“What’d you say?” she asks.
“I didn’t say anything!”
Again with the lilting laugh, the waving of the arms in the air, the drink spillage: this girl is thoroughly drunk. Speaking of which, I should really just grab two of these things next time; this cherry shit is the shit.
“Come on, Jared!” Apparently done with talking, the girl drags me out to the middle of the floor, backs into my crotch, dances off tempo, and proceeds to raise her Solo cup into the air slowly and purposefully, draining its contents into a circle on the floor around us.
I scan faces in the crowd for Val or Alan, just some viable backup. Val is nowhere to be found. There’s Alan, leaning against a stack of subwoofers, making out with Len Kowalski, the tennis jock who used to egg my house every other weekend.
From the opposite corner of the room, a girl smiles in my direction. She’s unfamiliar, pretty, and hard to miss with a bright blue bandanna tying her hair back.
“Jared!”
I look back at the girl in front of me. “What?”
Guess I’m Jared now.
“Come to Vancouver with me,” she slurs, close enough for me to smell her breath, a strangely intoxicating combination of sweet corn and wood fire.
I pull her hand off the back of my neck, while speculating how her hand came to be there in the first place. “What’s in Vancouver?”
She laughs like it’s just the funniest joke, then screams, “Weed, man!” at which point she slips in her own puddle of liquor and—okay, she’s down.
The song changes to the latest from Pontius Pilot, and the room amps into a frenzy. I try to block out the song while helping this poor girl to her feet, walking her to the next room over and onto a couch. “You’re jusss—so fucking nice,” she says, poking a finger in my chest. “The world is a terrible place, Jared. Terrible and shitty. But not you. You’re nice!”
I get her settled on the couch, arrange her head on a pillow, and say the first words that come to mind, a favorite passage from Year of Me. “‘Perhaps the world was not so giant a shitball after all.’”
She chuckles, all, “Shitball,” and like that, she’s asleep. I wait around for a few minutes, make sure she’s breathing okay, then it’s off to the Food and Beverage Atrium to test Alan’s theory about the catastrophic effects of a fourth Hurricane.
8 → the sunlit narrative of Philip Parish
Pontius Pilot is a Chicago-based recording artist who performed in the Iverton High School auditorium last year as a reward for our junior class having a decent magazine fundraiser. Nothing takes the wind out of a concert’s sails like a Tuesday morning billing; even so, the student council dubbed the event the Magazine Mega Gala, and, like that, Pontius Pilot became a legend. Though collectively, the Iverton High populace felt about his music the way one feels about their fourth-grade soccer trophy, or the crinkle-cut fries in the cafeteria: it’s a nostalgic love, weak at the root.
In the hour following his performance, Pontius Pilot had agreed to speak about his creative process to my AP English Lit class.
“Is that your real name?” some kid asked.
Pontius Pilot said, “My name is Philip Parish, but having a pseudonym helps your brand. And as a musician, brand is everything.”
“Care to delve into that a bit more?” Mr. Tuttle had checked out long ago, his physical body replaced with an automaton doomed to an eternal loop of overanalyzing the ending of The Grapes of Wrath, reciting Macbeth, and asking questions like, “Care to delve into that a bit more?”
Parish shrugged. “Brand tells people who you are, makes you stand out from the crowd. Eventually, hopefully, people hear your name and associate that with your thing.” He pointed to the school-issued computer on Mr. Tuttle’s desk. “An apple with a bite taken out of it.” Shifted his finger to Mr. Tuttle’s Pepsi can. “Blue can with the red, white, and blue circle.”
“But those are objects,” Alan said. “Not people.”
Parish pointed right at me. “That guy understood brand.”
“Noah?” asked some kid.
“He means Bowie,” said Val. (AP English was the only class all three of us had together last year. The front offices were sure not to make that mistake again.)
Parish nodded at me. “Tell me you’re not just wearing the shirt, kid. You know what I’m talking about, right?”
“David Robert Jones,” I said.
Parish said, “Anyone in here think they would have remembered the name David Robert Jones? Maybe. The man revolutionized music, revolutionized a lot of things, really, so maybe. But man—just look at that shirt.”
The whole class shifted until everyone was staring at my chest, the bold type BOWIE across the top, and under it, the man himself with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
“The music, the sexuality, the image,” Parish said. “All of it comprised in a single, universally understood word— Bowie.”
Some other kid raised his hand. “So your pseudonym is inspired by that dude in the Bible?”
“Something like that,” Parish said, suddenly fidgety.
“But he spelled it differently, right?”
Parish shrugged. “Purposeful misspellings can help your brand.”
Val raised her hand. “Would you say you put a lot of yourself into your songs?”
If Parish had looked uncomfortable before, watching him try to answer Val’s question made him look downright wounded. He mumbled something like, “That’s a tricky question,” and when Mr. Tuttle said, “Care to delve into that a bit more?” he cleared his throat and stood up.
And this was where things got weird. When he’d first entered the classroom, Parish had carried a small notebook. I’d assumed it had samples of his work, something he could use to exemplify the evolution of his writing.
“Every song is personal.” Parish clutched the notebook to his chest. “Most of my lyrics are based on the mood of a thing, not the thing itself. I make up a story, write myself into it. I call it the shaded narrative.” And then his voice changed, sounded like it was coming from under a mask. “But sometimes . . . something else comes out of me, a song I didn’t know was there. Those are more personal. Those are the sunlit narratives. Sorry, I’m not . . .” He shook his head, looked at Mr. Tuttle, then back at the class like he’d forgotten we were there. “I’m sorry.”
And then he left—walked right out of the room, dropping an item from his notebook as he went. So far as we knew, it was the first time a guest speaker had up and left right in the middle of their thing. “Guess he didn’t care to delve into it a bit more,” someone said, and the class laughed in that relieved way you do when normalcy is restored. And then Mr. Tuttle instructed us to open our Steinbeck tomes, and our laughs were replaced with visions of dust and booze and haggard tires on the road west, where the busty, analogous milky white breasts of rural America patiently awaited our arrival.
After class had ended, I stalled until I was the last one in the room; on my way out I grabbed the item Parish had dropped, slipped it into my pocket, then locked myself in the nearest bathroom stall.
It was a photograph: a simple portrait of a young guy looking slightly off camera with not so much a smile on his face as the idea of one. On the back I found the inscription, The sun is too bright. Love, A. Later that night, after dinner, I searched the Google jungle for the phrase (vague as it was), or any sign of this guy on Pontius Pilot’s Facebook page, but nothing. Something about the inscription seemed familiar, and at first I’d thought maybe it was related to Parish’s talk of the “sunlit narrative,” but that wasn’t it. There was something else; I just couldn’t place what.
That’s how it goes with my Strange Fascinations.
9 → they are talking about Tweedy and college and things of that nature
Jake Longmire returns from the bathroom. “Hey,” he says, all, Hey, like the whol
e world has just been sitting around twiddling its thumbs in anticipation of his arrival. “I forget what we were talking about.”
“The massive suckage that is the band Wilco,” says Alan.
“Come on, bruh,” says Jake. “Gotta respect the pride of Chicago.”
“I do not.”
I’m in the corner of the Food and Beverage Atrium, halfway through my fifth Hurricane. (Number four went down like a champ, no trouble.) There’s a bunch of people in the room, lots of chatter and laughter, but all eyes are on Jake. He is the sun around which the room of lonely stars rotates.
Alan is smoking weed. I have no idea where it came from. “I just don’t get why everyone has auditory orgasms over Tweedy,” he says. “Dude cannot sing.”
Jake polishes off a Natty Ice, crushes the can in one hand while simultaneously grabbing another. “You think Van Morrison could sing, or Jim Morrison? What makes them great is that they sound like no one else. Take your boy’s guy”—Jake points to my T-shirt—“Bowie. You think he could sing?”
Hard swig. Hurricane, don’t fail me now.
“What is that?” Jake asks, pointing to my bottle.
“Hurricane.” Swig, like that, and then: “It’s delicious.”
“Oh right, the girly drink.” Jake laughs in a grunt. “Think Alan’s rubbing off on you, bruh.”
Before Alan can toss an empty beer can, Jake raises his Natty Ice in salute, and Alan pretends he’s fine, and I’d like to rescind my earlier ruling about not sticking my fist into anyone’s mouth, and not only that, I’d like to pass a decree that blatant homophobes not be rewarded with such fantastic fucking kitchens.
“What about you, Oakman?”
Alan and Jake are looking at me. It was Jake’s question, so really the whole room has at least a peripheral eye on my response.
“What?”
“Collegiate athletics. You gonna swim?”
“Oh. I don’t know yet.”
“You should. You’re fast.” Jake points at Alan. “Unlike this little bitch,” and the room laughs; Alan proceeds to toss that beer can at Jake’s head.
“I’m fast,” says Alan.
“Yeah?” says Jake. “Prove it.”
“What?”
“Race me.”
Alan coughs on the weed. “I’m not doing that.”
“Tell you what. You beat me, and I’ll let you see it.” Jake points to his crotch. “Like the Titanic, bruh.”
The whole room laughs, and suddenly all I can see is twelve-year-old Alan making me swear not to tell anyone he’s gay.
And I wondered why.
“First off, gross,” says Alan. “And second, I’m not putting you to shame on your own turf. Would be highly unsportsmanlike.”
“I grew up in that pool. Plus, I’m in this new rec league in Elgin? Yeah, you’re not putting me to shame.”
Alan asks what Jake swims, to which Jake says, “Five-hundred fly.”
There is no five-hundred fly, but I guess when you have a kitchen this incredible, and all these stars in your orbit, you raise a beer and say what you want.
Jake asks, “Noah, what do you swim again?”
“Middle distance.” I barely get the words out. “Two-hundred backstroke, five-hundred freestyle.”
Jake raises a Natty Ice. “Michael fucking Phelps in the house.”
People chuckle, and I begin to feel a new side effect of these Hurricanes. “Actually, Phelps is known for the butterfly. I mean, he swam backstroke, but his only medal there was silver in the Pan Pacific Championships. He did freestyle, but so far as I know, he never won a medal for the five hundred, which is what I swim. So it’s really not an accurate comparison.”
The room stares me down.
“Dude,” says Alan. “Why so salty?”
“Nah, it’s cool,” says Jake. “Man of principle. I can respect that.” Jake gulps his beer, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “So how’s your back, bruh?”
I shrug. It’s all I have in me.
“My cousin had a herniated disc or some shit,” says Jake. “Laid him up for weeks. You seem pretty okay to me, broski.”
“You seem like a titanic dickhead.”
Alan hops down off the counter. “Come on, Noah. Let’s take a walk or something.”
“Alan,” I say, but nothing else comes out, and he doesn’t say anything, just looks at me like I’m the one who’s been crushing him like an empty can of Natty.
“Know what?” I say. “I’ll go. You stay here and get high with your friends.”
I leave the kitchen before the look on Alan’s face makes me cry in front of everyone.
10 → exit the robot
I love the way my boots sound on hardwood floors, the ultimate walking value, each step a statement, and I have to wonder: Does alcohol make us say things we don’t mean, say things we really mean, or just say really mean things?
Swigging of Hurricane, clunking of boots, this is my life now I guess.
“You can go ahead of me,” says this girl in line at the bathroom door. “I’m waiting for a friend.”
I’ve seen her before, but I’m not sure where. “I’m not here for the bathroom.”
“You waiting for someone too?”
“Nope.”
Blue bandanna. It’s the girl from earlier, the one who was smiling at me from across the dance floor. She’s pretty, but not in the same way as Val. This girl has wavy dark hair under the bandanna, pale skin, and freckles around her nose and eyes.
She’s all, “You’re just a fan of standing in lines, then.”
“More aimless roaming, I guess. But also I needed a way out of a room.”
“Well, I would be careful where you aimlessly roam.” She motions at the doors lining the hallway. “Someone is having sex.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. It’s quiet now, but a second ago it was full-on Animal Planet.”
“Good to know.”
“I’m Sara Lovelock, by the way. Sara without an h.”
“Noah Oakman. With one.”
She smiles, nods toward my Hurricane. “Hurricane, huh?”
“Yep.” I take a swig like I’m proving it. “Also, I like your bandanna.”
“Do you? I was trying it out, but I don’t know. Feels staged or something. Not sure it’s me, you know?”
“I wear the same clothes every day, so.”
My head is swimmy, but not so swimmy that I don’t realize that this night has been full of me being on the non-sober side of conversations. And yeah, the kitchen fiasco sucked, but I’m feeling fairly awesome at the moment.
“You wear the same clothes every day,” Sara says, all freaking smiles.
“Decision fatigue. I’m kind of complex, just warning you.”
Another swig to prove that shit. Don’t call it a comeback.
“You’re kind of adorable.”
Choke on the Hurricane. The Hurricane has betrayed me.
“Thanks, um. You too.”
You too? What is even happening right now.
Sara’s friend emerges from the bathroom, we say good-bye, and I mentally replay the conversation. I’m kind of complex? What in the world.
She did say I was adorable, though.
Out of nowhere, a moan. Yeah. Someone’s definitely having sex in one of these rooms. I feel like an intruder, or one of those guys who never moved out of his mom’s basement. A basement dweller, like that.
The sounds are coming in swells now, and it reminds me of this conversation I once had with Val: People are like songs, she said, ups and downs, swells and beats, happys and sads, and I said, That’s true, but I didn’t say what I was really thinking, which was, Sometimes I feel all those things at once.
I set my bottle on the floor in the hallway, stare a
t it, and here it comes: the tears, that high voltage unleashed, out of nowhere, too. Mila Henry called it “exiting the robot,” the idea that our physical bodies are constructs, ones we can exit at will. She warned against it, saying once you got out, it was tough luck finding your way back inside, and maybe it gave you a sort of spiritual bird’s-eye view, but it was dangerous, the toxicity of things outside the robot. It happens like this: I feel too much, eat too little, want to go places I’ve never been, feel those swells and beats inside, the happys and sads, too, and for once I’d like to feel a single thing for what it is, just the one fucking thing, but it’s never like that. It’s everything all at once, and no matter how organized I get my room, my records, my books, no matter how precisely I communicate a thing, or how many arrows point to how many objects, in the end I’m floating through space in a most peculiar way.
Okay.
Everything is swimming underwater.
Okay.
“There you are.” Val comes out of nowhere. “The fuck did you say to Alan?”
“Nothing.”
Now that she’s closer, her demeanor softens. “You okay, No?”
“I’m fine.”
She eyes the empty bottle on the ground. “How many of those have you had?”
“I don’t know. Five. I think.”
“Okay, well—tell me you’re done.”
“I’m done.”
“And you’ll find me when you’re ready to go,” says Val. “I’m not drinking, so I can drive.”
“Okay.”
“And you’ll apologize for whatever you said to Alan.”
“Val—”
“I’m serious, Noah. I don’t want to know a world where you and Alan aren’t hopelessly and semi-romantically in love with each other.”
A smile seeps through, but it melts as quickly as it comes.
“Listen,” says Val. “I know you didn’t wanna come tonight. And I’m sorry if you haven’t had a good time. Gimme, like, an hour, and I can go. In the meantime, why don’t you hang in the library.”