.
I laugh for like four minutes.
Jeff:  You know when people go to award shows and like, talk to long?
I apologize perfusely, using the "I'm high" defense. 
Jeff:  No, it needed to happen.  I was blathering.
Hunter:  Some things just override your attention.

We talk about having our own show, online.  I still, even sober, think this would be an incredible act.  We've talked about it forever, and have had some legitamately funny things happen throughout our hang out sessions.  I can see it working.  People are famous for much, much less.

Hunter:  Think about all the dumbass rich kid stoners that are forming our culture right now.
Jeff:  You realize we kind of fall into that category right? (even dumbass? aww)
Hunter:  I realize that, but that's why we can profit off of it. 

I explain that kids are the key to making money.  If you can culturally prepare them through business to be customers in the future, you are golden.  Seriously, it's kind of fucked up, but that kind of grand-scale social engineering is plausible and profitable. 

"Towards Dead End," by Children of Bodom begins playing. Jeff got me into them, and knows more about them than anything.

Jeff:  I just realized "Silent Night, Bodom Night" is playing, and it is awesome.

The only time I have ever seen this man slip on his Bodom knowledge; however, I apply my same "I'm high" defense to this situation.  Works everytime.  We talk about band lore and Jeff thinks he's coined the phrase.  He contends that "band lore" is a compound term and therefore original.  I tell him compound terms are the first to go.

We start heading out and pass the girls we saw earlier. They're crowded around a much bigger dude who stands in a grey college hoodie with a baseball hat on his head turned 180 degrees.
Jeff:  What the fuck?
Hunter:  Drunk people...? Oh, it's those girls---OH, they were coming here to meet a college dude.  That's kind of fucked up. 
Jeff:  You know that shit happens all the time.

We talk about it, and I tell him I'm totally going to write a story about it, though I have yet to do so as of writing this. Jeff goes, "Shit, now I can't write about it. But you mentioned it was worth writing, I may have just glossed over it." He mentions that that's how it worked back in the Middle Ages and shit like that.  I just think it's sad, though, for both parties.  A) The girls are being taken advantage of when they really think they aren't.  B) Old guy has no game and therefore prowls for young ass.  In my opinion, the older(up to 28-32) the better.  Immaturity, mentally, is so obscene, I don't care how attractive you are.  That's a killer.

We head home and go our seperate ways.   

  

    The past few days, everyone's been having the same conversation.  A fire alarm went off.  If you know anyone from the Cabaniss dorms down here at VCU, you know the story.  I hear the same fucking complaints about burnt soup everywhere I go.  On the bus.  In the dining hall.  In class. 
In the bathroom, two guys sit and converse through the blue panels surrounding their respective toilets.  They're talking about the goddamn fire alarm.  The fire alarm caused by soup.
 
    Some girl on an upper floor burns soup and causes this whole ordeal.  On the bus to class, some guy questioned the possibility of burning a liquid, as if all liquids share the same exact qualities found in water.  He doesn't understand the dire situation our nation is facing with such non-water-esque liquids.  He doesn't understand fire.  He doesn't understand fire like I do. 

    Waiting for the bus, I read my book, foolishly leaving my knuckles exposed for anyone to see.  Thomas walks by and asks me what happened to my hand. 
"Bloody knuckles," I tell him, dissmission coating my voice.  I find that straightforward answers held with little regard yield the best avoidance possibility when dealing with outsiders-- those not in the know, in my life, in my head.  The lesser tiers of my involvement.

    Earlier, I met Devon, the tall guy on my floor with the long hair, outside of my math lecture building.  I sit down next to him and ask him whether the imminent test is scantron. No, he says, not scantron.  No, I say, I guess it's just "papertron."  A failed jab at something clever.  The girl mirroring me on Devon's other side asks what happened to my hand.  Before I can bullshit her, she hands me a crutch to lean on--"'Bloody Knuckles' or somethin'?"
    "Yeah," I say, agreeing with her.  People like to think they're good at knowing what's going on in other people's lives.  If people speculate, I let them guess correctly every time.  You got in a fight? Yeah. You punched a wall? Yep, it looked at me funny.  You played "Bloody Knuckles"? Of course, it's my favorite game.  

    The truth is, though, that none of those are true.  I'm not bleeding, I'm pussing.  Pussing the ever living shit out of my unhealing hand and arm.  It looks like a battlefield, my arm.  My mind too, if it were visibly available to me.  No, I just feel it.  A dull roar of cognition.  A dull infrastructure of senses and reactions.  My system. Me. 

    My point is, if you keep your mouth shut and don't suggest things, hand over your ideas, people may be more willing, or more pressured to surrender the truth.  The truth is a self-generated understanding of the universe, and as soon as you have interfering factors, like a ditzy blonde who says "'Bloody Knuckles' or somethin'?"  you have a chance to skew that universe, to blur it.  To take an image and sodomize it with falsehood.  False enough to the point where I'm lying twice.  Bloody Knuckles?  I've never even played that game.  Great, blondy, now you have me lying about having played this sophomoric game TODAY and ever.  Thanks a lot, you genesis of lies. You sssserpent of deceit. 

    So, before it is questioned, I do stupid things when I'm drunk.  To myself.  Several times.  Again and again.  I'm fascinated by the utter lack of pain during intoxication.  A quick swipe of fire normally will not hurt you.  A longer duration of exposure to it, however, will.  And, if it doesn't feel like it's hurting, the scars and bulging skin balloons of puss will tell you otherwise the next day.  So, I'm sorry to You and Me both, for causing these second degree burns.

Also, fuck cigarettes.    

    I've become attached.  My girlfriend is sick and I find that in the past couple of hours, I have been completely useless.  To pass this last stretch, I write, in hopes that my friend will call and still want to hang out.  We're probably going to a party tonight should that be the case.  If you want to come party with us, let me know and we'll meet up somewhere. 

    Though this has been useless, and one of those "update on my life" sort of entries that I usually refuse to write, I think it's going to help me finish the "Promise Land" story that I started.  My standards are burning to embers, but at least some debris ignites a patch of productivity.  Hence the meager fruits of boredom.

edit: Nope, just kidding, fuck it.

It turns out when said fruit falls from the tree, there is a man at the bottom, lying in wait, readying himself with a militant hatred for apples and propensity for stomping things into oblivion. However, apple-sauce is delicious.  As long as you don't mind the rubbery concoction applied via boot.