PARTY

It was a Friday after work and I was eating chicken out of a paper bag when Beaglesworth showed up at my door with his long wet hair tied back in a ponytail. It was raining and he was holding a piece of crumpled paper in his hand which he kept referring to as a map. It actually seemed to be crudely drawn instructions on how to get to a "tits-out crazyhouse party-factory."

We arrived to the party late, and the young girl Beaglesworth had some how befriended was upset, afraid that we had decided not to come, but relieved to the point of tears that we had.

Jayha was worried that Beaglesworth was cheating on her. Some dipshit waitress from a local bar that was in love with Beaglesworth had told him that Jayha was fucking me. I had promised her I would keep an eye on Beaglesworth, but had immediately agreed to join him when he suggested a high school party in the hopes of fucking some girl he had met at a donut shop. The longer I stayed with these people, the longer I was fucking myself.

"You guys are assholes! Fuck off!" A thin high school girl turned and walked furiously down a hard wood hallway after we had knocked on the door. Beaglesworth shrugged, took it in stride and motioned for me to come in.

I was standing near the keg when I first noticed Eva. She was wearing a cheap pink tank top with thin straps and white shorts which were popular at the time with high school girls. I pumped the keg a few more times and filled my cup with mostly foam as it was almost empty.

I briefly contemplated ignoring her, but then struggled to think what it was that Beaglesworth would do. I looked around for him to no avail. He was probably already fucking the donut chick in the master bedroom. I hated Beaglesworth so much.

I drank the rest of the foamy beer for a confidence boost, then turned to pour some more but a bunch of kids were surrounding it, getting ready for some keg stands. "Fuck it." I thought, and walked over to Eva who was talking to a girlfriend.

"I hope there's some bourbon in this dump, because that keg is a finished." I said as I approached. Her friend saw me first and acted as though I had just crawled out of a swamp and was tracking mud through out the house. Evan turned from their conversation and immediately her eyes lit up as though she answered my phone calls.

"Moon!" She cried. "I didn't think you'd be here...well actually, I kinda thought you would be. I was hoping you would be." She lied. I smiled anyway and nodded.

"Yeah, my friend knows one of the girls that live here or something."

"This is my manager, Moon." Eva said to her friend. "This is Chantelle."

"Charmed." I muttered.

"You're her manager? Like, her boss? That's crazy." Chantelle said.

"Insane." I agreed.

The door banged open as Creedence Clearwater Revival began to play and a bunch of very drunk, very young Asians walked in. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned back to the girls.

"Moon, I fucking love this song. Let's go dance!"

I agreed and took her small hand, her left index finger sporting a ring with a black stone. I tried to ask her if it was a mood ring but the music was too loud. Facing her as she moved in rhythmic circles and caressed the wood floors with her toes, I felt self conscious and realized that she was a tough partner to follow. Other people on the dance floor seemed to be looking at me, and I felt like something out of an Egyptian tomb.

I always forgot how much I don't really care to dance, and that the whole premise of agreeing to do so is always based upon the lapse in memory of how awful I am at it. Thinking about Beaglesworth getting his dick wet somewhere though, I was determined to attempt to have a good time no matter how little I had in common with any of these people.

Mercifully the song ended, and Eva looked at me with something that might have been sympathy in her eyes. I was familiar with this routine--she would say she was tired and try to lose me, and I would take a long walk back to the kitchen to try to find some hard liquor while justifying to myself that she is a skank anyway. This made me think of her boyfriend-the giant ape I kicked out the store once-and I actually began to hope that she would leave me alone.

Instead she said: "Do you have any weed?"

I blinked sweaty rain water out of my eyes and looked at her, determining that she was serious.

"Of course." I replied, thankful that Beaglesworth had reminded me to bring some, mentioning that it would be a great way to make new friends.

"Yeah! I knew you would! I'm so glad you came. Can we go get high?" She pulled me from the dance floor before the next song started. I nodded and gratefully followed her down the hallway towards the kitchen.

We walked through the crowd, people trying to dance and drink red cups of beer. Some rap music blasted which I didn't recognize blasted from the speakers. I felt a hand on my shoulder and some acne faced kid asked me if I played Lacrosse. I shrugged and told him I did. He smiled and gave me a drunken high five. I took one of the beers of his hands and he nodded approval.

Eva and I entered the kitchen where some fat girl named Camille was crying about something. Two other fat girls were trying to comfort her. She asked me who I was, but I couldn't tell if she was serious, or if it was just a side effect, so I ignored her and moved to the kitchen table.

"Do you have anything to smoke out of?" I asked. Beaglesworth had refused to let me bring a glass pipe because he insisted it would hinder us meeting people.

"No, do you? Do you have papers?"

Finding an empty plastic bottle, I told her I could whip something up. As we started to get in the kitchen, the crying girl-Camille-left, and the girls began to cough and talk about people I didn't. As we were finishing up, Beaglesworth appeared from out of nowhere and slapped the back of my shoulder.

"Hey buddy-woah, getting high! Nice!" He grabbed the plastic bottle and took a long hit, the two girls still absorbed in conversation. He exhaled a thick, white plume, raised his eyebrows and tossed the bottle to the floor.

"Nothing left." He explained. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me up. "Hey, come take a look at this." He dragged me through the kitchen. I turned back to Eva to say something, to see if I was missed, but she had lit a cigarette while concentrating on Chantelle.

I tried to remember if she smoked, but couldn't recall.

Beaglesworth pulled me closer to the source of the pulsating music. Bass flooded my chest and even through the high, I became angry at the simplicity of the organized sound that was playing at top volume.

We walked through some glass doors into a carpeted living room. Bodies littered the floor like the scene of a holocaust. A fire was roaring in the stone hearth even though I was certain it was late August.

"There." Beaglesworth turned away to walk out of the room, but not before motioning with a tilt of his head. I turned to follow his gaze and my eyes fell on tanned flesh. A naked girl, no more than seventeen, maybe eighteen, was walking around the room holding a red cup. Walking past me as though I were a ghost, she spilled some dark liquid from the cup which immediately stained the carpet.

I turned to watch her walk out of the room, carefully avoiding the passed out kids who were somehow sleeping through the sound of the terrible music. I followed the tanned body and blonde hair into the hallway and watched her take a turn into a bathroom. She didn't bother to close the door.

Beaglesworth was beside me again. "Dude, I'm sobering up. These kids are fucking boring. Where's the keg?"

I said nothing as we walked towards the pile of cups and melting ice. I pumped the keg twice but got nothing but foam. "Fuck dude, this is a dying scene." Beaglesworth ran a hand through his long hair, looking around the room, presumably for another naked teenager.

"Why do you think she was naked?" I asked.

"Huh?" He asked me. "We need to get some hard alcohol."

"I think Eva said there was some in the kitchen. Rum I think."

"Who the fuck is Eva?" Beaglesworth asked me. He was smiling for some reason.

"C'mon." I said, leading us back into the kitchen. As we walked through a dark hallway, two tall kids wearing white t-shirts were yelling at each other about respect. One was shoving the other.

"Kick his fucking ass." I yelled at them. They didn't hear me over the music.

The light was on in the kitchen and the music was slightly more tolerable. I searched the crowded counter tops for something alcoholic when Beaglesworth gave me a nudge. "Where's your woman?"

I shrugged but again he motioned with his body. I looked past him and saw a crowd of kids at the kitchen table. Eva was sitting on the lap of some guy with a giant Adam's Apple and a tattoo of a cross on his large bicep.

"Interesting." I mumbled. I said nothing as the guy's hands worked their way over Eva's small body, her chest, her stomach, then finally squirming around in her crotch. Eva shifted uncomfortably.

I started over to the table.

"Nope." Beaglesworth said, trying to grab me. He missed and I continued over until I was under the yellow lights of the table, pushing my way through a crowd of kids young enough to be my students had I ever pursued becoming a teacher. I could feel Beaglesworth behind me, striding to catch and bumping into other kids trying to pull me away before I did anything stupid.

The crowd around the table cleared and I saw they were playing some kind of card game. The naked girl was sitting at one of the chairs, her eyes half open and glazed, her large breasts resting on the edge of the table on top of some cards.

"Yo, Eva?" I shouted. "Is there any booze left?" Was all I could say. After the first word escaped my body, loud, deep and defiant, a few heads had turned. By the last word everyone was absorbed into their game once again, Eva turning briefly to smile at me, and then away again. I looked around the table to see if anyone could acknowledge me, and saw Beaglesworth across the way absently rubbing one of the naked girl's erect nipples.

I turned and pushed my back through the crowd, grabbing a plastic cup from someone. They didn't protest and I drank the liquid down, vaguely afraid that it could be an ashtray, but was relieved to find it was straight vodka. I lit a cigarette with the hopes of some one tell me that I could not smoke inside, but no one noticed. People pushed past me dancing better than I could ever hope, faces in the shadows of the hall embraced each other with their hands running down one another's backs as more bodies curled up in front of a fire that was still burning for some reason and I ashed a cigarette into a flower pot on the front step as Beaglesworth opened the door in apparent relief, probably out of condoms.

"Ah, here you are. Those meatheads inside are fighting. It's pretty great, I think they already tore apart one of the bedrooms."

I snuffed out the cigarette and stood on uncertain feet. "Can you drive? I'm done with this shit."

"Yeah, I'm alright. Hold on, let me say bye." He turned back into the door then stopped. "You gonna say bye to anyone?"

"Nah. I'm good." I made my way from the front door onto the soggy front yard, noticing that the rain had stopped but slightly disappointed that we would not be able to drive home through it. I climbed into the car and began to look for a cigarette.

I was asleep with a lighter clutched tightly in my hand by the time Beaglesworth woke me by starting the engine. He nodded at me in the darkness as he shifted into reverse and I leaned my hot head against the rain streaked window.