"Let's Just All Get Drunk and Fuck Our Ruttin' Brains Out"
by
Timothy Stillman
Inebriated is a funny word when you come to think of it. sounds so drunk, like the guy who invented the word was bombed to the moon and back when he came up with it. It has tiny little champagne bubbles in it and sways when you look at it the right way, back and forth. And of course he was drunk, the student who thought this, me, he was lovingly roaringly drunk just like Elmer Gantry at the start of the book and the movie of the same name.
Drunk is good. Drink drinks you and shoves you into itself and you are safe and sound and on wheels and coasters and you just want to giggle for no particular reason other than you can giggle and the sound coming out of your mouth sounds like sour sick milk bottle tops furling (furling? little drunk word too there, nice baby) out into the cold November air with the dark all round cuddly like and I can't think of anything but why the lamppost I am so cliché like holding onto does not dispense a seven foot tall rabbit named
Harvey for me to converse with. Because Harvey is the only one who would converse with me, because I have told my ex friends back at Tony's Pizzeria (cliché thy name is life) that I was once in love with a boy name of Joel and he did not love me or like me terribly much, but I delighted in the gainsay of his being irritated when I was around.
And Sassy Sue had leaned over her frosty beer mug, an anchovy clinging to her prim lip, not that the top lip was not prim as well, and she asked, "A boy? Did you say a boy?" And her glasses were steamed up from the steam heat down at Tony's to the place where Louie dwells or however it went, and her eyes were hidden behind the fog but I knew they were like little raisin dots, and I nodded drunkenly, my head heavy on my suddenly too thin too long stalk neck. And she grimaced and she tapped one of her long bloodless fingers on the checkered table cloth, and her face was a pale cameo that looked like it had sand just under the skin.
And I nodded, feeling reckless, feeling bold, feeling fed up, because people had considered me sexless, had always considered me too sexless to drink or have sex or have any kind of fun at all, not even leer, not even look at Hustler magazine, not smoke, get high, get out of the city, get out of my clothes and let everyone laugh at my hugely underfed body, for I was ashamed I did not have a penis and balls, though I do have a penis and balls, no one really believed I had a penis and balls, and I did not say things like penis and balls, well, I could say balls as in billiard balls or dodge balls, but not the kind that did not hang between my legs though of course I did have them and they did hang between my legs.
So I smiled, emitted a gassy burp, and looked right at her, and point blank, said, "That's right, you little stick up the butt classic books reader you, I loved a boy, and I loved him to the nth degree, whatever an nth is, and whatever a degree means when it's stuck on the nth, and I loved him with all my heart and all my body, and he was beautiful, and fuck you."
I had never said "fuck you" in my life. I had never even said "the F word" cause it would have been like saying fuck you, but I said fuck you to Slinky Sue and she doubled up like a spider in her black blouse and jeans and her black sweater on her coat hanger shoulders and I thought she was going to spit venom out at me, and I stuck my jaw out prodigiously at her, just like in the Gold Medal paperback hard boiled detective novels of my youth, and Randy sweet shy delicate kind Randy sitting next to her looked at me, and said, "Joel?"
I nodded and took another sip of my beer. We had been to Ike's Ice House for earlier in the evening, hard liquor mind you, and I drank and they watched and were amazed because I had always been so goody two shoes around them, and in truth, all my word to say when you are drunk, try it some time) and they had said, is something wrong?, did someone die?, why are you drinking so much?, why are you drinking at all?, are you really you?, is this one of those Candid Camera stunts?, just where is Alan Funt hiding?, and I was too busy tipping the glass and occasionally the bottle into my greedy dirty sponge feeling mouth to answer them.
I felt like a rubber fire plug. Yeah, I can't explain that image either, but I felt it.
And Randy in his soft almost girlish voice, Mr. Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, boy of brown hair that was almost in an Afro, boy of water logged looking finger tips, boy of tall and boy of poetry writing and drawing beauty, and I said yes, again, and he said, "The Joel I know, the Joel we know?" I nodded. And Randy and Sue who was now turned from me and curled sideways on the seat in our booth and picking at her front teeth with her left thumb, my what long clear nails she had, I had never noticed before, because drink makes one not notice things and notice pin prick things at the very same time, booze thy name is enigma, though it's hard to say enigma when you're drunk, or when I'm drunk, rather, I can say prodigious, but not enigma, one of those endless questions to which there are never answers.
"You mean," Scary Sue said to her finger tip as she picked her nails, and looked over at Randy, her face like a bloodless meringue pie in the orange lights of the stuffy pizza restaurant, though of course who would want a bloody meringue pie to begin with?, but this is her face I'm talking about, "you mean like, sex? You mean, like want him?"
So I said "Sure, Sue, what is this suddenly 1948? Just like you and your boyfriend who is my roommate in the dorm at this little university in the South where only three males here have long hair and I'm one of them--I've never been good at exposition--and I want to throw up now, so I think I shall step out into the cold." They went with me. I was tumbling inside and out. My guts were playing that song "Kookie, Kookie, Lend MeYour Comb" (man, that'd make anyone barf, especially the killer ending--"babe, you're the ginchiest").
So I went outside and puked into the wind, while Sue and Randy went the other direction, and I had no doubt that Randy who was friends with Joel who put up with me was going to tell Joel who was friends with Randy who did not like me or not like me, but I always imagined Joel and Randy getting it on together and that would be the best way or them to get it on together because getting in on apart would make no sense and the world must make sense.
Especially to a drunk. And I am this evening in November unabashedly drunkerreeny, or however it's spelled. So after I spilled my emotional guts to Sue and Randy in Pepe's or Tony's or whatever the hell; look, for me to say even I loved Joel was spilling my guts, and after I spilled more of my guts out here on the sidewalk, in the picture window, so everybody eating their pizzas could distinguish what pizzas look like going into the mouth and what they look like when they are disengaging from the mouth, I decided to go to Elllington Hall and tell Joel I loved him, and if he could just maybe hold me for thirty seconds then the night would not be full of enamel white that I seemed at the moment to be pulling off from the dark with my fingernails which were for some reason getting bloody.
So I lurched back to campus two blocks away and stumbled and fell cross the quad. And the lights changed into all kinds of multi hued blops, and the darkness was like sand paper beneath my skin and the wind howled and I felt like a ship that had discovered finally there was nothing in me but Joel, there was only the first time I saw him, and he shirtless, that Saturday afternoon, he sitting under a summer tree on the quad on the green green grass, reading a paperback of "An American Tragedy" (natch) and his chest was so pale and his tits were so pale and his ribs were visible and his golden sun hair came down to and past his naked shoulder blades and I just stood there transfixed, I stood there considering the machinery of love and devotion and what it means to lay your life down for another human being.
I have always been loyal to people who were never loyal to me, mostly because I clung to them too much and because I was too nice to them, and most of them also I can state objectively were selfish sonsofbitches who took what they wanted and then moved on, but they never took anything from me but my trust and belief, and that's taking everything.
But Joel there on the quad, Joel there with the sun and the green tree shadows laying on him like a cloak for royalty, oh God, I almost sank beneath the weight of the sheer terror and devotion and worship I felt for him right at that moment, and then the girl came to him, there was always a girl and he smiled up at her and it was like he was going to fly to the sun soon that face of smiles he lifted so easily up to her in his world of kinder gravity, not my world of heavy chained gravity, and they hugged and then they kissed and his arms were around her and hers round his as she played with his backbone, and they tangled their legs round one another, and I stood there like a straight pencil on end, and they kissed me because I had need of it.
They kissed me because I was trying so hard for them to do so, and they let me in the middle of them and we were clothe less and we were tonguing each other and we were bronzed by the heavy mid summer sun and the windows of the world were all inside us and we were looking out at the world that wanted all three of us so badly, and she was heavy breasted and Joel put his hands on me and then on her, and we enveloped each other as though we were created out of a summer misting, and fevers that diagonally rushed down our bodies.
Joel and I were hard and our penises clung and clanged to and with each other, and it was so good seeing this golden boy with his small amount of pubic hair and his penis elevated next to mine, while the girl with us wanted to leaven us with promises of her own delicate caves and we were all falling like autumn leaves slowly and reverently toward the green green heavy bee fried grass, and it was as though at the apex of the sun we had come to be with each other as Joel kissed her ruby bright lips as I kissed his chest and held to him and he was a raft of boy, he was a raft of song that went through my skin and set off all these wonderful alarums and excursions inside me that I never had known existed before.
We were arms and legs and bodies and faces and hair and we explored and we were little children and everything was giggle making and everything was offering to the gods and I held him as he held her and I felt the huge heavy weightlessness of my love name of Joel and he made love to the girl and I made love to him and we were in the tree shadows and it was cool and damp and their tongues were in the other's mouths, and I lay on Joel and felt his naked buttocks and he was cream in my hands, and he told us he wanted us with him forever more and he was a farmer boy and we were his sheep, to lead, to instruct, to obey.
And then he and the girl walked away and I stood there with my hard on and the day was hot and the night was to be a long one and masturbation my truest friend would see me through this one as it had all the others, but from now on it would be a little bit sadder than it had been before. And I watched them walk in the heat and the humidity and I saw the sweat on Joel's swaying curving back, the two dimples above his buttocks deliciously visible, o pull thy jeans lower, beloved swain,and I went to class then, because I had to because there was nothing else to do, but I felt so small and scared and worthless, even more than I ever had before.
So this night I got drunk and I drifted on heads of beer and shots of whiskey and I pounded the bar and I said just where the hell is Sam and Doc and Miss Kitty anyway dammit to hell and people laughed at me and I thought I'm going to tell Randy and what's her name that Joel is my flame and he is my fame and I will never live for another moment than the moment I first saw Joel with his shirt off and put my hands on his chest and pulled the sword out of the stone and said I'm sick to death of being Miss Bygones Must Be
Bygones, will you for god's sake touch that sucker and get some speed on please and if you got some speed and what do they call them in the ads in The Advocate?---poppers, some of those too please cause I want to have the warm sweaty with you and would appreciate it if you would have the warm sweaty with me too, because the night is cold and the summer sheen is gone and it's not glowy anymore except in my eyeballs, so I told Sue and Randy, Randy who I had a crush on, but Joel was the boy of my dreams, read between the lines of you must.
And now Randy and Suemobile were in Joel's room and they were saying remember that jerk? the third wheel what's his name? hangs around us all the time? and Joel would look at them curiously and Randy would put his hand on Joel's shoulder for Randy was touchy feely with everyone but me, and Sue would direct those raisin eyes beams at Joel and she would say he wants you, he wants to have sex with you, he wants to
FUCK you.
And Joel would not be scandalized, he would not be shocked, he would just say in that whispery wonderful always laugh in the back of his throat voice, "well, of course I know that. I am not an idiot, I just don't want to hurt his feelings, but he's like a Brillo pad and he itches me to hell and back, so, mmmm, I guess this would be the time to get rid of him, don't you think?" He would be sitting at his desk in a straight backed chair, that he would be leaning back in against the wall, the chair up on its two back legs, and he would be dressed in autumn colors and his hair would be washed and fluffed and his face would be pale as the moon looked the first time you fell in love, and he would be shy, and working his hands into each other, a nervous habit I had noticed from time to time, and then he would put the chair down on all legs and sit up and lean over and scratch the knee of his left leg through his jeans, another nervous habit.
And he would not be the boy I loved and kissed with him and his girl under the old elm tree, and he would not remember that we rolled naked on the hot whirry grass, and he would not remember how he had kissed her down there and I had felt his tongue down there and how she squirmed like a bundle of worms, I'm drunk, can't blame me for a pretty pathetic simile every now and then--
--and she would kiss both of us on the mouth and we would each go to her breasts, and she would hold us like we were little babies as we leaned over to each other, lay our cheeks on her chest and kissed one the other, me and Joel and her, I don't know
her name, never did, not being sexist, just uninformed, and that was us on a summer day in a university on the quad on the Wabash far away.
To all three of them I would fit in the description of "junior partner" which term and this particular meaning of I would find in Peter Straub's "Ghost Story" some years later; no matter how old one of the characters, Ricky was, and he was quite old, to his friend, equally as old Sears, acquaintance of lo these many years, Ricky (indeed the name Ricky seems always like a child's, a teenager's name to me; Rick sounds like an uneasy compromise) was still a kid, a jerk, a nebbish, and no matter how old I would be forced to live, this is how I would always be treated, I knew so even then and long before then, so I giggled and I blushed and I felt urine strong in my penis and had to hold it inside and I giggled some more and blushed a little bit more as I entered the mole hole corridor of Ellington and went down the pale sick white walls bumping into them careening off them every now and then to Room 135 which was HIS room and I heard them in there.
I heard the acid tongue of Sexless Sue, I heard the hapless girlish voice of Randy, and I heard Joel who did not say a word but I heard his voice anyway, I heard his presence, which was like warm comforting butter taste and smell and feel coming out of the old scarred beat in a bit wooden door. I heard Sue exclaim. I heard Randy say they have a right to live too. I heard Joel say nothing and in saying nothing he said all the words there would ever be to say.
Chagrined the guts of my booze were running to sobriety again. Chagrined, I told Seat Cushion Sue and Randy Sweetheart that I loved Joel so they could tell Joel and he would say well thank God and fate and the blue moon above because I love him too so bring the lug in here and let him tell me to my face which is of course pretty damned adorable even if I do say so myself, my girlfriend of the moment thinks he's pretty boss too so she would like to get it on with the both of us, and now you two tattletales hit the road and thanks loads.
I leaned against the door to Joel. My pores were leaking out poison booze sweat in a terrible stench. I had come out of Tony's or Mama Leone's or whatever it was called without my coat and now in the hot hall I was shivering and sweating buckets of blood for my Joel, and I leaned my head against the door and I pounded my head against the door and I kept trying to think what The Great Gatsby would do in a situation like this cause I had read some of the classics though not as many as Sue, who had read Moby Dick and War and Peace twice, so she said, and she was so goddam irritating, she was probably telling the truth, just read these books to make the rest of us look bad.
And Joel opened the door. I fell through it, straight on my face like Sherlock Holmes with his magnifying glass looking for a clue, and I turned over like a struggling slug turns over, and looked up at Joel way up there very very tall indeed and he looked down on me like I was moldy cheese he had found in someone's refrigerator, cheese he would be gathering up to throw away shortly. I burped and laughed an unfunny laugh and I started sluringly telling him about the time he and his girl of the moment, he had had three more girls of individual moments since her, had made love to.
I told him I had sucked his alabaster cock (believe me, please please believe me)and I knew the taste of it and I described what it looked like and his balls that were neat little hen's eggs and how they pulled up tight when he was having sex with us and how the girl and I liked to feel the soft downy hair on his legs, (she calling him of course Bunny because the soft hair felt like a rabbit's fur) I had to tell him to remind him, to remind him of what we three had done, and he looked through the blur in my eyes and the blur in my eyes had gotten worse and I could not see his reaction and this terrified me that I could not. I had to know. I was drunk. Been through hell, give me a break, man, please, just a little break.
And I could hear chairs pushed back and Sue and Randy walking and I could hear everybody's breathing including my snoring breath which shamed me but I could not stop making the sound, and I remembered they don't think I have a penis and balls, so I told them I have a penis and balls and I scrimmed my hand to my zipper and after a lot of fumbling and trying, I pulled out my penis and balls from the opening of my BVDS, took hours to find it, seemed like, was afraid I really didn't have a penis and balls anyway at all at all and wouldn't my face be red?, and I got them out though they were quite shriveled and unappetizing looking I knew and I smiled up at Joel and held my trembly arms up to him and I said see? see? give me a moment and I can get it hard too, it's a six incher, honest, trust me.
And I closed my eyes which seemed to in some weird way be laughing at me and I heard footsteps and silent voices and the door closed and I didn't have to open my eyes to know I was alone in Joel's room. It was hot in there. Though it was the chilblains of winter in there. I was alone in Joel's room. He left me not in my room, but in his own, Joel's room. My god. I lay there for a time, quivering, sick. I threw up on his rug. I threw up a lot. I thought he deserved it.
I thought the whole fuckin' world deserved it. They better be glad I'm notGod for even five minutes.
I went to his bed and my poor penis and balls and me lay where he had lain and I tried to kiss his gentle face in the long dark air. Then I got up most unsteadily, skirted the rug where I had left a souvenir, and I opened the door, my penis and balls I do have them see? still hanging out of my jeans and I went up the stairs to the third floor where my narrow bed was, collapsed, mouth full of flannel and not a little rue, and in the morning I had a hangover that clung to me for weeks, like my long lost brother. I told it everything, and it forgave me all. I had made a close friend with it.
Friendships have always hurt. This was nothing new. And was like all the other friendship pains, worth it. Sorta. `Cept it killed me some more inside. But that was nothing new either.
There was no more Sue and Randy after this. There was no more Joel after this, save when I could glance furtively at him and he didn't see me. My life will be in this place in this time with these people forever. I will never move a moment from this no matter how many moments I technically move from it. It is everything I am. Sometimes I think
Joel and his girl of the moment really did make love to me and it was love not just sex though I surely would have settled just for sex, I can almost have a sense memory of them sandwiching me and their heat against my sides.
Almost but not quite. And I guess that's the thing that hurts the most. I didn't drink after that time. I'm in hell enough, even with my nimble wits about me. Booze need not apply.
That night before I went to sleep, I remembered the actor George Segal on the Tonight Show. He had a ukulele and he was singing this song which I boozily sang myself to sleep with, wishing I could meet George Segal `cause he seems like he's such a nice man and you could talk to him, really talk to him, and he would be kind and nice about it. And he could smile at me. Which would make me feel better. He has a nice smile. And it would be a real one. Directed at me.
"I'm tired and I want to go home/I'm tired and I want to go to bed/ Had a little drink about an hour ago/And it went right to my head."
'Night, everybody.
B Keeper silvershimmer@earthlink.net