Cabbage Patch

         She hung like a cabbage patch doll on my shoulder.  Stumble, lean heavily on me, momentarily regain balance, stumble, etc.  I guided her down the hall of our apartment to a spare room.  Before fetching her from the couch, I had taken the liberty of removing all of the shit that cluttered the bed.  Now it was in passable condition, at least she could sleep in it...

         Once we got to the bed I told her that it was time to lay down.  She gave up mid-stumble step and fell in the direction of the bed.  I did what I could, not much but enough, to keep her from smacking her head on the headboard.  I told her to be wary of it.

         I turned to leave and she hollowly called my name.  I pivoted so that I could see her again.  She had managed to sit up on the bed and told me thanks.  She kept going on for a few seconds, repeatedly telling me what a good feller I was, laughing that she had called me a feller, getting serious to thank me again and tell me what a fine feller I was.  Once again, etc. 

         I told her it wasn't that big of a deal and left the room.  Having only had two or three beers tonight, I was still pretty much still firing on all hinges.  If I was a V8 engine, I'm pretty sure I'd still have at least 6 cylinders firing...  Thus I set out in search of my friend, her boyfriend. 

         I glanced in the kitchen before peeking out onto our tiny ass patio.  Neither location was occupied.  I returned to the living room where four people were passed out.  Finally, I opted to check the bathroom.  I found him there asleep on his arm at the foot of the toilet.  I smiled a little bit and headed for his room to grab a pillow and blanket.

         Once I felt that he was securely tucked in I decided to call it a night.  I went through the place turning off all of the lights.  I noticed our guest room light on and didn't recall turning it on.  I poked my head in and she was sitting up on the bed trying to pull her jacket off.  I watched for a minute or two, amused by a drunk person lacking all normal coordination.  Eventually I took pity on her struggle and knocked on the door to ask if I could help her.

         She beamed when she recognized me.  She started smiling and asking me what I was giggling about.  I held out my hand to help her and she obliged by letting me remove the pestering jacket.  She looked me in the eye and asked what else I wanted to take off of her.  I asked if there was anything else that was inconveniencing her.

         She burst out laughing and asked what I was talking about.  I decided that she was way too far gone.  I'd just turn out the light and let her sleep it off.  She asked me where I was going, to which I responded that it was time for me to go to sleep.  She asked what was wrong with the bed she was in.  I frowned, honestly confused for a couple of seconds.  Like I admitted earlier, I wasn't firing on all hinges, just most of them...

         I sat down on the edge of the bed and looked her in the eye.  I asked her what was on her left hand.  She looked down and saw nothing and looked back at me confused.  I told her that her boyfriend was trying to save up enough to get her a rock that would put her nails to shame.  She frowned, deeply confused.  I continued asking her what her boyfriend meant to her.  At the mention of him, her lower lip started to tremble. 

         She asked me why I was being so mean.  I told her that I didn't want to be mean to her.  While I loved her as a friend, I was not going to take advantage of her and ruin not just one friendship, but two.           She started to outright cry.

         I got up and walked out of the room.  I turned off the light on the way and closed the door after telling her to close her eyes and get some sleep.  She'd feel differently about a conversation like that in the morning I knew, but I really hoped that she would just forget this whole thing.  I figured that it would be better to abandon the whole concept before we got to a point where we really did screw up our little Three's Company thing...

         However, if she did remember it, I would simply pretend that I had no idea what she was talking about.  Better to forget that the whole fiasco were avoided...



         I woke up around ten and got out of bed.  Nothing to really do on a Monday, my day off.  So I headed into the kitchen to make a light breakfast.  Nothing beats a day that gets started with a bowl of golden grahams...

         As the random people from the party left, I waved and told them that I'd see them later.  She surfaced around 12:30, more than a little confused.  She asked where her boyfriend was, and I told her he was gently tucked in by the toilet...  She smiled a little, claiming that laughing still hurt a little.

         She sat there uncomfortably for a couple of minutes while I fiddled with my computer, trying to get a damn game to play correctly.  Finally she asked who had put her in the bed and tucked her in.  I looked at her momentarily, squinting my eyes feigning a struggle to remember who it was.  Finally I told her that it was probably her boyfriend.  If it hadn't been him, I could only guess whom else it might have been. 

         She frowned a little at that and told me it was kind of disconcerting to not be able to remember whole hours of time.  I told her that I could sympathize with that seeing as I couldn't even remember half of the night which was a bald ass lie.  She smiled lightly again.

         I asked her if she would like some food to soak up the remaining alcohol.  After finding out what I could offer, she also settled on golden grahams.  She sat at the table with me for a while, just chatting about this and that whilst I continued to fiddle with the computer.  Finally I had an aha moment and got the little bastard working.  She asked what had been wrong and I explained what my game was supposed to have been doing and what it was doing.  She developed  a very blank look and I laughed out loud.

         After a light punch a small scolding, she finished her cereal and left the table to gather her belongings so that she could be to work on time.  I bade her well and continued to get my game on taking only breaks for the bathroom and drink refills of dew.

         Eventually my roommate surfaced and sat down.  He also took the offered golden grahams making us a trio of grahamaholics.  It also decimated my supply of them.  He asked where the pillow and blanket came from and I said that his lady friend was responsible for that.  He sat there for a minute with a spoonful of cereal halfway to his mouth, his mind a puzzle that was currently the equivalent of a Rubik's cube.

         Eventually, he opted to toss the cube aside with a shake of his head and continued with his cereal.  Throughout breakfast, he asked me rudimentary questions about the shindig we had held at our place.  I answered his questions, in between killing all the bad guys, in half truths and flat out white lies.  If they both got together with different stories, they would find me out.  However, I kept everything pretty simple. 

         After two or three shots and a couple of beers my mind had gone foggy.  The next round had taken me to a stage I called brownouts.  I could remember in detail a few things, but the majority was gone.  After another round, this one completely fictitious, I had gone over the edge and couldn't remember a thing.

         His final question in our game of 37 questions was whether I had awoken with companionship.  I told him no, but that I remembered something about a girl being interested.  The area around her showing interest though, according to my increasingly elaborate story, was entirely gray.  It must have been in the middle of the good times we agreed upon.  He also lampooned that it was an opportunity that I should have jumped not on, but in. 

         Whilst shaking my head at his pathetic pun, I told him that some things were just written into my genetic code.  Apparently, one of the rules that I was created with was to not take advantage of overly drunk women who were dancing with somebody else at the party earlier in the night.  He shook his head, claiming that I needed to experience the world before I declined to subject myself to a ridiculous theory like that.  My code decided to ignore him for a while and continue to be a one man army inside of Nazi Germany.

         Once he moved away from the table to call his girlfriend, I relaxed a little and got up to find some food in the pantry.  Since I would be off to my parents house to do laundry in an hour or two, I opted for something light.  Mom always cooks better food than ramen noodles and a side of blueberry poptarts...

         As my roommate passed by on his way out of the apartment, probably to pick up his girlfriend from work, I reflected again that some things are probably better left forgotten.