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Chapter One
I think I’ll start where so many genius, epic stories have started before me.
Also See: John Tucker Must Die or Heavyweights
The last day of school, sort of. This was the last Friday of my senior year, all the work was done, and the next 3 day week was just a formality, a predictable array of stupid senior pranks and teary goodbyes that served no purpose other than off setting the assembly line monotony of endless, useless paperwork.
During the last ten minutes of that day I knew how an insomniac felt. 3:35 + eternity + 3:36 = 3:37 + The Big Bang, The Earth Cools, Dinosaurs Die, Ice Age + 3:38 + mammalian evolution, Mesopotamia, Greece, Egypt, Rome, Jesus +3:39 + eternity = 3:40 + Eternity = 3:41. The red second hand crawled as if it were slicing through tar. Finally it happened. I guess twelve years of anticipation built that moment into something far greater than it was, I was expecting the single most relieving moment of my life, and flying papers and a parade, the normality of the moment seemed to disappoint everyone. Then, there she was.
This was not the first time I had seen her, she was not an older sister, a hot cousin or a new student. I had known her since middle school. She lived only two neighborhoods over; five times she took my bus home because she missed hers. (she even sat next to me twice, our legs touched both times) Seven times I lent her a writing utensil, 54 times I asked her for one from her (twice I needed one.) For a while I thought she would always carry an extra pen because she liked me.
When I saw her I could only think of Christmas morning,
A special Christmas, that first Christmas when you get clothes instead of a toy. For weeks and weeks dreams of the perfect gift keep you awake, not once all year is there a higher level of anticipation or excitement then the month leading up to that special morning. Finally after a week of sleepless nights it arrives. You run down the stairs, and when you see the large boxes your imagination runs a marathon. You begin to smile and glow as you wish your parents a Merry Christmas. They feed off of your pure delight and share a smile, and for a moment they feel the love they felt on their wedding day. The whole room floats like a first kiss. With innocent tears of excitement you beg to open your presents. Your parents with a childlike glee are as excited as you are. You giggle as your shaking hands shred the glossy paper passionately, then…a Sweater.
Unconsciously your face drops, and the heaviest disappointment rips your heart into your throat. Your mom, who has not yet seen your face, fells a genuine warmth inside knowing she made the right choice in the $87 sweater. You are too sad to even fake a smile. With a false confidence based on your earlier excitement your mom asks if you like it, (fully expecting a resounding I Love It!) This is the first time she looks into your face. She sees right through your phony half smirk, she knows that you hate it; she knows that the magic of Christmas morning is gone never again to be recaptured. For the next 3 months you never wear it and when you finally do your mom cannot bare to see you in it. That night while you are sleeping she throws it away. You don’t even notice that it’s gone, she is crushed.
Imagine the pain of that mother; living life knowing that she ruined the Christmas morning magic that lies within every child. She won’t say a word: but each Christmas eve when she looks at you, she sees the void she created, now each Christmas eve she cries herself to sleep. Double that disappointment, break that heart again then you will know how I felt when I saw her. I was stopped standing two steps into freedom, the mere sight of her left me paralyzed. I just stood there watching her soft brown hair sway in the hot breeze. I couldn’t look away from her so I didn’t; I just stared, frozen by her sun bright smile.
The first time I saw her was in the cafeteria of Campus Middle School, we were both sixth graders, I remember the first time we made eye contact (a big thing for a male who is eight months further into puberty than everyone else in the room.) I was ecstatic when I saw her in my Spanish class. I don’t know if it is rare for a 6th grader to feel or act as I did, but I didn’t know any other way. I used to look at her at least once a minute (I used the clock to ensure that I wouldn’t miss a quick angelic glance.) I kept a tally of how many times she looked back at me all year (just under 347.) I was obsessed with her, I kept (and had until three months ago) a piece of paper that she had put her hand on accidentally, I was militant in making sure that I was the first person who touched the stapler and pencil sharpener after she used them. I was more dedicated to not washing my hands until the twenty minutes of sexual fantasies she and I (ok just I) played out each evening.
But don’t worry this is not the story of a high school stalker, or my relationship with this girl. This is story of the summer after senior year, and my desperate pursuit of a seven year dream. But first I should tell you a few things about myself.
Chapter Two
I am rich, really rich, well my family is rich so I live I a really big house and have all the cool toys and stuff. I am the Gatsby of our high school, it seems that every weekend people show up at my house expecting bacchanalian. See freshman year I wanted to make some friends, so I told my football team buddies to each gather a couple friends and come over to my house, that small get together became the party that defined lives. Oh that first high school party, where each person has their first enlightening tastes of alcohol. 50 of us split 30 stones and one flask of jack. The party was over at midnight when most of the guests were picked up by their parents. Six people (three pioneering couples) made out at that party, it was so innocent, everyone had a great time. Two weekends later three hundred youth came to my door with a vampire’s craving for alcohol. The 50 or so people who drank at my first party had separated themselves from the pack, now 250 people wanted that image, and that all important level of popularity. From there the expectations just kind of snowballed. Every week I was expected to out do myself. Each week I was expected to throw the year’s best party. I usually delivered.
I laugh sometimes at those freshman year parties, paying my older cousin 50 dollars a week to get us blitzed. Now I can get liquor cheap and risk free, I have PA equipment so I always have good music playing. I even have a deal worked out with the local cops, (Don Corleone style I know) they don’t bust my parties, but each week I tell them where to put a DUI stop, I’d be dead if anybody found out about this. Despite the risk this allowed me to ruin anybody I wanted. With all the videos and posters you’d be amazed by the amount of kids that drive drunk, you would be even more amazed by the amount of kids who claim to have no idea how copious amounts of alcohol or cheap narcotics found themselves in plain view in the back seats of their German automobiles. It is especially surprising in this neighborhood.
I live in the richest part of suburban Colorado. My house is only a mansion, by spatial comparison. Mansions are dead; on a Friday night my house has vitals, the heartbeat of 75-400 lost suburban youth booms down each hall, my house bleeds. On a cold night all of the windows are conquered by a foggy ghost that drips down the cold glass, outside the windows breathe steam leaving those outside drunk with wonder. When you opened the door to one of my parties it was like you were one inch tall and standing in the bell of a trumpet. I remember seeing some girl’s hair actually blown back, like in a movie. To a guest those nights were legendary, but to me they were routine. What a life huh?
Chapter Three
Ok where was I…oh yes Christmas morning. I can say, with a certainty that that point in time, that exact moment was the most profound moment in my life. Its clarity was only eclipsed by the black hole of emptiness that consumed my spirit. Imagine a lifelong quest ending with nothing. In many ways that is worse than failure. Seven years of dreams ending with a peaceful awakening. There was no shock, no pain, just the lonely sorrow of emptiness.
I guess I can only blame myself; I never really tried to talk to her. I came close once. Freshman year I switched classes four times until I finally got into a class with her, and in my 14 year old boldness I marched up and sat down right next to her. She barely noticed me; she looked up once and flashed an acknowledging smile. I was forming nervous words for a whisper when she got up and moved her stuff to the front row to sit by one of her friends; every time they smiled I knew they were snickering about how desperate I was to be near her. That was the last time I tried to talk to her. In four years of high school she only said four words to me. It was the first time she came to my house, October 12, 2001 and with the phonation of angels she spoke, “is this your house?” The words caressed my tympanic membrane, (she talked to me!). I had dreamed of this exact moment for years, you’d think I would have thought of something to say. But I didn’t, I felt like my tongue had been shot with a tranq dart. I froze and just nodded like an idiot; in the three seconds of silence that followed her shirt strap slipped from her shoulder. I guess she caught me staring at her perfect, exciting skin; she gave me a terrible look and scoffed out of my house making sure to smile at every other boy on her route. I was all alone in a room, a room with 75 happy people drinking, dancing and screaming. The next Monday at school it was official, I was a creeper.
Sorry…Sorry I’ll get to the summer; I just can’t stop thinking about all that stuff sometimes. Being the creeper in a high school of 4000 and a class of 900 makes you feel like the only all white penguin at the zoo. When I looked at girls in the hall they looked back like they were walking above me. It took them until halfway through junior year to forget, but for almost three years I was the butt of all their jokes; I was the exciting secret that they all knew about. I was the sweet gossip that this community raped. We learned this from our mothers.
Our mothers spent all day locked in a two story tragedy; their only connection to reality (well their reality,) was the phone. A house can only get so clean; eventually they need to pick up that phone. Our mothers talk only to each other. If you think about it, there is nothing else they could do, they have no business deals to make, no golf to plan, and women can’t tell good stories, so they gossip. They walk in Long Island sweat suits around the neighborhoods dissecting every aspect of the scandals that shaped their society. Later in the day when the kids are home our mothers have nothing meaningful to contribute to the conversation, so they spread the only information they know. They really take it seriously; our mothers can talk for hours and days. With first and last name accuracy our mothers fill us in on the hot stories of the week. I guess this kind of rubbed off on the kids, a hot juicy story spread faster than soft butter. Nobody was safe from it. One week you were a water fountain, everybody came to you to quench their dire thirst. The next week you were a lonely famous painting on tour in a museum, everybody knew all about you, and everybody stared at you. I was the Mona Lisa.
For those two and a half years, there was nothing I could do to escape my stigma, I was the creeper, the creeper who had a really cool house and threw the best parties. I can’t tell you why kids kept coming to my house each weekend but they did. It took me too long to figure out that nobody cared about me; they were just here because that was the only thing they knew. It was just what you did, on a weekend you just came to my house; my house was where everyone was. It had nothing to do with me. My ignorance blinded me until the first weekend of sophomore year.
There were still puke stains on the carpet from the end of summer blowout six days earlier. My parents and I…
Oh yeah my parents. As you probably guessed they were out of town a lot (every weekend actually.) They took vacations around the world. They wanted to experience as many different cultures as they could, or at least one more culture then the next snob at their dinner parties. I always wonder just how much Parisian culture they experienced from shopping on the Champs Elysees. Or how much you can learn about South American life from the beaches and day spas. But that didn’t matter; as long as their passport was punched my parents could pretend to be experts about culture the whole world over. They really didn’t care about me. When they were home they mostly ignored me. My mom only bothered me to get a different perspective on the gossip she and her mindless walking buddies discussed that day. I don’t think she ever addressed me without leading with the words “Did you hear.”
“Did you hear about Jeff and Sandy Ridgley at school?”
No. (I don’t care)
Her tone rose in pitch as the question progressed, she is so fake.
“Did you hear what happened to Sara and Ben Everson’s son Charles last weekend?”
No. (Don’t care)
Even if I did know I wouldn’t tell her, and have to listen to her blather on for hours.
“Did you hear......?”
No. (Oh God, I Don’t care)
At least my mom made an effort.
My dad never approached me without a problem. He was too committed to his job. One evening late in the summer before freshman year I asked if he would go play golf with me the next day. Without pausing he asked me back, “Well then how would my work get done.” I begged him but to no avail. The next day some friends of mine and I went to the driving range. I’m sure you already know who was playing a lunch time round with some work associates. That was the last time I approached my father.
Now I cringe when I see our family portrait, the three of us in matching sweaters smiling lies from above the fireplace. We deceived guests into thinking that they were in a happy home, and that we were a tight, close knit loving family.
I was glad when they left town, I had freedom. Ok it was the first weekend of sophomore year…puke stains…end of summer blowout. My relatives were in town from New York, so we decided to go to the mountains and relax at my cabin. (Cabin, sorry… mountain home) It was 9:39 when I got a call from a “friend” asking me where I was. He asked if I was on my way home from the liquor store. I didn’t even ask him what was going on. I raced home.
I was glad to leave my parents; in fact I had been searching for an excuse all night. I told them that one of my friends was in the hospital (had I told them this 2 hours and 12 minute later I wouldn’t have been lying). As I careened down I-70 toward Denver I was preparing a dramatic speech to tell them off.
Also See: Samuel L. Jackson
My mind burned with rejection. Did I matter that little to them? Was I being used all last year? With each question came a painful answer, as I drove my mind sweltered with anger. I took short sharp breaths, my muscles contracted, and I was sweating lightning.
Chapter Four
I had to park outside of my neighborhood and hike in. With each step a black venom of blinding rage flowed scalding hot through my arteries. I opened my door, twelve eyes shined at me with excitement. I don’t know his name but when I heard him speak, in his stupid fake California accent, I wanted to kick his face in.
“Dude do you need help unloading the Alchy man? Hey Boys the Alchy’s finally here!”
I am not proud of my next few moments.
A freight train blasted through my ears, my fists clenched into rocks. I knew he was not the host of this party. I knew he, like all but one person had no idea that I didn’t throw the party, but I took it out on him. His head bounced off of the marble floor with each punch. I could feel his nose breaking under my fingers. My hands were warm and sticky with blood by the time I stopped. A thick pool of oxygen-free blood made a series black rivers in the crevices of the marble. (Somebody call 911.) When the adrenaline wore off I felt a screaming pain in my right hand. When I held it up in the dim light of the police cruiser I saw the broken ivory white tooth sticking jagged out of my middle knuckle. When I told the cops that I came home to a house full of 378 strangers, and gave them a reasonable amount of money, they let me off with a warning.
When I got back from the hospital most of the cars were gone, but I still had to park in the lawn. I opened the door the house was quiet. The now oxygen rich rivers had turned into a bold bright Red. Patterned spaghetti sauce footprints from hundreds of hundred dollar shoes stood out against the bright white marble floors. I kept walking. In the next room a lonely puke stain, a brown reminder of the week before, back when I thought I had friends. When I went downstairs there were about fifteen people watching a college football game on my 81 inch plasma. I was relieved to find some people that actually cared about me. (Nope) They seemed startled and left without making eye contact with me. I stared blankly at the bright screen, (Touchdown Boston College.) I felt alone…shit, I was alone.
Surprisingly on Monday nobody cared. The kid I hit didn’t even go to my school; he was the cousin of some friend. (Funny, I never saw that kid again.) Although I didn’t hear much about it I’m sure it didn’t help my creeper reputation. Yet, like I said before people still came to my house for parties. One guy on the football team would ask me if I would host and for one second I felt like I mattered, and in that brief instant of happiness I would always agree. Then that was it I’d wait and like prodigal sons they would show up at 8:00 come rain or shine. Every week hundreds of smiling people would show up at my house, and every week I stood alone watching thousands of happy introductions and drunken interactions. Every week I stood in the dark corners of my mansion, and sank deeper into the crushing quicksand of loneliness.
Man I’m sorry I need to get back to the story. I’ve rambled on and on like Dickens and I’ve really only made it two steps into the summer. (I do have the story of how I got my revenge on the kid who through that party, but I’ll save that for later) Ok, she was waiting there perfect, talking to one of her friends. Then it happened, the bullet of shock that splashes in your brain when reality clicks in. I would never see this girl again. I remember feeling my heart drop like a watermelon; I had to sit down. I don’t know where it came from, but a breath of bravery ran through my entire body. When my mouth opened even I was surprised with how clear and calm I sounded. It was hard to talk to her without staring, she was so perfect. I couldn’t tell you how I spoke smoothly, because in my head I was being drowned. My legs tightened and shook, my palms were soaked with a hot film of sweat, and my lips became sand dunes. Each heartbeat rattled my teeth, and my lungs felt like an empty can of spray paint, wheezing and struggling to push out that last wisp of air. I asked her if she wanted to come to a party at my house that evening. She seemed happy (she had forgotten or forgiven what had happened the first time she came to my house), and agreed to drop by. I kept my cool and strutted off, but the second I turned the corner I jumped and screamed and smiled so hard my desert lips spilt open. The Christmas morning magic was back.
I walked all the way around the building (I was so excited I started walking the wrong way) so she wouldent see me, I jumped in my car and drove home singing along with the radio at the top of my lungs.
When I got home I became a spoiled bride; everything had to be perfect. I picked out my nicest pair of jeans and a freshly dry-cleaned shirt. I sculpted every wrinkle to make it look like I didn’t really care and just threw on some clothes. I even put on some of my mom’s makeup, making sure it made me look my absolute best in the dim light of the rapidly approaching party. My vanity however took a back seat to my planning. Nothing at this party was going to be random, I wrote out a detailed script. Nothing escaped my planning: eating times, liquor times, and lighting times, even times to make the room hot and cold. The song order was erected to make any girl want to be with a man.
Also See: “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing” or “Frank Sinatra”
I wrote a note to give to her later. I made it look like I wrote it when I was drunk. I had planned exactly how much I would have to drink, and when I would appear to drink them, I was going to slip her the note at exactly 10:05. It said Hey, I wanna talk to you when I am not drunk call me tomorrow whenever here’s my number 303 221 5457 you look relly good tonight. This was an easy way to get some one on one time, I didn’t put my name, but I was going to make sure that she saw me give it to her. This was the single boldest day of my life. All I had to do now was wait until it was night, then it would all work out.
My daytime insomnia is back. Why does excitement make time go so slow that you get visibly angry at the clock? I try to sleep, I try to play guitar, I try to read, I try to watch TV, I try to shoot some hoops, I try to clean my house. Nothing works, time is mocking me. I think it would have been funny to watch, me alone in a vast mansion, doing something for two minutes then grunting in agony each time I looked over at the clock. Actually hearing me scream “Fuck You Father Time!” at the top of my lungs. Pathetic. There were two hundred minutes between me and the beginning of the script, there aren’t enough synonyms for forever to tell you how long it felt to me.
All I had to do was wait, and wait, and wait, like disgruntled cooks screaming at the door hoping that no customers will come in during the final ten minutes of a busy Friday night. I sat and pondered how profoundly my parties had impacted life in our little cell of the world. How many couples were forged? How many more were lost? How many people had come in and out of my door? I felt a sense of pride when I thought about how important those parties were to our community. I had shaped my high school class’s culture, only I forgot to sculpt myself into it. Since that fateful evening sophomore year I had made only one or two friends, and God only knows if they are true friends.
I was about to wake up and live out a seven year dream to its conclusion. It was weird and humbling to think that this is my last shot with this girl, and the rest of my life will be based on what happens tonight with this girl. I guess you could say that about any moment, but tonight was defiantly more special. What if my script was wrong? (It couldn’t be.) What if she didn’t like this shirt? (Everybody likes this shirt.) Oh shit, my nerves began to consume me, and there were still 137 minutes until my script began.
Choose Your Own Adventure: if you want to read about my revenge read ch 5… if you want me to get to the party already skip the next chapter and read 6.
Chapter Five
I was going to save it but I guess this would be a good time to tell you about what happened when I found out who it was that threw that party sophomore year. From what I found out this kid tried to throw his own party. A few kids went to his house but to because they all were used to my parties found it oppressingly lame. This kid, this annoying tool, was disappointed in his own party, so he decided that it would be a good idea to break into my house, call hundreds of people and continue the party inside my house. This kid was one of those “enlightened” ones. He smoked a lot of pot and walked around with his arrogant nose stuck way up in the air. He spent tons of money on clothes that mad him look poor, and enlightened. He would let us all know how Bob Marley would feel in certain situations, and tell us how much weed Jesus must have smoked. He watched The Wizard of Oz and played Dark Side of the Moon; he bought Steal This Book, and used it at his bible. He couldn’t be in a conversation without dominating it with his views on politics and human life. He was in the process of growing dreadlocks, another way to show the whole world how far above them he was. I hated this kid, not only was he annoying, he (for two lucky months) was the man my angel called her boyfriend. He never came to my parties because he didn’t want to conform, but a break in and entering party would be perfect for his persona. I was almost glad when I found out it was him, he would be a satisfying target for my boiling revenge.
It had to be perfect, extreme physical harm would not be good enough, emotional damage was necessary. I wanted to go so low that breaking both his legs would have been merciful by comparison. I wanted to crush his dreams. I knew that this kid was putting on a show, and it was time that the whole world knew that he was phony. Three weeks after I smashed that kid’s face in I was going to throw the first annual marijuana party. I tried my best to seem nervous and naive when I approached him that Wednesday in school. I told him about the party, he loved the idea. I told him I needed somebody to bring a gross of weed, and that I hoped his dealer could hook us up. He laughed and told me some bullshit about how he grew his own supply and how that was the only way to do it. I told him that I needed to get 200 people stoned, and that I’d pay him accordingly, I was trying so hard to sound ignorant to the pot game. I asked, full of doubt, if he could get “like six pounds?” feeding off of my ignorance he took this as his chance to show me that he was better than me. He guaranteed that he could supply the amount. I took one more ignorant step when I told him that he better get rolling on those joints then. He smiled glad to have found somebody so ignorant and someone that he was so much better than “yeah, whatever,” he told me. Now he had to bring the pot to show me up, he was mine, I’d like to thank the academy.
That Friday I approached him again to ask if he got the amount I needed, and to arrange the payment. He smiled arrogantly as he confirmed. (How he got all 6 pounds I’ll never know.) He slipped me a piece of paper with a large number on it. He gave me his car key and said to lock half of the money in a manila envelope in his glove box by the end of the day. He would get the other half on delivery. We planned that he would arrive at 8:45 and that he would text me when he was five minutes away. I smiled and thanked him trying my best to sound over-excited about that evening’s party. I got the money and a manila envelope and walked to his Toyota.
Now he was the only person at school that I told about the marijuana party (the rest thought it was a football victory party.) Oh and an anonymous caller tipped off the police that a rusty white Toyota Camry license plate 219-OAK would be driving with six pounds of marijuana on Yosemite avenue near the school at precisely 8:30 that night.
Now busting him would have been bad, but I had to humiliate him. I made him to think that I was trying to be too cool, so I told him that I was going to mount a video camera with a microphone on the dashboard, and hook these up to a remote web feed (I’m sure Radio Shack was glad that a rich kid used electronics to get some revenge) I told him that this entire setup was so I could watch my stuff get there. He didn’t care, he was blinded by his pride, he loved that he was so much cooler than me.
My trap was set. I set up the web feed on my plasma, and invited everyone down to the basement to watch. The dashboard camera depicted him loading six massive greenish brown bricks into the compartment that he customized in the back seat of his car. To make matters even more perfect he was wearing a t-shirt that said “Fuck The Police.” This was going to be classic. It was 8:23 when he left his nice suburban home, he drove quickly, everyone watched in awe of how cool he was. He got a cell phone call from one of his enlightened buddies.
“Yeah I’m driving over there right now”… “Yeah six pounds”… “I know what kind of an idiot thinks he needs six pounds for a hundred or so people, this kid is such a loser.” (What kind of an idiot drives with six pounds of marijuana in his car.) Then two lights flashed, the entire party gasped and held their breath I act surprised and nervous. … “Oh shit cops man I gotta go!” The fear in his face was priceless, and everyone at the party began to chuckle.
“License and registration please.”
“Officer why are you pulling me over?”
“Broken tail light, just a minute.”
As the officer walked away the boy exhaled. My plan couldn’t have been going any better that was until he started crying. Salty drops streaked down his face as he moaned to his mom on the phone. Two hundred and sixteen people start laughing hysterically. Why is it that cops take so long scanning your license? Anyway after he hung up the phone with his mom he started bawling into his hands the crowd erupted with laughter. Just as he turned around to adjust the compartment in the back seat the cop tapped on the glass of the rear window with his night stick.
“Hey! What are you going back there? Keep your hands where I can see them. Now step out of the vehicle. (Tears and Laughter)
“Officer what’s wrong?” he cried, (literally cried) as he stepped out of the car. That was when the cop saw his shirt.
“Nice shirt” he said smugly. Another cop opened the back door to the Camry, lifted the seat and revealed the six bricks. “Whoa, hey check this out.”
The first cop only needed one glance, and then he said it. The words that would become the running joke that would last until after college. “Alright Crybaby up against the car!”
The laughter boomed through my basement like an earthquake. (God bless the webcam) The tears flowed like wine at an all women’s book club. “No God No” He screamed and threw a tantrum like a three year old; they put the cuffs on him and threw him into the back of the car. Here was a kid who just a few days ago was talking about how if he ever got busted by a cop he would kill that worthless pig, now the enlightened one was crying into oblivion in the infamous back seat begging the cops to forgive him. This was the first weekend that he had his license. For the rest of the night I was floating.
He was sentenced to seven years in a juvenile detention center. They let him come to school with an officer. One day I built a banner that hung so everyone in the parking lot could see it. Alright Crybaby up against the car. He became the primary target of the vicious public humiliation that only rich suburban white kids are capable of; people would throw him packets of tissues and ask if he needed a shoulder to cry on. He was ruined, after two weeks he stopped coming to school, nobody heard from Oh Enlightened one ever again.
Chapter Six
I slouched in a leather chair spinning an antique globe with my bare toes; I sat and watched the second hand spin for each of the progressively longer last thirty minutes. I couldn’t help but smile during the last ten seconds, my script was beginning. I drove directly to my destination, Chipotle, to get my usual pre-party burrito, and meet with an undercover member of the police department. He would slide me an envelope containing either $200 or $500 in cash and a phone number. (Ironically this was the money I used to buy more alcohol each week.) If it was $200 I had to text them a type of car and a license plate number. When a drunk person chose to drive away from my house he (once she) would be pulled over on his way home. If it was $500 then I actually had to do some work. I had to buy a cheap bag of marijuana (always supplied by my favorite Jewish suburban gang banger.) Then I had to secretly set it in plain sight in their car; when they left my house I would text the cops and the rest…well the rest became statistics on a middle school poster. I helped the bored suburban police meet their quota. I know this whole arrangement sounds farfetched, I don’t know why but when the cops found that the camera in the car was hooked up to a webcam, they called the anonyms number and asked me if I set the whole thing up, when I admitted to it they told me to meet them to have a talk. That was it now each time I threw a party I met a cop at Chipotle, if I did, then they would give me some pocket cash, and leave my house alone that night. If I didn’t speak to them then they would come by my house and break up any party that might have been going on. That week he slipped me $500.
I got in my car and drove north. I stopped behind the giant liquor store on Mason street and popped my trunk. Within thirty seconds four stockroom lifters emerged from the sliding door. Each carried two sweet boxes full of high school freedom, they put the boxes in my trunk and slammed it shut. I held a familiar envelope out the window and the shortest man grabbed it. This was my routine every week. You see the owner of this liquor store was lazy, he delegated the ordering of new shipments of alcohol to the stockroom manager. I worked out a deal with the stockroom manager, each week he would order extra alcohol for me, and give the owner false paperwork. I paid him $200 a week (thank you GVPD) for more than $500 worth of alcohol. I never felt bad about stealing from the liquor store owner, he slept each night in 1500 count Egyptian cotton sheets paid for by thousands of beaten wives. He had an Italian wardrobe paid for by hundreds of dead car crash victims. He did not deserve my money. I got what I wanted and never spent a penny of my own money; the stockroom manager got to buy his kids nice clothes that made them feel better about themselves at school. Nobody was hurt.
I was glad that the cop gave me $500, it would pass the time, although I had started working out my script time still seemed stuck in hot glue. I needed to pay a visit to my suburban dealer, I drove deliberately slow trying in vain to waste as much time as possible. Just thinking about her made each second melt into the other, time morphed into a into a molten blob that rolled and oozed the way you would imagine lava struggling to flow up a small hill. Each time my mind flashed to an image of her face the river of time flowed slower than 830 year old church glass. I thought of once perfect images of the resurrection, now distorted, a squishy reminder of no matter how sacred and glorious something is, time will eventually get the better of it.
I drove and drove in a time induced agony. Finally I made it to my dealer’s house, square in the middle of the suburbs. I waved at his parents as they drove away in a luxury SUV.
“We are going to get our picky son a softer mattress, he says his back hurts.” His mom said, her pitch distorted to an unnatural, shrieking high. This is normal in this neighborhood, this shrill communication that occurs when you try to squeeze your words through the constricted airways of a huge fake smile. I thought her laser whitened teeth were about to pop out of her head and hit me in the face, with smears of her tomato red lipstick staining my nose. I got the chills when her knife-on-plate voice asked me if my mother had talked to me about blah, blah, blah.
As they drove away my cheeks hurt thinking about that smile. He was sitting on the couch watching Scarface trying to learn from his master.
“What up bro?”
“Hey I need some cheap stuff for tonight.”
“Man I know you rich why are you always up in here buying my schwag?”
“Its not for me, please, I’m kinda in a hurry.”
“Alright Alright, calm down bro how much you want?”
“Twenty.”
As we walked up the apples, we passed 18 pictures of the Jewish suburban gang member smiling in colorful shirts in a pastel room. His room was messy. There were posters of Bob Marley and The Grateful Dead, now legendary musicians, who without them popularization of marijuana, would be nothing more that bar bands. I sat on his king sized bed as he pulled his dresser out from the wall. (He was right that mattress was a little firm.) He removed a section of soft carpet and reached down into the hole hidden right above his mother’s calendar. (Oh yeah our mothers have a strange obsession with calendars, they fill these things out three months in advance and nothing short of a nuclear holocaust can stop them from completing these sacred tasks.) From the hole he pulled out two things, a cheap bag of tan herb, and a black pistol.
“Check this shit out man.” He wailed excitedly, “I got it last night from one of my boys in A-town, pretty cool huh?” he tossed the heavy gun and it landed softly in my hands. Instantly a cold sweat condensated on my back. This was the first time I ever held a gun, despite my attempt to play it cool and appear that I knew what I was doing hands shook like a seizure.
“It’s loaded.”
I tossed it gently back to him baffled that somebody in these suburbs kept a loaded gun. I just knew that one day his Tony Montana fantasies would become real, it was weird to think that just ten seconds ago I held a weapon that was going to kill somebody. It was only a matter of when.
Like every other boy in our school, including myself, he would eventually have to defend his image. One day he would be insulted to the point of 2nd degree murder. His image would pull the trigger for him. I paid him 20$ (thanks again GVPD) took the weed and walked briskly out of the house. I drove home quickly and made my final preparations for the party, I never varied from my script each detail I planned, I acted out meticulously. I ordered pizzas, I mixed chasers, I blended margaritas, I poured chips into bowls, I checked my makeup, I made fun centerpieces for the pizza table, I felt an awful lot like Martha Stewart.
I know its kind of pathetic but I never charged anybody to come to my parties, this was probably the reason people always showed up. I just wanted to have a lot of people at my house. I wonder just how much money I had spent to entertain people in those four years.
There is a weird moment before each party; when I’m alone in my mansion I think of all the destruction that will occur in the next few hours. To destroy, that is fundamentally the reason we go to parties. One time Junior I hosted a plate breaking party, each person tried to break a plate in a more creative way than the person before. Four hours and 2673 stitches later there was nothing but a pile of broken bloody plates, scattered all around my yard as random as the stars in the sky. Nothing was solved but nothing mattered, that night simply became a legend. The violence excited everyone, all of our rage was released on those porcelain circles. Adrenaline turned a bunch of suburban rich kids trying to be cool, into an angry mass of animals. Each time the crash of a shattering plate rang out, the mob screamed and sank deeper and deeper into a primal trance, soon the screams of exuberance were no longer words. Everybody shouted like evangelical ministers preaching in tongues, the words didn’t matter, the volume and nature of the sound were enough. The worst side of human nature was exposed that night. You’d think that the party would stop when somebody got cut, but it didn’t, each time when the sharp chunks of glass slashed our skin the mob erupted, eventually people were breaking glass with various parts of the human body. We were covered in sweat, each heartbeat felt like a grenade going off in my chest cavity. Blood painted our faces and clothes.
Also See: William Wallace in Braveheart
I still have a few scars from that night, that night when we lost control. From that point on I always had to worry about the violent side of human nature taking over. Sometimes people would just start breaking things, once they threw billiard balls through my windows.
Chapter Seven
Finally the first guest arrived, the same first guest that had been the first guest all but two or three times. I was so sick of this kid, each week he would start eating chips, crack open a beer and start the same old boring conversations. You see this kid would never even be confused with intelligent, each week he would start talking about how hot the girls were going to be that night, and how he was guaranteed to hook up with one of them. He was the definitive frat boy wannabe God he was such a tool. The collar on his pink polo shirt was popped, and he had it tucked halfway into the front of his plaid shorts. He thought he was such hot shit, and here he was in my kitchen, eating my chips, telling me about how cool he was, and how he guaranteed some action, and how he was going to be the big pimp in his co-ed dorm next year. Each second I preyed for the doorbell to ring. When it did six people showed up, the party was officially underway. (Most people showed up in packs, I wasn’t the only person who couldn’t stand Mr. pink and plaid.)
Six packs later she walked into my door. I’m sure it was the excitement of the moment, or maybe my anticipation, but when she walked into the door she looked perfect, the most beautiful she had ever looked. My heart fluttered like a hummingbird, and my lungs collapsed. In my script it was written that I was to ignore her for the first hour. You have no idea how hard that was. The one time in your life you get up enough courage to make your impossible dream come true, and you have to be in the same room as your angel for one hour and you can’t say anything. I was so excited, I remember locking myself in the bathroom and screaming into a towel, being careful not to smudge my makeup. I remember my cheeks hurting from the ear to ear grin stapled to my face. Everyone asked me what was wrong with me. For the first time in my life I felt like I fit in, I felt cool. I was able to walk from group to group and get into conversations with people. This was the first time I didn’t feel alone, I could finally share words with the people that I had been sharing my toilet for four years.
I followed the first hour of my script to a T. It feels good to be in total control, like a great general I had almost three hundred drones marching to my beat, when I said eat they ate, when I said drink they drank, power also makes time speed up, this was actually one of the most painless hours of my day. There were only five minutes left until I was going to talk to her, five minutes between me and a headfirst swan dive into unknown waters. For the whole night I struggled to avoid her, a few times I had to leave the hot house and get some fresh air. At four minutes I had to look at her. She was leaning against my couch her leg muscles were contracted and her tight shirt revealed her perfect form. She looked so good, and when our eyes met she flashed me a smile that sliced through all of the mayhem and ruckus that had overwhelmed my basement party. All around us there was a hailstorm of people, shouting in tongues, completely oblivious to my hummingbird heart. The disarray and chaos siphoned the air from my lungs, I had to escape the madness. I walked to a quiet upstairs bathroom. Alone in the bright room silence I swished some mouthwash, applied some cologne and looked into the mirror. I composed myself, smoothed out my makeup and took in a relatively small breath given the moment.
Pause. Zoom Out.
So there we were. 204 of the brightest futures in the world. One day all of us would take over our daddies businesses, or their thriving law firms, or their oil conglomerates. We were the ones who would be building new malls, new neighborhoods, hell, the new America, we were all going to be somebody great. So again, there we were, lost in the predictable ending of a Hollywood movie, stuck in the greatest moment of our lives, all of us the same in the world.
Perspective is a humbling phenomenon. No matter how important we felt or how profound we thought our existence was, in the perspective of the world we were nothing. As great as we felt that night, the next morning, 1.6 billion Chinese people would wake up, harvest their rice, and not even know we existed. We were less than half of a thousandth of a percent, we were negligible, dismissible by the standard deviation, negated by statistical error. But none of that mattered, at that moment, that exact point in time, we felt like kings.
It’s always weird to think about what is happening all around the world at an exact instant in time. If you could take a snapshot of the entire world, what would be happening. In suburban Southeast Denver my hand is twisting the hot knob of a $300 sink halfway off. Downstairs six gallons of gold liquid waited in equilibrium between cheap cups and rich lips. 27.8 miles due south a man scratches the first of six zeros on a blue and tan check. 3.7 miles northeast the stockroom manager of a local liquor store is taking his family out to a nice dinner. An oversized piece of steak is hovering three inches from his watering mouth. In a Barcelona hotel two rich Coloradans begin to stir in the early morning light excited about a day of shopping.
At this exact instant all across the globe there are 386 bullets hovering in mid flight. 209 will eventually hit their target, but now they are stopped in mid air. 93 people are somewhere in the middle of the respiratory process of what will be their last breath. In less than one second, less than the time it takes for you to open a can of soda, 93 bullets will splatter 93 people; before you could read three more words 93 humans will be dead. But now, at this exact instant they are as alive as four slimy babies yet to take their second breath.
Ok. Zoom Back In.
Exhale. Now a wooden door was the only thing between my old life and my new life. As soon as I opened it I would be a different person. I guess I blacked out; I still can’t remember opening the door, walking downstairs, or what the first word I said to her was, the first thing I remember was her smile. It knocked me out of my haze, and shook me awake.