Dance Yrself Clean on the 4th July II

You awake to all kinds of pain and immediately you are aware that something occurred the night before, and although your memory only registers "scene missing" after 9 pm or so, you are quite certain that whatever happened was very bad. You are still in your clothes from the night before, and after a quick inventory you are relieved to find your keys. Out of state Driver's License. Credit Card. Wadded up cash. A crushed Pall Mall cigarette. Contacts stuck to your dry, bloodshot eyes.

Your head is a drum machine, and unfortunately it is covering Your Treachery Will Die With You by Dying Fetus. You stagger to your feet and almost collapse, feeling pain in your sides and legs. Your bed is stained with a dried blood and you quickly see why--your legs are horribly scraped, and you have a nice looking gash on your left forearm. A quick glance in the mirror shows a cut under one of your eyes as well, and you can feel bruises forming.

Did you get in a fight last night? You smile to yourself. You think you did. You probably did. You're pretty sure you did. Did you win? You might have won too. The details are hazy, but you're not in the hospital. Or jail. So it must've come up roses for you. Your apartment is empty--no sign of your room mate, who also happens to be your brother. The coffee table is destroyed though, laying in a pile of broken wood and glass. There is a note attached:

You did this. Love, Max.

It seems strange that you would break your own coffee table, but it also seems very plausible. You vaguely remember trying to throw it at someone the night before. But your phone is ringing and there is no time for memories. You answer it and it's your friend Alec. He wants to know where the fuck you are.

"I'm at home." You say.

"Well let me the fuck in."

Confused, you open the front door and you see him crawling out the window of your neighbor's apartment. The hippy one who breaks hearts all day. You laugh and he comes over to great you, looking disheveled and possibly still drunk.

"Damn, you look like shit man." He says to you.

"Likewise, buddy. What happened last night?"

"Man, just another crazy adventure. Polonius would be proud. Did you get in a fight or something?" He walks pass you and into your kitchen, looking for champagne.

"I think so. I think I won. I remember getting a bike thrown at me. And kicking someone in the face. Lots of bad noise."

Alec laughs and drinks an old Conductor he finds on the counter, grimacing. "That's awesome man. Fuck those jabronies."

"Dude, I need a mimosa ASAP."

"How about a Bellini?" Alec jokes, but you miss it.

"Italian trash. Fuck that, we need orange juice."

"Haha, alright man, calm down. Let's go back to my place. We'll grab supplies on the way. Where's your bro?"

"No idea. But he'll be fine. Apparently I broke the coffee table last night."

"Yeah man, you were angry for some reason. Real angry. Tried to throw it at your bro."

"Damn." You say. "So it goes, huh? What say you, let's ride."

On the way you buy 3 bottles of expensive champagne that you're pretty sure the cashier over charges you for and tricked you into buying in the first place. You argue with the girl, a young Indian with an unpronounceable name and a thin mustache over her upper lip. Alec pushes you out the door after he buys cigarettes and before you get the police called on you, and you grimace and wince climbing back into the car. Your whole body is a symphony of sharp and flat pains, so you pop the top on a bottle of bubbly and swig from it on the short ride to Alecs.

Once inside, you stash the other 2 bottles in the freezer and pull out some frozen vegetables for your face which kind of aches. Alec laughs at you, and his room mate Adman seems concerned. You brush it off and toss down another mimosa, beginning to feel a little better. You text some woman who is in love with your brother but tolerates you enough to be concerned about whether or not you died the night before.

"Alive. Fight, maybe? Im ok tho, how's midwest?"

Apparently she's visiting home during the holiday, and home happens to be some dead corn state under a midwestern sky. You put your phone down and sigh loudly, wishing for something more from your life. Adman hands you a real ice pack he had somewhere, which seems fitting because he strikes you as the kind of guy who took health class really seriously a decade ago. You drink more champagne and loud music pours through speakers somewhere and your phone is ringing.

It is Conductor and he is happy that you're alive. He relates the coffee table murder to you, and other embarrassing details which reflect your inner personality which only appear when you are dangerously drunk. Violence against strangers and living room furniture. Conductor is picking up more champagne and is on his way.

Adman is leaving for the airport. He is always traveling.

"Where you headed?" You ask him.

"The airport." He replies.

"No, where are you flying to?"

He cocks his head for a moment then laughs. "I just told you, I'm picking up a couple of friends flying in from LA. College buddies, they're cool shit. We gotta show them a cool time."

You agree, and hand him the melted water in the ice pack. He throws it in a sink and leaves. Alec puts on a different song and lights a cigarette.

"Man," He says, kicking a stack of GQ, Spin, National Geographic, off a table. "What a bitch."

The Conductor arrives in his fancy black car, and you see someone sitting shotgun through his tinted windows and realize it's your brother. By now you and Alec have killed two of the bottles of champagne and are working on the third. The gents enter and you see that your brother is carrying a 6 pack of champagne.

"15% off if you buy six at a time." He mentions to you, or rather to your general direction on the couch, as he walks by.

The Conductor is his usual self, talking a mile a minute and making plans, wheeling and dealing. He is asking where Adman is and at the same time talking on the phone to some one.

"Conductor, shut the fuck up." Alec says. He turns to you and mentions what a bitch he is. Your brother is asking you what happened the night before and you are forced to go through the terrible hazy events once again, and he adds even more horrible details which you've forgotten. The running, the throwing, the yelling. You polish off the last of your orange juice and champagne and decide it's time to move on to beer. It's almost noon.

You are sitting in Alec's room playing loud music. You want something thick and full, something that moves and will make the walls shake and inspire you, something that will bring relevance to these seconds here on earth, something that will give meaning to this moment with its scraped knees and dried blood. The bass sounds like someone is squirting mustard through an old bottle as Les Claypool runs through his set at Bonnaroo 2007, and you walk out into the living room drunkenly jiving and dancing and see a room full of people you don't know. You are introduced and immediately forget most of them as you push your way to the freezer.

Ice is the only thing that matters right now. But you break the ice tray and ice falls everywhere and now people are outside, two blonde girls you know, well one of them, the other you've never seen before, but you are quickly introduced and you remember her name, and you seem to get along. You drink outside in the hot sun, sweating immediately, people asking what happened to your arm, what happened to your left knee which is now becoming swollen and you hope it is okay by the next softball game next week.

Drinking games are being played. Bags of sand thrown at holes cut into wooden platforms that a drunk slob had accidentally stomped on during Memorial Day. Ping pong balls fly through the air and into red plastic cups. Death from above--you think that the Luftwaffe knew what was up--the war is to be won through the air. You grab yourself a seat, explaining something about the dynamics of a rotating ball slicing through the air to your blonde friend, and she politely pretends to understand what you are saying.

Someone decides that it's time to swim, so you join everyone on a short walk to the neighborhood pool, beer in hand. You're not sure what time it is, but it doesn't matter, the light in the sky is burning hot and bright, and in the summer in Texas, it seems like it'll burn forever, even when it's night. Everything is infinite in these little moments, but a slight push in the opposite direction never hurts, so you call Seth, the drug dealer, and ask him to bring you 20$ worth and to meet you by the pool which you give vague directions to. You're not worried that he'll find it. Everything seems very likely to work out right now.

You get to the pool and they tell you you can't drink inside, but you tell them not to worry--you're almost finished with it anyway. They look at you, at your eyes, and they nod and let you in, not wanting to argue. There are kids around. There are old people around. There are teenagers who seem dangerously young smoking cigarettes and talking on cellphones. You bum a cigarette from one and throw your empty beer can over a fence. Except it lands twenty yards short of the fence. Litter seems like a minor issue in comparison to stopping terrorism, the double dip recession, hidden CIA prisons, and the decline of traditional moral values, so you shrug and inhale the Camel Filter.

Your friends are giving the lifeguard a hard time--young, blonde, and attractive, maybe 18 or 20 years old--they call her Wendy and she eats it up. Now Seth has arrived with help and you tell him there's 20$ back at the house, and he nods, seemingly horrified at how intoxicated everyone already is and gazing at the bruises on your chest as you suddenly realize you are unsure of where your shirt is. You explain to him the violent events of the night before, and Seth does not seems surprised, nodding grimly. To him, street fights are inevitable result of the modern world, and he mentions that you should have seen it coming. You despise the term 'street fight.'

You are talking to your friend Megan--a red head girl who swoons over all manner of scum to fill a void in her life left by her father--and she is talking about something--the ride over maybe, maybe how you're drinking all of her vodka and ice tea--but you feel amicable and benevolent so you listen to her story before trying to pull off her top. She shrieks, loving the attention, and once again the people around you are horrified.

Some geezer in the pool yells at Adman, telling him to stop bothering the life guard and go back to his country club. You think how that doesn't make any sense, and you feel beads of sweat running down your chest so you take off your pants, not caring that you're only in your boxers now, and you jump into the pool. You itch for the geezer to confront you, but there is no fight left in his eyes, and you are not quite sure if it is even the same geezer. There seems to be an alarmingly large presence of the elderly. You swim to your friends and drink more vodka, yelling jokes to the lifeguard as Alec is now trying to rip off the tops of one of the girls. Seth is no longer shocked, but seems to be enjoying himself, asking if you'll come to his party tomorrow.

You tell him you wouldn't miss it for all the candles in Beaumont, and smile at how poetic that sounded, though it made little to no sense.

Swim time is over now, and you head back to Alecs. You and Seth are the first ones there, and with nothing to smoke out of, you crush up a beer can and begin to smoke weed out of it. Adman walks in and gives you a disappointed look, but by now you hardly notice or care. Other people walk in to join you, and there is nothing anyone can do. Seth leaves after a while, and the Conductor is so intoxicated that you sit in a room full of other people listening to him call people on his phone and engage in hour long, rambling, nonsensical conversations with them.

He frequently mentions "skiing in Colorado", and you wonder if it is actually winter somewhere in the world.

The Conductor stutters about the general tenants of a racist ideology. Something misogynistic falls out of his mouth. Another second it is something eloquent and pragmatic, which could possibly even make you money if you could remember it for longer than a minute, but your mind is like a tire on ice--no traction. After a while, the weed is gone and you're still drinking but it's only late afternoon. All the girls have left. You haven't eaten all day. You're smoking a cigarette inside the house and are wondering where Adman is and why he isn't stopping you.

"Fuck this noise." You say to no one in particular, and stagger into the hall, not sure where you are headed. You have several pairs of sunglasses on for some reason, and the red sun reflects off the tiled floors so you lower two of the glasses over your eyes.

You stagger into one room and see people doing cocaine. You recognize those people. They laugh at your site, and cheer your name. You collapse on a futon in the room until they motion for you to come to the desk. There are lines cut up on an Ipad. You stick a hundred dollar bill that must belong to the Conductor to your good nostril and inhale. The dry taste is immediate and some what satisfying, but you are incredibly drunk.

Your friends are taking about some blonde broad you don't particularly know too well. You lean back on the futon, half awake now, but not much. Loud music is pumping through the speakers again. Music you don't recognize but sounds incredibly crisp and beautiful. Someone hands you a glass of straight gin. You refuse at first, but then take a small sip. You need water very badly.

You stand to try to find some, and are glad to see that your feet are cooperating. You stride into the hallway defiantly, and duck into the bathroom where you chug water from the dirty sink faucet. Feeling better, you walk out wiping your mouth with your sleeve and duck into Alec's bedroom. It is dark, and the evening sun can't find you so you take off your sunglasses and unconsciously place them on some type of nightstand or something. A week from now you won't be able to remember where you put them.

You grab a pillow from Alec's unmade bed and toss it into the corner farthest from the door. "LA Woman" by the Doors is playing at such a high volume that even from your corner you can hear every single note. You find this strangely comforting, this uninspired song about some Californian broad who wouldn't give Morrison the time of day if she saw him walking down Wilshire. You smile in the dark, laying in the corner, sniffling slightly, and go out like a candle in Beaumont.

You awake with a swimming head and dry eyes stuck to the inside of your eye lids. Max is nudging your body with his toe and saying something about pizza. It is dark and a lot of loud noise is coming form the living room. You are laying on the floor of Alec's room, and although not entirely uncomfortable, you are not refreshed and are in fact rather angry. Luckily, you are so disoriented no particular emotion sticks. You groggily stand up and look for your sun glasses to no avail, even though it is pitch black in the room.

You walk out, following your brother, as Alec awakes and screams something about being a bitch. It's only 3 hours later, and people are talking about going down town. Going dancing. Drinking. The things you've been doing for the last twelve hours. What time is it? Why don't you have your sun glasses? Your body is a giant pulsating bruise, your brain unsure if it's just terribly tired or still obscenely drunk. You stagger to the sink and get some water.

Adman has a bottle of energy drink and asks if you want some. At first you refuse.

"That's the last thing I need right now." You say.

You think it over and quickly reconsider as the synapses finally begin to fire somewhat correctly.

"No wait, I do want some. That's actually the first thing I need right now."

Adman laughs and gives you the rest of the energy drink. You mix it with some vodka you find on the counter. You congratulate Max about tricking you away by promising pizza. He shakes his head and points to the counter where boxes of pizza are stacked. The Conductor is talking about renting out illegal immigrants to rich white people as a business model. Alec walks out of his room angry and disheveled, demanding vodka or an equivalent. Shirtless, he collapses onto the couch.

Conductor is mocking him, and apparently cabs are on the way. People are standing to leave, to drink, to dance. You need to take a piss. The bathroom is occupied so you go outside and urinate on the front lawn. Neighbors may be watching horrified. You remind yourself to install Greek letters over the doorway sometime soon. The Conductor is calling Alec a "Nancy Couchsleep" as everyone leaves to the roof top bars in the center of the city.

Rhythmically swaying to the bass of black music with a beer in your hand, you feel like a painting on the wall of an Egyptian tomb. Everyone is rather drunk and hugging you while you try not to spill your drink. At one point you decide to stop delaying the inevitable and throw it against the wall, while someone you who think is named Amanda shakes her head at you. You stick out your tongue and the worst is over. Someone hands you a new drink and tells you to finish it fast, everyone wants to go to the bar across the street, even though they are pretty much the exact same bar.

At the next bar someone takes your photo and you hesitantly wipe the sweat from your forehead before looking for a cigarette. You duck away from all your friends and find one by the balcony in the hands of a stranger who you tell you will give a thousand dollars for an extra one. It is a full proof plan, and soon you are smoking away, vaguely aware that it is time to close your tab and rather unsure where everyone is going next and how they are getting there. You are being led down some stairs and into the sweaty street, where people older than you are throwing up on their own feet and girls wearing barely anything at all with pieces of sterling silver shoved through their faces lead giant buzzed cut slabs of hamburger past you long enough for you to notice their cheap cologne and barbed wire tattoos. All the markings of an innocent culture are out tonight.


Back at Alec's house people are starting to sleep in strange places. You are drinking tequila and orange juice with the Conductor and Alec and you really want to lay down. You think you may even fall down. Music is pumping through the speakers as usual, and drugs are probably being done somewhere but you could care less. You must be getting old. Heading into Alec's room you say fuck it and take his bed. Some blonde broad is already in there so you push her over to the side and take the one closest to the ceiling fan. Sun glasses on you exhale for a few seconds until Alec is poking you and telling you to get on your feet soldier. The troops are restless and morale is fading fast.

You reluctantly raise and wander out of the room. Alec walks in behind you and closes the door. You sigh and stagger into the living room where the Conductor is talking to someone on the phone again, rambling drunkenly about dead ambition and how the jewel of the lotus holds the morrow for none. This scene is not for you, and fortunately no one notices you or offers you any more tequila.

You retreat to Adman's room at the end of the hall knowing that all couches and beds will be taken, but hoping for a soft piece of carpet to rest your rapidly sinking skull on for a week or two. At the end of the hallway you feel as though you have just crossed mountains and oceans. The door is open and inside the room the lights are dim and bodies are laying in heaps. Someone on the couch, your friend T-Level you think. Megan is on the bed with one of Adman's friends. This seems reasonable enough to you, so you lay on the far side of the room using a sweatshirt as a pillow.

After a few moments you realize that Megan and the dude are awake and you hope that they are both fictional characters whom you have made up but haven't realized until now. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and you hear them doing things your Catholic buddy who went to BC would not approve of. Then they realize you are lying on the floor, and they whisper, asking each other how long you have been laying there.

"Fuck this noise." You say, and leave the horrible scene behind you. Les jeux sont faits.

You walk straight on through the living room, hardly noticing the Conductor and anyone else still awake, and out the front door. You know you parked around here somewhere, and you find your beaten blue car at the edge of the street, unlocked and dusty. You climb behind the wheel and squint hard, trying to make sense of the rapid road being gobbled up by your tires. You wish your headlights worked better. You wish you didn't decide to drive. Your mind is struggling to grasp at details such as where to turn and what street you currently live on.

Your frame of mind is pushing you to succeed. Now is not the time for another DUI--there is no shabby nobility in bail money. Total concentration. Every cell moving towards trying to grasp the goal. Complete determination. Finally, you cut through the fog and are in your parking lot. You open the door and realize that the fog wasn't an illusion, and wonder vaguely if it will actually rain. Once you close your door, you get down to your hands and knees, and in reverence, kiss the ground.

Dance Yrself Clean on the 4th July

Conductor pours you more champagne, then throws some gin into it. You are not crazy about drinking these concoctions but you don't say anything, because despite the awful taste they get you drunk in a smooth way that you believe is tasteful and kind of classy. Gin and champagne. Which Conductor named after himself.

As you sip your Conductor, your feet dangle into the water of your apartment pool in the evening sun and one of your neighbors walks by. You have never really talked to her, only afar from across the way, but she is pretty in a way that is almost free loving and hippy style. You imagine that she breaks hearts all day, as men can't help but fall in love with her. Personally, she seems so dignified and practical that you can't really picture her as a sexual being, although you do stare at her cleavage as she leans over and briefly hugs you in a greeting.

You introduce Conductor while drinking a Conductor and your night begins to blur as you are already drunk. Soon it is dark and you're sitting on a bench outside of a bar with a lot of people. You're making people laugh, you're making some people cry and you're chain smoking cigarettes because you are anxious and restless, drumming your finger tips on the tables edge and looking around the bar patio. A slow feeling of impending doom. Slowly self destructing one drink at a time, one second at a time and you have nothing to show for you're twenty five years on earth yet except some memories that continue to cloud and fog over like graffiti being removed from a wall. You've talked the bar into making you a Conductor.

Your neighbor is swooning your male friends and your female friends are giving her daggers. You'd like to talk to her about something, but you can't remember what it is. It seemed important--maybe she is going on a trip to Costa Rica. But you only know a little about that country, and most of it is very political science-y, and you'd probably bore her so you think that it can't be about that. You vaguely recall her saying something about moving out, but she's surrounded in the middle of the table anyway, and reaching her would be a chore of leg stepping and drink spilling.

Another woman who you've on and off fallen in love with all summer is around, and you go to say hello but you're far too drunk at this point and she is completely sober. She is with some friends who are really into rock climbing, and they all seem sober. You immediately forget all their names as you are introduced, and you wonder if you should tell them your belief that rock climbing is a second class activity for people that are too unathletic to throw a ball well. You might have said this, but you doubt it-- either way you excuse yourself and now people are leaving to go dancing.

You don't remember dancing, but now you're walking home by yourself. You're calling people on your phone but no one is answering, probably because it is very late and they're several time zones away. You're a few miles from your apartment and are yelling at cars. A hipster on a bike rides by and briefly seems like a horseman ushering in a drunken apocalypse.

Suddenly he's very upset at you. You laugh at him and tell him to fuck off, unsure why he is angry. But you are feeling invincible, high on alcohol and completely bullet proof. You think that you'll show all those fucks dancing and having a good time without you, even though you were the one who left them. Fuck them anyway. Walking home alone has become a kind of weekend ritual for you--there seems to be some type of crummy nobility in it.

The hipster is making a lot of bad noise in your direction. He's stopped his bike and is calling you a faggot. You laugh and tell him you'll burn his family alive and that his kids will die from necrotizing fasciitis. You spit out all kinds of vile garbage from your mouth, hitting below the belt in every fashion--aids, cancer, racism-everything that is dark and hateful inside of you takes shape in words that you scream across the street to this stranger on a bike who looks as though you've just walked out of a swamp trailing green slime behind you.

He says, come on over, let's fucking fight. Let's throw down.

You struggle not to laugh at hearing the words "let's throw down". It seems like something a wrestling character would say in the mid 1990's. You tell him to fuck off.

You're not too big and you don't know martial arts, but you have a lot of anger inside of you and you are quick. You can see that there's no way out of this as he pulls up on his fixed gear bike and is now standing only a few feet away from you. You tell him to get the fuck out of here, you yell at him to get lost, but he shakes his head, motions with his hands and says let's go fucker.

The inevitable has occurred and you accept your fate.

"Ok." You tell him.

He gets off his bike and picks it up, wielding it like a weapon. What the hell, you think, this isn't fair. He swings it wildly and it connects with your side knocking you back. The alcohol has numbed you and made you a bit slow, but you manage to duck as he throws the whole damn bike at you. You regain your composure and start moving and ducking very quickly like one of your old roommates showed you once in college. His fists are flying but he doesn't get any head shots and you just try to land an elbow or two at his neck. At some point you both are entangled in each others arms, in some weird wrestling holds, and he's landing punches on your body as you throw each other to the ground.

Kidneys. Back. Stomach. You wonder how long this is going to last. Your on one knee with his head in your hands and the sound of your shoes scraping the gravel seems really loud.

You must've hit him, must've connected because now he is laying sprawled at your feet. He grunts, and as he gets up you wind back your leg and kick him solidly in the face. The feeling is satisfying and you feel some of the anger that has welled up inside of you like puss in a black head disperse, the white snake oozing out in his cry of surprise and pain. Two girls are at your side now screaming for both of you to stop. For you to stop.

They say they've called the police, and in your stupor and you suddenly can hear the sirens. Really close. Really loud.

You kick him in the face once more as the girls scream in horror then you put your head down and run. You've recently watched a documentary about how NFL players train to run the 40 yard dash and you put this new found knowledge to good use. Your feet are pushing the ground out from underneath you and you're attacking the space in front of you with each step. You are fast. You are bullet proof.

It turns out that the fight occurred really close to your apartment. You run in and people you recognize are at your pool. Night swimming. You tell them to get inside right away and they look at you confused. You run into your apartment which is thankfully unlocked, and collapse on your bed.

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.