One Hundred Virgins Copyright 2006 Jason Mcgathey All Rights Reserved

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One Hundred Virgins

EXQUISITE NOISE PUBLISHING 4798 Leap Court Hilliard, OH 43026

Also by this author:

Night Driving (2001)

License Notes

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The drilling of the peepholes we’ve debated from day one. Feverish with longing, it seems unjust that a mere two inches of wood should separate us from our neighbor Stephanie. Questions inevitably surround an enterprise such as this - whether illegal, or, of more importance, whether she’ll find out - renewed each time we see or hear her pass. Yet one look at that haughty countenance, that lustrous black hair, and the potential for seeing her body naked is like dynamite in the hands of a three year old. Ultimately, this small piece of business is taken care of one winter afternoon while Stephanie’s off walking her dog. Damon drilling the holes as I play lookout, and after all this time, the days of frantic plotting and heated debate, the physical effort behind this act of perversion takes but a few seconds. Four holes in a door, and now we’re free to spend another eternity weighing this invasion. The drilling is implemented, strategically enough, in two separate rows - one chest high, the other at our belts, four holes total. Affording us ample vantage points into every inch of her bedroom, from every angle, the placing perfect, we hope, to analyze every inch of her nubile, clothes free body. And this first afternoon, after Damon’s finished drilling and Stephanie returns with her dog, any shock over what we’ve done gives way, replaced by rampant lust. High fives all around, fellows, in celebration of our genius. This brilliant gambit offers us our first glimpse into the private life of our mysterious downstairs neighbor. In person, Stephanie keeps a constant smirk on her face, wordlessly asserting her superiority. But watching her in this light, behind closed doors, the condescension she wears like that bulky black coat is all but gone. And armed now with this secret special knowledge, the tics and mannerisms of her interior world, it’s impossible to feel anything less than at least her equal. The three of us may very well be the only people alive aware that she talks to her dog almost incessantly, sometimes while toking on a giant water bong. Her own boyfriend might not even know this, but we do. A halfhearted workout buff, Stephanie’s no rock solid specimen of leanness, but keeps herself in shape to the extent that she could pose nude for Hustler and emerge unscathed. Curves worth bragging about, and an engaging smile on the rare occasions she chooses to share it. She has a job waiting tables at this trendy campus restaurant called Cap City Diner, on Olentangy River Rd. She has a boring boyfriend with a boring office job and as the details bored us to tears before, such mundane data concerns us now even less. Now, any conversation initiated while passing her on the sidewalk or the front porch means stealing valuable time she might spend indoors. Disrobing for a shower, maybe even masturbating, who knows.

I smell the possibilities here. This university, this city, I know they are ripe for the taking. Shooting off in every direction, the major arteries, the minor ones too, each pulses and flows with its own peculiar rhythm. A million future histories, a million possibilities. You move somewhere new, and the hidden volumes there escape you. Every supermarket, gas station, restaurant and tavern, every billboard and street light, encumbered with the weight of years gone past, but none of this is immediately apparent. Heartache, mirth, rage and romance, there is plenty of this and more sunk within the fissures of these buildings and sidewalks. But to the outsider, they’re anonymous places and things, as they appear to us until we peel off the skin and live inside them awhile. Columbus comes calling, luring us into its fiery midst. We arrive the first of the year, Alan and I moving the bulk of our stuff in with the help of his wacko ex girlfriend Alexis. Sixty seven degrees in January, it’s a record setting swell of mercury, and the heat helps assuage the customary misery of making a winter move. Damon arrives a day later, with his parents and a fuckmate named Tammy, but by now the temperature has already fallen fifteen degrees. Capturing this epic moment for posterity, Damon’s mom snaps a picture of the three of us, grinning in threadbare clothes before our even less impressive homestead. Meanwhile Damon’s worrywart dad hands me a garbage sack full of used paperbacks, feeling I could use this sizeable diversion. He hassles a passing jogger, with questions about the neighborhood. “Is this a pretty safe place to live, you think?” “How should I know, man?” the jogger retorts, without breaking stride, “I just moved here myself.” Clearly shaken by this trashy environment we’ve chosen to roost in, mom and pop Privette drive away, shaking their heads. The fifteenth largest city in the nation, Columbus boasts the biggest college campus in the country, OSU, four blocks away from our house. But the whole metropolis, university included, seems to regard itself as a charming little village, an attitude that pervades everything from the isolated, communal feel each neighborhood possesses unto itself, to the driving habits of its residents. Everyone in this town continually cruises five miles below the posted speed limit, a senseless quirk on par with our lack of a major professional sport. The real story here isn’t the city, however, but the apartment we’re moving into. Otherwise known as 1990 ½ Summit Street, this is the physical manifestation of our long harbored bohemian dreams. We’ve heard the legends about the meat market atmosphere of this campus scene, within walking distance of its myriad bars. If the home we’re moving into is also a nightmarish dump and less than a half mile away from the crackhouse district, so be it. Taking up floors two and three of an ancient house that has been split into four roughshod pieces - giving us two downstairs neighbors and one beside us upstairs - our living quarters are dreadfully unsanitary, but we just don’t care. Rent, at a paltry three sixty per, is the cheapest around, and our landlord, a shady campus property baron named Wayne Ault, is currently under investigation for income tax fraud. We figure he won’t be giving us too much trouble, but he’s probably not repairing a whole hell of a lot around here, either. Our first attempts at cleaning up the pigsty are laughably ineffective, leading us to pretty much resign and rarely attempt again. But twenty one dollars spent on cleaning supplies buys us a token effort, and we begin the damn near impossible task demanding our attention. First things first, we prop up this department store mannequin in one corner of our kitchen, our version of a faithful watchdog. Damon once bought this beauty for fifty dollars, and has modified it since with a glued on rug of pubic hair, metallic robot breasts jutting out straight from Madonna’s Blonde Ambition era wardrobe, and the thick makeup job a downtown whore might wear. The dingy green and white tile of our kitchen floor is crudded over with black, ditto the bathroom. Whoever rented the place immediately before us - a bunch of skate punks, judging from the scuffed up hardwood floors and various stickers plastered all over the refrigerator - seriously ran 1990 ½ Summit Street to seed. Inexplicably, they left a dozen bags of kitty litter behind, too, but also this intricately carved wooden floor lamp that I swiftly claim as my own. Mushrooms are growing in the light sockets; our bathroom window is nothing but a taped up sheet of plywood, and raccoon tracks are discernible along its eastern wall, between the sink and commode. Wiring proves a joke - we blow light bulbs at a record clip as days go by - and in the master bedroom, a leak is soon discovered so severe that Alan nearly kills himself one afternoon climbing all over the roof trying to remedy it. A sad setup we’ve willed ourselves into, though typical of the campus area. By chopping up this once beautiful, spacious house, that faceless someone from decades past has rendered these four bizarrely construed apartments. In our case this means Alan, who owns a large bed and really nice stereo and more stuff than Damon and I combined, is to be given the master second floor bedroom. In actuality, with an ornamental marble fireplace and all, this should be the living room, but we’re not concerned with such trivialities. Along the long hall which leads from the stair landing and the filthy bathroom, filthy kitchen, in between these and Alan’s room, my own tidy corner of the galaxy lays. A snug little twelve by twelve alcove, hardwood floors but more or less warm, tucked, as it is, in the middle of our apartment. Drifting further, up a second flight of stairs which begins across the hall from my room, a third bedroom looms above, and a fourth beyond it. In the summer months this upper floor will turn unbearably hot, but for now this third floor’s a source of much welcome warmth. Hack musicians all, the three of us compile our assorted equipment in the first of these rooms and dub it our jamming facility. Damon claims the other, in the deepest reaches of the third floor and directly above Alan’s quarters. His window, like the two in Alan’s room, looks down upon the steady roaring traffic of Summit Street, US 23, as it tears its way through campus en route to downtown. Psychologically, mentally, physically, spiritually, a lot can be read about the individual simply from the way he’s living. Alan’s room, well furnished and well kept; Damon, paranoid about getting things lost or stolen, brings down only what he needs and leads a minimalist monk’s existence; as for me, I spend my nights in a sleeping bag and keep my room in a constant state of disarray, with boxes all over the place and papers flying everywhere, books, cassettes, you name it. We scour our godforsaken place to the bone, but even so, there’s only so much we can hope to accomplish in this forum. Come nightfall, we kick back with a twelve pack of beer, smiling in content at the job well done. Our first brave stabs at big city life, behind us. Even Damon’s sex partner Tammy, though she never strings together more than three words at once, is visibly pleased and amused all at once. It bothers us not that in the hustle and bustle of getting moved in, we three have collectively forgotten to place a call for electricity or heat. We shiver in the dark, tell stories while huddling around Damon’s space heater for warmth, feasting on an incredible pot of chili Alan’s father sends down with us. No amount of hardship can diminish the indescribable euphoric rush I feel, we all feel, at having made it. Swigging bottled beer in the dark, we buckle down and ride out the worst. The three of us have been friends since junior high school, and to anyone who suggests we’ll never last living together, we offer only a dismissive laugh. 2

Preceding Damon’s arrival, Alan and I hit the streets running to secure employment here. He’s scouring the classified ads but I stick to the campus restaurants, focusing upon one place in particular, a rib joint coincidentally named Damon’s Place For Ribs. Running from a series of unfortunate mishaps that left me $10,000 in debt in addition to losing all my furniture, most of my clothes and half of my personal mementos, my final year in Mansfield was a dark and ridiculous saga. Yet in those twelve months I managed exactly two redeemable deeds, in finishing my first novel, and hooking up with this absolute goddess named Jessica. Jessica I can’t seem to reach now, in the handful of intermittent tries I’m making, but it was while working at the Mansfield Damon’s that we met, and as such I think I know a thing or two about their menu. “Come back on Tuesday. Talk to me then, I’ll know if I can use you or not.” I’m talking to Mark Stokes, a poker faced little man of few words who oversees this operation. Standing no taller than five foot eight, with a salt and pepper crew cut tapered to perfection down the back, Stokes is the general manager, a no nonsense field tactician. So stoic I can’t find a way to read him, though fortunately there are ways to circumvent an absolute reliance on his opinion. Down on your luck with enough frequency and you develop a cagey resourcefulness, honed through idiotic struggles dotting your past like those raccoon tracks against our bathroom walls. I creep back into the restaurant on Monday, knowing damn well it’s Stokes’s day off. Hillary’s eating lunch at a table in the back of the clubhouse, a sweet, short brunette with amazing curves, a supervisor. She’s munching on a salad to retain that shapely figure and I barrel forward with my left field introduction. “Yeah, Mark told me to come in today so I could start my training.” “That’s weird,” she says, brow crinkling with confusion as she sets aside her fork, “I wonder why he would tell you that....this is his day off....” “I don’t know,” I smile and shrug, and just like that, I have a job. Hillary clocks me in, and I begin the gargantuan task of filling out their curiously voluminous paperwork. Seated across from me along this plush clubhouse booth is a blonde haired chick named Amanda, who talks so much this task takes twice as long as it should. Most of what she is I’m already certain is utter bullshit, but I listen anyway, because she’s hot, because her massive breasts are more entertaining than this instructional video broadcasting on one of our big screen TVs. “I used to work here before,” she explains, doodling in her own dossier of new hire materials, “they even promoted me to manager for awhile. But I got an even better offer to manage Skyline Chili and I couldn’t hardly turn that down....” “Really?” say I. Damon and Alan are spending their own Monday in much more frivolous fashion, escorting Tammy to a Polynesian lunch buffet downtown. Jobless, Alan’s stuffing as much spare grub as he can into a knapsack, uncertain how many more days will pass before his next influx of cash. Meanwhile, Tammy’s still gushing about the scenery down here, in all probability the highlight of her year. “Oh my god!” she squeals, “I’ve never seen buildings this big before!” Damon doesn’t have to sweat finding a job, because he has a steady gig playing bass on the weekends for a classic rock group in Mansfield. Enrolled at the OSU branch up there ever since we left high school, he’s run out of courses to take, and alone among the three of us he has an actual point in relocating to Columbus. The position he holds with Get-A-Way Band is ideal, then, in that he’s able to bank plenty for rent and parties, while leaving his weekdays free for school and study. He’s met this dim country bumpkin Tammy at one of their shows, skinny to a fault and with a pointed chin to match. She rarely says three words but maintains her glorious head of long brown hillbilly hair as if it’s the most prized possession in her small town universe. Which for all we know, it is. But Damon suspects she’s boffing her landlord in exchange for rent money and out of kindness or pity brings her down here for the week, to escape all that. Touching, in some weird way, to meet someone like her. So unblemished by modern life, oblivious to the world swirling around her. Yet well versed in the bedroom, judging from what Damon tells us, a paradox that has her begging for anal sex often, for intercourse in general most of her waking hours. In light of this information, I’m leery taking up Damon’s offer that we all crash in his room this second night here with no heat. The temperatures have fallen consistently since Thursday and hover now around zero, but though his room is the toastiest in the house, who are Alan and I to deprive them of their privacy, especially if Tammy needs laid as often as legend would have it. When it’s time to retire Damon takes his space heater upstairs, yet even though our sleeping bags provide precious little warmth we can’t bring ourselves to impose. “Now that you mention it, though, why are we hanging out in my room every night?” Alan muses, the exhale jets of his breath visible in the frozen air. Valid question, that, for Alan’s room is so frosty we dub it Planet Hoth. Among our home’s other charming quarks the climate veers wildly from station to station, and he’s just lucky enough to squat upon Antarctica. The running joke is that scientists will someday camp in this room, confirming the coldest locale ever documented by man. I endure about half the night in my room, but through chattering teeth I cannot sleep and trudge, sleeping bag in hand, up to the convection oven of Damon’s bedroom. Dozing off around three a.m. on his floor, I’m hazily half awakened by the sound of my roommate rising for school, just a few hours later. The sun has yet to rise outside and it’s raccoon mask black in here, but I hear him groaning and cursing aloud, as he straps his shoes on in a chair beside me. Or at least what I assume to be beside me, until my eyes snap open for good much later and I find that I’m perfectly hemmed in by the chair’s four legs, just missing my sides by inches. By pure accident I narrowly escaped an oblivious impalement, but Damon’s far more the trooper. Walking to school this ridiculous six a.m., while the rest of us rise at leisure, while I begin my first day proper at the restaurant and later, Alan and I take Tammy to lunch at a campus fast food establishment. Wordlessly, she reaches under the table and gropes Alan’s package, smirking as he recoils. Later this same night, making a ninety minute drive in each direction just to return her home, Tammy’s brother comes barreling out the door threatening to kick Damon’s ass for some reason, and just like that, she’s swiftly cast aside. But at least he has some surreptitious tapes he’s recorded of the two of them fucking, which the three of us snicker over repeatedly, particularly the high pitched squeals she makes when particularly caught up in the moment. Penniless, my idea of beginning employment at the restaurant is to jump on the floor immediately. Tip money equals survival, now that we’ve killed Mr. Kline’s chili and my car’s almost out of gas, but unfortunately Stokes has other ideas. Coming from the same chain up north it’s not as if I need to learn the ropes, yet he’ll have me training for three days just the same. “It’s not really necessary, dude,” I tell him, “I know this menu like the back of my hand.” “Mmm hmm,” he nods his head, lips pursed as they always are, “Sandy will be your trainer.” Following this middle aged Sandy around for three days then, an anachronism in these parts. Utterly alone among our wait staff, she’s the only one over thirty, much less forty. Rumor has it her husband’s loaded and she keeps this job just for pocket cash, but at any rate she’s the lone throwback, a lifer who’s never done anything else. With her fake smile and her canned speeches, waltzing in her shadow is a minimum wage nightmare that refuses to end. She pushes desserts as if selling cars and the overall effect of her shtick is sickening. In addition to all this other madness, I’ve already managed to lose my wallet since moving here. No ID renders you an essential cipher in this city, and I have to wonder if I shouldn’t spend my days sitting in the middle of an empty room staring at the walls. Seems the only solution to keeping myself out of trouble, climbing over this staggering mountain of debt. Once I reach the floor, on Thursday, they’ve got me dialed into their standard lunch wage of three thirteen an hour. Most establishments break off the least allowed by law - two thirteen, half the minimum wage - and so it is for the night shift employees here as well. But even though I’m shoved into the dismal, much reviled dining room each morning until I can climb further up the seniority ladder, they’re breaking off this extra dollar every hour for me and all the other unlucky daytime stiffs. I figure these guys must be okay if they’re willing to fork over the extra cash. Right. Poker faced Mark Stokes is cool and so are most of the others running that place, but every restaurant I’d ever worked for seemed pervaded by incompetency, it’s in the woodwork somehow, and this place is no different. Maybe because these managers can never get on the same page, the operation suffers. John Stella, Stokes’s right hand man, is a little ball of pizza dough, perpetuating this overly gruff front for no discernible reason. But Stella spends most of his time in the kitchen and rarely crosses my path anyway, which is fine by me. He’s the kind of guy who treats his ass kissers and best friends like gold but is a dick to everyone else, an attitude I don’t have much use for. On the flipside, John’s brother in law, Ron, is also a member of our management team. Tall and a well scrubbed clean, his hair a neatly trimmed black hair, Ron gives the appearance of having probably played basketball in high school and never said an offensive word to anyone. Figures then that he’s a pervert on par with a par with my roommates, prefacing most of his comments with an “actually, uh....” that serves as the only indicator something foul is imminent. So Ron is an ally, a real straight shooter, but finding a management figure to befriend beyond him is iffy at best. Hillary, sure, she of the long flowing golden hair, the alluring cocktail of a curvy frame and bookworm’s sweet demeanor. She’s a wild child away from here, which only improves her standing in my ledger, and becomes a valuable comrade. Still, for every Hillary there’s a Lori, the glossy eyed banquet manager, thin and sallow and unpleasant like Michelle Pfeiffer on crack, and there is also the blight of the two Drews. Hovering over most mornings, Drew Forster and Smith attend to each minor detail with anal retentive scrutiny. A short and wiry bespectacled geek, Forster arrives each opening shift unfailingly grumpy, though still a far sight easier to deal with than Smith. Smith, the smug, overweight bastard with thinning blonde hair and round wire rim glasses is the manager most directly involved with me and my dining room posse, a thespian in his spare time with some local theatre company. With every sentence spoken he’s offering dramatic inflection alongside all purpose condescension, yet while he believes he’s coming across as a hardass, we all pretty much assume he must be gay. “Stoner boy!” he addresses me, with appropriately booming voice, “if I were casting a coming of age movie, I would seriously consider you for the lead.” Attached to the fleabag Parke University Hotel, our rib joint offers not only lunch and dinner but a breakfast buffet as well, run with an iron fist by Smith in the despicable cave of a dining room. He’s got a couple other lackeys cruising through at six in the morning to set this up, but whoever’s opening dining room lunch is stuck tearing it down. In at ten thirty, the opener has to knock this out as well as get the server station stocked and the kitchen ready by eleven, when the rest of the crew shows up and we officially open for business. Moving up the hierarchal ladder, above Stokes, a number of other supposedly key figures are floating in occasionally to check on the operation. Two-faced Chip King, for instance, a fat little fuck who gives you high fives on his way in, before bitching to Stokes about the unkempt quality of your uniform. Or his boss, John Votino, who’s always pissed off about something, period. I respect Votino a shade more than King, however, because he never pretends to be your pal; he just flies straight to Stokes with his beefs about your sorry ass. The particulars of who owns the place are somewhat cloudy, but this round old man named Mr. Self factors in somewhere, and the principal proprietor is none other than George Steinbrenner, who of course claims the New York Yankees among his business holdings. Steinbrenner, then, is naturally involved with the local Yankees minor league team, our beloved Columbus Clippers, and always puts his traveling players up in the Parke Hotel, another piece of his empire. I spot him in the restaurant just once, early in my tenure here, but technically speaking he is my boss. Steinbrenner’s my boss and yes, it’s worth noting, I would wind up getting fired.

Our twilight odyssey begins at the Drake Union, deep within the labyrinthine chambers of this sprawling university. An entertainment facility for students, Drake Union has live theatre, which we avoid, and a charming little bar fitted with some bowling lanes and a pair of warped pool tables. Unable to drink without ID, and not much for alcohol anyway, I watch my roommates become thoroughly soused before we drift upstairs to a third story fast food restaurant. Overlooking the smooth sable surface of our Olentangy River, the back wall of this restaurant is all windows and its view breathtaking. Thirty below zero tonight and there’s no one else out except us fools, rendering this campus an unblemished wonderland. We’re at Ruby’s now, two doors down from our house. Driven home from the Drake and boredom leads us here, already our favorite hangout. After one week, the scowling bartender Randy knows our faces well enough not to hassle with ID, which is fortunate if I ever hope to drink in this town again. Still unaccustomed to drinking beer, though, unable to hang with Alan’s pilsner pounding Irish roots, Damon and I ask for daiquiris and Randy’s not above glowering even at us. “Gee, let me go check in the CLOSET for my BLENDER,” he retorts, “maybe I can DUST IT OFF.” Ordering mixed drinks here in the metropolis, the overworked barkeeps have too much on their hands as it is to piddle with this nonsense. Not so much a problem here at Ruby’s as it is those overstuffed clubs bursting at the seams on High Street, but the mentality is still geared principally toward serving beer. A quick turnover, a timely dispersion of the lines standing sometimes six deep. A mellow dive, Ruby’s is basically your proper English pub, outfitted almost entirely with wood and a dark, smoky atmosphere that grows incrementally warmer the foggier it becomes. A creaky wooden beer stained floor and matching bar, matching tables and chairs and stage further accentuate this idyll, not to mention the mostly killer jukebox. Above it a chalkboard calendar charts the musical acts due up this month, horrendous though most of them are. Two pool tables near the front door and real darts, an elaborately stained glass window on the other half of the bar and the kind of chattering hippie clientele that unites the thread of conversation, on quiet nights like these, from one end of the building to the other. Still, thoroughly soused, my roommates are both pulling for a walk down to High Street, and I never need much incentive to join them. Down Woodruff on foot through this freezing winter weather, the temperature swing we’ve endured this past week has to stand as some sort of record. In the space of seven days it’s gone from seventy plus to thirty below, though if it seems ridiculous at this instant our misery doubles as we round the corner south onto High. Along it, with the wall of shops on its eastern shore nearly uniformly closed at this one o’clock hour and the university lining the west side of the street a pitch black, lifeless tomb, the long straight gauntlet of road makes for a high pressure wind tunnel, blasting our bundled skin, turning our bones to ice. The fast food Mexican restaurant we were hoping to catch is shut down for the evening, ten blocks south of Woodruff, lonely and frosted over near 9th Avenue and High. Fortunately for us a pub named Panini’s spills a beacon of warm yellow light onto the sidewalk at the corner of 10th, and they not only serve sandwiches but don’t even card at the door. We sling our thawing bodies onto stools at the second, most distant bar and stare up at its monolithic menu, while the Drew Smith clone with a name badge reading Matt openly scoffs at us. “Why don’t you get a haircut consistent with the century you live in?” he challenges Damon. Damon has a clean cut past to call upon, but cast it aside somewhere a year or two earlier. Now sporting decidedly unfashionable Buddy Holly hornrimmed glasses and a shaggy mop of hair, he’s doing all he can to look the part of an eccentric rock star. He loathes taking showers - once a week, tops - and the camouflage jacket he wears like skin probably isn’t helping the cause when it comes to these campus ladies. But he expects little else outside of banging those hillbilly broads up north, hopefully walking away with a diploma a year and some change from now. Anything else is just gravy, including the two hundred bucks a week he makes playing bass, for that cheesy rock band on the weekends. Panini’s is a moderately upscale joint near the southern tip of campus, and on a weeknight such as this it resembles a New York City deli more than anything else. Heaping subs and sandwiches, a smattering of business boosted by half upon our arrival. When the weekend comes all those tables in the center will find themselves jostled against the wall and a DJ’s bound to arrive, as this joint magically morphs into a dance club. An overly crowded one at that, with pisspoor music and too little ventilation. Waiting for our sandwiches to exit the oven, I yawn and risk a look around. Scarcely populated on a frosty eve such as this, but the ratio’s decent. This skinny brunette in the corner with giant breasts is sitting at a table with some other girl, and we can’t resist craning our necks back at them whenever the spirit moves us. Damon and Alan are pounding mugs of ale but from where I sit ogling them offers the only source of entertainment. “Where you guys live?” Matt asks, bored, the three of us his lone patrons. “Summit and Woodruff,” I tell him. “Yeah, we walked,” Alan says. “You walked?” he scoffs. “Yeah.” “From Summit and Woodruff?” “Yeah.” “Bullshit,” he says, “it’s thirty below.” “We walked,” I insist. “Bullshit.” Beyond this point he loses interest in speaking to any of us, figuring we’re either escaped mental patients or habitual liars. Then the brunette with giant breasts and her friend are joined by these Italian guys who keep shooting us evil glares for checking out their girlfriends, at which juncture we figure it’s probably a good idea to finish our sandwiches and get the hell out of here. Halfway home, frozen to the bone, we stop at the all night Buckeye Donuts, we defrost our fingers playing a 1980s video game in the corner before wrapping up this senseless journey.

Always flaky, Alexis once dressed well and exhibited a modicum of normalcy. But through a series of breakups with Alan - by turns both cause and effect of her progressive idiosyncracy - she’s flipped her past upside down. She begins associating with this drugged out bisexual chick named Sara who systematically converts Alexis into a total weirdo, a path she’d already begun mapping out on her own. These days, following the ebb and flow of Alexis’s loopy conversation is a fragmented nightmare and among other charming personality developments, she too is experimenting lesbianism with many of her longtime friends. “Just to freak guys out,” she explains, “we like to french kiss each other sometimes.” She waits tables at the Applebee’s on Olentangy, which is where we meet for drinks. Located in the same strip mall as my restaurant, hers is a bustling establishment, a swarm of dense bodies crammed necktie to elbow in one warm, raucous room. Now that he’s caught on with a temp service, Alan can party with impunity again, and rounding out our quaint quartet is the recently relieved hostess, Marion. With swelling bosom and sleek black hair, Marion is among the more normal of Alexis’s colleagues, though at this moment they speak of making out at some party recently - again, just to psyche out some boys. Hard to reconcile Alexis’s prim and proper past against the image she now portrays, and it is equally impossible to believe she and Alan were ever compatible. Clean cut and muscular, his copper colored hair trimmed to regulation, Alan spends one weekend a month in the arms of the national guard. He’s a weekend warrior doing his part for some padding on the paycheck and tuition assistance should he choose a return to school. By contrast, while Alexis has always held a deep seated penchant for funky, mismatched and outdated clothes, she’s tweaked this fetish to the extreme. By day she’s also attending beautician school, and the havoc this education has wreaked on her ever changing hairstyle is staggering. “You still seeing that Rikki-Tikki-Tavi guy?” Alan asks, always handy with the racist jokes. “Rakesh,” Alexis corrects, spelling out the name of her med student boyfriend for the thousandth time. “Maybe not for long,” Marion says, with a knowing smirk. “I don’t know what happens,” Alexis sighs, “he always has an erection when we’re making out....but every time we start to have sex he shrivels.” “Hmm,” Alan muses, “maybe I should call him Limpy-Dicky-Tavi.” Boredom leads us to Alexis’s apartment, in the University Village complex immediately behind this strip mall. Flipping on her old school Nintendo, we become one with Mario in flattening dog faced mushrooms, all to the tune of that corny music we’ve memorized better than our birthdates. When it’s not my turn I’m flipping through a stack of music magazines Alexis has just given me, old rags from a year or two prior. Cheap amusement, but no worse than the kind Alan found on the way here, hollering out his truck’s window at a young chick strolling up the sidewalk. “Hey! We can buy beer!” he calls out to her. Enthralled to no end by her mystified expression, he chortles for the remainder of our drive. Marion bails moments after impact, and for this I feel to blame. Though she has a boyfriend, the dynamic demands I provide some small measure of excitement, and yet I fare, as is far too often the case, miserably short. Fifteen seconds after meeting me a shield comes up and nothing I can say or do will penetrate this, I don’t exist. An isolated incident I could pin on her, but this reaction is nothing new and the best I can ascertain the general impression these chicks form is not one of hatred, or dislike, but that they find me trifling and ridiculous for some reason or reasons I’ve yet to learn. Alan’s regaled me with tales of how the three of them will wrestle around on the floor as he cops cheap feels of Marion’s contour, but with me around it’s this, video games and magazines, a somber atmosphere. Alexis puffing on a one hitter bowl of weed and working the telephone to score some stronger drugs, as Marion sits twiddling her thumbs. “....yeah, so anyway,” Alan’s continuing a story I already know and scarcely pay attention to, “these Italian guys noticed we were checking out their girlfriends, so they started giving us the evil eye.” “They were probably mobsters!” Alexis gushes, “don’t you guys know the mob runs that place?! You shouldn’t even hang out there!” “Oh whatever!” Alan scoffs, “the mob....quit being stupid.” Upon Marion’s departure, miffed by her inability to touch base with any connections, Alexis shepherds a mission back to the strip mall, as we walk to its indigenous pool hall, Chalkie’s. A giant room with searing overhead lights, Chalkie’s boasts about thirty tables and wall to wall students, or at least those of a corresponding age. Grabbing one of the few remaining felts, Alan secures us a pitcher of beer and we jump into a game of cutthroat pool. Alexis paces around and fidgets, she slinks off to the foyer payphone, as we soon dismiss her and finish our game head to head. I can understand Alan’s interest in establishing this carryover pussy, to get him over the hump until we meet some girls down here. But though my own skills dim next to his and Damon’s, I wonder if this inability to maintain any connections from the old days is much hindrance at all. With no number to reach my last Mansfield fling Jessica, the lonely nights fan out like flames and yet they might be a blessing in disguise. I have no choice but to sink my teeth into this college scene until something snaps, and the threat of an Alexis-like distraction doesn’t factor in the least. The legends surrounding this magical town have led us down here, and there’s no sense wasting time digging through the past. Our focus lands upon a blonde shooting pool nearby, easily the hottest chick we’ve seen since moving here. She has a young Debbie Harry’s face fused to the figure of a porn star. Dolled up to the nines, her radiant lipstick and dazzling eyeliner a vortex drawing every eye and light in the room, she keeps looking over at us with a smile, fully aware we can’t keep our eyes away from the magnetic pulse of her appearance. Skinny, with large breasts and a perfect behind, she’s chosen some skinny nerd in Coke bottle glasses as her companion for the evening. “I don’t get it, dude,” I moan, citing this troubling theme we’ve seen around campus, the knockout babe coupling with some dork. “They don’t feel threatened by the math geek,” Alan explains, “she doesn’t have to worry about him putting the moves on her.” Alexis disappears entirely, off on an unnamed mission. We finish our pitcher and pool game without the interruption of her frequent senseless stories, until she returns a half hour later acting even wackier than before. All the while Blondie taunts us with her maddening smile, her doughy ass in flimsy slacks bent over the table. Alexis paces around talking about some pills she just scored but we’re bored with this scene, as she’s finally grating on Alan’s nerves just as bad as mine and we politely excuse ourselves. Crossing the river home, back into the heart of university, Alan laments his reunion gone awry. “I don’t mind a couple chicks dyking it out, but what the fuck,” he curses, “you don’t see me kissing dudes just for shits and giggles.”

“I just moved here a little over a year ago from New York City,” Amanda’s telling me, “see I was really bad into drugs, I was drinking all the time and hooked on crack and I had to get away.” Amanda stands maybe five foot four, with a soft luxurious banner of curly blonde hair, those giant breasts and an ample ass. When she smiles the creases form a pair of twin parentheses, two on each cheek, and her blue eyes embed a thinly veiled mischief. Her appearance brings to mind a more pornographic version of the mom from Growing Pains, and yet looking past that nonstop bluster, her purported hardcore past, she too comes across as a doting housewife. It’s hard to equate these stories she’s laying on me as even remotely factual, yet it’s obvious she believes them, if no one else. Most everyone else finds Amanda a cloying nuisance, but I beg to differ, or maybe it’s just that I’m desperate for trim. I know her type well, and in fact her type is always attracted to guys like me, because I’m a blank slate. I’m an ear which always listens, without ever offering any judgement, or interrupting with any stories of my own. She asserts she ascended to management in her earlier incarnation here, and who am I to say otherwise, even as all the other employees roll their eyes at this claim. Even as I’m standing there when Mark Stokes spots her name on the bottom of our schedule, posted in the server station hallway. “Who hired her back!?” he irritably demands, of a couple other managers clustered nearby. I force myself to suppress a laugh. Apparently, Amanda has slipped through the cracks much the same as I. Though countless faceless others pull night shifts here, and a whole mob clamors over tables each morning in the clubhouse, our daytime dining room crew numbers exactly one half dozen. Seasoned veterans, whether hardcore party animals scraping by for rent money or pampered brats seeking a cushion atop their trust fund reserves, unite alike in their disdain for this half of the restaurant. Left alone as the dominion of new hires and fuckups, this detestable pit with balding brown carpet and tacky Tudor decor finds Mike and Kip and Akash and me meeting one or both of those criteria completely. Aside from Amanda, Brandy is the only other female peopling our crew, but for starters this is feast aplenty. Postcard cute, with dimpled smile and a wave of long light hair, Brandy has a figure more fully fleshed out than someone of her modest height and weight rightfully should. Pleasant and unassuming as a dislocated farmgirl, an image nailed home with heart stopping precision the first time I spot her in a pair of jeans. These girls you just can’t get a handle on until they parade past you wearing street clothes, and the way her behind fills out those pants is an eyepopping joy compared to those black dress slacks and electric pink shirts they force us into. Hideous though these shirts are, they represent rhythm and routine, patterns I’ve known nothing about for the months preceding this one. Inevitably bound to bore me, for now there is comfort in rising at the same time each day, throwing on the same clothes, driving in and seeing the same faces. Not just our six man team but the satellites swirling around us, the interactions of our fragile ecosystem. Drew Smith adjusting his glasses as he condemns some trivial detail of our work, or the dreadlocked, wisecracking black man Gary Russell cranking his hiphop tunes and lunches from the dining room kitchen Wednesday through Sunday every week. Jenny Hughes at the lobby podium, soft spoken and smiling, the rare veteran chick who avoids most of the others, and Stacey Edwards slinging drinks and her own peculiar wit behind the clubhouse bar. Jenny mans the hostess stand each weekday morning with plump, pouting lips, or, as they’re known in some circles, DSL’s. Her chestnut hair cascades halfway down her back and shimmers even in the dim lighting of the lobby, as does her flawless countenance. She never wears makeup, nor has any reason to, and with a demeanor as sugar sweet as Brandy’s it’s mystifying why she consistently dates such losers. I’m unaware of her history but the blanks are filled in by everyone else, her past, the jackass cook named Steve she’s currently seeing. That she’s already caught him cheating on her once but stands by her man nonetheless. Though Drew Smith continually stands behind our dining room bar, polishing both his glasses and the ones we use to serve drinks, if we actually need any alcohol during these a.m. shifts it’s to the clubhouse we’re forced to travel. Behind its bar, which has more the feel of a smoky tavern and does twice the business of our bright, stuffy dining room, the vaguely Oriental looking Stacey Edwards holds court with the most sensually seductive currently found on our payroll. Big city glamorous like I’d hoped more of these girls would be, her coarse black hair looks as though it were trimmed with a pocket knife, and in sharp contrast to Jenny Hughes she wears glittering eyeliner and the occasional dab of exotic lipstick. Stacey’s quick to dispense highly illustrious tales concerning her and sidekick Hillary and another clubhouse chick, Amy A, dropping acid and wandering around the artsy Short North district, and I wonder if she’s the physical embodiment of these wild times we’ve moved here to find. For the most part, at least while working, she comes across as a dreamily stoned pothead, though I’ve seen her in that black leather jacket and those hole riddled jeans, and I know there’s more to the story. She might not have the most outrageous frame but I’m sure there’s something under those clothes worth exploring, and I hope she grants the chance. “God, I hate people!” Mike Short seethes, bursting into the shadowy cavern of our server station, as we’re treated to venomous verbal reenactment of his current crisis. His common mantra, he mutters this one at least three or four times a day, dead serious and on the verge of bursting a blood vessel in his forehead each time. Standing a few inches lower than me, Short fits the name well and walks around with jet black hair neatly parted down one side, a goatee to match. He stomps around with clenched teeth continually threatening to quit, oblivious to the comic value inherent in his runaway rage. Furthering our wide sweeping study in incompetence, Kip shares not only the same job as Mike but the same apartment as well, in the University Village complex just behind our restaurant. Joined most days by Akash, the three of them leave here bound for that humble abode, eating up their afternoons with video games and bong loads. With his hair extending just shy of Damon’s length, though tucked behind his ears while working, Kip exudes a stoned aura on par with Stacey’s, far more subdued than his passive aggressive roommate. Focusing perhaps with Zen placidity upon their annual summer trip to Colorado, his and Short’s, whereby they act as white water rafting guides, a gig so plum I wonder how they stomach the other nine months living here. Posited between the two, Akash is a dark skinned guy of Middle Eastern descent, continually whining, but otherwise maintaining his cool. Living closer to campus, on Indianola, he catches a ride to work most mornings with me and another one home, on the rare afternoons he isn’t smoking down with Mike and Kip. Personifying what I consider the classical OSU student, Akash doesn’t have a car and bums rides not just here but everywhere. Working some half assed job, filling up so many hours with those other trivial pursuits it’s a wonder he squeezes any classes in at all. Lumped in with those three burnouts, yet everyone at the restaurant believes I’m the one on serious drugs. Nothing new, it’s a plague that follows me everywhere. My shift ends at two o’clock and Stacey calls my name from across the building, waving me over to her clubhouse bar. Once there, she reaches across the counter to hand me a zip locked baggie full of banana peels. “Here, McGathey,” she purrs in that huskily alluring voice, “try not to smoke these all in one place.”

Kara arrives here a galaxy removed from the girl we knew in high school. Tight jeans and a black leather jacket like pages stolen from the Stacey Edwards playbook, or maybe the other way around. She’s developed a killer body somewhere along the line and with her naturally pale blonde hair cut fashionably short, exposing more of her angelic face, the blossom into womanhood has been a kind one. We were never tremendously close, but she’s attending OSU in pursuit of a teaching degree and decides to drop by for drinks. New to this game, we find some coincidence in reuniting with an old friend from back home, ignorant that this is the point on the map everyone has converged upon. From what she says a slew of familiar faces are buried in the brambles down here, if only we’ll connect the dots and find them. “Wow,” she says, plopping onto Alan’s bed beside me, as the other two grin and drink beer on our tiny couch, “how long’s it been since I’ve seen you?” “I don’t know. Probably since graduation,” I surmise, a span of four years. Damon has spent the weekend just past banging some old woman he met at their show, but he’s also, beginning in the fall quarter and simmering through the holidays and erupting anew now that this winter school period has begun, developed a serious crush on one of his classmates, Meredith. The least entrenched of us all, despite his enrollment, I get the feeling Damon will split town the instant he has a degree, and I fear he’ll never dive fully into everything this university has to offer. But I look at his adoration of this Meredith chick the same way I look at our utilities which have been up and running for days, the same way I look at the plastic with which we’ve taken the time to wrap every window. The same way I view another old friend of ours, Mandy Goff, who’s already come down once to clean our house top to bottom, all for a twelve pack of beer. In this light I see Kara, as another scrap of the patchwork quilt we’re stitching here, a guiding light to help show us the way. Fifty four thousand students and half of those must be female and it stands to reason that of the five or six thousand freshman chicks there’s a hundred virgins in there somewhere. One hundred virgins who know nothing about us, clean slates we can start over with, absolve and wash away our failures. Kara’s living here on campus with four other girls, though, and if they’re not quite virgins I’m still positive, for the interim, that they’ll do. Kara insists on driving and leads us along a number of major thoroughfares to the city’s decaying north side, a district of the inner city that we know nothing about. Out this way, bums push shopping carts down litter strewn sidewalks and the police siren is an incessant soundtrack, varying in location but never shutting off entirely. She’s zipping along Morse at breakneck speed, knowing no other mode except full bore, whether mashing the gas pedal or slamming the brake. Onto a vaguely more gentrified side street, we park on the grass alongside this road, for the club’s own lot is teeming past capacity with cars. Stepping out into the brisk winter wind, we rub our coatsleeves standing at the end of a fifty yard long line. For years, we’ve heard stories about the clubs down here, wall to wall females, total insanity. In line at last for one such destination, Precinct 99, and every time the front door opens we’re treated a brief glimpse into the world everyone has touted all these years. Harsh red lights and throbbing dance music, chicks shaking their asses on tables, atop the bar, in time with the propulsive, teeth rattling beat. For these first two weeks disappointment was a resurfacing theme in our excursions around town, but this is more like it, the promised land we’ve envisioned. “Shit,” I curse, as we reach the cross armed door man, “I still don’t have an ID.” “You just now thought of this?” Kara smirks, hands upon womanly hips, bewildered by my unwavering inattentiveness surviving all these years intact. Even worse, this, than having never witnessed the hopping club scene at all, catching just a glimpse before the carpet’s pulled out from under us. Back into Kara’s car and I might be an airhead, but she’s the worst driver of all time, holding no concept of gradual acceleration. Gas pedal to the floor and pulverizing brake jams, the cycle repeat itself. The light turns green and there’s nothing in between, from warp speed to stand still. “Ah, all girls drive like this,” Damon says, but somehow I doubt it. If nothing else, however, her hyperactive driving style brings us back to campus in short order. Kara’s pretty handy with the parallel parking, too, whipping into a spot right on Woodruff, beside this chicken wing joint we’re confident of infiltrating. The campus BW3, into which we crawl, grabbing one of the chest high wooden tables along with draft beers that are seemingly nearly as tall. Surrounded by sorority girls and fraternity guys, also known as “fratholes,” the chiming of their chatter and toasted glasses swell around us in symphonic majesty. Conquering this town with a beautiful woman from our past, across the street from the university’s main entrance, this world we’ve built sizzles with latent energy, and potential towering futures we can’t even comprehend. “Yeah, I’m on antidepressants,” Kara says, conversationally enough. Speaking of jolts and charged undercurrents, it’s a shock to hear our sweet, meek girl speak so candidly about the gulfs of sorrow she swims in daily. When she talks, her voice rings with a chipper singsong quality that suggests the schoolteacher she hopes to become, and yet I suppose there has always been something dark, silent, and a little strange about Kara. In our highschool days she hired us as watchdogs to protect her from the bizarre, rampant vandalism then afflicting her family’s home. The attacks eventually ceased without yielding any answers, at least to us, but even then there was this sense of things about Kara we didn’t know, enemies an assuming and modestly popular chick shouldn’t have had but did. Citing the prescription chemicals, she sticks to just one beer. She untangles her primary tale of woe, a guy she just can’t let go of no matter how badly he treats her. Our ears perk up when she mentions that a number of her roommates are wildly promiscuous, but it’s clear that to Kara their parade of boys isn’t half as charming, it only compounds her misery. “What about you guys? Seeing anyone?” “Nah, I broke up with Angie six months ago,” Damon explains, “now I’m just playing the field.” “Me too,” Alan says, “I still see Alexis some, but, you know...... ” “And you?” she asks me, “girlfriend?” “No girlfriend.” “Where you working these days?” “Just waiting tables,” I laugh, “I finally figured out that the less responsibility I have, the happier I am.” Unaccustomed to these draft beers, I fare no better than Kara, but my roommates are on their perpetual mission to drink this bar dry. Damon has also joined Alan in the ranks of smoker nation since moving here, having determined that the cloud of smog hovering within these establishments doesn’t bother him when he’s puffing away as well. In the deathgrip of this brand new vice, he says the cigarettes taste to him like medium rare steaks and sucks them down with relish. I’m covertly examining our environment, committing every corner to memory. Like Ruby’s, this place has tasteful wood paneling, a wooden bar and tables, and a warm, cozy ambience. With its sports memorabilia dotting each wall and a slightly muted lighting I’d classify as amber bock, this building in fact represents the first ever BW3 location, nationwide, cropping up here on High nearly twenty years prior. “Take it easy, will ya?” Alan asks Kara, stumbling behind us to her car. A consummate professional in handling his alcohol, the lone chink in Alan’s armor often surfaces whenever we become mobile. Riding around in a car, he becomes a vomit machine, and in light of Kara’s driving I wonder that he doesn’t walk. “Okay,” she giggles, but peels out and streaks up Woodruff. “Can you run me up to gas station?” Damon asks, “I need more smokes.” Kara reaches Summit, and streaks down it with her usual abandon. But her cockeyed bounce around that last corner is the main catalyst responsible for Alan’s roiling stomach, and from his seat in back he starts flipping out. “LET ME OUT, LET ME OUT!” he bleats, “I think I’m gonna puke!” Laughing her ass off, Kara swings to the left hand curb of this one way street and deposits Alan at our doorstep. If nothing else, his misery becomes her balm, sending her home in a lighthearted spirit. After continuing ahead to the all night gas station at 17th and Summit, she brings us back around the block to the spot just vacated by Alan, sending us off with a wave of the hand. “That’s weird what she said about being on antidepressants,” I note, as we make our way indoors. Past the foyer and our front door, at the pitch black landing between it and our stairs, we stop to peek into Stephanie’s peepholes. No activity at this late hour, which doesn’t really surprise us. Though yet to glimpse so much as an illicit inch of her exquisite figure, we’re dreamers, we hold out hope that it’s only a matter of time. “Eh, Kara’s always been moody,” Damon says. In the space of the ten minutes or so since dropping Alan off, he’s already vomited in the toilet and repaired to his bedroom. Well aware of our mischievous streak, he’s shut his door and locked it, insulating himself from enemy attack. The best we can manage, then, is to pound on his door, shout scurrilous remarks at our incapacitated roomie. We can’t resist, and he’d have done the same to us, anyway. “Wake up, Puker T. Washington!” Damon’s screaming at the top of his lungs, “wake up!”

Precinct 99 aside, any hard evidence concerning the city’s club scene is thus far not forthcoming. But my social security card comes in the mail, and I’m able to obtain a brand now ID which allows us, for the first time, a more serious examination of the campus nightlife. With High Street and its legendary gauntlet of bars stretching from Dodridge to the north all the way down to about 8th Avenue on the south - a stretch of maybe three miles - there’s no shortage of uncharted land to delve into, only a question of where to start. Up until now the legends about chicks dripping from the walls seem seriously overblown, but then again we haven’t gotten into anywhere more happening than delis and wing joints. With only the most clinically deranged professors hosting classes on Friday, the weekends begin here each Thursday night. Bars that are struggling for business throughout the week or closed entirely suddenly spring to life, an amazing metamorphosis which leaves us wondering how they’re not like this all the time. Damon’s one of those unlucky souls stuck with a Friday class, but as he has no other chance to enjoy this heightened atmosphere, he looks forward to these Thursdays as much as everyone else. Here in Ohio, the weather swings wildly on a day by day basis, changing the color of its skin with the frequency of a chameleon. Firmly entrenched in the middle of January, the climate has taken another u-turn, creeping into a moderate season of 30 to 40 degree days. Driving south into this fray Paul Radick makes a visit, his first since our move, as he too’s itching to examine this thriving night club scene. Radick’s a zealous nut when it comes to music, clothes, and grooming, and no less than all of these the weather. Alan often likens him to a cat, in that he’s loathe to leave the house when it’s raining. Paul despises the rain even more than the cold and snow, which is considerable in that all the talks about is leaving this crap behind for a permanent relocation to Florida. “I mean, when it rains here, it rains all day. Down there, the sun shines all the time, and when it rains, it rains for like five minutes and then the sun’s back out. The only way you even know it rained is because the sidewalk’s wet,” he’s fond of saying, for we’ve heard this one a thousand times. “Fuck this, man,” he tells us tonight, having just returned from a holiday trip to Sarasota with his folks, “we’re all walking around down there in our sweaters or a light jacket. People down there bitch when it dips down to the fifties every now and then at night, and if it snows it’s like a fluke occurrence, it’ll be a half inch and everyone’s swerving all over the road cause they’re not used to it.” We continually debate Little Paul, mainly for the thrill of working him up. A sawed off bundle of attitude clocking in at five foot four, he’s exceedingly verbose in the arenas worthy his attention and disinterested entirely in everything else. Still, he also has a knack for the perfect one liner, the caustic summarization of what would take the rest of us a whole paragraph to say. Enrolled at the Mansfield branch of OSU, he’s too particular about his living standards to room in this pigsty, though likely wouldn’t have made the move whatever the circumstances. As close as Paul is to his parents, he’s probably not going anywhere until the whole family migrates south together, and yet he claims it’s the traffic keeping him away. “What traffic?” I protest, “Damon never touches his truck at all, and the only time I do is to drive to work.” “Yeah, but what about Alan?” Paul nods to our silent associate, sipping beer across the kitchen, “he has to either drive through rush hour traffic, or find a bunch of side roads to take. See, I wouldn’t like that....” “Fuck, dude,” I tell him, “I used to work in downtown Mansfield. The rush hour traffic up there’s worse than it is here. Besides, if it’s that bad, you don’t drive during rush hour.” “See, that’s what I like about living up in Mansfield, though,” Paul says, “if I’m hungry and want to grab a bite to eat, I don’t have to look at the clock and say, well, I gotta wait an hour before I can go.” “We don’t do that,” I argue. “Yeah, but if I was gonna move, I wouldn’t move anyway unless it was Sarasota.” These debates carry us outside, down to Woodruff and High. Fully recovered from his episode with Kara Monday night, Alan’s been sucking down the sodas all night, and Damon’s not too far behind him. The only difference is that while Damon is tightest of all with Paul and rarely needles him, Alan’s of a mind similar to mine and challenges Radick just for the sheer joyous hell of it. For the duration of our downhill walk west along Woodruff, each champions his respective drinking prowess. “You’d take one sniff of my Heineken bottlecap and be wasted,” Paul scoffs. “Dude, I could drink you under the table whatever we were drinking,” Alan demurs. Limited not to a buzzing hive of bars, the university is alive with a million other diversions, most of them perfectly legal. Quirky mom and pop clothing shops such as Avalon and Atlantis and No Lemmings Allowed, each of them covering one small, wholly unique sliver of the stylistic map; the best record stores on planet earth, as diverse as the day is long, from Used Kids underground to World Record on the second floor next door and Magnolia Thunderpussy with its two dollar discount each Tuesday, further down the line, all of them a piece of this veritable sonic heaven; and most of all no end to the ethnic food merchants, from the Middle Eastern cuisine of Firdous, to various Greek, Ethiopian, and Asian establishments, as well as the expected slew of pizza shops, bagel shops, and other traditional American eateries. These are the storefronts and then some along the eastern flank of High, half with windows proudly shouting day-glo advertisements: BURRITOS AS BIG AS YOUR HEAD! the Mexican restaurant La Bamba’s proclaims. WE ACCEPT BUCK I.D.! the common mantra posted most everywhere. And brooding dark and silent, across the street from all this madness, three thousand acres of university. We duck into Skully’s, an underground pool hall at the corner of 11th and High. Aside from such interesting curios as an all German Metallica tribute album on its jukebox, however, the ridiculously dark environs have little to offer and we leave after one drink. They’ve got couches and four or five pool tables but it’s nothing we can’t find anywhere else, and there’s no point in sticking around. We stand in line an eternity at the swankiest of all university clubs, The Edge. Another underground establishment along the bustling south fringe of campus, The Edge is OSU’s nighttime mecca, the spot to be in a locale chock full of them. The sidewalks along campus are lined with taut, waist high ropes and everywhere you look there are cops in riot gear hanging out by their paddy wagons, waiting for the next drunken fight, the next public intox. More often than not, the springboard for all this action is The Edge, and we are dying to get inside. Standing in line for the bar, I eye the cops, with their polished helmets reflecting shafts of overhead streetlight, their equally shiny badges, their perfectly pressed uniforms, their holsters, their guns. Rather than acting as some sort of deterrent, the menace they imply and the general atmosphere of mayhem lends an air of static electricity to the scene. That we are in the midst of something heavy, that this is the place to be. And though we’ve yet to find the means for making it all click, our assumptions are unwavering that nirvana lies just around the corner. “The thing I don’t get at all is sports,” Paul’s rhapsodizing, as the whipping wind slashes through our clothes, “the way people go crazy for Buckeye football in this town, or whatever. I mean, if you pay money for a sporting event, you don’t even know for sure who’s playing. That’s like shelling out money for the Rolling Stones, but it hasn’t been determined that Mick Jagger’s gonna play. It’s like, well, he isn’t starting, but he might come out in the fourth quarter.” Freezing our nuts off awaiting entry into The Edge, a better idea comes wafting our way. We spy a plain, unadorned club right next door, a place called Coeds. And aside from the Swiss villa wooden decor of its front facade, its tucked away status lends it a feel of best kept secret, forcing our hand. Curiosity piqued, we step inside. A swarm of bodies, and flashing lights of a thousand hues punctuate the dark. Two stories tall, there’s a dance floor upon each level, each teeming with a mob of females gyrating to Prince’s latest smash, Pussy Control. Within their midst, we’re still treated as slime, pond scum or worse, but to see all of these girls in one place, from cute secretarial types, to sluts in tight black pants or miniskirts, punk rock chicks with spiky hair and eyeliner, you name it, seeing them all here offers some measure of encouragement. “I feel like we’re walking around with the word OUTSIDER stamped on our forehead, though,” Damon offers, putting to words what we all feel. By this he means not just Coeds but the city in general, and much as it pains me, I have to agree. How anyone can tell at a glance that we’re new to town and don’t belong here is hard to say, but everyone does. Girls aren’t giving us the time of day, and even males on the scene hassle us an inordinate amount, everywhere we travel here in the capital city. But how do we make our presence felt here, how does anyone? Music so loud conversation’s a technical impracticality, faces visible only as passing blurs - recognizable within a tight circle of maybe ten feet, but beyond that a rippling, anonymous ocean. The only option is to ingratiate ourselves somehow, dig trenches and hold on. In this spirit, we slug a few beers, scope out the scene, while Paul gives the place his uncommon stamp of approval. But everyone’s tolerance for standing around, ogling chicks operates on different wavelengths, and after a few beers both he and Damon are ready to pack it in. Friendships resemble those origami games played as a child, whereby different corners touch depending upon the question. Between the four of us, the complexities of our lifelong association are such that we align differently depending on the topic of debate. Damon and I are most alike in temperament, indifferent to detail, anarchic to the bone, and yet when it comes to these clubs, he and Paul are on the same page. Always moving onto the next one to the next one to the next one, impatient and unwilling to understand why Alan and I prefer hanging tight, plying our wares in the current locale. We’re upstairs, in the attic loft with mirror lined walls and a brass rail surrounding its dance floor. Swirling pinspot lights of every color throb along with the ferocious ass shaking beats stemming from the DJ booth and we’re on the floor ourselves, albeit it simply leaning against the railing as we drink our beers and ogle females. Rising heat from the floor below, oblivious to that frozen tundra outside, warms the limbs and throat even as we stand still, and Alan’s pounding bottle after bottle as I nurse a solitary one. Directly before us, some scrawny little kid is dancing with a blonde chick in tight pants, one of the dozens here. The kid accidentally backs into Alan, and I can tell by the look on my friend’s face that his temper’s about to explode. Alan, notoriously red under the collar at a moment’s notice, is abetted in this respect by half a dozen beers. He backs into Alan a second time, and my roommate erupts. Alan gives the guy a hard shove and it all flashes through my head in an instant, the logical outcome of this evening. Alan drunk and dead wrong, but my being forced, as a friend, to jump into the fray beside him. Our hides stomped before the bouncers cart us away, passed along to the police and those idling paddywagons. But though the kid spins around, ready to brawl, he takes one look at Alan’s military build and thinks better of this strategy. “Yeah!” Alan taunts, “what are you gonna do about it!?” The guy just stands there with his girlfriend, eyes blinking, immobile. She’s wide eyed with astonishment, and rightly so, unaware that her boyfriend kept backing into this intoxicated redhead with a weightlifter’s physique. If they have others here with them our situation complicates, but they don’t, and we’re rooted to a gaping impasse. Call it the frustrations of living here a month with no action, but either way, brawling or otherwise, it’s advisable Alan exit this place on the double. The origami folds again and we’re in different corners, he and I, fighter versus pacifist. I don’t have a problem defending myself as a matter of self preservation, but am certainly not the type to go around starting shit. “Now he looks like a pussy to his girlfriend,” Alan scoffs. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” I suggest. “Yeah,” he agrees, setting down his empty bottle, “fuck it.”

Feeling as though outsiders isn’t merely relegated to our maneuvers in the dance clubs, it’s a sensation that hounds us everywhere. Even the people I’m working for afford me a lukewarm reception, which throws me for a loop. I’m ordinarily an instant hit wherever I go and true, the rest of this dining room six pack, and our cook Gary Russell, they dig me well enough. But management’s already less than impressed and seems determined to make my life hell in hopes of driving me out, in particular Drew Smith. Smith’s tolerable most of the time, but isn’t above harping over the pettiest details. He whisks me aside Friday morning for a perfunctory pep talk, the impetus for which I can scarcely fathom. “If I don’t see some improvement, some serious improvement, I’m going to recommend a retrain.” Smith’s polishing his spectacles, having pulled me into the manager’s office for this quaint little chat, up in arms as always. He never extends or raises his voice beyond that measured, stage friendly baritone, yet clearly means business just the same. The kale I set out for garnishing our plates is brown, or the bread baskets from breakfast buffet were stowed away in the wrong cabinet. I’m not a perfectionist by any means but if they want something done fast and at least ninety five percent right, I’m the man. Ninety five percent isn’t good enough for him, maybe, but there’s a hundred details to knock out in half an hour and I don’t have time to ponder the intricacies of the operation. “Aw man!” Amanda laments, grabbing my wrist. Our shift has progressed as a typical Friday, with a sizeable lunch rush that includes the fastidious Dr. Innis and his equally difficult wife. Standing side by side in the server station, Amanda and I are ringing orders into the twin computer terminals, and she’s glimpsed the neon band I’ve forgotten to remove. “You went to a club last night! I wish I could have gone with you.” “Next time,” I grin. “No, I can’t,” she sighs, staring down at the orange red tile, visibly greasy and filthy despite the near total darkness of this secluded cavern, “it’s part of my program, I’m not allowed to go anywhere they serve alcohol. Besides, Brett would kill me.” “Your boyfriend?” “No,” she smiles, holding up her left hand and its gleaming wedding band, “my husband.” Mighty observant, I am. The only chick I’ve spent five minutes talking to this entire month, and she’s already spoken for. Not that my failures are unique. Home from his lone Friday class, Damon spends two hours in the late afternoon on the phone with Meredith, working in a subtle suggestion that she drive north tonight to watch him play bass. He calls her almost every night, and their entanglements within those telephone wires are never brief, but whatever the time or day or proposal, she insists she has to study. Last week he invited her to the movies but she claimed a burden of school work, it’s the same old tired tale. I’m in the kitchen, washing dishes, of all things. After coming home from the club I had made a three a.m. pizza by hand, fast becoming my specialty, which we devoured with delight even as its creation and destruction further fueled this mess. For the price of a twelve pack, our Mansfield friend Mandy Goff drove down last weekend and cleaned this place top to bottom, but we are slovenly ogres, we can’t keep this squat tidy to save our hairy behinds. “I can’t figure out this Meredith chick for anything,” Damon groans, pacing around kitchen as the sky turns black outside and the hour of his weekend departure draws near, “she’s always talking my ear off at school, but I keep asking her to do things and it’s always some excuse.” “I know what you mean. I feel like this married chick at work is flirting with me, but I’m not sure what to do about it.” “It’s probably Meredith,” Damon chuckles sourly, “she’s using a fake name to torment both of us.” Furthering his frustration, he feels that all the other girls in his classes aside from Meredith think he’s a total maniac, and the more he talks to them, the worse it gets. Every word, every action, every smile the three of us make is misinterpreted, with no sunlight on the horizon. And to think we had been under the impression that in moving to the land of plenty, hooking up would come easy. “It’s gonna be harder,” Little Paul insisted from day one, “you’ll have that whole big city thing going on, chicks being leery of strangers.” Who knows, maybe Radick and his mixed bag of paranoid theories got one right this time. But my opinions in this arena depend on the day, and the frame of mind in which I’m asked. On one hand this bustling metropolis nurtures fear of strangers as well as any other city its size, yet by the same token, there are ten thousand new students who’ve descended upon this campus the same time as we. And once those homesick jitters disappear, these girls are just like us, small town kids temporarily displaced. Wide eyed with awe, but sweet, and essentially unchanged. “Hey, have you guys seen The Fork?” Alan asks, breezing into the kitchen. The Fork earns capital letters because it’s become our fourth roommate, a mythical being. In my Mansfield apartment I’d had more silverware than I knew what to do with, but mystical forces have stripped this surplus away. We still have a billion spoons and knives, but just the one fork, and it’s not always easy to find. You learn how to eat steak with a spoon, as well as spaghetti, salads, a thousand other entrees, you adapt as species have done since the earth became hospitable. “Yeah, dude, I think it’s in the living room.” Damon has replaced a number of electrical outlets that weren’t working, mounted a flourescent light on the kitchen wall to replace a bum overhead one, but our attempts at home improvement venture no further. A reasonable person might suggest we run out and buy some plastic ware or, heaven forbid, the real deal, and yet this thought is akin to anathema. When you’re scraping together pennies to the extent that you are now even showering without a washcloth, as am I, you sure as hell aren’t going to sweat over the silverware situation. So we don’t. “Hey, man, Meredith says Kurt Cobain wrote really good lyrics but that the guy from Bush doesn’t make any sense,” Damon says, returning to this vein of vexation. “Yeah, that’s right,” I agree. “What does she mean, though? What’s a good example?” I recite for him a verse from Dumb, but he just shakes his head and leaves the room. He paces around some more, feigning befuddlement, and yet I’m just as mystified myself. Specifically, I wonder what angle Damon’s trying to run. People accuse me of sandbagging, of withholding secrets, of pretending to know much less than I do, but he’s just as guilty, albeit in a different sense. He often cites a bad memory, claiming not to recall events he certainly does. He plays dumb often, insisting certain subjects are beyond his grasp. He writes his own songs upstairs on that acoustic, and fronted a classic rock cover band for years before joining Frank’s, yet says he doesn’t pay attention to anyone else’s lyrics. Strangest of all, though, when I recite these particular stanzas, it’s one thing for him to profess to me incomprehension, that he can’t discern a qualitative difference between Bush and Nirvana. Except I know it’s the same line of bull he’ll sell Meredith tomorrow, and his motivations puzzle me. I get the feeling he believes ignorance the coolest tack to take at all times, even if it damages his chances with her. “She’s always talking all this philosophy crap, too,” Damon sneers, “which I think is a load of shit. Is a chair still a chair if no one’s sitting in it. Give me a fucking break.” “You know what I always say to people like that,” I advise, with a grin, “I’m invisible. If they disagree, ask them to prove otherwise.”

Behind the closed door of his bedroom, Alan’s fucking Nicole in the ass with a banana. Her idea, he says later, once she spies this fruit in a bowl on our kitchen table. His goodbye plaything from Mansfield, Nicole’s a couple months pregnant by someone else, but has driven down here for dick. Working with Alan at his last job, in a shopping mall department store, Nicole’s status has for some time echoed Alexis’s. Like Alexis she’s a fling he perpetually fluxes between on again and off, though in sharp contrast to Alexis, Nicole’s got an easygoing mien and a fairly sublime body. This we can attest to without ever banging her ourselves, from a night one year earlier when Alan blindfolded Nicole and let us watch. Slender and reserved, unassuming and unlikely to cling too tightly, she’s the perfect chick for a discreet rendezvous. That and her inclination toward the kinky, like this thing with the banana. So after a month long dry spell, my roommate’s getting laid again, and I trudge alone through celibate misery. Just a morning removed from Smith’s “serious improvement” speech, I’m battling snow flurries just like everyone else, to a pointless nine a.m. meeting at the restaurant. Frosty as fuck and fifteen minutes late, Stacey fixes me with her squinting smile - stoned already, perhaps - and a wave as I enter, claiming a clubhouse booth by myself because I’m too shy to sidle up beside her. Last night Alan pounded the hell out of Nicole on the other side of my bedroom wall but I couldn’t sleep, as I never can, dozing off just a few hours shy of this horseshit. Franchise overlord John Votino’s blessed us with a visit, strolling between tables as he barks his latest beefs. For an hour, this is expected to run, listening to him rant about a brand new restaurant they hope to build while demolishing this one. Self and Steinbrenner and the gang, he says, have approved funding for this venture, sprouting forth where our parking lot now sits. Like Applebee’s on the other side of this strip mall, ours is a stand alone building in the front of the shopping center, though we alone are attached to this dreadful Parke Hotel. It, too, which will have to be addressed, ideally through the blunt force of a wrecking ball. “We’re going to be opening the new restaurant right here in March and we’re only gonna take the best of the best over with us,” Votino threatens, “so you people really need to put your best foot forward.” Who among us might qualify? Surely not those drifting into the meeting fifteen minutes late, as I have, even though my own exploits are outdone by a lanky, smirking lad named Axelrod who skates in even later. He’s wearing a trenchcoat and an enormous head of curly black hair, strutting in like he owns the place, as the rest of us giggle under our breath. Axelrod is apparently one of the nighttime people I never get to work with and while I’ve not met the man, he looks outrageous enough, a potential ally. “Is this a sure thing? This new restaurant?” one server asks, voice dripping skepticism. “Oh yeah,” Votino nods gravely, pausing for effect, eyes floating across the room to met each of ours individually, “if I was betting man, I’d bet on it.” A bartender sitting in back of the clubhouse raises his hand, he’s a beefy guy with glasses and crew cut brown hair known as Scott Lucas. “I’d just like to say that I’ve been here five years, and I don’t feel like management gives any of us that have been here awhile any respect.” “Well I’ve been here ten!” Votino boasts, though this chest thumping only serves to underscore the point Scott is making, “you know, and I was just like you all when I was your age, I believed in working hard, playing hard. But like I said, everyone needs to step up and do a better job, because we’re only taking the best of the best.” Votino moves on to the latest shopper’s reports, those compiled since the last meeting. A questionable practice both in purpose and efficiency, management pays an anonymous professional to dine at our dignified establishment, posing as a paying customer. The mystery shopper fills out a report card, grading us on how we’ve done, an indisputable piece of marketing analysis. “Well, I’ve got some great news,” Votino announces, “in the entire history of this restaurant, we’ve never had a shopper’s report come back 100 percent. But we just recently had our first, and what that means is that the server who scored a perfect gets a $100 bonus, as well as a gold star for his name badge.” Whose name does he call, then, but my own. I’m blushing in walking up to accept the certificate and the gold star, but even while flattered the whole thing seems ridiculous. Smith, the manager who works closer to me than anyone else, is suggesting a retrain or even termination, while an impartial third party just rated me the best server in the history of the restaurant. This, more than anything else I could possibly say, summarizes my experience working for these clowns.

Nicole’s arrival precipitates an avalanche of bodies, up to and including my folks. They fly in from Charlotte on Friday night, as keynote speakers at a motivational seminar downtown, and are staying at a hotel along the outerbelt’s northern rim. I’m able to visit them there during the few free hours we have in common, but the typical turnaround of their frequent trips has them leaving town on Sunday. Their two day gig comes all expenses paid and a handsome fee atop that, but my chances of seeing them again are nil unless I sit through another meeting. They’re unlikely to swing through this apartment anytime soon, and that’s probably for the best. Though Mandy’s frantically reassembling the broken pieces, discarding trash, mopping up and wiping down, we’re entertaining a miniature entourage for the first time and this isn’t the most opportune occasion to make a strong impression. While the rest of us party, she’s clicking her tongue at the chaos, unable to believe we could obliterate the premises in such short notice. But truthfully, no amount of volunteer work could ever save this place, it’s as though my home and my restaurant are neck and neck for the title of most deplorable building in town, competing to see which will crumble first. She piles the trash in bags at the top of our stairs, because we’ve not yet gotten around to buying a can, and there’s little else she can do. A tomboy holdover from the big haired 1980s, Mandy shows up in her customary jean jacket, pants of a similar material and black Harley Davidson tee shirt. Green eyes so faint I feel I can see through them, she wears her locks in a curly sable cloud, multidirectional, billowing above her head. While fairly flat chested, she crams an otherwise appreciable body into those rugged clothes, even as it’s difficult to consider her sexually. Though deep into her first trimester, I can look at Nicole and think about the banana incident of this morning with a distant reverent lust, or reminisce fondly upon the way she trimmed her tidy black bush when we viewed her through the motel window, but poor Mandy, she just draws a blank. It isn’t that she speaks so fast as to evade comprehension, which she does, but a conjunction of characteristics that spell out mother or friend more than they ever would lover. Then again, I’m having trouble focusing upon anyone tonight except the girl that didn’t show. Audrey, her name was, and while I’ve never met the girl, her failure to appear with Nicole’s friends Robert and September has doused all enthusiasm I once held for this evening. Alan’s been filling my ear with instructions for days, that I need only to get this girl drunk and she’s an easy lay. Instead, it’s Mandy, or her cloying sidekick Melissa, and if these are the options then I suppose I’ll choose neither. Fortunately, Big Paul Linville has made the journey down with them, and it’s he and me and Alan jamming together now in the third floor equipment room. The consummate heavy metal fanatic, Linville’s attired in black leather jacket and shades, offering only a deep, rustling laugh to what’s said. He’s in a strange mood tonight, imputing nothing conversationally, and I imagine it’s only a matter of time before he drifts on down the road. But for now he smiles and nods his head while wailing on guitar, for our guests of varying gratitude. While knowing them not the least, Robert and September seem to me a neurotic, dysfunctional couple. He the cocky, grimacing tyrant and she the doting hysterical, each feeding off one another in perfect symbiosis. They lean against the cracked drywall, watching with little interest, while at the other extreme we have an ideal fan in the form of Melissa Logue. Her voluminous speaking voice is surpassed only by the raucous roar of her jet intake laughter, a horse faced chortle she exhumes far too often. Finally, the stable center of this contorted constituency, Nicole, sitting upon an amplifier with her slender legs crossed, smiling sweetly and silent as she twirls her lustrous black hair. Alan’s hammering the drum set and I’m caressing my keyboard to back Big Paul’s heavy metal stylings and Nicole absorbs it all with reflective tranquility, like a cat lying in the sun. As the magic hour of eleven approaches, we’re prepared to exit this bedraggled homestead and enter the campus carnival. Setting aside our instruments and shutting down the gear, we stomp downstairs and those not already wearing theirs throw on coats. Reluctantly abandoning her mission now, which she insists remains unfinished though our eyes detect not a spot, Mandy shakes her head and rues our squalid ways. “You boys, I swear,” she says. Maybe Mandy’s missing some integral ingredient necessary for understanding and coping with big city life. She moved to Columbus just before we, and lasted less than a month. Enrolled herself in a dog grooming school on the west side, lived with her brother even further out on the west side before her brother’s wife tossed both of them out and they wound up back in Mansfield. Now both she and K.C. are residing with their parents, and this is her first strictly social visit since. If only we can talk her into moving in and putting on a French maid’s outfit, maybe even blowing us now and then, we might consider letting Mandy stay here rent free. We pay the utilities, we buy the food, all she’d have to do is keep this place clean. General consensus has us striking The Edge, and Linville, as expected, bows out. Hailing from the rock and roll capital Cleveland, his past is one of dive bars and hard music and even harder drugs, the dance club scene isn’t really his forte. Besides, his friend Brian from the Cleveland days now lives just around the corner from us, on Lane Avenue, and I can tell that Melissa’s getting under his skin every bit as much as mine. That, and there’s a further complication in Mandy’s unwavering infatuation with him, so potent I’m amazed he agreed to ride down here at all. “Fuck this,” he mutters, and disappears up Summit Street. The wind as we march down Woodruff is bearable, true to form, but rounding the corner four blocks later that corridor effect of High Street nearly knocks us to the ground. Equally potent is Melissa’s high strung patter, wordier than the hiphop singles blaring from the clubs we pass, as jacked up as the bass. Attired in loose, indifferent clothing, with sandy hair falling carelessly down her back and a pale, vaguely moonish face, madam Logue doesn’t drink, smoke, take and drugs or even curse, which is fine. But her chatter is like boll weevils boring through my ear, making me wish that just for once our caffeine addled crony would lay off the soft drinks and have half a dozen hard ones. Her lone vice is spreading those thick legs for virtually anyone, but while Damon has endured a few moments of weakness with her, no one else is much game. I’m slumping something fierce, yet would rather just beat off. Eyeing that foursome just a few steps ahead of us, paired off into couples and walking hand in hand, I fight off a bitter jealousy, unwilling to lower myself to hitting on these two simply because they’re here. Alan has Nicole, Robert has September, Linville has enough sense to bail out entirely. What do I have? Stuck entertaining two well meaning female friends, pleasant to the point of torture. Certainly I appreciate their trip down here and Mandy’s efforts in straightening up our pad, but that’s just it - when is it someone else’s turn to appreciate them? I’ve paid my dues, been a comrade. What I need now is a legitimate piece of tail, and while one of the thousands of beautiful campus girls swarming around us would work wonders, anybody outside of these two chicks should suffice. Like most south campus clubs, The Edge is open only from Thursday to Sunday, yet this limited window of opportunity hasn’t damaged its appeal. On the contrary, interest in this hotspot is at an all time high, its cache bordering on the fanatical. The line’s halfway up the block and as we’re standing in wait it occurs to me that with all these bodies trapped in an underground bar with just one exit, if a fire breaks out we’re all seriously fucked. They’d be sorting out charred remains for days. We pay the cover and make our way down the long slab of concrete stairs. Somehow, Robert and I manage to grab a pool table nearly off the bat, despite the suffocating crowd. I’ve never met the guy before and am not sure what to expect, having only heard from Alan and Nicole that he treats September poorly. Still, September is certainly one of the more unbalanced chicks I have ever met, and it’s not a stretch to picture her as the lunatic stalker type. Girls like that, a guy almost has to become an asshole just to keep her in check, twice as much so to get rid of her. Robert’s a stocky guy, medium height, and has short cropped black hair, military style. He obviously considers himself a cut above, but he’s well dressed and certainly acts the part with aplomb. Arrogant to the extreme, he insists upon giving me pointers on billiards, though we’ve yet to begin our first game and I haven’t asked for any. “The break is very important. Very important,” he says, one of his many pearls of wisdom. “Really?” I say. “Yes. And you can also tell how good a guy is from the way he racks.” Alan and Nicole are on the cavernous dance floor already, dirty dancing amidst the sea of mirrors and strobe lighting taking up the entire northern half of this trendy cavern. I can’t pick out Mandy or Melissa anywhere, but if I know them well enough, they’re standing near the sidelines throwing snide remarks at everyone else. When it comes to those redneck dive bars of our hometown, they don’t think twice about shaking their rumps, but not here. September hovers near the pool table, watching us play. Her indigo eyes, saucer sized, are alternately crazy and sad, two basic extremes that extend to her otherwise innocent face. Offering a different spin on the big 80s hairstyle, one Mandy rarely trifles with, September poofs her bangs up to the ceiling, drawing attention away from her bowling pin body. She further accentuates this look with a standard uniform of button down denim shirts and black jeans, but after a night of heavy drinking she’s perfectly doable. “He’s very good,” she says of Robert, as he destroys me in embarrassingly quick fashion. Mandy and Melissa appear beside me just in time for Robert and September to drift away, swallowed up by the gargantuan dance floor. I lose sight of those two as well as Alan and Nicole in the swarm of bodies and am left paired up with the chatter twins, much to my chagrin.

Sunday morning the phone rings early as hell, rousing me from my hardwood floor. Shuffling into the kitchen to answer, I find my mother on the other end, wishing to see this place before they leave town. I tell her I’ve got to be to work by 10:30 and she says that’s perfect, they’ll swing through before catching their flight. Mandy’s cleaning efforts the night before are already just a pleasant memory. After leaving the club with her and Melissa, we repair to the apartment and play cards until the others arrive, as the place comes apart at the seams again and in fact looks even worse than before. Beer cans, cigarette boxes, and fast food wrappers litter the house from wall to wall, a litany of destruction interrupted only by the comatose bodies strewn everywhere. As I prepare to climb into the shower, there’s a knock on the front door. Darting downstairs to answer, I expect my parents, but instead encounter Linville. Clad predictably in shades and leather jacket, he’s grinning in the early morning broader than he’d managed at any point the night before. He nods his head as if to say “rock on!” while I laugh and let him in. Awakened by the commotion, Alan drifts into the kitchen as he and Big Paul crack open their first ice cold beers of the day. Not even nine o’clock a.m. and already they’re at it, more dedicated in their pursuit of a buzz than I could even dream. I’ve yet to climb out of the shower when Mom and Dad arrive. I can hear their voices as Alan conducts the grand tour, leading them past the annihilated kitchen with Paul in his sunglasses and jacket and beer, past my bare bones bedroom with no bed. He shows them his own room and a still sleeping Nicole, then it’s upstairs, where Mandy and Melissa are sacked out on the jam room floor in sleeping bags, Robert and September in Damon’s room after fucking and crashing on his tiny mattress. As I step out of the shower Mom’s shaking her head and Dad’s not saying anything at all, smirking in admiration without making it too obvious to Mom that he approves of this scene. Upon one kitchen wall, a poster Damon stole from school is hanging, it’s Bob Marley in all his dreadlocked glory. Damon’s taped it here and added a bogus autograph in black magic marker - Thanks boys for the memories. Bob. - which my mother is now inspecting, entirely oblivious. “Who’s this?” “Bob Marley.” “Oh yeah?” She has no idea who Bob Marley is, probably hasn’t even heard of the guy; it’s just one more strange aspect of their entirely confounding detour. They leave, and while the scenario’s assuredly shocking, Damon’s and Alan’s parents confronted this squalor a month ago. Maybe Mom and Dad live four hundred miles south and are insulated to some extent from my antics, but they can’t avoid my world entirely. “Dude, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen your dad speechless,” Alan says, which tidily sums up everything. As I’m leaving for work, Mandy and Melissa awaken, scooting out of town with Linville in tow. In leaving Mandy’s pulled over for speeding up the interstate, given a ticket. I suppose the cop never suspected her still drunk from the night before, which in fact she was. Ten o’clock in the morning and if forced to pass a breathalyser, she’d have blasted that puppy right out of the water. When I return from the restaurant four hours later, the remainder of our guests are gone, and Alan’s reclined upon his bed watching television. An afternoon like this so weary, so austere, it finds me sitting crosslegged beside my bedroom boombox, making mixtapes of better years past. Though I still have no bed and crash in a sleeping bag upon the hardwood floor, though my clothes are still lumped everywhere in trash bags, my room is nonetheless one of our house’s coziest. With no rhyme or reason attributable to configuration, some are simply colder - such as Alan’s - and others, like mine or Damon’s, remain blessed pockets of heat. Of course the bathroom is a frozen tundra, but as we have no window in there, just a plastic covered piece of wood, this makes sense. So much sense that Damon refuses to shower here, declaring it far too cold. Yet Alan’s room is not only frosty, it’s suffused with a wintry melancholy, brought on when the sun is sinking over campus, in the western sky beyond his windows. He has no overhead light in his room, just one dim lamp, and the associative gloom this invokes often leads us out of the house, on days like this, with no destination in sight. We walk two doors down to Ruby’s, where the rustic ambience blasts away our cabin fever. Here the sun slants through the stained glass of their elaborate front window, in warm shades reminiscent of a roaring campfire. More than anything, Ruby’s is a western saloon from the end of the 19th century, and if they’d only replace the jukebox with a beer soaked piano, the illusion would stand complete. Sometimes I imagine that I’ll glance through a pane of that multicolored window and feast my eyes upon a rutted dirt road with horse drawn carriages, a few stray tumbleweeds. Were this the case, then our favorite Ruby’s regular would assuredly hold the post of town marshal. Unfailingly attired in cowboy boots and faded jeans, a thick salt and pepper mustache and button down shirt, he occasionally adopts a brown leather vest and ten gallon hat as well. Roaring down Summit Street in his enormous yellow 1970s auto, its muffler painfully ineffective, he parks in front of Ruby’s, breezes through the door arm in arm with his gloriously middle aged wife. Smiling in benign abstraction at everyone she encounters, the lady I peg as our mining boomtown’s lone seamstress, or perhaps the proprietor of its thriving whorehouse. A coy flapper girl perhaps, should she dress the part, were she twenty years younger. As the sun sinks into purple twilight, this bluesy hillbilly outfit takes the stage. Pitchers of beer abound, and the air is alive with a dozen disparate conversations, audible alongside the band without drowning it out. On this side of the bar, they dim the lights down to accommodate a flickering candle atop each table, and we’re reclined here absorbing the group’s twangy wares. Though quite competent at what they do, this isn’t exactly our cup of tea, and we await the moment our quarters come up on one of the two pool tables. The band finishes its first set, yet this ungodly feedback fills the air, leaving the guitarist onstage to investigate its source YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and as Alan descends a flight of stairs to the basement restroom, the guitarist inspects his axe EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE he inspects his amplifier. He stands there literally scratching his head, but this voluminous, continuous squeal divides the atmosphere like a bandsaw EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and the din grinds down to absolute standstill, pin drop quiet if not for the banshee shriek. Miffed by this mysterious malfunction, the guitarist begins unplugging their equipment, walking off with a shrug. It is only when our mustachioed town marshal spins around from his bar stool to face the crowd do we divine the genesis of this marathon wail. Drawing deep within his powerhouse lungs for one last triumphant hurrah, he concludes this raucous endorsement HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW! and grins with obvious delight, knocking off the dregs of his beer mug. He stands and grabs a pool stick as the bar explodes with laughter, and the conversation eventually swells back to life. “What the fuck was that?” Alan asks, returning from below. “It was him!” I cheer, pointing at our friend. “Christ that was loud,” Alan declares. His wife showering smiles from her own barstool, our hillbilly friend rustles up a redneck partner and in tandem, they own the table. Our quarters come up and we meet them head on, but they eat up an hour draining our pockets, reigning triumphant. And yet within this window of fierce struggle, while the first band wraps up its show and a second nearly identical group begins, we manage just three games. In shooting the breeze with his fellow patrons, pausing for giant gulps of draft beer, the average time elapsed between the arrival of his turn and that which he actually shoots approaches five minutes. With every female entering the saloon, regardless of age or appearance, our goodwill ambassador slings an eardrum puncturing whistle in her direction. He lines up to take a shot, then straightens, turns to somebody at the bar behind him in resurrecting a prior conversation. “Anyway, as I was saying...... ” Maddening, if not so hysterical. As we arrive home, Damon’s already returned from his weekend with Get-A-Way. This becomes immediately apparent to us because in opening our front door, he’s crouched by the peepholes in the wall, at the foot of our stairs. Owing to the unique configuration of this household, across the foyer our front door stands, and only beyond it lies our stairwell up to the second floor, our abode. At the foot of the stairs looms a sealed off door to Stephanie’s bedroom, which is where we’ve drilled the holes, though also, for whatever reason, where we’ve unwisely decided to park our charcoal grill. “See anything?” we whisper. “Not yet,” he grins, barely visible in the pitch black of this secluded spot, “but I think she’s in the shower.” She emerges maybe five minutes later, clad only in a powder blue bathrobe. Huddled in tangled knots around three of the peepholes, we’re glued to the wood as she strides to a dresser in the corner, her back facing our prying eyes. She drops the robe to the floor and though the view we’re granted is a relatively tame one, this forbidden luxury packs as much eroticism as any of the pornos in our extensive collection upstairs. Stephanie’s damp, ebony strands of hair, clinging to her naked shoulder, spark indelible mental snapshots of mounting her from behind, those locks splayed instead across some satiny pillow. Doubly so her plush, round ass, revealed to us at last and virtually begging for conquest. So stoked is Alan that he accidentally backs into our grill, knocking its lid to the floor with a thunderous roar. But though we can clearly hear every motion Stephanie’s making, no matter how small, she doesn’t flinch the least upon its impact, nor in response to our stifled laughs. She calmly throws a tee shirt over those breasts we cannot see, though splashing suggestive shadows across her dresser drawers. She steps into a pair of sweat pants to cover that bare, milk white rump, the contour of which we already know by heart, we shall never forget. She turns on the television and flips off the lights and our show’s over, as she falls into bed with a sigh. Blue hues of broadcast entertainment fill her room, her standard nighttime companion. Maybe this Stephen character’s her boyfriend by name but we’re just as involved, whether she knows it or not. Close enough to keep her warm, should she just reach out and connect with us, should she tire of these nights alone in bed. We can hear her dog Stella’s clicking toenails somewhere back by the kitchen, and we hope that our tiptoeing is no louder as we creak our way up to the second floor. “Think she heard us?” Damon worries, pacing the kitchen. “I don’t see how she could not of,” Alan laughs. “Ah, who cares,” I offer. ink removal 1

Mark and Tyrone May are our a.m. busboys, a pair of black brothers who’ve been working here forever. Mark resembles a young Chuck Berry and Tyrone looks just like Snoop Dogg, a relation I’m still struggling to resolve. They bust ass all day long and smile continually, though, role models for the rest of us who can barely tolerate being here. In at ten thirty, my opening shifts begin helping one of those two finish tearing down the breakfast buffet. Mostly this entails moving the tables back to their proper positions, stashing away these wooden baskets used to hold bread and fruit and cereal, returning milk and juice to the dining room cooler, then hoisting the microwave into temporary storage atop the highest shelf of our server station. Drew Smith’s doing whatever it is he does behind the bar, exactly, and my lunch routine begins in earnest. Brew some coffee, a pot each of decaf and regular. Mix up lemonade in the correct proportion of ice, water, and powdered flavoring. Insure that the apple bran muffins are firing away in the prep cook ovens, that the prep cooks have enough salads made, then go to work on our expo line, the table where our tickets are sold piping hot. Water for the bottom of this warmer, producing the proper steam effect - hot au jus one on half, barbecue sauce in the other. Ice along the bottom of the lettuce, tomato, and onion pans, pulled each from the dining room freezer and unwrapped, along with the various salad dressing tubs. Finally, a mountain of cubes for the server station ice chest, transported from the central ice machine at the other side of this dining room kitchen. My first morning opening, some dickhead cook named Ryan screamed at me for dumping out the night before’s lemonade. Since then I have privately dubbed him Guardian of the Lemonade, but this brusque manner is more or less how we learn the ropes, bullshitting along until someone blows the whistle. I soon learn that not only is his opinion meaningless as it applies to my procedure, but that lemonade isn’t a valuable commodity at all, at least not when compared against ice. Ice is our most treasured resource, a lesson gleaned in miserable fashion that first morning our machine is on the blink. Given the secondhand junk we’re operating under, this phenomenon is a fairly common one, and I can only imagine how brutal the summers are here. Whatever the scenario, though, management guards these squares of frozen agua with religious fervor, which explains Mark Stokes’s mild meltdown when he catches me shoveling from the ice machine’s bottom hatch. “See, if you scoop from the top, the sensor goes off!” he explains, in perfectly patronizing fashion, a mock grin frolicking upon his face, “that way, there’s more ice for everyone!” Mark means business, but for him to break his standard stoic cool, for him to say anything at all, means he’s in a relatively chipper mood. Positively peachy, in fact, considering that the cops are here. Last week, a hundred dollars came up missing from the drop, and from yesterday’s receipts three hundred more. Given our bank out procedure - whereby we cash out the tables ourselves, hand over the wad of dough at the end of our shifts to have the managers count and sign off on - they’ve narrowed it down to one of those seven in charge, but a slew of individual questioning has yet to yield any answers. As with every Monday, Gary’s off, and we’re running to the clubhouse kitchen for our food. Our triumphant pothead trio of Kip, Akash, and Mike Short are also scheduled a day away, leaving me with Amanda and Brandy to navigate this unexceptional spate of tables. Half a world removed, the clubhouse hums with activity, but the three of us are ice skating through our shift blindfolded. It’s almost two but Smith has yet to make any cuts, stumped, perhaps, by the quote I’ve chalked upon his beloved blackboard. Taunting him, ostensible man of the theatre, wondering if he’ll address me as Stoner Boy again anytime in the near future. “.....sound and fury, signifying nothing,” he reads, “hmm....I believe that’s Shakespeare, right? But I can’t remember which one.” I have to give him credit, though. Now that I’ve gotten the minutiae of this operation down to an offhand afterthought, he’s essentially left me alone. In the beginning, I struggled to nail this opening litany in the half hour allotted, before our eleven o’clock crew arrived and the restaurant flung its doors wide for lunch. But now most mornings I’m done and still have time to walk to the hotel lobby for a paper, stand reading it in the server station before anyone else arrives. “You should be a model,” Amanda says, our backs side by side along the server station wall. “Why do you say that?” I laugh. “You’ve got that whole I don’t care look going,” she explains, her electric blue eyes regarding me as that parenthetical smile returns. “Maybe I should,” I agree, “because it would be genuine.” “I told Jason he should be in GQ,” Amanda says, as Brandy’s passing through, with an armload of steaming hot plates. “Yeah,” Brandy beams, bestowing me an over the shoulder glance before moving on, “you’ve got that heroin addict look about you.” That heroin addict look? Not quite the loving sentiment I’ve longed for from this bubbly ball of effervescence Brandy, but I can certainly see her point. My hair hasn’t been cut in months, my skin’s pale beyond belief and my inability to sleep has left permanent bags under my eyes. Inexcusable, but the whole I don’t care thing is likely twice as damning. I can look at that Saturday morning meeting now and say that sitting alone mattered little, or that I should have skipped the pointless charade entirely as Brandy and Amanda did, yet neither solution rates for shit if I seriously intend to meet chicks. I could readily resent those who have it far easier, like the fratboy football players annexed into effortless popularity through savage conquest of a caveman sport. Or the tall guys who merely have to comb their hair and smile, and they’ve got girls swarming all over them. But the truth is that for a short little space cadet with zero conversational dexterity, I’ve had a proportionately high percentage of glorious opportunities in the past. More than Damon and Alan, even, I have secretly felt, but the difference lies in conversion, that they’re so much more adept at capitalizing on the women they’ve had a chance with. Outsiders or not, this campus lies before us still an unblemished mesa, and yet if I continue to operate as I did back home, drawing within myself and my neuroses, walling out everyone else, then I’ll be left with noxious heaps of regret here just the same as there. “Shoot, I need to get outta here, I’m gonna miss the bus,” Amanda notes, checking the time on our computer terminals, “I wonder why Drew hasn’t cut us yet.” “What, you don’t drive?” “No, I always take the bus.” “I could give you a lift.” “No way,” she shakes her head, “I never accept rides with anyone. I was jumped once riding home with this guy I worked with in New York City. Besides,” she adds, and I know what’s coming next, “Brett would kill me.” By half measures attempting to seduce this married woman, I have to wonder what Alan would do in my shoes. His approach mystifies me, but works obvious wonders. Damon and I privately liken Alan to a throwback from some earlier era, possibly the Eisenhower years. What he wants out of life is very simple, the basic meats and potatoes, a wife and a breadwinning job and some kids, a few beers once a month with his friends. Whatever his interests, he gamely shoves them aside in favor of a girlfriend, should she so much as snap her fingers. Unlike Damon and the Pauls and I, he has no lofty notions where his future will ideally lead, no real quarks, no predilections other than that his female of choice be reasonably hot. Above all else, Alan could never be accused of thinking too much - a basic flaw that dooms the rest of us. He sees what he wants, he goes for it. As the calendar approaches February, he’s finally found a full time job, in a field he knows nothing about. Airplane maintenance for America West Airlines, at Port Columbus, clear over on the city’s eastern lip. As a new hire, he’s working eight to four each morning, with Mondays and Tuesdays off. These early shifts are killing him after partying with me and Damon each night, but he’s on the same afternoon nap kick as the rest of us and is slowly adapting to the schedule. The pay is lousy but they offer decent benefits, not the least of which is a number of attractive young women to ply his straightforward approach upon. Already, he has one of the chicks who works there blowing him, this blonde named Andrea. She’s had the same steady boyfriend for years and won’t sleep with Alan, but doesn’t object to sucking his cock, a typical twist of the convoluted female logic. The rest of us, we worry about trifling little details such as losing our jobs, but the first conversation he has upon meeting her, Alan starts right into discussing oral sex. Most days she’s smoking his pole as they’re shuttling in a truck down the runway, though his fondest moment is a stairwell encounter they had inside the airport. “I usually can’t come when a chick’s blowing me, but I don’t know what happened, I pulled out and nutted all over her uniform,” he chortles. These roommates, they just keep piling up the options. Damon’s seeing Stacy again on the weekends, a curly haired brunette just a couple years older than us, a holdover from back home. What he ultimately hopes to extract from this grand debacle of our lives is as tangled up and weird as my own majestic designs, but again, he’s infinitely more adroit at putting the pieces together. Walking to school each day in pursuit of that fisheries management degree, and despise this though he does, it’s a steady rhythm he can get behind. A pit stop at No. 1 Chinese on High Street for dinner, crashing out in the early evening upstairs. I know his every waking moment is not entirely a bed of roses, that he has a lifelong friend in Cincinnati dying of cancer and that he spends his stray moments writing mournful dirges in his bedroom, strumming an acoustic guitar. Lamenting girls he’s known and left behind, and the tragedy of this friend Jack. But each weeknight he’s out on the town for drinks with us, and he’s got the band each weekend, with the easy money and always ready lay, and his sum total adds up to more than the wreckage I’m sculpting with my days. I’ve come as far as determining I need a second job, but no further. Staying afloat, but the ten thousand dollars I still owe isn’t going anywhere, and it’s impossible to budget money waiting tables. This line of work, cash in pocket always finds a means of getting spent, because there is no end to the variations for rationalizing it away: “I can have a couple more drinks. I’ll just pick up some extra tables tomorrow.” Making over ten bucks an hour to work the deadbeat lunch shifts, so what. I’m barely treading water. And this resourcefulness I’ve acquired, I can’t determine if it’s a reaction to the problem or the source. Whether because I never take any situation seriously and continually screw my life up I’ve learned all these handy survival tactics, or whether because I’ve learned all these handy survival tactics I never take any situation seriously and continually screw my life up. “You crack me up, dude,” Damon says, pacing around the kitchen, “I keep telling people, man, that motherfucker doesn’t worry about anything.” Worry, no, but that doesn’t make this constant grin entirely authentic. Too much time on my hands to sit around and think, and it leads nowhere. I can put a happy face on anything, but my personal life remains a cruel joke. I’m convinced this campus is the hot corner of the universe and that heaven lies just around the bend, but the dreary agenda of getting there runs us through the ringer each day. The alarm clock bleats and it’s a recurring nightmare worse than the one threading through my fitful sleep - off to the goddamn job again, and I curse, some mornings I throw things against the wall. Or I awaken inexplicably morose, having risen preoccupied, oddly, with some girl I haven’t thought about in years. Half asleep from suffering another insomniac night, I run my shifts on autopilot and come straight home to crash, waking up delirious and disoriented from these afternoon naps. Haunted by dreams far more strange than their early morning counterparts, a recurring string of them where all my teeth are falling out. Instead of simply surviving, I’d like to steal a page from Damon and Alan, I’d like to learn how to live. Whenever they’re not around, I recline at the kitchen table with crosswords and a radio, waiting to either hear of or endorse the next great adventure they’ve envisioned. After a month, Alan’s finally struck a small pot of gold with that chick at the airport, and they’re both still hanging onto threads of their hometown past, but I can’t even manage that. The last girl I was seeing in Mansfield, Jessica, had no telephone, and after a handful of unsuccessful attempts calling her best friend Sonja, I’ve just given up. Still, the third girl from their fabled trio, Keisha, moved to Columbus just a few months ahead of me. In many respects she was a major selling point behind my relocation, and finally, our paths have crossed down here.

Propelled by fever hunger, I’m devouring everything in sight. Parked beside the picture window, we’re afforded a pristine view of High Street, the shuffling masses on the other side of this glass our private menagerie. On Wednesday nights here at BW3, they shove aside this very table to make room for a makeshift acoustic open stage jam, and Tuesdays mean twenty cent wings with lines literally out the door, nary a spare seat in the house. But it being Monday, we can claim this penultimate perch as our own, or virtually any other in the building. At a nearby table, this solitary Asian fellow is openly weeping, his neck wrapped in napkins after sampling the hottest wing plate available. While not nearly as bad off as he is, my own forehead is throbbing as I run a slight temperature, joints aching with what I’ve accepted as a rare incipient illness. Four years have gone by since I’ve had so much as a common cold, and it would figure that Damon and Alan would choose tonight to test my mettle, determined to bounce around campus to no end. As if presaging a decline in health, my stomach has urged me to inhale a small pantry’s worth of food today, including this massive boat of wings and a side order of buffalo chips. “This place is cool,” Alan notes, nodding in approval at the pair of perky blondes behind the bar, the sports games broadcast overhead on mounted televisions, coolly appraising everything down to our suffering Asian friend, “it’s got a good atmosphere.” But not so impressive we’re able to remain put, for after knocking off these hearty dinners, we leave this deserted bar behind for the comforting neon hustle of High. Next door, a dive bar named Larry’s has open mic poetry night, as they have every Monday, but campus legend has this pegged as a gay establishment and we’re leery to so much as poke our heads inside. Continuing further south, at an hour when most record stores are shuttering their doors for the night, restaurants running the gamut up and down the ethnic alphabet are packing patrons into rooms no wider than their menus, and the occasional all night coffee shop pours a steady stream of aromatic beans. But outnumbering all these entities put together are the bars along this strip, so plentiful that selecting one we’ve not yet visited is no simpler nor more difficult than drafting the ultimate Christmas list. Near the end of the line, where campus attractions begin to thin steadily south of Eighth, we find a dive by the name of Not Al’s Rockers. Judging from the muted thud oozing through its pores, we’re in store for some much needed live rock music, a surprisingly difficult find. Three dollars at the door and we’re ushered inside, privy to the Local Color experience. A bohemian outfit gracing the minuscule stage, Local Color somehow cram a small army upon its meager surface. Just left of the entrance, amidst a sea of swirling red and green pinspots that would make Pink Floyd jealous, the band is flailing away, half a dozen strong. Fittingly, these dislocated hippies are slithering through Floyd’s seldom heard gem Fearless like ripples on a pond, and as we stumble our way past the queued throng beside the ladies room door, our eyes never leave the stage. For a small time local act, it’s immediately apparent these cats have their ducks in a row. More than the half assed combos gearing up at Ruby’s each night, though for all I know Local Color plays there too. It would certainly seem their ideal locale, sticking, as they do, to golden 60s nuggets by the Dead and Country Joe. Normally this music drives the three of us bonkers, but they pull it off with such splendid grace, often bettering the originals, that we’re hopelessly drawn into their hazy web. Tight and musically competent, I feel they could do with a slimmer roster than that of the lead guitarist, the singer who strums an acoustic, the bass player, the saxophonist who picks up a rhythm axe when not blowing his horn, the keyboardist and the drummer, but whatever the particulars they impress. Their craggy faces, impenetrable and unreadable behind tinted glasses and facial hair, stake wordless claims upon the years these songs cover. Ponytails and jeans and faded tee shirts worn like badges of honor, war medals, further strengthening their unspoken bond with the crowd. As for the crowd, words can never do this mob justice. Body odor hanging in a ripe fog, whether male or female those wearing dreadlocks and overalls prevail in equal proportions. These chicks are by no means averse to sporting rampant armpit hair, nor are the guys opposed to donning what I’m guessing to be potato sacks with holes cut out for the arms and head. “Look at the way they dance!” Damon howls, pinpointing a handful of specimens with the precision of those swirling red and green lights. Truly a sight to behold, this jig. Pervasive enough to make us wonder whether someone at the door is passing out booklets detailing this single particular maneuver, and we’ve failed to pick one up. Throughout the bar everyone else except us is operating under the same mysterious spell, dancing in a like manner. Arms raised slightly, elbows bent, they shimmer their bodies up and down, swaying side to side, with an occasional three hundred and sixty degree turn thrown in for good measure. When inspiration strikes they elevate their arms and hold them there, though only as high as their heads. Then it’s back to the same routine. Uncomfortable, we slide onto the only seating we can find, at a picnic table located near the sound booth. Situated in the center of the bar, it affords an enviable view of Not Al’s Rockers, in every direction, confirming our initial suspicions that this is in fact the only piece of furniture in the house. Aside from the bar, along one wall, and its few token stools, Not Al’s unfurls as one large concrete slab, whereby its occupants either dance or stand along the rear wall. Making no effort to conceal their continuous daisy chain of joints, those situated furthest from the stage lean against the wall with giant dopey grins, suffusing the room in that sharp aroma just a notch below the foul armpit smell. Together, these elements lend the occasion more the feel of an outdoor festival than a Monday night at some run of the mill tavern. We stick out here like the proverbial bulls in a china shop, but care not the least, and in fact find this unfamiliarity, the newness of a community such as this, of unmitigated interest. Wholly fascinating, this submersion into their hippie subculture, if only for one night. Local Color finishes Shakedown Street, and we respond with modest hand claps, with respectable hollers. But here, these cliched responses stand out like an animal activist’s paint splashed against a fur coat. They have the clapping thing down, but we’re not about to hear a woo! or an oh yeah! anytime soon, we’ll perish before someone sets forth the first whistle. Instead of what we’ve come to characterize as the standard classic rock response, these peculiar beasts toss off wild kingdom shrieks, and what might be snatches of bird song. “What was that, a mating call?” Alan jokes, just before hooting like an owl. But as we’re sitting on the picnic table, the fever and an all purpose weariness are crushing me, I can barely kept my head aloft. My left hand accidentally grazes someone else’s beer bottle and sends it spilling out all over the table, onto the floor, but the goodwill vibe of the place is such that the guy isn’t the least bit angry. Such that I would hand him a twenty, tell him to buy himself another drink, on me. “I can’t believe you just did that!” Damon gasps, eyes wide. But the guy has a face I feel I can trust and sure enough, he returns with my change, thanks me. No problem, brother. Maybe these hippies aren’t really our scene but their laidback kindness sure beats the snooty bitches we’ve encountered to date at those other clubs, and the assholes surrounding them.

Damon’s playmate Stacy arrives, bringing us a coffee maker as her belated housewarming gift. A kind gesture, though we don’t drink coffee, and won’t need any other stimulants, either, if she insists upon dressing this scantily all the time. She’s a couple years older, though, and assuredly knows how to dress herself, just as she knows there will come a day when we don’t bounce back from these all night parties quite the same as we used to. Till then, she’s the only one firing up this coffee maker, as she prances around our icebox home in a curious costume of white tee shirt and boxer shorts, no socks. If she’s here, that’s what she’s wearing, and though her curly bouquet of black hair mirrors a little too closely the outdated Mandy Goff ‘do, Stacy’s short frame houses a deceptively smoking set of curves, one somewhat obscured on the rare occasions she has more clothing. Though awakening this fabulous Tuesday morning with a full blown fever, such is my work ethic - or make that my despondency - that I dress for battle and prepare to slog through another shift anyway. We’ve just gotten new uniforms, which does improve morale, replacing the bright pink monstrosities with those black and white referee shirts formerly worn strictly by our bussers. Yet lessening the uniform’s glare doesn’t placate this pulsating head, and on top of these other miseries I can’t seem to locate my keys. I flip the house upside down but emerge empty handed, leaving me no choices but to either sprint across campus somehow in fifteen minutes flat, or walk and show up half an hour late, or call off entirely. In this condition that’s no dilemma at all, and I’m on the phone shortly with this morning’s clubhouse manager, Drew Forster. “Okay,” he says, putting up far less resistance than I’d imagined. Lying in bed, I can hear the bodies steadily filling our house, and the faraway quality they assume mingles with this febrile condition to become a surrealistic dream. Damon’s home from school and shortly thereafter Stacy arrives, and they’re screwing upstairs. Alan returns, a day off running unnamed errands, except he has Alexis with him and no sooner have the third floor gymnastics abated, does he shut his bedroom door and enjoy a romp with her. Finally, I can hear the two girls introducing themselves and chattering in the kitchen, while Damon strums an acoustic upstairs to the tune of his song about Jack, but I’m momentarily unsure of Alan’s whereabouts. The issue clarifies itself when a Kiss greatest hits CD blasts forth from Alan’s monolithic stereo, a unit nearly as large as his queen sized bed. Odd in its own right, stranger still is a development by which the other upstairs tenants of this building begin blaring the same album, a track by track effort racing headlong against ours. But unless they have the band itself suiting up and smearing on those grease paint masks, their efforts at besting Alan’s voluminous output are certain to fail, and they give up the ghost. A month has passed, and still we don’t know those three guys living on the other side of the wall. Though they locked themselves out of the house one night and had to crawl through our bathroom window to the roof to reach their own, we never even bothered to learn their names, nor they ours. The only unassailable facts are that they listen to country music and pound on the wall when Damon’s playing his guitar too loud, but everything else about them registers a vague void. To pass these guys on the street, we probably wouldn’t recognize their faces. Kids who likely sat in the middle rows of high school classrooms, said nothing, dressed unremarkably, were neither handsome nor ugly, pulled C’s, dated either no one at all or else chicks who were just as middling as they. Guys who had no sense of humor, no discernable talent in anything, guys you forget about entirely until someone shoves a yearbook under your nose years later. Bland nobodies, to the extent that by comparison Stephanie shines. We’re not quite sure what to make of her, perhaps, but at least she exists - these guys do not, except in the most scientific sense. Though we’ve discussed her bare ass so exhaustively as to almost render it humdrum, we still don’t know the girl very well at all. Aside from the smirking public countenance she affects everywhere she travels, by now she knows us well enough to add smarm and condescension into the mix whenever spoken to. Aside from nightly stabs at playing this upright piano someone has given her - she has Saints Come Marching In down and absolutely nothing else - Stephanie makes nary a peep, leaving us to fill in the blanks in whatever manner we see fit. Her supercilious air, for instance, is more than balanced out by the allure of hopefully someday seeing her nude body. She has a hyperactive mutt who shares a name with my least favorite manager at work - Stella - and still this boyfriend Stephen who rarely comes around and a baby blue Ford sedan, and that’s about the extent of our exterior knowledge. But these glimpses into her forbidden places suffice in place of a personality, rounding her out to a genuine, whole person in a way she might not have otherwise been to us. Still, the thrill of having a semi-hot chick under our thumb in such an illicit manner, though sizeable, is nearly matched by our good fortune in other arenas. Namely, to reside in a place where our neighbors are uniformly cool, even those three cardboard cowboys beside us. As we are living in what essentially amounts to a double duplex, the arrangements could have been a royal nightmare, in a campus that teems with enough idiots to make the pope start packing heat. But in this regard we are lucky, with Stephanie no trouble at all and the hippie chick beside her even less so, Sherrie. Sherrie’s bone thin with pale skin and long wavy black hair and a goofy, toothy smile showcased only when she laughs, which is basically all of the time. Thirty extra pounds and a sharper wardrobe would serve her well, as would a better fashion muse than the one leading her to wear bright colored slacks of one color - say, purple - with blouses of an equal yet opposite vibrancy. Orange, for instance, or maybe even aqua. Yet in her defense she does have a great, chemically enhanced personality, always zonked and guffawing hysterically at everything loud enough to wake up every neighbor in a twelve block radius.

“God, I hate people!” Mike Short seethes, pounding his fist against the counter as he enters his latest order. If his last name didn’t fit with such exactness, Short’s outrageous mood swings might loom a touch more menacing. As they stand, however, and as he stands - a peg below my modest height - these tantrums count as trifling diversions, amusing but meaningless. We tally the number of times his cheeks burn red on any given shift and measure this figure against the current record, laughing openly at his outbursts, waiting for his rationality to return. We might observe that his roommate Kip keeps an even keel and theorize that maybe Short isn’t smoking enough weed in the afternoon, though this hardly seems possible. Scientifically outlandish, even, but apparently true. Clocking in this morning, Forster had a writeup waiting for me, documenting my inability to follow protocol. Employees are expected to call off no later than an hour before their shift begins, but though I sign his worthless sheet of paper, I have to wonder what kind of lunatic rises that early even under the most optimal circumstances. An hour before I’m due in? More like fifteen minutes. The fever grips me today no less tight than it has the past two, but one more night spent cooped up indoors should drive it away. After the dueling stereos incident yesterday, my roommates and their ladies spent the evening strolling around campus, dining at BW3, soaking up ale at a lengthy procession of university establishments. I’d slept through most of these hours, blanketed and blinded, though arose to join them at a kitchen table bullshit session which lasted till three a.m. Now, as I’m leaning against the server station wall half delirious, watching Smith chalk an 86ed item onto his chalkboard, I question the wisdom of that courageous venture. Idiotic, though it allowed me to recover my car keys from Alan’s coat pocket, having forgotten that I’d borrowed it the day before. 86, on the fly, all day long, in the weeds....though presently miserable, these morning shifts move along with a steadfast ease, the lingo no less a component than all those other pieces. These phrases soothing in their familiarity, unchanging, regardless of the town, regardless of the restaurant. Brandy breezes into the serving station chuckling, “fuck, I’m in the weeds!” and I know she has too many tables, the kitchen door swings open and I can hear Gary singing, “four steamboats all day long!” in making a mental note of his current needs. Amanda telling Gary she needs an appetizer on the fly, meaning pronto, and Drew Smith’s note 86 chocolate cake, meaning we’re out. Wednesday indicates Dr. Innis is here with his wife, regular patrons who routinely ask hostess Jenny Hughes for a seat in my section. Each Friday Innis lunches instead with his associate from the nearby Riverside Hospital, but whichever his companion, their orders never change. All three unfailingly want barbecued pork sandwiches with french fries and no garnish, no lettuce, a side of sauce warmed up as hot as we can get it. A cranky bastard, this Innis, with copper colored hair parted and gelled like a canyon divide upon the left hemisphere of his scalp, the mouthpiece for his stone faced wife, his goofy overweight colleague with protruding overbite and exceptionally thick glasses. But I’ve developed this rapport with them that he doesn’t have to tell me what they want, that our exchanges become friendly and he smiles on occasion. Even Gary knows the drill by now, for though I originally had to manually type each order

XTRA BBQ SAUCE XTRA HOT NO LETTUCE NO KALE

all he needs now is to see

DR INNIS

on my ticket and he’s throwing the order together. Today of all days I don’t feel much like suffering Innis’s demands, but the shift eventually comes to a merciful close. Missing her bus, Amanda shocks me to the core with her request for a ride home, and the dim thrill this provides is enough to carry me through the rest. But I’ve been watching Smith all day, polishing his glasses behind the locked up dining room bar, cramming as many polysyllabic words as he can into every smarmy wisecrack, and I suspect my performance today won’t pass without comment. I’m banking out in the manager’s office, and he’s fighting with a plastic stapler trying to fasten our reports together, when the expected incursion begins. “I must say that I’m less than impressed with your motivation today,” he declares, with commendable theatricality. “Dude, I’m sick.” “I realize you’re not feeling well, so go home, get rested up, you know,” he bids, appropriately somber and dramatic, “but if your work doesn’t improve....ah!” he curses, “this stupid stapler!” “It’s made of plastic,” I remind him, “that’s usually indicative of its quality.” “Well put,” he admits, and I’m free to flee. Maybe in this warped little universe I’m considered a slacker for some reason, but I suspect it has more to do with attitude than anything else. Forgetting the hundred dollar bonus and the perfect shopper score, Smith can bitch about motivation and Forster can preach adherence to the handbook, all because, as Amanda might say, I just don’t care. Perpetually staring inward across some distant dreamy horizon, trifling details escape my notice, down to and including the wedding ring gracing her left hand. She’s married, but I’m beginning to believe it’s her husband’s problem more than it is mine. So long as I play my cards right and don’t stick my neck out there where he can chop it off, if Amanda isn’t concerned than neither am I. “Man, we should grab a cup of coffee,” Amanda suggests, explaining, “I like hanging going to this one place up at Hudson and Indianola, it’s called Common Grounds. You know where that is? Man I love that place! The atmosphere there...... I don’t know, I just love it.....what do you think?” “What?” I rub my forehead, lightheaded to the point motor reflexes are compromised, “today?” “Well yeah,” she says, and the bottom half of her face visibly droops, as her eyes widen with the same wounded expression Mandy Goff adopts when she too is studying someone else, balancing for once upon that other person’s words. “Maybe some other time,” I tell her, scarcely believing the words even as I’m exhaling them. Threading our way across Lane and down High, I turn left at East 11th and she has me stop the car. Amanda resides in an apartment complex further up the road, but paints Brett as some overly protective creep, watching her every move, waiting to pounce. If he sees her climbing out of my car she’s done for, so she exits with a smile and a wave in front of this corner convenience store, the first building on her street, and I’m gone. Riding the fever to termination in bed, I awaken at two in the morning, hungry and restless. Alan and Alexis are passed out in his room with the lights off and the television on, Damon presumably up in his room with Stacy. Living vicariously through them, I pretend for a moment that he’s brought that chick from the airport home instead, or that Damon finally managed to get somewhere with Meredith from school and she’s the one keeping him warm. But maybe the burden rests squarely upon my shoulders, and as I leave the house in search of that all night gas station at 17th and Summit, its submarine sandwich franchise open till three a.m., I reckon that the time for making reasonable excuses has passed. While I slept, a light layer of snow had fallen, and as I walk south on Summit past Ruby’s, the sound of some band playing inside is floating through the air. Our start here in the big bad city hasn’t gone as planned, the cobblestone streets of our adventures remain uneven. But as I soak up the ambience of this idyllic postcard scene, contentment washes over me, the rare knowledge that at this place and this time, there is nothing else, nowhere else, on the planet more worthwhile. This is where I belong, this little window of opportunity we’ve somehow crawled across that elusive alignment of all the right factors, not to be repeated again in our lifetimes. In the years before and those to come mistakes may number in the thousands, opportunities lost. Yet looking up at the street lights hovering like angels above me, and the snow covered cars and asphalt, the snug little houses billowing smoke, content behind the wall of sleep, the smattering of people gracing the sidewalks at this hour, I hibernate for a moment in this igloo of wistful reverie, this frozen winter paradise. Moving here, the most propitious maneuver I could have made, assuring the months to come are dusted with gold as fine as this veil of ice. “Goddammit!” Linville curses, “they’re gonna fuck up our chances of meeting girls!” Big Paul has just learned that Mandy and Melissa are hot on his heels to Columbus, and is understandably less than pleased. His best friend Brian’s hosting a massive keg party right around the corner, and while attending this bash looms a virtual no-brainer, how our tomboy twosome gained knowledge of the event is far more difficult to assess. Endlessly intrusive though these chicks are, we felt we’d firewalled ourselves thoroughly from their questions, isolated them from the chain of passed down hearsay, only to discern at this late moment we’re not half as creative as they. But whatever the particulars of their grapevine savvy, Linville’s concerns are irrefutably well founded, and I regret an inability to dissuade those two from coming. I had my moment on the phone with them earlier, and I failed. Conventional wisdom has it that showing up anywhere in the company of girls improves a guy’s chance of hooking up with other girls, and yet it never works that way when bringing Mandy and Melissa. They stand alone as exceptions to the rule, somehow. Hearing Big Paul freak out as such strikes me as odd, however, in that he never has much to say about these or any other females. We’ve only known him a little over a year and generally assume all along that with his leather jacket and black jeans, his stringy hair an equally dark shade and heavy metal long, his wallet chain and the vague Brooklyn accent somehow acquired through years spent living in Cleveland, he must be getting a piece of action somewhere. We don’t have any specifics to base these assumptions upon, but gauging his disinterest has always said plenty. By way of example, Madam Goff has spent the entirety of this year pining miserably for Paul, but he’s not the least bit interested. “Why not?” I taunt him again, “it’s there.” “No dude, you don’t understand,” he vehemently insists, “I can tell. She’d be one of those types, always callin you and buggin you and shit. I don’t have time for that.” In six months playing with Get-A-Way, Damon’s enjoying his first ever Saturday off. As he squeezes between us, tight around the microscopic table, we wait for the girls to arrive, and in the meantime Linville’s offering a tutorial of this fabulous drinking game Beer Tree. The man who might appreciate this diversion most of all is missing in action, but we’re trudging forward just fine in Alan’s honor. A regular drinking glass is procured, and placed in the center of the kitchen table. Correlating to a standard deck of playing cards, Linville finds a spare scrap of paper and writes down the rules. Play begins and I’ve just cracked open my second can when the ladies’ boot heels come charging through the front door and up the stairwell, though, putting this promising endeavor on hiatus. “Holy shit!” Mandy gasps, whips out a camera in lighting quick fashion as she snaps my picture. Melissa squeals each of our names way too loud and insists upon hugging us, as Big Paul flings the deck of cards aside and leaves the house. Ten minutes later he calls with Brian’s street address and the four of us are gone, eager to join him up on East Lane Avenue. A breeze to locate, thanks mostly to the mob of kids packed sardine tin tight upon its front porch, the exterior of Brian’s house echoes ours and virtually any other on campus. A thoroughly antiquated beast, enormous and ancient, but possessing the battle scarred character of a thousand senseless nights. Unlike ours and nearly all the rest, however, his has avoided the axe, standing as one large residence rather than a ream of smaller apartments. Top to bottom, all three floors and this giant deck and the meager yard, these are his to do with as he pleases for as long as he pays the rent. We elbow our way through the front porch throng, into a living room teeming with bodies no less dense. Before a neglected fireplace, two kegs trail side by side lines, stretching beyond these four walls and into his equally congested den. Past this roiling ocean of unfamiliar faces, we search for just one we know. Each room along this ground floor is painted a uniform shade of white, and with overhead lights blazing brightly in each we’re not struggling so much with identifying the bodies as much as we are making sure we don’t miss any. Scouring the living room and den, the kitchen, we move upstairs and repeat the process through a bathroom, a number of bedrooms. This sharp looking Oriental girl stumbles into our midst and Damon does his best to land this cold contact, jumping into the fray and hitting on her with astonishing bravado. She spurns his advances, however, drifting off to parts unknown. Eventually our search uncovers another flight of stairs leading up to a finished attic on the third floor, and it is here we find the Cleveland gang, those purveyors of evil we’re seeking. Makes sense these cats would hole up in the darkest corner of the house, a place where their dark jeans and jackets can melt into the shadows. True to form, Linville’s strumming ominous chords on acoustic guitar, and tall, lanky Rob, attired in the same basic outfit as Paul, frowns invariably, saying little. But contrasting sharply against that dour duo, our host Brian, a short, affable fellow, smiles readily, between his business casual clothes and well trimmed light brown hair. Yet to shed the last vestige of his baby fat, Brian seems at peace with the madness two floors below, perfectly content with that and the Oriental chick sitting beside him, otherwise known as his girlfriend. “Ouch. Sorry....I didn’t know,” Damon stutters, suddenly awkward. “It’s okay,” she says and laughs, as Brian, who has no idea what they’re talking about, offers a corresponding smile. Thick Asian rugs cover the floor, and aside from the central couch and chairs we’re crowded around, a window faces Lane Avenue, another Brian’s back yard. Likely the warmest room in the house, this tepee shaped attic has a hypnotic charm found nowhere in our own meager abode, insulated by unpacked boxes from the clamor below these white floorboards. But we haven’t come here for solemn reverie, nor a pastoral rehashing of old times. The girls are distracted asking Linville to play them some songs, but even as he’s blatantly ignoring them, Damon and I have found our avenue for exit. Properly ground once more, we raid the kitchen, desperate for two solid containers of any size. Still our contempt for beer runs rampant, but we see consumption of the vile beverage as a psychological tool. Draft, worst of all, but if mimicking the Romans grants us that slight edge we may pry ourselves into some young girl’s panties. Nailing down the last two useful items available - a pitcher for me and something resembling an orange juice carafe for him - we are drawn to the keg’s honing signal, jumping into line like cattle for slaughter. Ahead, an arresting sight captivates our virgin eyes, as one young kid does a handstand atop the keg. Two guy hold his legs and a third shoots beer into his mouth from the tap, with the crowd chanting out each passing second in unison. “What the hell?” Damon mutters. “Keg stand,” the football player in front of us turns around and grins, a well seasoned veteran of these affairs. Our makeshift mugs eventually filled, we have seats along the stairwell, the nerve center of this titan beating heart. Scanning the room, we gauge attendance for Brian’s soiree at somewhere between a hundred and one fifty, not bad for a kid who’s moved here from the shores of Lake Erie just a few months ago himself. But most of the girls we talk to, drifting past us en route to the second floor restroom, are either too drunk or too refined to maintain a conversation with us, and our pickup lines are uniformly awful. “Hey, it’s been awhile!” “Didn’t we used to work together?” “So, you know Brian, huh?” Some chick named Olivia we recognize from high school plops down on the stairs between us, yet gorgeous as she is, it’s a vaguely uncomfortable encounter. We scarcely knew her then and have nothing to say now, and the elegance by association we might reasonably hope to acquire dissipates. A few game candidates emerge once Olivia moves on, but little meaningful can come of it, because we don’t know how to carry ourselves in these situations, we’re not sure what we’re supposed to be saying, or doing, or for that matter wearing. The most genial of these creatures will stand and speak or sometimes even sit but we can’t get over the hump of making an impression somehow, these are obviously faceless encounters no one will remember five minutes from now. Lines roughly half as long as those for the kegs issue now from both restrooms, first and second floor, highly skewed female. Female because the men don’t give a damn, the men are outside pissing on the side of the house, pissing in the yard, some even pissing out of windows. Meanwhile, this black kid in the den is playing DJ, spinning a ceaseless procession of great dance tunes, stemming mostly from the Beastie Boys’ License To Ill, for wherever we go, whatever the year, this has always been the lone CD everyone agrees upon. Finally, we’re standing in line for another round of beer, and Brian crosses our path. “I just tried to change the keg,” he pants, incredulous, “and I’m coming through with the new one and some guy’s like, Hey! Who do you know to be changing a keg! and I’m like, I live here!” “Did you know the guy?” I ask. “No, but then again there’s a lot of people here I don’t know.” Brian drifts off, possibly to the hideaway upstairs and the arms of his hardbodied girlfriend. He no sooner disappears when Mandy, Melissa, and Big Paul reemerge, or maybe he’s trying unsuccessfully to elude them. Damon and I have realized our approach isn’t working, and moving one step ahead of that crew, we reassign ourselves to a couch in the den. Here, the disc jockey’s operating in detached tranquility behind an easy chair, while the dozen or so females chatter with a few randomly scattered males. Linville eventually manages to dump his fan club off with us, but until he does we’re free to ogle unabated. Mostly stunning in appearance, a handful of these beauties actually stoop low enough to converse with us, but again it leads nowhere. The best we can hope for in this situation is to hold tight, pray that a clear break will open if we outlast everyone else. As Brian’s five keg surfeit is whittled down to one, bodies begin streaming out, a slow though visible depletion, and this is ideal. But between Mandy’s wicked glares at the glamorous, dolled up dames surrounding us and Melissa’s outrageous guffaws in response to all that’s said, we’re not making much headway, the cause seems lost. During an idle moment I spy this sheet of notebook paper near my feet, and tuck it into my pants pocket. A list of names and phone numbers, I explain when Damon asks, though judging from his knowing smirk I guess he’s already aware. The identities imbued upon it matter little, but I’m nestling a dim belief it might net us some positive gain, keeping this ship afloat. One of the ladies talking to us as a group gradually ignores everyone else, sidling up next to Mandy. She places her hand on Mandy’s knee, smiling grandly as she whispers in Mandy’s ear, attempts throwing an arm around the shoulders, clearing digging our quintessential tomboy. Up north in hilljack country, flagrant lesbianism is far from an everyday encounter, and miss Goff’s face grows a deeper shade of crimson with each passing moment, half anger, half embarrassment. Clearly on the brink of blowing her top, Mandy’s anger has the rest of us rooted firmly in voyeuristic heaven, elbowing one another as a conversational muffle falls across the room. The DJ spins with his head hung low, oblivious to the imminent fireworks. We’ve seen Mandy stomp other girls to shreds in the parking lots of the roughest Mansfield bars, but she needs a half gallon of whiskey to summon that brawling mien. Tonight she simply leaps from the couch and stomps out of the room, out of the house and into the wintry night. The remaining three of us, we don’t even bother locating Linville, we gag our howls and follow. “Oh my god, that was hilarious!” I crow. “It was not,” Mandy insists, refuting any humor. But she starts up a spitting contest with Damon along the way home and I’m thinking that for a girl that acts this butch, it’s no great shock. Poor Mandy, she’s as lonely and depressed as the rest of us, she has no idea how to present herself in public. Unwillingly enticing, she is, to a lesbian looking for someone to play the male half of a same sex relationship. As if to assert her womanly nature, however, she cleans our house from end to end again, before they head back Sunday morning.

Though liberated from the classic rock band last night, enabling Damon to attend the party, this Sunday differs little from his standard ritual. Every week he returns from Mansfield, and paces around the kitchen chain smoking cigarettes, agonizing over the most trivial details. Reclining at the table, I’m his captive audience, a willing set of ears as he runs each episode underneath the microscope. Bereft of a Saturday night to analyze, Friday remains untouched, and I find myself the sounding board again. Sometimes these monologues extend two hours or more but I never mind, as in many ways, these second hand thrills exceed anything happening here. And though much of what he says amounts to empty discussions of the various sexual encounters he’s enjoyed in the preceding days, mostly he’s just blowing off steam. Bitching about his bandmates, in essence Erik the lazy drummer and Frank the outrageously unhinged leader, in their early 30s and early 40s respectively, a generationally diverse trio rounded out by Damon’s twenty one years. “Sorry, I’m sure I talk your ear off,” he apologizes, treading a continuous path around our tiny kitchen, “but I guess it’s just my way of figuring things out.” Consumed by interior struggles, I forget sometimes that even the extroverts battle their own private dramas, different yet equal. Maybe Damon’s able to invite that libidinous brunette Stacy down for a two day stint, she the slightly older chick with a great ass and delectably fleshy lips framing her truly wicked smile. And maybe he visits this old woman named Jane in a similar fashion whenever Get-A-Way plays her redneck town. All true and more, but Damon’s a born worrier, never able to enjoy himself as much as he should. The pleasures these women provide are offset to some degree by his classic rock cronies, their maddening behavior. Frank leaves tape recorders running in every room to insure nobody’s talking about him, while Damon ups his incessant popping of the heartburn medicine. Erik whines so much after driving to the gigs, about being unable to drink, that it ruins Damon’s night, and he winds up driving Erik to every show merely to avoid hearing it. Still, he’s got it damn good, and though I frequently urge him to chill out, I’m thoroughly convinced he never will, just as I’m certain he’ll look back someday upon this era and wish he had. Alan and I slave away in occupations far more mundane than Damon’s, after all, which allots us heftier doses of frustration and bullshit than his illustrious band concerns could ever touch. And here to think, I’ve just taken on another one. “We were on this three day binge of beer and coke,” Doug Freshwater’s telling me, Sunday night, my first at the second job, “and on the third day we both took a hit of acid. I look over at my buddy, Hoody, he’s sitting at the couch, and he’s crying, he’s hunched over this huge puddle of tears on the coffee table.” Years living alone around Mansfield, my arrangements were never this cheap, yet I can’t seem to make ends meet here. I’m about forty deep on the seniority chart for servers, still on what is known as the “Short List”, which means in a nutshell the good shifts aren’t coming my way anytime this decade. I will continue finding myself stuck in the dead sea of the no smoking dining room, and all the while that ten thousand dollar debt I dug myself into up north still stares me in the eye. This grand relocation is a noble stab at escaping the past, fleeing from its trail of destruction, but ultimately I concede it’s a futile exercise. In rehab and detox circles, they jokingly refer to this as “the geographical cure,” one that never works. My own difficulties are far from severe, just a general all purpose aimlessness, but the basic truth of this holds sway: these problems must be met head on, or they follow you everywhere. Crunch time leads me into the campus grocery store, located in the same strip mall as my restaurant, along Olentangy. But a day later the personnel director of this brand new location on the northwest edge of town is calling, and I’m taken on working five to nine, four nights a week in the butcher shop here. She increases her initial offer by two dollars an hour without any prodding at all on my part, and Damon flips through the roof when I confide how much this is. “You gotta be kidding me! I worked four years for those fuckers up in Mansfield and never made that much!” Of all my friends, Damon’s the nearest to obtaining his college degree, yet he’s also most sympathetic of the life I’m carving here. Everyone else insists those restaurants are a dead end road, and maybe they are, but even the worse shifts there pay more than this part time gig, which is in turn more than anyone else is pulling in. It’s never a question of income so much it is outcome, however, which is the reason this grocery store vocation has me positively euphoric. Here, I’m paid not in fistfuls of cash, but with a regular check each Thursday, an important distinction. Sunday night is my first, and it happens to coincide with the store’s grand opening as well. Doug’s working the same shift as I, burly and goateed, his auburn hair gelled in a resolute fashion that belies his redneck heritage. But he’s also the type of individual who can make everyone in his presence feel as though they’ve known him forever in the space of five minutes. After one shift and a few riotous tales I’m hooked right along with the rest of the gang, we’re cutting up like old friends. A person like Doug is always a hero wherever he goes - in the shadow of his star the rest of us are illuminated as well, drawing even a recluse like me out of his shell almost instantly. “You seem pretty cool, Pockets,” he says, a nickname he’s immediately crafted, noting my fondness for standing with both mitts crammed into the meat coat pouches, “you don’t talk much. Most young kids, they talk too much, they’re always trying to impress me with their stories. It’s like, junior, shut the fuck up. I don’t care.” Doug’s five years older, has a treasure trove more experience and the war stories to prove it. He’s just moved here a week ago himself, from a sparse village on Ohio’s eastern border, near Steubenville. Something to do with a married chick and a jealous husband driving around town with a shotgun looking for him, relegating him to the couch of a friend’s house here. His drawl is as unfamiliar to me as that entire eastern end of the state, a dialect with elongated oooh, one that converts its ah into an aw. “Don’t ever mess around with a married woman, Pockets,” he cautions, and in his hands my new handle translates as Paw-kits. “Actually,” I laugh, and tell him about Amanda. “Pockets, trust me,” he insists, “you don’t want to be messing around with a married woman. It just ain’t worth it.”

Nicole’s panties are red, cotton and faded, with a zillion white Garfield cats dotting their surface. Positively beaming a giant toothy smile, he’s a happy pussy, likely attributable to sitting all day an inch away from hers. September’s underpants, while satiny and shining a brighter shade of red, occupy, as expected, a larger piece of real estate. Sexier, all things considered, if not for the extra acreage. “It’s a new rule I started,” Alan explains, half lit, as they’re crowded elbow to elbow around our lilliputian table, “any chick that comes over has to leave her panties.” Stumbling into the last night of his personal weekend, Alan’s buoyancy is as justified as it is contagious. Juggling not only Nicole but Alexis as well, he’d taken Damon and I out with the latter and some of her friends last night, at a quietly upscale bar known as Alumni Club, on the absolute northeast edge of town. As Alexis demonstrates her surprisingly nimble voice onstage, karaoke style, Alan plays the part of devoted simpatico expertly, while from the plumpest of Alexis’s two overweight, dark haired friends, Damon and I receive massages. The giver of these a so-called professional masseuse, she hands out homemade business cards reading A CELEBRATION OF BODY AND SPIRIT, further inscribed with random galaxies of moons and stars. Fitting, in that it’s doubtless during our darkest hours we put this number to use. An indisputable genius, Alan, dreaming up these wild schemes the girls not only don’t object to but openly embrace. Hovering over our kitchen table, the girls feel recompensed forcing him to tack his crusty grey boxers on the wall, though fully aware only their underpants remain the instant they leave this house. Nicole and September, giggling with pride at the kinky contribution to our squalid squat, and meanwhile, a local rock station blares from Alan’s boombox atop the fridge, and Damon’s pacing around the apartment, nothing new there, cradling a beer. Fresh in from another double headed work day, I sink into a wooden chair nearly literally on its last leg, eyes riveted to this savage scene. Along the fringes, little has changed. The trash Mandy gathered sits still in bags above our stairwell, and the counter is besieged with a newly assembled militia of empties and wrappers. Over the past month and some change, we’ve been covering our refrigerator with beer bottle labels, and while its front facade is almost full, the ashtray everyone’s sharing spills beyond capacity. Nicknamed Mt. Smokemore, its gumdrop shaped cup will hold not a butt more, as a number of failed ascendants pooled around its base attest. Maybe it has something to do with Nicole and September growing up in white trash Mansfield, but I have a difficult time picturing these squeamish campus chicks tiptoeing around our filthy pad with such indifference, such aplomb, the way these two are. We have mouse traps laced with peanut butter out to catch a few errant critters spotted roaming the kitchen, but the girls don’t seem to mind a bit. In fact, not only are they oblivious to the overwhelming grime, they’re settling in as if they live here. A deck of cards rests beside the overflowing ashtray, presently forgotten, but testament to the Beer Tree game consummated earlier. Spotting the deck, and the drinking glass nearby, the distant light of promise I have glimpsed for a month now suddenly reaches the foreground and explodes in my face. How else to explain these panties adorning our walls? My brilliant roommates have somehow taken an innocuous drinking game and turned it on its ear, coaxing all the sexual energy they could from it, as they manage to do with every other facet of their lives. “Kara’s on her way,” Damon says, pausing in mid stride to puff on his cigarette. Holy smokes Christ on a crutch Jesus in a jumpsuit...... Kara? Equating somehow the latent eroticism wafting through this smog drenched air with the vision of her shapely frame and what it must look like devoid of clothing, I’ve created an abstract image almost too hot to bear. Up to this moment I’d assumed the greenhouse effect developing within our kitchen owed its genesis to the smoldering tobacco, but equally to blame, I must confess, is the steam blasting out of my ears. Might Kara contribute her panties, and if so, how will they and the landscape beneath them appear? Are we ever afforded access to that sweet snatch, or at least a quick peek at the shape and shade of her shave? Are we potential suitors, or just sympathetic ears? Kara, the first girl, it’s true, for whom I ever nursed a crush, knowing her, as I have, since third grade, years before these roommates ever came into my life. Sparks flying from my frontal lobe threaten to ignite the head full of hair spray September’s doffed for the occasion. Beyond that customary ornamentation, September has dolled herself up this evening in more makeup than usual, and wears a sweater with the black jeans instead of her usual button down denim shirt. But what she’s angling on is difficult to ascertain - Robert dumped her three days ago, and she isn’t remotely interested in any of us, nor in going anywhere. She’s hanging by a thread on a call he has claimed he might make, and every time our phone rings, she jumps. “Kara wants me to ride out to this Bee Dubs with her,” Damon explains, deflating my vision with the subtle pinprick of his words, “I guess it’s on the other side of town or something, I don’t know. You feel like coming along?” “Sure,” I shrug, darting back into my room to change. What the hell we’re thinking is impossible to say. Why we would ever leave, why we wouldn’t try to rope Kara in once she shows up. She’s tittering in our kitchen, though, she’s whisking us out to her car, before we’ve had the chance to make a pitch otherwise. She’s mashing down the gas pedal from stand still and we’re off. Seated beside me in the back of her sedan, I find Raymond, a visiting New Yorker with light black skin, piercing blue eyes visible even in the dark. We don’t ask questions, concerning his identity or otherwise, mostly because there’s no room to wedge any words between his incessant flood of them. Disinterested in introductions, he speaks not as though he’s addressing anyone in particular, but more as though his stream-of-consciousness monologues are occasionally intercepted by witnesses, sometimes not, but at any rate their content never changes. “....and then I was shootin pickup with some dudes down at the park but sheet, I always played in high school, know what I’m sayin? I know my way around the court, man, these cats, anyway....” Content aside, his mutter is difficult to follow, though a touch too voluminous to tune out entirely. Fortunately, he does pause for air occasionally, permitting Kara’s far more intriguing updates. A bad week for relationships, she’s been dumped again by her erratic boyfriend Eric, precipitating both another depressive bout as well as this manic urge to grab drinks. From his shotgun seat, Damon’s not saying much outside of a few inspirational phrases. But I know what’s coursing through his head are the same thoughts occupying mine, wondering how this sweet, straightforward girl we knew in high school has developed such mental foibles in the space of a few years. Like Alexis, she has swerved exponentially left of center with every passing day. Or, more likely, maybe there were always these dark undercurrents slithering beneath the surface, and we were just too stupid to notice. We know Kara lives on campus, but she still won’t tell us where. She sighs, she breaks off most sentences mid stream and finishes them with self deprecating chuckles. She clicks her tongue and chides Damon with each cigarette he lights, but a few days ago we run into Kara at the campus grocery store and her teeth are so nicotine stained, a far cry from the pearly whites she’s brightened when expecting to see someone she knows, that it’s obvious she too smokes. She drags us to distant bars such as this one, even though we have two more of the same franchise located right on campus, one just four blocks west of our house. Still, the sum of these warped fragments, pieces that don’t quite add up, bizarre personality kinks, they only serve to make her more intriguing. Certainly some force pulls us away from home while two girls are nailing panties to our kitchen wall - hard telling where that might lead - compelling us into the car with Kara. Particularly as it applies to me, for if my suave ladies man of a roommate Damon is joining us, I probably have no chance at nailing her anyway. Common sense says hedge my bets and stick around, try to work on September, but the nagging twinge of what I might miss insists I ride along. Animals at heart, our desires twist like vines inside us, they often make no sense. In my left ear, Raymond’s itinerant chatter continues, but I’m mostly successful in tuning him out. Instead of paying conscious attention, I contemplate what his presence implies, the fact that we keep running into so many folks from the Big Apple. Relegated for so long to a second tier city facetiously referred to as Cow Town, in the blink of an eye it’s become a destination worthy of their time. Strange that just as Columbus has mushroomed into this sprawling juggernaut, the city seems more manageable than it ever has. We’ve made the hour drive south all our lives, in varying frequencies, particularly once we drove, once we graduated. But to live here throws each street corner in a brand new light, so that even to cruise this elevated highway in the center of town becomes an altogether different experience. Distant skyscrapers and hotels and hospitals, even the helicopters and clouds above us, we can pull these into our chest, claim them as ours. I can look down at the quiet side streets zipping past below us to the tune of seventy miles an hour, and announce that they are mine. I can reasonably assume things about the two dozen loosely joined hamlets that I never would have before. I will know these people, I will drink beer with them, I will commit the interiors of every single building to flawless memory. I will conquer this town, piece by piece. Tuesdays are twenty cent wing night at every BW3 in town, and this is one of the more popular locations. Wall to wall drunks, most of them sports fanatics, hollering in either agony or triumph with every scoring change on the big screen TVs all around us. Just up the road from my second job, on Bethel, this relatively posh northwestern subdivision is known as Upper Arlington, a notorious hub for twentysomething postgrads who either haven’t figured out where they want to move or never will. Cavernous in size and brighter and much busier than the campus version, this Bee Dubs feels more sports bar than pub, emitting far less warmth. An aircraft hanger separated by gleaming golden rails but not walls, and we grab a table near the door, some beverages as well as some wings. Curiosity eating us alive, Raymond struts off to the men’s room, and we determine his purpose in this divine menagerie. “Oh my god he is driving me crazy!” Kara groans, massaging her temples. “So what’s he doing here?” Damon asks. “He sleeps with my one roommate whenever he feels like coming to town,” she explains, “remember, the skanky one I was telling you guys about?” “Is that a nice way to talk about your roommate?” I tease. “She is!” Kara insists, “Ugh! Skank! And the thing is, she doesn’t even like him anymore, so she just took off without saying a word tonight! I felt sorry and invited him along...... big mistake.....” Though we know not one of her four roommates, we’re eventually able to ascertain the skank in question is a white girl. And while the whole notion of interracial romances abhors our ancestors, it hardly blows any whistles among people our age. Still, even as Damon and Alan and I would love to date black chicks ourselves, we don’t know any, and it seems that this phenomenon hasn’t quite caught on the way black males and white females have. And while primarily a pattern we’ve seen the women perpetuate to mortify their parents, its mutinous power is diluted from even five years ago. Formerly a hotbutton fad like tattoos and piercings, or the occasional lesbianism Alexis advocates, the girls leave home and shack up with a minority of their choice and the ignorant elders are up in arms. Yet keeping with those other once taboo forms of rebellion, it becomes commonplace, passe. These relationships lose their shock value and are rendered as any other, as they should be. Raymond returns, and his surrealistic monologue resumes full bloom. Dependant upon the swirls of our own conversations, we’re only occasionally listening, for he who talks the most shall be heard the least. Like the bass line in a jaunty rock song, it’s the drowning rumble we build upon, however, ceaseless as he stares at the big screen television mounted nearby. I look over at Kara and she’s baring her teeth in a grimace, cocking her thumb repeatedly, pumping blanks into her skull with a fake forefinger pistol. Raymond digs the Nets and haunts his treasured New York City clubs, we discover, but he’s unearthing nothing of us because he isn’t addressing us, or so much as glancing our way, he may not know we exist. Aware of the extent September’s hanging upon the telephone, Damon and I prank call our own house, a retrogressive first. Spaced just a few minutes apart, we make this connection twice, just to ask our lunatic friend whether Robert has reached her. He hasn’t, but she’s bent upon returning to Mansfield either way, leaving us to wonder why she doesn’t just leave right now. Much later we place a third such call but it rings forever, before a slumbering Alan awakens to answer the line, grumpily announcing that he doesn’t find us funny and neither did September, that she finally hit the road. “Last time I got pulled over I was doin one eleven in a sixty five, sheet, changin lines like this, this, this,” Raymond demonstrates whipping the wheel, as we’re cruising back home ourselves, “but the cop was like, hey! You know how fast you’s goin! Like it was the first time I’s pulled over.” “I’ve got a bunch of tickets, too,” I interject. “Or somethin, I don’t know what the fuck he was talkin about,” Raymond mutters unabated, “but I’m like, sheet, I must have seven tickets out already, eight, I don’t even know, I just drove away.” I look up and over at Kara, and she’s banging her head against the window, and Damon’s doubled over, and this Raymond’s so clueless he notices neither.

Though comically idiotic, more bumbling dweeb than gangsta, two minutes with Raymond and at least he feels New York City. Oozing from his pores, he carries the weight of those five fabled boroughs on his back. But working alongside Amanda daily, I’ve never felt she has a big city bone in her body. I try to imagine her living there, or for that matter anywhere more metropolitan than this, and my mental portrait remains a blank canvas. Given her propensity for outrageous tales, I’d never believe she hailed from the Empire State at all were it not for Mike Short, who, as chance would have it, knows someone who knew Amanda then. “He says she was this huge crack head back then,” Short explains, his face contorted with second hand repulsion, “he said he was at their apartment one time and she and her husband lived like pigs.” “Really? I never actually believed her.” “Oh yeah,” Short assures me, his lips barely moving and revealing no teeth as he speaks with deadpan gravity, “my friend said their place was totally filthy, it was the most disgusting thing he’d ever seen in his life.” Amanda has an unstable past, perhaps, though no shakier than our current managerial situation. Days ago John Stella quit, to the eternal joy of many, and Drew Forster turns in his notice today. The cops are here again, questioning Forster and all the other supervisors who worked yesterday, concerning the disappearance of six hundred dollars. As if the first two infractions weren’t enough, corporate office overlord John Votino has gone ballistic with this latest, demanding resolution. Despite all this uncertainty above, the action down below remains unchanged. Veteran servers still have the weekend shifts sewn up, and my second job swallows the nights. Even were I eventually able to rise above the Short List it’s unlikely I’d want to work alongside those clubhouse bitches, which leaves me and the same old crew here slinging dining room lunches from eleven to three. Brandy and Amanda, Mike and Kip and Akash and me, three or four of us each day, clawing for a few tables apiece amid the smattering of business we’re lucky enough to receive. This Wednesday morning is rare in that neither Brandy nor Amanda is scheduled. For eye candy, we have only hostess Jenny Hughes, swinging into our lobby her lustrous brown hair, loosely restrained with an exotic, sweeping braid that ties only at the bottom, thus resembling an inverted beaver’s tail. Otherwise, we males hold court today, ignoring equally Drew Smith behind his bar, and those bitches over in the clubhouse. In at ten thirty, I had stopped to give Akash a ride, and we’re joined by Kip and Mike at eleven. When Akash needs a lift, he typically calls around a quarter past ten. Though Damon and Alan have already long left for their daily obligations and I’m due in myself in fifteen minutes, I’m only half awake, but stagger somehow to my car, jaunt the two blocks north and the block east to Akash’s place on Indianola. And while management flips out should anyone dare clocking in early to help, Akash is just as lazy as the rest of us and surely wouldn’t anyway, preferring instead a march to our hotel lobby for the daily paper, to stand around in our server station reading it as I’m setting up. With its white plaster walls and hot cocoa carpet both no thicker than the Columbus Dispatch Akash peruses, its matching plywood trim an equally disgusting shade of brown, the dining room has clearly not seen a remodel anytime this century. As such it draws a corresponding elderly crowd, ones who’d probably last changed homes fifty years prior and could relate to this antiquated decorating scheme. Most of these patrons are either insufferably difficult or just plain forgettable, but a few familiar faces emerge. Dr. Innis is here with his wife, as he is each Wednesday, and local printing magnate Mr. Cool graces us with his presence again. “I wish my name was Mr. Cool,” Mike bellyaches, “I mean, my last name’s Short - how cool is that?” Most days Mr. Cool is joined by two similarly aged gentlemen, though there are a handful, such as this, where one younger, sandy haired guy joins them. Easygoing to the extreme, they sit sipping one round of Miller Genuine Draft bottles with their lunches, laughing like old friends rather than casual work associates. Sometimes Mr. Cool and one of the guys would split a second bottle, but no matter what the situation Mr. Cool always picks up the check on his credit card. Mr. Cool’s got a bushy head of white hair and smiles all the time and clearly doesn’t give a fuck about anything outside of his lunch and the Miller Genuine Draft. As I sweep into our kitchen, manager Ron stands behind the grill, momentarily relieving Gary. He’s examining a ticket I’ve recently rang in, puzzled by the message typed near its bottom margin. “Dr. Anus?” Ron jokes. “Yeah,” I reply, “he’s a proctologist.” Analogous to our daytime dining room six, precious little has changed in this kitchen, either. Maybe Jenny Hughes is still seeing that cocky clown Steve, but he’s done the rest of us a favor by quitting, replaced by someone with an actual semblance of personality. As for the remainder of this kitchen, the little band of fuckups I work with every morning, the scenery never mutates. The clubhouse has their own set of servers, managers, cooks, ever revolving, but us dining room people seem cut from a different cloth and are as constant and predictable as the rising sun. Wednesday through Sunday, Gary Russell is our cook, and the other two lunches this kitchen is closed. A tall black man with the most incredible mane of long, braided hair, Gary’s always in a buoyant mood, continually cracking jokes and laughing. Cranking the only local hiphop station on his radio each morning, Gary rides the bus to work from the ghetto east side of town and by now we’ve built a telekinetic routine, we rarely need speak anything ticket related. “Where you from, originally?” Gary asks, during a lull in business. “Mansfield.” “Ooh, Mansfield,” he puckers his lips, a distaste framed by the thick black whiskers of his moustache, “I hear that’s a rough town.” “I guess,” I shrug. “Would you ever consider going to a black bar with me?” “Depends.” Gary’s attitude and performance both shine, so it stands to reason that the restaurant compensates him accordingly, with those same two days off each week, a set schedule. This represents one of the few things about the place that makes any sense at all, however, and under this broad umbrella stands its very design. Whichever architect laid out the blueprint for this abomination either fell under the influence of some heavy chemicals, or paid for his degree on the black market. At the very least, he should have been sent packing before the first pickaxe was lifted. Attached to the Parke Hotel, our restaurant has a central hallway literally running right down the middle, connecting the lobbies of both. The clubhouse and its kitchen are on one side of the hallway, the dining room and its kitchen the other. In between, eighty year old grandmas clomp down the carpeted hall with walkers, kids bounce soccer balls, moms and dads swagger back to their rooms drunk. The clubhouse does three times as much business as the dining room, if not more, and yet its kitchen is about as big as someone’s broom closet. By logical extension, then, it stands to reason that our inanimate dining room kitchen has enough space to double as a football stadium. A pair of doors theoretically connect the two, but between these lies the obstacle of that goddamn hallway. So as all prep work is done in the dining room kitchen - flouring onion rings, baking bread, and countless other chores - our poor preps carry steaming hot, four by two foot metal pans from their work stations, creak the one swinging door open very carefully so as not to drill any passing hotel guests, look both ways, cross the hall, mount two steps, open the clubhouse kitchen door - it only swings out, not in, another brilliant conception - and then fight their way into the cramped cubicle where, on a good day, as many as half a dozen cooks are jostling about, yelling, cursing, in general paying little mind to some quiet foreigner bringing in their next batch of barbeque sauce. Donatus - “Don” - and Illirjan - “Larry” - are the two most notable preps, simply because they never seem to leave. Sbai also toils back here, a pleasant Middle Eastern man with crew cut black hair, amateur soccer star in his free time. And Kevin, Gary’s grumpy nephew, resembling the actor Laurence Fishburne as he wordlessly glowers at everyone. But mostly, it’s the Don and Larry show, sixty broadcast hours a week. Don, a short, dark skinned African in round wire rim glasses and comical little potbelly, an eyebrow sized moustache, slight gap between the two top front teeth, speaks precious little English. Grey at the temples, he spends most of his shifts listening to the pounding tribal rhythms of native hero Fela Kuti on cassette, to the extent one particular saxophone line, honking and insistent, remains lodged in my head around the clock now ber-der-der-der-dut, ber-der-dut...... ber-der-der-der-dut, ber-der-dut and I ask Don what the song’s about, he grins broadly, explains, “ookey.....he’s sneaking outta de house....sneaking....sneaking....” as he pantomimes the creeping motions necessary to accomplish this subterfuge. Sweating, his faded red official Damon’s tee shirt holey and coated with flour, Don gasps, “suffering, always suffering,” in a thickly accented tongue, without fail, whenever anyone asks how he’s doing, or for that matter anything at all, “I am a black man.” He throws out the word ganja at random, too, shouting it at people, or as an exultation, or even a whispered, barely discernible chant ganja ganja ganja ganja ganja while preoccupied. “Hey, go tell Suffering Boy we need more salad!” Akash says, his pet name for Donatus. Illirjan, Bosnian by descent, is in his forties and confounds us all with his fondness for American metal, especially Nirvana. From ten thirty onward, he’s got the local hard rock station cranked upon his own radio, down the prep line from Don’s Fela Kuti, separated from Gary’s hip hop by a long, towering bank of ovens, and before this magic hour it’s Howard Stern. Right around the time I came to Columbus, Stern arrived also, and Larry catches his syndicated show each morning without even touching the dial. A man like Larry can clearly appreciate the notorious shock jock. Perhaps it’s just his upbringing, the lowly status females possess in some of those old world countries, but a more sexist individual than Illirjan I’ve not yet met. Unfortunate, because he’s otherwise personable, and just as industrious as Don. When away from here, he somehow manages to teach weight training at a fitness club across town, as his cannon biceps readily attest. “Jenny ees a peeg!” he declares as I walk past, coaxing from me a startled laugh. “Why do you say that?” “She ees always dating these loo-zares! A peeg, just like I say!” Behind the whole operation we have Jamie, our head cook. A goofy space case, Jamie is also known as Big Batch, because he always makes too much of everything, or Ass Patch, a vague approximation of his strange last name. A man of few words while at the restaurant, he’s by all accounts a total maniac in his social endeavors, continually entangling himself in the craziest predicaments. Jamie drives out to this bar at The Continent shopping mall for a couple of drinks. He arrives in his own truck, but a couple drinks soon turns into about a dozen or so and a fog descends over the evening, one that ends with him awakening the next morning in the ditch of some unrecognizable road, behind the wheel of a white sedan he’s never seen before. He abandons the car immediately and makes it to work on time, but in doing so wonders what the hell happened to his truck. Three days later, it turns up in Cleveland, but no one, certainly not him, has any idea how it got there. Not only that, but he never learns anything about the white car, either, who it belonged to, how he’d wound up that night as the man in charge of its steering wheel. I don’t know much about Jamie but to see him in operation with his crooked half smile, spiky reddish brown hair and the red Damon’s Place For Ribs cap pulled down low, obscuring his eyes, it doesn’t take much imagination to picture him committing these bizarre atrocities, and more. The only question I have is how he could have landed a gig as head cook here in the first place, even an establishment as fucked up as this one. But seamy though this sports bar may be, the eternal question remains: are we bringing this place down, or it us? Employee turn over is a fact of life in any work place, and while only in restaurants does it reach epidemic status, this one stands head and shoulders above all others. Shifty drifters are drawn to this atmosphere, and at any given time, at any restaurant in the known universe, ninety percent or more of its employees are absolute maniacs. Not wife beating, child molesting, serial killing lunatics, maybe, but certainly money squandering, video gaming, liquor guzzling bums. Factor in here the college element, the unreliability it fosters, a predilection for these cakewalk shifts, and the overruling theme becomes one of utter chaos. Try as they might to pretend otherwise, the management figures are no more reliable. One month working at this rib joint, and already two of the seven I started with are gone. Two gone, and an investigation still under way.

We subjugate the streets, demanding spoils. Damon and Alan attack the midweek happy hour with a fervor, and as I’m rolling in from another double sided workday, they’re already three sheets. They’re just now catching their second wind, they’re sucking me into an optimistic whirlwind which carries us like styrofoam keg cups all the way down to High. A Wednesday night equals country music at the Jailhouse, and the first solid lead Damon has produced. Smack dab in the heart of campus, near the northwest corner of Lane and High, the Jailhouse seems an odd host for this weekly hoedown. A fashionable club pouring reservoirs of beer and throbbing dance music to the collegiate legions, the other six days draw an entirely different crowd. But Wednesday comes and the boots return, the ten gallon hats, to the backing of the lonesome western dirges these people know by heart. A correspondingly older crowd, mostly, though also including two girls Damon knows from school, Laurie and Jessica. Roommates, they’re both majoring in fisheries management, same as Damon, and have invited him to the Jailhouse tonight. He warns us not to expect much from either, but we’re starving for prospects ourselves and are not inclined to miss it. Even by location, the Jailhouse stands alone. Joined at the hip to a Greek deli, mounted a half dozen steps above the street, the nightclub faces West Lane Avenue in relative aloofness. Dozens of bars dot north campus and far more limn the university’s bottom border, but the ones between are spaced out piecemeal. Fanning further west along Lane finds first a towering cluster of dormitories, one window of which, eighteen or nineteen stories high, proudly harbors a neon Bud Light sign. Visible from blocks away in any direction, this glittering, glowing advertisement reaches people like a beacon, calling everyone within the signal’s radius to cast their cares aside and party. We can’t help but conjecture as to its owner’s identity, whether a polished ladies man leading thousands into battle, or a lonely recluse begging for just one person to arrive upon his doorstep. Or maybe not even a guy at all but a member of the fairer sex, some hedonistic hellcat that can drink every male she knows under the table. Beyond these dormitories, the Varsity Club, and further down Ashley’s, a Holiday Inn, an all night convenience store, a gas station, a restaurant. But interlacing them like stitches are tiny apartment complexes and houses of every architectural stripe and era, high rises even, and a smattering of university buildings. The St. John Arena, where OSU fields its men’s hockey and basketball teams, though not much longer. Across the bridge spanning our dormant Olentangy, an enormous indoor stadium twice the size of St. John is nearly finished, soon housing these athletic endeavors, a signpost of westerly campus sprawl. Leading the way along Lane through an impressive arboretum, underneath the 315 highway overpass and into the pastoral OSU owned farms, before university owned property terminates uphill in the old money nobility of aptly named Upper Arlington. Laurie’s a tall, suave blonde, stylish and beautiful like a classic Southern belle. Sophisticated, remote, she says little, but something about her watchful eyes, her fuss free wisps of hair, these imply her age might extend a few years beyond ours. At any rate, in her boots and tight jeans, her button down satin shirt, her demeanor and appearance suggest a sassy gold digger from the 80s soap Dallas. But she’s far too subdued to fit this timeworn stereotype, she’s as cool as winter rain. Unfortunately, her roommate Jessica more than makes up the difference. Still dreaming daily about my last fling up north, meeting others who share that name gets under the skin, somehow, muddies her memory, sullies the pristine image I’ve built. But everywhere we turn there are more Jessicas, first Alexis’s fat friend of BODY AND SPIRIT fame, now this irksome sprite. Bottle in hand, Laurie leans against the dance floor railing with impeccable nonchalance, eyeing the crowd packed snugger than her jeans. But upon the lip of the slightly elevated dance floor ourselves, Jessica insures we advance no further, yammering above the clamorous country patter, accosting Damon with a ceaseless rundown of her day’s spectacular achievements. Akin to Raymond on three pots of coffee, she’s shamelessly self exalting, enumerating professors delighted, tests aced, and papers penned with utmost precision. Flat as a board, her facial features similarly bland, Jessica wears her brown hair bowlcut short. No dummy, she’s aware of our wandering gaze, and that half the bar probably views her as a closet lesbian. Desperate for attention, she stops at nothing to seize it, she drops her pants now and moons us, all in the name of showing off a fish tattoo on her otherwise lackluster ass. Having long since given up on Meredith, Damon’s primary interest lies in working Laurie, but Jessica won’t let him. Thankfully Alan and I are not trussed as such, and we leave him nailed without pity upon that cross. We squirm through every dark corner of the bar, we climb into the zipper teeth mesh of this dance floor crowd and unveil our amazing club moves. Throughout, I follow Alan’s lead, waiting patiently for the moment this seasoned veteran approaches some of these genteel foxes. Given his pronounced buzz, what I don’t expect is this sudden timidity, an atypical Alan. We can’t claim, after all, any misgivings with the atmosphere. Just as unexpected is the warm welcome we’re receiving here, veering sharply away from the glowering indifference those elitist snobs showered upon us at Coeds and the Edge. Here, the guys tip their cowboy hatted heads once by way of wordless hellos, the chicks place gentle hands upon our backs while squeezing past. For a senseless joke I’ve worn my old pizza delivery uniform here tonight and we’re both dancing like flagrant jackasses, but nobody seems to mind either. Twinkle eyed old timers watch from afar with faint, praising smiles, and couples cling tightly, while we hog as many square inches their passivity will allow. “Damn, that Laurie’s hot!” Damon extols, almost a curse, as we traipse home empty handed, “I’d like to nail that, but I think she’s out of my league.” Lamenting our failures for the long walk home, I begin to understand. Considering their cumulative track records, I’m not sure how it’s been left in my hands to take charge, but it apparently has. All the other successes they’ve enjoyed with women in other spheres, it isn’t doing them a damn bit of good here, they’re just as adrift as I. The problem with our approach, I see, is in hoping by some distant, unfounded miracle, to attract attention from the opposite sex simply from walking through the room. Blessed not with movie star looks, we’ve nonetheless bought into this lazy ideology, willing ourselves to believe some magic osmotic development will broadcast our strengths loud and clear. Pure horseshit, in other words, and if we’re going to find a mate in this haystack packed fifty thousand strong, we’d best junk this worthless cowardice. We’ve nothing else to do, no other ploy but to jump in and start digging, no matter how tiresome the process. In the kitchen now, the ever changing time capsule of our current devotions. Into the boombox atop our refrigerator pops the Beastie Boys’ first album, and a continual rewinding to the track Cookie Puss we’ve obsessed over of late. Upon the counter, the ingredients for my latest early morning pizza, whipped together by hand. And in the center of our table, fighting for space amidst Mt. Smokemore and the litany of empties, the list of telephone numbers I’d swiped from Brian’s floor. “What do you think we should say?” Damon wonders, his face flushed and beaming smiles as it customarily does when he’s drunk. Country night or not, whenever he gets this look he reminds of a cowboy coming in off the range. I always expect him to whistle, “whooeeee! What’s for dinner!?” but instead he runs upstairs for the acoustic guitar. Strumming a number of ancient western songs, a couple of which we’ve heard at the bar, he alternately sings and joins the debate. “We could say we met them at Brian’s party,” I suggest. “Hmm,” Damon mulls this offer, “yeah, I guess it’s worth a shot.” Yet this seemingly simple exchange doubles as relief map, outlining the peaks and valleys of our personalities, a case study. Pizza in the oven, I join Damon at the table, as we plot the precise combination of words we should siege these unsuspecting girls with, while Alan just grabs the sheet and starts dialing. Alan, the boldest one, leaping into action. We too would have eventually taken the same step, but not without sketching the whole thing out first. If Damon’s the giddy hillbilly when plastered, Alan merely devolves into a carefree jester on par with the rest of us. By day, with his room customarily spotless, his bed made, he’s more conscious of his image than Damon and me combined. Leasing a brand new oversized truck, electric blue, he keeps it washed and waxed, he keeps the cab relatively clean. Though necessitated by his monthly National Guard gig, he’d likely trim that copper colored hair down to a Caesar cut just like the one he currently wears, for while Damon and I haven’t seen a barber in months, Alan raves about the girls who shorn his locks on High. Since discovering their salon, at the underground campus mall, he’s visited and championed them relentlessly. But held firmly within the grip of drink, his image control loosens. When sober, he’s unwavering in his subtle pursuit of those nuclear age values, and I feel at times a vague condescension lurking just beneath the surface, for Damon and the Pauls and me, how we entertain notions loftier than those he holds dear, the eventual family, the career. He once played drums in a band alongside Damon and the Pauls, for instance, but as their blood boiled in response to his indifference, it was always plainly obvious to me he found their devotion dumb. Yet other moments exist, brief if not intoxicated, when I sense, too, his resolve wavering. He’s always been a shameless flirt and an amusing storyteller, true, but these both tie, however obliquely, to his longterm goals. At other moments, however, he reveals a vicarious thrill in my more eccentric attributes, as in a tendency to walk campus at three a.m. for no reason, to sit up until six in the morning reading books at the kitchen table, to drift out in broad daylight with my hair sticking up every which way or wearing two entirely different shoes. And though these oddities can in no way help him climb the ladder, I catch rare glimpses of his yearning, a shot of airheaded zaniness injected in his own life. Phone against his face, he adlibs with impressive dexterity. Alan’s spur of the heels cover story is that his name’s Rocco and he’s a bouncer at The Edge, a bit brutish but basically kind at heart. Utilizing this alias, his first foray leads him to the answering machine of some Moisha chick, a name he takes one look at and assumes the obvious. “Moisha, this is Rocco. You don’t know me, but I was just wondering - are you black, honey? Cause I’m lookin for some brown sugar toooonight!” Counterbalancing the doorman’s tactless manner, Alan develops a second alter ego, a meek little twerp named Mike Sparrow. Sparrow he reserves for the ones who sound like they might be more impressed by the gentle sort than by a thug who bounces bodies from a club. Entirely a split second judgment call, dependant upon the sound of the recipient’s voice, and a fifty-fifty tossup on those instances he’s leaving voice mail. As we work our way down the list, focusing merely on the female names, I’m making notations next to each. Michelle....DO NOT CALL. Samantha....left message. Tori...left message. Stephanie...bitchy roommate. Penny....left message. Cheryl...wrong number. Kelly....left message. Alan reaches a male roommate somewhere along the line, too, this kid named Brad, an even bigger geek than our man Mike Sparrow. “I’m coming over to kick your ass!” Alan tells him. “Okay,” Brad says. His efforts eventually find Halle, sleeping until he calls. As nothing else is working, Alan unveils the honesty approach, telling her we found this scrap of paper with phone numbers at our friend’s party - who could have ever imaged this would stand alone as Alan’s winning formula? She laughs and says she knows who Brian is and doesn’t seem to care about our bogus means of obtaining her digits. All told he spends almost ten minutes on the phone with Halle, and while Moisha’s heritage was only a guess, there’s no mistaking this chick’s blackness. “I’m gonna call you again real soon, okay?” he says, chortling at the ridiculous ease of this victory. “Okay,” she replies, mirroring his laugh.

When Amanda first began at the restaurant, she never wore any makeup at all. Now, each morning has her arriving with cheeks powdered and rouged, eyelids blackened to needle sharp points, lips painted a hearty coat of red. Aptly named eyeshadow the color of twilight shade, as conspiratorial as her identically tinted irises and all done, I like to think, for the benefit of me. Our interactions intensify with each passing day, albeit inch by inch. I let her ask me out for coffee, but never make the suggestion myself, sensing this reluctance as the best course of action. Slow days alone in the dining room, we pull chairs into the server station, and she sits there telling me her life story, sometimes seated upon my lap. An entertaining diversion even if I hold little faith in the audio streaming from her mouth, as when she often promises to call me sometime during the coming night. She rarely does, and I’m later pressed into some play acting of my own. “Sorry! I forgot to call you!” she gushes the following morning. “Oh,” I shrug, “I wouldn’t have been home anyway.” A newcomer to this dizzying kingdom of coffee, I don’t know the first thing about these exotic words upon their chalkboard. The difference between a mocha and a latte is relatively easy to grasp, but when the nomenclature ascends to the realm of double shot espresso au almond biscotti machiatto Americano I must admit defeat. Amanda vacillates between ordering simply so as not to disturb her current tale, or trying to impress with her vast wealth of worldly knowledge, but regardless of her whims a regular cup of joe suits me just fine. It’s all a vaguely tan whirl of cream and liquidated sugar by the time I’m through accentuating anyway, why differentiate. And why she always chooses Common Grounds for our afternoon caffeine jolt, I can’t grasp. Though living maybe four blocks away from Insomnia, and not much further from a whole slew of coffee shops in the arty Short North district, with even more scattered around campus, still Amanda prefers this place. She speaks glowingly about the atmosphere here, but to me it’s abnormally dark, and scarcely populated, though maybe this is the point. Located in the rundown stretch of land between north campus and south Clintonville, a white trash pocket jokingly known as Clintucky, there’s little danger of anyone spotting her here with me, at the corner of Indianola and Hudson. “Brett gets so jealous of you,” she beams, “he hates it even when I just mention your name.” As well he should. In addition to grabbing coffee, she likes hitting the midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show every third Saturday, along with her AA comrades. She’s outlined how they dress in costume and sing and throw popcorn at the screen, she’s invited me along to the next. Ditto some fancy dinner in connection with her AA meetings, asking me to throw on a suit and join her, all the things Brett hates and refuses to do. But again, though intent upon attending both functions, I’m perpetually waiting for her to make the next move. Most of the problem, obviously, is that she’s someone else’s wife. With her frizzy blonde hair and sizeable breasts, plump ass, her dimpled smile and the now red lipsticked mouth that never stops chirping, everything about Amanda I adore. From her high proud cheekbones, to the blushing circles of skin below them, it’s not a question of desire. And even for a shy guy I can usually wrench enough courage to ask someone out, but the ring on her finger gives me second thoughts about stepping over that line and I just can’t muster up the balls to do anything about it. She’s just as vague as I am about everything and even as our flirting heats up to the boiling point we’ve yet to leave square one. Neither of my roommates are having much luck with the campus chicks, either, but at least they’re getting some action on other fronts. Making their own breaks, a facet I’m still struggling with, always struggling with, in my basic inability to gel alongside these fellow human beings. Any friends I ever made through the years, any women bedded, these all seem bizarre accidents. I still have no idea how any of it ever happened. On the days we both work, typically four or five a week, I’m giving her a lift home. She no longer bothers waiting for the #18 bus in front of our restaurant, as we’re beyond the point where she worries about riding with me. Occasionally, if not coffee, we stop for lunch along the way, yet conversation remains rooted to pedestrian topics such as books and movies and future plans, and the customary charade still lingers. That whereby I must deliver her to the apartment on East 11th the days her husband’s in school, but stop instead at the convenience store when she suspects he’s home. Little Paul Radick’s sitting at our kitchen table when I arrive at my own abode, a guest for another of Damon’s frantic hair pulling soliloquies. Lighting a relentless stream of cigarettes, Damon paces holes into the green and white linoleum, fretting aloud the complexities plaguing his coming weekend with the band. Only Thursday, but already Frank is manufacturing a tremendous ordeal of the material he’s discovered on his hidden audio tapes, though Damon insists he and Erik weren’t badmouthing their paranoid leader at all. Furthermore, and far more troublesome, they face a gig Saturday night in Millersburg or Shreve or some other hillbilly hamlet in the heart of Amish country. A drive nearly two hours northeast of here, though this doesn’t prevent Erik from pleading with Damon to come pick him up beforehand, so that the drummer may avoid driving once again. Even as his woeful hometown of Galion lies an hour directly north, and will add a corresponding amount of time to Damon’s journey. Frank, as always, refuses to intervene, arguing correctly that it’s Damon’s problem alone to issue a harsh denial. “I just can’t figure out what’s WRONG with these guys!” Damon groans, “what the fuck goes through their HEADS?” “Look dude,” Radick says, gripping a cigarette loosely between the first two fingers of his own left hand, “Erik’s a pussy, and Frank’s crazy. That’s it.” Damon stops in his tracks and regards Little Paul with an inquisitive look, lips pursed. Yes, our diminutive friend has summed up another tangled mess with a tight, well spoken phrase, and nothing else needs said.

“It always cracks me up when I see that,” Alan says, as the silicon enhanced blonde bombshell on screen, her visage already caked with come, licks the withering head of some guy’s pole, “it’s like, it ain’t chap stick, honey! He already busted his nut on your face!” For campus porno purchases, only Waterbeds N’ Stuff will suffice. Along the university’s southern rim, between Panini’s and a club called Maxwell’s, the original building burnt down roughly a year and a half ago, taking with it the treasured indigenous pizza joint Papa Joe’s. Located further north on High, about a block north of Lane, this newer Waterbeds location doesn’t have quite the same charisma nor the space, but offers a much more focused version of its standard notorious wares. A world glass selection of bongs and pipes and designer lighters underneath its countertop glass, the walls are adorned with black light posters and psychedelic tee shirts, with racks and display cases of trinkets both delicate and bizarre in the middle of the sales floor. Past a beaded curtain in back are the sex toys and adult games and pornos, and finally, in one remote corner, a few futons and papasans and pillows to justify its name. We’re knocking back adult beverages in Alan’s room, the four of us, viewing our latest video acquisition. Damon has the cheap black Series 10 bass guitar out and my tiny amplifier, learning the throwback funky theme song introducing this low budget modern classic. Like this snappy, stuttering bass line the videos are unfailingly bottom of the barrel, but it’s not as if we spend a fortune acquiring them. Cheap enough on their own, these ten dollar bargains are made further so by a buy-one-get- one coupon Waterbeds N’ Stuff runs on the back cover of The Other Paper each week. Issued every Thursday, The Other Paper and its rival Columbus Alive document our city in a way the lackluster daily paper - Dispatch or Disgrace, depending who you ask - never bothers. These weeklies tackle tougher issues like the ongoing investigation of police chief James Jackson, barred for two solid months now from so much as entering his office, the target of numerous wrongdoing allegations. Mixing up these heavier pieces with articles about mayor Greg Lashutka, easily our city’s most beloved politician, the bearded, towering giant known primarily for his inscrutably zany quotes, they also offer a more dedicated rundown of the polychromatic night life, review with more intelligence upcoming movies, local band CD releases, their gigs, the restaurants and bars and campus night clubs. Indispensable, these two publications have become our entertainment bibles, and still of equal value are those porno video coupons. “I was watching this porno awhile back and this chick took two guys in her ass,” Radick announces. “Bullshit!” Alan challenges. “No, I’m serious,” Paul giggles, “it was like holy shit, what the fuck....” Thursday night and we’re mobile again, dead set on south campus. Despising this cold weather ever so, Paul’s not inclined to leave the house any more than he has to, thus his month long sabbatical from visiting us. But additionally, he’s nursing a newfound infatuation for this chick named Jennifer, a petite brunette he’s met through his mom, a coworker’s daughter fresh to Ohio from some distant state. Mrs. Radick is pulling strings for Paul to soon date Jennifer, though in the meantime he subsists by calling her house each night. “What does she look like?” I ask, though Paul’s specific tastes leave little room for doubt. “Well, you know, she’s the kind I’m always after, short and real skinny,” Paul replies, “I mean, you know, the first time I saw her it was like eh, she looks pretty good but then I did a double take and it was like damn, she’s pretty hot! I mean, you know, it’s not like she’d walk out here on High Street and stop traffic or anything, but yeah, she looks pretty good,” he chuckles, “you know?” Much like music or the few rare subjects he also cares a great deal about, when Paul sinks his teeth into one specific chick, it’s standard knowledge that he’ll obsess over her for a year or longer. For the duration of our hike he’s analyzing every angle out loud, and they’ve yet to begin their courtship. If everything goes as planned, Jennifer will likely find his single minded devotion flattering, but if not then Paul’s in for an extended period of agony. As a guy who thinks about a hundred chicks a day for five minutes apiece, and can never summon the requisite attention span to seriously pursue any of them, I admire his dedication, and yet it seems to me the middle ground Damon and Alan strike between us is far more desirable. They focus without obsession, they whittle their prey to a select few without sweating the outcome, they finagle satisfactory results. Whereas Paul and I continue wandering in the shadow of our radically disparate neuroses, intermittently successful but mostly firing random shots at a target we can’t see. Consumed by Jennifer, Paul’s not talking much about Florida this time around, though much of that tropical state, too, has suffered a terminal frost of late, nullifying, for the moment, its utopian power in his obsessive daydreams. Far stronger are the subliminal wiles of round trip ticket prices tacked to the window of a campus travel agency, but even those exotic locales can’t hold a candle to High. His strenuous exhortations merely an affected stance, there’s a reason Paul hasn’t hopped the next plane elsewhere, or for that matter remained at home. Fifty thousand students and god knows how many stragglers like me, interloping on the fringes, and a year from now, one fourth of these people will be elsewhere, replaced by an equal surge of fresh faces. But the transience may make this the most elaborate way station on planet Earth, bottom heavy with rising anticipation, tucked within a city on the brink of bursting through the stratosphere. Pausing at the intersection of 15th and High, saturated with more foot traffic, as a rule, than any other, we face Wexner Center for the Arts across the street, its misshapen structure alone an intricate puzzle, worthy of afternoon sidewalk introspections, seated on a bench, peering over the cup of a steaming hot chocolate. Walkways that lead nowhere, and piles of red bricks stacked without reason. White scaffolding left standing, stretching skyward to crooked infinity. Beyond these visual deterrents an art gallery and bookstore, a theater and performance space within, more conventional in shape and scope, and the stately Mershon Auditorium, recently host to a sold out show of decades old jazz legends. Continuing south, we pass beneath the Newport Music Hall’s wedge shaped marquee, a white background glowing beneath its black block lettering. The nation’s longest running rock club, the Newport seats 1700 and has survived like a prisoner of war held captive some thirty odd years. Scarred but defiant, its weathered ebony doors and medieval facade stand in stark contrast to much of the surrounding strip. But a half inch coat of rock posters flanking both sides connects the Newport to its many satellites, the campus telephone poles, staple gunned with a chain mail suit of flyers heralding events both current and those years past. In the past ten days, Weezer and Snoop Dogg have booked sold out shows at the club, and on nights like those, lines of devotees extend all the way down to 12th and around the corner. Itching for adventure, we latch upon Maxwell’s, across the street from The Edge. Though passing this club a number of times in pursuit of others, we have nonetheless absorbed and pondered those tantalizing tunes emanating from its mysterious pitch black interior, we’ve seen scores of lovely ladies swallowed up by the same. Rumor has it that Thursday is 1980s night and as such we can no longer resist. After the twenty minute walk here and a wait in line very nearly as long, we finally gain entry into the club. Struggling to adjust, our eyes initially protest this unrelenting onslaught of black, not only the absence of light but also the predominant shade in both hair color and clothing among the freaks that populate this place. Goth kids, in other words, though accentuated with a plentiful dose of meek freshmen females, cowering in corner clusters, making us feel at home. Aside from a remote DJ booth perched in a loft above the dance floor, reachable only by a wall clinging ladder, the layout is fairly standard here. Near the entrance, a number of tables and chairs, a couch by the DJ’s ladder. A u-shaped bar enclosed by the building’s front wall, with one lone pool table underneath a swinging lamp on the other side of it. Beside the pool table, the establishment’s only window, a giant plate glass affair affording a splendorous view of High Street. Occupying much of the room’s center is the dance floor, elevated about two steps up from the rest of the club. Beyond lie two more couches and another pool table in a relatively well-lit section, the restrooms, and then a patio for fresh air whenever the weather allows. All told we spend fifteen minutes surveying the establishment, at the conclusion of which Damon and Paul announce they’re leaving. “What?” I gasp. “Eh, I think we’re gonna check out The Edge,” Damon explains. Damon acts regularly as Paul’s mouthpiece, and the good friend who won’t say no. Tracing parallels to this budding obsession with Jennifer, Paul’s modus operandi always involves traipsing from place to place until he locates one chick above all others who meets his specifications. A tiny little twig with no curves to speak of, if possible, as short and as skinny as he is, or even smaller. He will then forevermore insist we hit that place every time he visits in hopes of spotting that chick, whom he won’t speak with anyway, but will merrily observe from a distance. Leaving sometimes a quarter of an hour later, just so he can gush about her attributes as we’re walking back home. What more can they expect, after all, than big 80s night in a freaky goth bar none of have ever set foot inside before. Assaulting our ears with panoramic supremacy, these golden pop nuggets such as Little Red Corvette, Just Like Heaven, and 99 Luftballoons. Depeche Mode’s Blue Dress, The Bangles reworking Hazy Shade of Winter, and seemingly every cut from the first two Beastie Boys albums. Given, these girls are less attractive than the selections at that subterranean club across the street, but they’re also less included to give us any grief when we approach - and we avoid the top 40 dance music prevailing over there, which those two despise most of all. Yet this is Little Paul Radick we are dealing with, he of the impossibly high standards. He suggests a change, and Damon’s willingly roped into joining him. I don’t care much about where they’re headed, because at long last we’ve finally stumbled onto a scene with substance and potential, the fleeting pot of gold, and to bail now is laughably insane. I have a seat on the back couch to soak it all in while Alan’s off at the john. An overweight youth with wire rimmed glasses and bowl cut dirty blonde hair flops onto the couch beside me. He’s dressed like an overzealous sports fanatic, in the jersey shirt of a Chicago baseball team. The kind we cater to in the clubhouse at my restaurant, he admittedly appears as out of touch as us in this murky habitat. My eyes are momentarily riveted, though, to this short redhead in a tight black dress nearby, and I’m paying the corpulent White Sox fan no mind. Until, that is, he expresses his incompatibility with the place by launching this half full cup of ice into the air, impacting the pool table felt just as this musclebound thug with a shaved head is lining up to take his shot. Incredibly, no punches are thrown, but he’s attracted attention plenty. “Ever been here before?” he asks, lounging still in perfect unflappable ease. “No.” “Me neither,” he says, “and I’m never coming back.” “Oh really?” I return. “Yeah,” he says, “my girlfriend dragged me here. Some friends of hers come here all the time. We were over at their house and they were all doing coke and shit, so they decided to bring us here. That’s them over there,” he elaborates, nodding toward a group of three girls, among them my redhead in the tight black dress. He introduces himself as Brian, and I’m suddenly interested in becoming his best friend. As this entire exchange has transpired in the time it’s taken Alan to secure a stall in the john, it seems ridiculously easy, though I suppose we are due some good fortune. At any rate if Chicago fits in here we no longer have any worries about assimilation. And if only this Brian will bridge the gap between me and the strawberry princess, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief, I’ll gladly endorse the notion of love at first sight. From the group, he calls his own woman over, introduces her as Kathy. With a naturally attractive face readily given to smile, and a dash of makeup that, while sparse, is more colorful than what the other freaks are wearing, she’s a comely brunette in her own right, friendly and by turns either self-effacing or putting down this place. But I can see no reason in beating around the proverbial bush, particularly with strangers I may never see again. “I think your little red headed friend is hot,” I admit. Kathy whistles to her two friends, who immediately join us. Like my redheaded beauty, the raven haired goddess beside her wears another tight black dress, clinging to a body only marginally less sensational. Their names are Tonya and Valerie, respectively, and to my astonishment after just a moment the redhead grabs my hand, leads me out onto the dance floor. “Come on,” she says. Just then, his timing immaculate, Alan returns from the restroom. I shout to him and point at Valerie and tell him to follow us on out onto the floor, which he does, he jumps right in beside her. Amidst the swirling lights and the throbbing beat, we claim our tiny parcel of land, as Alan’s beside his babe and I’m all over Tonya. Our bodies grind together and the whole time I can’t help but think this is it, I’ve finally arrived. She pulverizes my crotch with her ass and I’ve got a hand on each of her hips and it doesn’t matter that we’ve barely spoken five words to one another, total. All that matters is the moment, every twitch our bodies make to the music, every ounce of sweat, the way the occasional pinspot light sets her lustrous hair afire and her green eyes dancing in the dark alongside us. We maintain this frantic lockstep for two or three more songs, then separate. Needing no coaching of his own, Alan fixates upon Valerie in much the same fashion as I have upon Tonya, and now’s he’s priming me on the finer points of seduction. The girls are still dancing and Brian’s kissing Kathy on the couch while we hold up the back wall, three distinct islands within eyesight of one another but playing this scripted game of social conduct. After ignoring our prey awhile, we spot them walking out onto the back patio. Alan turns to me and says, “come on, let’s go talk to them.” Meeting the girls outside, we converse with them a short while. If club time is expressed in songs rather than minutes, then this discussion clocks in at approximately one and a half. Eventually, they hear a beat they can dance to, or maybe the well of our conversation runs dry, the flames of discourse momentarily extinguished. Either way Tonya and Valerie make a beeline again for the floor and as the crisp air around us feels like a splash of cool lakewater after sweating indoors, we’re in no hurry to follow. “Now when we go in,” Alan explains, “we need to act like we don’t even know them. Don’t even look their way.” “Okay,” I nod, as we step inside ourselves. We besiege the dance floor again, this time without the girls. Neither of us are especially fleet of foot, but he insists this is our best ticket, and as I don’t known one tenth of what Alan does about girls this becomes our next grand maneuver. He comes off like a genius, then, when the hottest girl in the entire bar swings her hips over to where we are. A tall skinny girl with sandy hair, in untucked white tee shirt and tight black slacks, she immediately begins dancing with us. Beneath those pants lies the most amazing ass I’ve ever seen, a feature made no less incredible in viewing it under such intimate circumstances. She jumps frantically up and down with the big 80s beat, inching closer and closer, until that luscious behind is flush against my crotch, grinding out the rhythm of the song. I do my best to keep up and move along with the girl, rubbing her wondrous rump with my hands. The song ends and she wanders off without a word, but it doesn’t matter, her impact has been felt deep and wide. Tonya and Valerie are against the back wall, eyeing us and talking in what appears even from this distance as conspiratorial plotting. That the skinny girl with the tight ass deems us worthy enough for a dance only improves our standing with these other two, it seems. “Look at them,” Alan says to me and nods his head in the direction of the cigarette machine, against which Tonya and Valerie are standing, “they haven’t taken their eyes off of us.” The house lights come up and it’s time to leave. Bouncers in black shout venomous instructions herding everyone to the door, and meanwhile, our two girls are still staring at us with an expression equal parts wonder and awe. I can’t wrap my head around the luck we’ve enjoyed this evening, but do my best to act as if it is an everyday occurrence, sensing this is a front worthy of Alan. Brian and Kathy are nowhere to be found, but we offer Tonya and Valerie some perfunctory goodbyes before stepping out into the night. Euphoric, Alan and I scarcely notice the winter chill biting our extremities. “Dude, it’s in the bag!” he cheers. “You really think so?” “It’s in the bag,” he repeats, and I believe.

In the mail Friday afternoon, Damon receives an early St. Valentine’s card from his Chambord fanatic Stacy. In a flurry of related sentiment, Alan lands one from Nicole, while all I’m granted is a card from my mother. Which beats having a cauldron of hot grease dumped on my head, I suppose. Were it not for my relative success last night, those familiar stab wounds of exclusion would readily bleed anew. After all, Damon and Alan are still far more accomplished in shepherding their pasts, remaining in touch with everyone they’ve ever known, whereas I just keep rolling on, burning bridges with abandon. But no longer, I tell myself, rising to face this day as optimistic as a freshly popped virgin. Knowing my history, I may never get anywhere with Amanda, and yet even that is acceptable for I now have other options. Let the redhead Tonya stand as the first entry in an unblemished ledger, and my quest send me deeper into uncharted terrain. To this end I pick up my first ever night shift at the restaurant, as runner. Working four evenings this week at the grocery store across town, and five in those to come, I likely won’t have many other opportunities like these. Fridays, Saturdays, management prefers having some food runners available to bail out the servers, and as it stands tonight I’m free and I’m game. The job doesn’t pay for shit, but I’m really only angling to meet the nighttime ladies here anyway. And if I’m lucky, the more generous ones may even tip me out. At long last, the parallel lines between Keisha and me finally bend and intersect. Keisha. A reputation so large, it precedes my arrival in Columbus. Surrounded by mostly unfamiliar faces tonight, hers is the round, devilish one behind our hostess podium, a face I’ve never seen but feel I’ve known a million years. Though doing its best to look angelic, I take one quick glance at it, at those dancing green eyes, her quivering upper lip struggling to conceal a crooked smile, and the monster beneath is plainly seen. Not only that, I’ve heard the stories. Here, no, for there’s just too much going on, nobody’s mentioned her name. But up north, at the old restaurant, hers was virtually the only I ever heard. The paths our lives took then darted around one another, yet never collided, even when the laws of probability insisted they should. The night of my last arrest in Mansfield, I am out with Keisha’s aunt, among others. I date one of Keisha’s best friends for awhile and party with most of the rest, but never her. A week before I start at the Mansfield Damon’s Place For Ribs, she leaves, moving here. Her aunt, Darlene, throws the wildest all night parties just a few blocks from my apartment, but I somehow always manage to miss the odd night Keisha slithers back into town and attends. Since landing here, I’ve spotted her name on the schedule, through sheer coincidence. I haven’t been able to reach Jessica or Sonja, though, and while Keisha apparently has, when those two ask if she’s met me, she doesn’t know what to say - a name she has spotted on the schedule, as well, but can’t attach a face to. “Just wait till you meet Keisha, just wait....,” they always said then, eyebrows raised, lips contorted in a gruesome smirk, “you two will absolutely love each other.....” Call it small town naivete, an ignorance of the world beyond. But I leave for Columbus, a city nearly one million people strong, and nobody doubts for a moment that we will find one another. They know not where she’s working or if she’s attending school, they haven’t so much as a phone number, an address, they haven’t spoken to Keisha since she went away. Yet they assume our eventual encounter inevitable, and maybe it is - a scant six weeks gone by, and here we are, falling down laughing within five minutes of hello. Preceding my move by a good three months, she’s been a hostess at this restaurant all along. Her long, wavy hair shines a broader band of cinnamon than the garden variety redhead, than Tonya’s last night, tinted blonde or brown beneath, depending on the light. Fuller bodied, too, those locks, much in keeping with the body below, a bosom bulging at an angle even Amanda must envy. Finding side splitting humor in virtually everything, she crinkles her nose up and squints her eyes at the slightest provocation, summoning the nastiest throaty snicker I’ve ever heard. She clutches her stomach and doubles over to the floor before nearly toppling over, as the hostess podium becomes her life saving buoy. Smitten, I embrace this notion of predestination, that certain people must collide, some events are just meant to transpire. “I still think what Mike Powell did to Debbie was total bullshit!” she charges, straightening, though unable to conceal a perfectly wicked smile. “Really?” “Well yeah! Knocking her up and then dumping her! Don’t you think so?!” “Yeah,” I nod, rubbing my chin, “I guess you’re right.....” At night the lights are dimmer here and the overhead Muzak twice as loud, which is fortunate, because beyond Keisha there’s not much I wish to see or hear. Accustomed to the wispy haired hippie chicks of those endless a.m. shifts, a la Brandy, or Jenny Hughes, I’ve envisioned their evening counterparts as glamorous, metropolitan creatures. Instead, both sides are overrun with some grotesque exaggeration of the daylight clubhouse bitch army, whereby the women are thirty pounds heavier and twice as sassy, even as their faces, most shining with some weird iridescent grease, have less to offer than the worst of the morning lot. Whether assuming me a new hire or otherwise, I can’t say, but either way they don’t tip, they’re not the least bit interested in learning who I am. No small wonder Jenny refuses to work nights.

And so the weekdays pass and the weekend comes, but the way we live there’s no telling any difference between the two. Damon expends the idle moments in his bedroom, working out some songs on his acoustic guitar, scribbling lyrics in a notebook, committing them to tape on a cheap handheld recorder. I camp at the kitchen table with a novel or the crosswords, I walk the streets alone trying to solve these riddles piece by piece - social ineptitude, financial hell, an inability to focus on anything for more than five minutes, just for starters. Alan, not exactly the introspective sort, kills time nailing one of his two old playthings as opportunity allows. Drinking himself into a stupor most nights, bashing on the drums whenever he has a free day. Weeks draw to a close and it’s more of the same, except our number is reduced to two with Damon in Amish country playing classic rock god. Plenty happens, but at the same time nothing happens. Saturday night has us on another ridiculous mission, the only kind we know. Cruising around in Alan’s truck, trying to locate some obscure bowling alley where he’s slated to meet a few coworkers. East along a dimly lit Weber Road, quintessential Clintonville street packed snug with houses and senior citizen quiet, I can’t imagine his intended location is anywhere near this neck of the woods. But though notoriously awful with directions, Alan chose not to write any down when speaking to his buddies earlier, and so lost we roll. Across some railroad tracks and the I-71 overpass, we drift into the vaguely ominous northern quarter of Linden, bonafide ghetto. Already a half hour into this wild goose chase, we exterminate still more time examining a number of tiny residential side streets, shooting off Weber all the way out to Cleveland Avenue. Yet the clock reads early and we’re in no hurry, which is fortunate, for in turning around Alan drives just a touch more slowly, inspecting each block anew in case there’s something we missed. He forges ahead through Clintonville, past the point our journey began, until Weber slopes steeply downward in a series of sharp S curves, heavily wooded and reminiscent of an upstate Californian highway, before bottoming out, much to our surprise, at High. “Fuck it,” he cackles, “wanna see what’s happening at Ruby’s?” In lieu of a good woman, or for that matter any woman at all, we turn to her instead. Drink, pool, music: not the least bit novel by way of escapism, but solace plenty in times such as these. She’s always here for us, welcoming us into her womb, no matter how varied and strange the occasion. Walking in one drowsy weeknight unawares, A Clockwork Orange is flickering on the giant screen behind the stage, and we laugh our asses off watching Damon squirm in his seat. “What the fuck!?” he bellows, “I don’t get it!” More recently, Super Bowl Sunday Alan and I wander in to watch the Packers trounce the Patriots upon the same rolled down backdrop, shocked at the enormous food buffet provided to patrons gratis. Pizzas and meatballs and wings of every imaginable variety, it’s a far cry from the bland, dry popcorn secreted by that machine in the corner, typically our only sustenance here. But they likely banked enough dough that night selling booze and beer to the massed throng of screaming savages to pay Ruby’s rent for a year, justifying the banquet’s expense. Aside from bartender Randy’s scowl, our sole entertainment this evening is the more familiar standby, live music. Yet even such a tried and true commodity is never formulaic, despite their apparent intent to book an endless succession of jam hearty hippie bands. Somehow, be it opening act or otherwise, wild cards slip through the ranks, chaotically diverse in style as well as quality. An enchanting neo-psychedelic band named Sugar Pill, for instance, with a lead singer in granny glasses and a paisley shirt, tall and white with a huge jet black afro. A bad by- the-numbers metal band called Chaos Theory. The worst band of all time, Weave, comprised of four overly earnest dorks playing generic college rock, a torturous affair redeemed only by their cover of Duran Duran’s Rio. Far more typical is a jam band Damon and I catch here one night, four older gentlemen known as Men of Leisure. Arriving during the final notes of one set, we endure a forty five minute break before they take the stage again for their last - no band was ever more fittingly named. Though now nearly two in the morning, a point where most attendees have either left or no longer care, their first tune alone clocks in at eight minutes, and the rest stray not far from this mark. From the outset, we’re convinced they suck mightily. The chops heavy quartet - drummer, guitarist, bass player, and saxophonist - proffer a loose vibe a la Local Color, but lack both the style and the grace of that band, playing the part of Southern rock and roll vagrant to the other group’s west coast acid hippie. Bored to the point of nearly weeping, we endure three such meandering epics, and are too lazy to relocate ourselves before they begin a fourth. Yet this particular song begins with a captivating James Brown style groove, before flying off, halfway through, into a Neil Young-ian feedback tangent. This singular feat alone is enough to win us over, and we’re rooted to our chairs for the duration of their performance, which extends well beyond two thirty. Men of Leisure ultimately win a thumbs up, but for every one of them there are four or five Weave around town, a half dozen Chaos Theory. Ruby’s embodies this basic musical pie chart as well as any campus bar, and still we can’t refrain from coming here, drawn by the lopsided uncertainty of what we might find. Before tonight’s undoubtedly engaging guests take the stage, we’ve got quarters out and minutes to burn. As Alan stakes our claim to one of the two pool tables, I slip coins into the jukebox, and though sparsely occupied, an expectant air fills the room like a dam about to burst. Or maybe the pleasant tinge I feel against my flesh is simply the rising tide of our steadily improving outlook, the increasing confidence with which we carry ourselves. A sharp, tall redhead with silky locks of a similar length and profile saunters into the bar like a queen, drops her perfectly rounded behind into one barstool along the mirror lined wall. She orders a bottled beer and in the same breath strikes up a conversation with the both of us, showing, much to my relief, none of the customary preference these chicks throw Alan. Ditto a thin, slight girl standing in the middle of the room, a few years older than us, in brown cardigan, brown corduroy pants, cheek length hair parted down the middle just a few shades darker. She says she just moved here from New York City to the corner of 17th and Summit, imparts a billion unconnected anecdotes of living out east. Mentions bumping into Lou Reed once on a sidewalk there, and Henry Rollins as well, and neither encounter strikes me as any more odd than the spinning wheel of fate, how easy and natural everything has suddenly become. “Henry! I called out to him, I love you!” she recalls with a warm chuckle, “and he spun around and laughed and said No! I love you!” “Knowing him, I’m sure he was just fucking with you,” I point out, “he probably hated being bothered.” “Yeah, probably,” she agrees. As my tunes revolve on the juke, the half hour Pink Floyd epic Echoes slides into rotation. During one long middle section, it breaks away to a swarm of chirping seagulls, and nothing else. This dull intermission yawns and stretches through the space of two or three minutes, or should. Except Randy preempts by storming over to the jukebox and skipping the rest of the song entirely, advancing to the next selection I’d picked with the press of a button. Applause breaks out in disparate corners of the bar, as three or four individuals clap their hands, shout their thanks to him. Our turn arrives at the second pool table, but Alan’s over near the first, talking to these two girls he’s just met. Chalking up his stick, Alan shoots game to them with the ease of a man going through his mail, tossing off the casual, mildly amusing wisecracks which constitute his forte. I admire from a distance, speaking still with New York City’s greatest Henry Rollins fan, but as the brunettes he’s latched onto represent an improvement over this one, I’m not bound to maintain this distance much longer. Secretarial in demeanor if not actuality, Gretchen and Vanessa carry themselves with the poise of that stunning redhead nearby, but comparisons end here. While boasting neither the face nor the figure, these two dress more professionally than she, or anyone else comprising our loose congregation. In sharp slacks and soft sweaters, tasteful dabs of mostly dark makeup and glittering, dangling earrings, they appear more substitute teacher than hippie chick, but are naturally, simply OSU students. “We’re heading over to Bernie’s,” one explains. “Where’s that?” Alan asks. “It’s on High Street,” says the other, “you guys should meet us there.” One of the more highly regarded campus clubs, I recall seeing the Bernie’s marquee above the sidewalk at 16th and High, hearing its name whispered in hushed reverence as a critical live music hub. Damon and I have even discussed checking it out, but buried a story beneath the ground, the legend intimidates. For if we’re visually unable to appraise the place from the outside, working up the courage to drift down a flight of stairs and inspect proves difficult. Now, as advertised, the girls knock back the rest of their drinks and shrug into heavy winter coats, reiterating, with a flick of the hair, that we make tonight our maiden voyage there. “Think we should?” I ask Alan once the girls are gone. “Nah,” he says, “we’ll see them in here again. It’ll just make us look like dorks anyway, following them from bar to bar.” An opening act now mounts the stage, Johnny Smoke. Hailing an hour west, from the eclectic rock and roll city of Dayton, Johnny Smoke hurl themselves into a breakneck set of punky pop. But while the songs are unfailingly catchy, not to mention a far sight better than the standard fare here, an air of mediocrity pervades the performance, the musicianship itself. Their lone ace lies in the hand of a lanky, disheveled lead singer, who, while not vocally gifted, is nonetheless a ham actor born to be hogging the stage somewhere. “If it weren’t for beer and pot, I’d be dead,” he announces, straight faced, between songs. They launch into a tune concerning old Def Leppard and ZZ Top shows witnessed at the Hare Arena back home, in a jaunty vein akin to all that’s come before. Yet their set soon draws to a close, and the bar is swelling with an odorous flock intent upon catching tonight’s headliners. Judging from the crowd, we speculate another hippie jam band awaits us, an assumption soon proven correct. Mary Adam 12 is the moniker this outfit operates under, but they just as easily could call themselves Local Color II or Men of Leisure Lite, a watered down version of what we’ve already seen done better. Sure, with a half dozen musicians who clearly know their instruments backwards as well as forwards, and a short, chubby chick doing a credible job on lead vocals, they stop short of outright hackdom. But every song they crank out sounds identical to the one before, and each is at least two minutes too long, a frightening cocktail for any group. Not to mention one that sounds like half the other bands we’ve heard around town, considering themselves a modern day Dead and cultivating a mob of would-be flower children wherever they wander. The music, accordingly, is an unrelenting, unwavering hippie shuffle - chick, chick chick; chick, chick chick; chick, chick chick - tedious as hell three cuts into the set. Adhering to this vibe, the crowd seems also a strip mall version of the Local Color following. The swirly, elbows bent hands raised dance prevails here, predictably, but the girls are generally less hairy and the guys more inclined to shower, with both sexes dressing sharper, as a rule, than their Not Al’s brethren. A number of the same individuals assuredly populate both crowds, true, and yet whatever their particulars neither party has a problem displaying its affection for the meandering kaleidoscope of sound. Maybe if Alan or I are on drugs, like everyone else appears to be, then we might enjoy this grand spectacle better. We aren’t, however, and we don’t. Hours later, dead asleep in the pitch black predawn, a tremendous crash reverberates through the house - BOOM! - jarring me awake. Ripped in disconcerting fashion from a sweet, lurid dream by this ungodly thunder, I spring immediately from my sleeping bag, pegging this peal as the sound of someone kicking our front door down. Crouched like a catcher for our hometown Clippers, I’m instantly wired and ready to pounce, should anyone attempt entering my bedroom. Suddenly, our parents’ fears are brought into sharp relief, as I’m confronted by this intrusion. What kind of morons we were, to question our folks when they suggested this might not be the greatest neighborhood on the planet to move into. Here we are just a block west of the ghetto outskirts, and in our arrogance we assume everything is cool because we’re living under the banner of what they call campus. Still, this break-in strikes me as rather odd. Beyond Alan’s stereo and the musical equipment upstairs, we have not a single item in the house more valuable than that thrift store coffee maker upon our kitchen counter. And surely, profit margins aside, either Sherrie’s or Stephanie’s apartment on the first floor makes an easier target for any burglar. Heavy boots tread the hardwood stairs and floor, though, and a body crashes headlong into the hallway wall just outside my room, forcing reason from my frazzled frontal lobe, my spontaneously combusting heart. Presumably asleep in his own room, it occurs to me to shout for Alan across the house, but an inner voice says stand still and wait. Common sense, perhaps, for I soon hear the high pitched giggle of a young farm girl, then the familiar voice of that third roommate. Damon. Jesus. Four thirty in the morning and he should have passed out in Amish country by now, naked next to some filly. Instead he sails through the night, lit up, sweeping his latest trophy into the house in the same motion that grants me this near massive coronary. As they continue upstairs to his room, I return to the warm, cotton stuffed cocoon of my flannel sleeping bag. By turns both insulated and suffocated beneath its checkerboard pattern, writhing, raging jealous. Unable to drift off again, my misery compounded all too soon by sunlight peeking through the windows, and the two of them above me audibly wide awake. Moments such as this, every blunder you’ve ever made projects like a horror movie against the nearest bedroom wall. Panoramic widescreen, standing floor to ceiling tall, a film stock geared to bringing out the blood. I start to think about all the girls I dated through the years but never slept with. All the girls I could have dated but managed not even that. Not mention the hundreds never the least bit interested, girls too busy chasing somebody else around, often one of my friends. Or, and this is a thought somehow more sickening than all the rest combined, the scattered corpses of those I left behind, the odd, scattered successes, the former lovers I will likely never see again. I know Alan’s correct is asserting we play it cool with those two chicks earlier, but times like this, when the cold spell seems aggressively hostile, standing strong is well nigh impossible. You consider a night that began with limitless opportunity, and wonder how it ended empty handed yet again. And so the next chance you have you jump headlong into, as though she’s the first woman ever given you the time of day, you scare her away with your awkward flailing and you’re right back where you started. Enough of this. The time for sitting around that kitchen table reading magazines has passed. Regretting my financial insolvency, making mixtapes in my bedroom and lamenting the twisted fork this past year has taken. What am I hoping to accomplish, these nights home alone? So many of them, I can stare at the clock and know that at that particular moment, Damon’s rocking out on a stage somewhere, that if Alan’s not here then he’s probably sliding into bed with Alexis or Nicole. Stuck here, I can remain at home every night for a year just crawling back to square one, but chances are I’ll feel twice the idiot I do now. Forget it. I need to run through the streets foaming mad, I need to dig in with both hands and rip out this land by the fistful. Kami, the girl’s name is, and Damon’s still fucking her when Alan wakes up for work. Unaware that virtually no hour passes without a roaming presence in this house, she runs down here in the teeth rattling early morning chill to use our restroom, clad only in a tee shirt and some panties. I fall asleep and miss out on any voyeuristic thrills her mad dash suggests, though Alan manages an eyeful before she darts back upstairs. Passing the baton to Damon, who musters the strength to throw on a coat and some shoes, determined to gather breakfast. Leaving his toasty third story bedroom behind, he shuffles down here, pauses for a brief summit with Alan in the kitchen. “Dude!” Damon whispers, “I think I might have found a nymphomaniac!” “Really?” Alan whispers back “I’m serious, man. We fucked and fucked and fucked, and she still won’t quit! I told her I was tired and just wanted to sleep, but she wouldn’t leave me alone! Finally I had to say, look, at least let me go get some food before we start back up again. It’s fuckin crazy, dude.” So the cycle continues. Damon pulling in a ridiculous amount of pussy, while I await just one willing partner to make that connection with. Not even a question of willingness on their part, actually, so much as it is a default on mine, my wandering focus. Stacey flirts with me at work, but my mind’s on something else by the time I’ve crossed the room. I don’t plot my next word or action in advance like the rest of these guys do, and maybe that’s a problem. I give Amanda a lift home but five minutes later she’s forgotten, too, until the sleepless morning rears its head again, pounding my fists on the floor. Now Damon has this Kami and by all accounts she’s young and blonde and her body’s scorching hot and if that’s not enough, she fucks like the world’s going to burst into flames tomorrow.

“Nice panties!” someone shouts, a disembodied voice. “Huh?” I spin around, dazed, cradling the laundry basket in both hands. “Hey! Nice panties!” he repeats, and I cast my eyes skyward to spot Ponch on the roof of the building next door. Ponch, so nicknamed by us for his resemblance to the Chips era Erik Estrada, is our landlord Wayne Ault’s personal manservant, the maintenance man for his cottage industry of campus domiciles. Located next to this rundown laundromat on Summit, Ault’s tiny basement office encloses little outside the ditzy but outrageously foxy blonde secretary, and I can’t even fathom what Ponch is doing up there on the rooftop. But then again nothing adds up around here, a surrealistic tableau of the kind that has a young intern rhapsodizing to me just now about his burgeoning medical career, as he puffs away on a joint inside the laundromat. The kind that finds Ponch beaming down at me, hands on hips. “Your kitchen!” he shouts, grinning profusely, “I saw them earlier!” “Oh!” I sing back to him, suddenly recalling the minor wiring work he was slated to have done today, “thanks!” Equally bizarre, the scenario this morning at work. Our sullen, bug eyed banquet manager Lori is escorted from the building after confessing to the theft of more than a thousand dollars. Claiming she stole the money to buy drugs for her boyfriend, but from the moment I started at the restaurant, her glazed, zonked out gaze has always intimated a habit of her own. In her place, they have promoted former supervisor Val to take over banquets. Given to wearing billowing white blouses and navy blue slacks, the sublime figure beneath is more hinted at than expressly stated. Of medium height, the curves these loose fitting clothes conceal suggest a porn star’s dimensions, even as, with her long, delicate lashes and a curly coif of feathery black hair, her businesslike mien, she comes across more as real estate agent. Make that the world’s hottest real estate agent, but for now our banquet manager. I wave a salute to Ponch and climb inside my car, reverse the four blocks home. Funny he should mention those panties - or not so much, perhaps, when I really stop to think about it - but at any rate, they’ve hung upon the wall for a week, yet linger lately in our psyches even stronger than before. Call it the mounting frustration of too many dead end nights, for we’ve recently devised a practical application involving those panties, a game to keep ourselves occupied. When giving their motivational speeches, my parents often mention the need for setting goals. They probably never dreamed the perverted spin guys like us would put on this premise, but we too have set goals, threefold of late. The quest to nail just one campus beauty, as it has since the moment we moved in, reigns eternal, and just a rung lower sits our trenchant adherence to those beloved peepholes, hoping for more from Stephanie than merely a glimpse of her ass. Lastly, however, predicated by those downy donations which dangle still from our kitchen wall, we’ve set a target of no less than a hundred pairs tacked there by the time we leave Summit Street. Having already killed roughly one and a half months of our year long lease, this feat looms by no means impossible, but nearly so and thus all the more compelling. Driving Kami home at some point Sunday night, Damon defaults our newest policy. Any girl spending the night automatically donates her underwear, the charter stipulates, but he promises that next time around he’ll surely comply. Still, not even the most optimistic forecast of sexual conquest could land us a combined one hundred for the year, we must scour our collective minds for creative solutions. Like a surreal variation on those paintings which stare at you regardless where you stand, Nicole’s thousand grinning Garfields flash toothy beams at every square inch of the kitchen. Joining theirs, a smile in the flesh of her own, as she’s driven down yet again for a conjugal visit with Alan. Her swelling belly betrays the impending pregnancy, but for the most part she’s retained her slender frame. Seated beside her at the table, Alan floats through this Monday afternoon already half lit, enjoying the beginning of his weekend. Inspired by Damon’s introduction of Kami, Alan commits to a blitzkrieg roundup of his own harem. Last night, he and I drove over to the Applebee’s to knock off a few drinks with Alexis and Marion. Marion’s officious boyfriend Greg was too busy and cool to do more than pause for one fleeting moment beside our table, hands on hips, the faint light glittering off his sweat dotted crew cut scalp, nodding a gruff “hey” at Alan and me upon re-introduction. Then he’s off again, as I continue my tenacious, ineffectual attempts at wooing his girl. The four of us eventually land back here at the apartment, but any hopes I hold of a wild romp are quickly negated. Just a few days ago, Alan is over at Marion’s place with Alexis, and a roommate takes off her top to advertise a brand new pair of surgically enhanced breasts. I hear stories like these but never seem to find myself within them, whether through bad luck or some diffusing element of my own. Mostly, I tend to believe the latter, for I’m unable again to arouse Marion’s interest, and she soon leaves. Alan, naturally, winds up boning Alexis in his bedroom. As I stand chattering with Alan and Nicole, Damon trudges up the stairwell, home from school. Just then the phone rings, and I scoop the receiver from the wall, as some girl on the other end asks for a Chris. “Sorry, I think you have the wrong number.” “Oh.....who’s this?” “Jason.” “Okay, thanks,” she says, and hangs up. As Alan and Nicole leave to grab an early dinner, Damon and I decide to take a stroll around the university, inspecting the architecture, the buildings. Construction on a grand scale is a ceaseless phenomenon, and a comprehensive hodgepodge of styles, architectural rages embodies the university. Roads duck and weave in peculiar patterns, some looping, some abruptly dead ending, rendering this college scene drastically skewed from the neat rows and identical buildings often associated with the customary campus. Sprawling at odd angles across an acreage larger than entire small towns, it has the look at feel of one, a melting pot of disparate energies and benign cross purposes. Ramseyer Hall, at the southwest corner of High and Woodruff, resembles what I consider the consummate hall of higher learning, a faded red brick building reminiscent of a backwoods junior high school, stumbled upon in a bend of some winding country road. The kind of structure pitched in every Hollywood college movie as the average university building, though an endangered species here. Holding more in common with the junior high school building on E 16th Avenue, in fact, and visual evidence that OSU has exceeded its original intended grasp, extending into the city, encroaching upon and entangling within it, gobbling up entire blocks. Visible from this High Street intersection, and for that matter virtually any vantage point, the twin octagonal white high rises of Lincoln and Morrill Tower, staring at one another like bucks scrapping over territory, form our ostensible intended destination as we make our way across this intricate landscape. Perched along the eastern bank of the dormant Olentangy River, we peg it a good thirty minutes west from where we currently stand, and the probable outer limits of our enthusiasm. Downhill along Woodruff, a staggering array of skeletal future business buildings stand tall against the gathering night, and an eventual upscale hotel. Bottoming out near the massive Horseshoe, otherwise known as Ohio Stadium, where the Buckeye football squad and their fanatical fan base will hold court every Saturday this fall to the tune of a hundred thousand ticket holders, Woodruff becomes Woody Hayes Drive. Ahead, Woody Hayes will rise in the form of an overpass crossing the Olentangy, pass a softball field and a number of agricultural buildings before dipping into a tunnel beneath the roaring onslaught of state route 315 - all this, just to reach what’s known as west campus. But we’re not biting off such a maniacally titanic piece of sightseeing tonight, intent more upon a triangular shaped overview of this quadrant, touching on most of the major central signposts. Hooking left, we flank the Ohio Stadium perimeter, across the stone sidewalk, each block inlaid with the names of what I take to be key financial contributors. Around the arena’s backside, the walkway elevates, and students are continually zipping past us on bicycles hellbent for the towers. A number of others coagulate in loquacious, high spirited packs along benches and knee high parapets, as ignorant of the vaguely uncomfortable cold as we are. In a caged catwalk, we cross Cannon Drive, zigging left and downhill through jungle thick foliage on a thin dirt trail which terminates in front of Drake Union. Grizzled, jaded veterans after little more than a month, Drake Union, with its pathetically modest bar and smattering of eateries, is already an exhausted destination, one we pass tonight with nary a wayward glance. Next door, crazed b- ballers fling the orange sphere around a series of fenced in courts, earning our admiration as we bend back along the second leg of our journey. Beyond the Lincoln Tower, we traverse an extensive plot of grass, duck inside an all-night library Damon’s been itching to inspect. As he meanders within its interior, I stand along a bank of tables peopled intermittently with serious, silent students hunched over textbooks, and gaze in awe out the second story wall of windows, a solid sheet that eats up the building’s entire northern face. While not quite breathtaking, or picturesque in the classical sense of the term, the view I’m afforded wholly enthralls me, a maze of incongruous buildings, white and orange lights, random members of the collegiate army spotted walking below. Bogged down within the day to day routine of working one or both jobs and paying bills, cooking dinner, shooting pool at the comfortable second home of Ruby’s, I forget sometimes what an alien terrain this is, so far removed from anything I or any of the other guys have known. An emerald city, truly, at least in the array of possibilities presented us, and the warm, bright future the more optimistic of these would imply. Tantamount to our success, it seems to me at this moment, is never losing sight of this open ended forecast, never letting ourselves believe this land of dreams merely commonplace. Reminding ourselves continually how much remains unearthed, and itching for new experiences so badly it burns. Outside again, Damon’s in a chatty mood more consistent with his usual self. Elevated, it seems, by piecing together one small chunk of the puzzle, finding this haven for his studies. “That Kami looks good, and Jesus, she sure likes to fuck,” he laughs, “but man! What I’d really like is to nail that Laurie chick from class. There’s so much pussy down here, dude, it seems kind of stupid not to make something happen. I think if I would make some guy friends down here it would probably help, too, you know, kind of fitting in and hanging out and meeting people or whatever, but I don’t know what it is, I can never bring myself to actually make the effort. It’s like, eh, I probably should, but fuck it.” “I know what you mean,” I tell him, “I think we’ll make some guy friends here and there by accident, but the days of actually trying to are probably over.” Our crooked gait leads us between a handful of unremarkable buildings, until we emerge upon Neil Avenue. Essentially the spine of campus, Neil is the lone north-south street running through its middle from one end to the other. Even so, its path is far from constant, or for that matter continuous, bending and jagging, in one spot terminating entirely at the majestic white stone structure of the main OSU library. More English country mansion than scholastic property, this library, named in honor of one William Oxley - whoever that is, or was - allows Neil to resume its idiosyncratic course on the other side, zigging north through more campus property, a slum like stretch of apartments and chopped up houses, ending eventually as a block of brick road. We swing by Mirror Lake, the man made, stone lined pond as calm as the christening would imply. Around a small, rustic pavilion termed Browning Amphitheater, and southeast across another grassy expanse. Ahead, the strangest structure we’ve yet encountered, a building shaped roughly like the state of Pennsylvania, with one whole, cartoonishly elongated wing fanning out in a sharp triangular tip. Composed of seemingly every architectural element known to man, from limestone to metal sheets and girders to queerly shaped panels of glass placed apparently at random, this monstrosity is known as Drinko Hall. A great name for a bar, Drinko Hall, but here it’s the college of law. Reemerging upon High at the intersection of 12th, we bridge this main thoroughfare and press onward, inching homeward. Night has fully fallen, however, and for some odd reason a helicopter circles campus, marking its course with an insistent, inquisitive spotlight. Already our trek has taken much longer than anticipated, but as this exercise finds us invigorated than exhausted, the wayward pattern this whirlybird is tracing piques our boundless interest. “I wonder what’s going on there....,” Damon mutters. “Dude, we should check it out,” I suggest. Our efforts prove more tiresome than informative. Swaying left and right like laundry on a clothesline, along 12th, 13th, 14th, through alleyways, just when we feel we’ve got a beat on the chopper’s primary proximity of focus, it shifts again, until we’re virtual spinning plates, dizzy as our eyes chart its trajectory. As it eventually fades into the background behind us, we make no effort retracing our steps, and cover the remaining distance home. Nicole and Alan have long since returned, and as our roommate continues his assault on the case of beer refrigerated, our parched throats beg that we do the same. Plotting our next move, we recall that Monday means “goth night” at our new favorite bar Maxwell’s, and we’re unanimous in our urge to check this out. Too wired to sit, we stand around the kitchen and when the phone rings, Alan answers. “It’s for you,” he says, passing the receiver my way. “Who is it?” “I don’t know,” he smirks, as if dazed by disbelief, “it’s a chick.” “Is this Jason?” “Yeah.....” “Well, this is Penny, and I just want to know who the FUCK you are, and why the FUCK you’re leaving obscene messages on my FUCKING answering machine!” she screams. Whoa. One unfortunate offshoot we might have expected, but which has caught me off guard just now, nonetheless. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell her. “No? Well my caller ID says it came from this number, and my roommate says she called earlier and talked to you!” “Maybe so, but she didn’t say anything about any obscene message. Look,” I explain, conjuring up a perfectly reasonable fabrication on the spot, “we have parties here all the time. There was a house full of people here just the other night. It’s hard telling who might have called your house from this phone.” “Yeah, well, try it again, motherfucker!” she shrieks, and slams the line dead in my ear. Across the room, Alan and Damon nearly choke on their drinks. Even Nicole, who doesn’t know the first thing about what’s been done, or by whom, offers a quiet, curious smile. “What do you wanna bet we end up partying with those girls,” Damon predicts. The four of us traipse down to campus, redrawing much of the ground Damon and I have just canvassed, minus the helicopter. Ducking into Maxwell’s, populated with maybe a third of the crowd it hosted last Thursday, we own the front pool table for the duration of our stay. In a sea of black inkier even than 1980s night, we gape in open amazement at the handful of pierced loners in dark clothing and raccoon mascara, writhing along to Nine Inch Nails, trying to act mysterious. Howling till our sides hurt for nearly two hours, before calling a much deserved end to our night. 6

Two weeks working here, Doug and I have already nailed this closing operation into ironclad certainty. Closing down the meat shop at nine o’clock sharp, our shifts coincide anywhere from two to five nights out of seven, with a couple other flunkies thrown in at random. The butchers leave us about three tall racks of tray packed product to work out of the cooler as needed, and that’s about it. We wait the counter’s intermittent customer, we cover up the service case at nine, we shut off the lights and head home. We keep a bottomless well of bullshit on tap, too. No work to do Doug stands here behind the counter telling stories, spitting tobacco into a cup. Before running afoul in his home town, he’d enjoyed a short stint in the dank southern bayou of Mississippi, swerving through the countryside at night on a bicycle with, in his words, a beer in both hands. In those nimble hands, tales otherwise tall are made perfectly plausible, and I believe every word. Just as I believe him when he says he’ll return to that swampy state by this time next year, to the extent I’m already talked into joining him. “See now, the reason I keep this goatee is my face is too round,” he grieves, shakes his head, “I can’t shave it off.” With an impeccable gift for gab, Doug has already lured half the store into his web of debauchery. While I’m naturally roped in alongside everyone else, his primary effort concerns the female workforce here - and lord, what an effort his is. Whenever a cute chick walks by he waves and shouts, “hey Suzie!” disregarding her actual name. Without fail, the girl in question beams and stops cold, approaches the counter to exchange a quick hello. One mighty cheesy method in theory, it works like a dream for him, as he’s already gone out drinking with a number of these ladies. “Christ, Pockets, I’ve seen some filthy cars in my time,” Doug says, stepping as gingerly as his redneck machismo will allow into the Escort’s passenger side, “but this takes the cake.” Doug lives in a complex just a few blocks away, east on Bethel Road. His grand idea for this evening is that we catch a middleweight prize fight at a sports bar nearby, accompanied by roommate Mike Nelson. Because Doug and Mike have both recently lost their licenses to DUI convictions, I’m driving, but what neither of them know is that my own right to operate a vehicle has been suspended since December. Aside from severity of infraction, the difference between myself and them is that I just don’t care. No license, no insurance, I continue driving anyway. The big city cops are spread much thinner than those small town hick police back home, and I sweat them not the least. Suburban in every sense of the word, placid and refined, this northwest end of town differs acutely from the university mayhem I’m accustomed to. Yet with sophistication there comes an offsetting loss of character, and the further I drift from campus the more pronounced this disparity becomes. Maybe this Upper Arlington condo Doug’s living in has clean carpets and all its windows and can house five people in comfort, but he loses that gap toothed low class charm. Though Doug has described them in great detail, I’ve yet to meet his roommates. Two crazy sisters sleeping upstairs, screaming at one another and everyone else, all hours of the day. Some mysterious loner, suspected gay, residing in the basement, known alternately as Junior or, in Doug parlance, Johnny Flamer. Doug squatting on one couch he smirkingly refers to as “his bedroom” and his best friend Mike Nelson crashing on the other. Either the domestic scene here tonight is uglier than usual, or he’s jonesing hardcore for a drink, because before my car’s come to a full stop Mike barrels out the front door, jumps into my backseat. Doug has described Nelson as a friendly enough guy, deep down, who nonetheless isn’t going out of his way to know anyone, much less a total stranger such as me. And to the extent I can determine in our short trip over to the sports bar, coincidentally named Pockets, Doug’s characterization isn’t too far off. Mike has a handful of amusing anecdotes and will laugh at yours, but doesn’t ask many questions. He’s as polished with his every movement as he is in appearance, giving him the air of studied suaveness, a masculinity honed in front of a mirror. With his pencil thin moustache, his jet black hair parted down one side and gelled neatly into place, his sharp casual attire, Mike reminds me more than anything else of Alan, or one of Alan’s military buddies, and I’m struck by the thought that there are only a handful of basic roommate archetypes, playing out all over town. That regardless of location, Columbus hosts a hundred households chemically identical to mine, or Doug’s, or anyone’s. Located around the corner and a few blocks down the street, on Kenny Road, this establishment shares the same nickname Doug has unfortunately saddled me with, but it’s doubtful I’ll log many hours here in the near future. Proudly touted upon their parking lot marquee, this boxing match, while featuring two figures I’ve never heard of, draws about a thousand drunken assholes with the same idea as ours to Pockets’s numerous mammoth TV screens. In actuality, having forgotten my state ID at home, I’m forced to drop the two of them off, as they alone claw their way through the jungle of bodies. When I return more than thirty minutes later, locating their table to the left and sandwiched between two gigantic wall mounted screens, Doug lets out a roaring mocking cheer. Timing immaculate, a pitcher of cheap domestic beer sits between us, and the fight is just beginning. I still can’t swallow more than two or three cups of this hoppy swill in one night, but the match offers my taste buds distraction enough. Besides, with the bar too dim to peer deep and our backs to most of the compact crowd, I don’t have much choice. A burly Latino squares off against this wiry black, and I instantly take a liking to the Central American star’s style, the deliberation of his motions. He wins in twelve rounds, our hero, which is exactly the amount of time it takes us to kill three pitchers. After running Mike home, we set off for another bar called Joni’s, though Doug isn’t too hip on directions and I haven’t the foggiest notion where we’re heading. We waste a great deal of time sorting out the location of Doug’s number one dive bar, his best kept secret. Up here in Arlington even these major roads are alien landscapes to me, where I have a vague sense of direction guiding me but little else. “You mind if I smoke this?” Doug asks, whipping out a joint. “That’s cool, but roll down the window,” I tell him. As he puffs away, we’re cruising down Kenny past Pockets, and into some sleepy, capital drenched residential section. Out here, the houses stand alone in splendid isolation, their gargantuan yards maintained in cold, crystalline perfection, the evenly spaced security lights like moonbeams illuminating these houses as if distant mountaintops. Slithering through this pristine gauntlet, I’m reminded of a master’s run at some prominent art gallery, where each portrait is slightly different yet obviously rendered by the same hand. We turn around and return, hang a left on Henderson, eventually finding our point of destination. Located in the last strip of businesses before this road rolls into the countryside west of town, we park at Joni’s, make our way indoors. A standard neighborhood pub with cover bands on weekends and little room to maneuver, Joni’s holds no women to speak of beyond one or two middle aged harlots, passed around through the decades like a trusty beachball at your favorite football team’s home games. Sitting at the bar, we’re checking out this middling four piece Nowhere Fast, as they pull off credible versions of a Cheap Trick tune and The End by those beloved Doors, whereby the lead singer mimes Jim Morrison to a tee, even down to writhing around on the floor. I have one beer to Doug’s three and we lament the loss of the pool table, covered over on what passes as the dance floor here whenever a band’s in the house. “I smoked a joint with the bartender the last time I was here,” Doug explains. When Doug’s intoxicated he gets these funny looking droopy eyelids going, ones I marvel at to think he can even see through. His pupils refuse to focus and just before closing time, as we leave the bar, he develops his half eyes which signals to me that it’s time to take him home. Hilariously enough one of Doug’s first speeches - outside of that whole bit about dating married women - involved coming to Columbus to clean up his act a bit. But it seems that slowing down just isn’t in the cards for him, a feat easier discussed than managed.

Thursday morning, and an avalanche of snow assaults us with a ceaseless, furious blast, blinding in its ferocity. A near blizzard symbolically bookending this hellish week, one that began with the harbinger of that hovering helicopter Monday night. Splashed across the Dispatch front page Tuesday morning, subsequently followed up there and elsewhere, the whole bizarre tale can’t help but ensnare us as it unravels. Just before six p.m. Monday, as Damon and I are hiking around campus, some middle aged maniac bursts into the Wexner Center for the Arts lobby, rifles a couple of mostly empty desk drawers, then opens fire on university officer Mike Blankenship - the OSU police force’s first ever line-of-duty fatality. As the gunman flees the scene on foot, out come the chopper and a city SWAT team, fencing off the area, but their quarry eludes them for another two days. Eventually, a body is found in a Clintonville bedroom, victim of a self inflicted gunshot wound, and ballistics match both occurrences. Authorities have a face and a name now but no answers, even as the grieving masses multiply in remembrance of the fallen officer. Red eyed and somber, the student body hosts an overnight candlelight vigil in his honor, at the large, central expanse of lawn known as the Oval. Joining police brethren and some two thousand additional mourners, OSU president E. Gordon Gee attends Friday’s funeral, respectfully somber in this campus cathedral as the massive, unexpected storm whorls around outside. Gee, forever goofy in his oversized glasses, with or without the silly bowtie, pint sized frame housing that nerdy plastered part job atop his puny head, offering a tidy, reverent speech. From the ceremony, a staggering motorcade three hundred and fifty vehicles strong mourns a sluggish crawl across town to the cemetery. And suffering through a grievous trip of his own, Damon’s already left for Cincinnati, where his old friend Jack has finally succumbed to cancer. Weighed against these abominations, our own domestic troubles seem laughably slight, but Alan’s having a rough week, too, all the same. After opening an account with a campus bank, Alan’s checkbook is sent here but stolen right out of our mailbox. Already the checks are turning up all over town, often exceeding five or six hundred dollars, at clothing stores, shopping malls, and every other merchant imaginable. Alan is hanging out at Alexis’s apartment this very afternoon, until some big black guy shows up with a joint. Preferring to abscond rather than partake, Alan retreats home, but Alexis shows up pounding on our door within the hour. He lets her in, whereby she explodes into venomous, voluminous rage, face engorged as she screams delirious indignities. Alan promptly shows her the door’s backside. “She’s fucked in the head,” he later summarizes. Not uncommon, for him to joke about any or all of his playmates, by turns downplaying their importance while at the same time insisting he’s having the time of his life. Read between the omnipresent haze, though, of fuzzy alcohol logic, and he’s obviously searching. For despite Andrea’s runway blow jobs and those two long running flings with Alexis and Nicole, I know he’s just as dissatisfied with our experience thus far as I am. Further down the food chain, the executive structure at our restaurant shakes loose, both in policy and personnel. In the wake of the Lori scandal, management installs a new money drop program for banking servers out. Now, displacing the archaic former system, reports are run and money counted, the cash is dropped in a vault accessible only by two keys used at once. Drew Forster is gone, off managing the greener pastures of a nearby pizza joint. No management is excellent management, in my book, but Votino sees things differently, he tells his two-faced henchman Chip King to tell Mark Stokes to start finding some replacements. Among these maneuvers, elevating Amy Anderson to supervisor status in the day time is a natural, given she has the most seniority of anyone who will actually work our crummy lunch shifts. A thoroughbred pothead, she, but Amy A is also reliable, trustworthy, and knows the store from every angle. The other promotion Stokes makes at this juncture proves just as sound. Right around the same time Amanda and I were slipping through the employment cracks in January, this giant beanstalk of a man named Dave Weinle was also hired in as server. Or this is the cover story, at least. In reality, Weinle had just quit the Damon’s at The Continent, a once prominent inner city mall which has fallen into neglect these past few years. Overworked in managing that location, his recurrent objections ignored, he walked. Dave’s a born leader, though, diplomatic and kind, with a casual chuckle ideal for dismantling ticking bombs. That bleak January afternoon, Dave sat there through the same boring orientation videos as I, we’d dined upon the same onion loaf and rib samplers at the tail end of my three day foodless fast. All part of some elaborate ruse, it turns out, for the understanding always lied beneath it all, between him and Stokes, that bigger things awaited Dave the instant an opening presented itself. John Stella’s departure opens the door, and Weinle fills the void. As the flurries fly outside, Amanda’s sitting on my lap, in a chair we’ve pulled into the server station from table 61. She and I were just arguing, of all things, about the correct pronunciation of the Hadji character’s name from Jonny Quest. With no one else in our dining room, be it server or patron, and only Gary in the kitchen, she and I have an open arena to flirt. Now she’s telling me with a sigh that she’d really like to go back to college, and although I don’t believe for a minute she’s ever been to college at all, I’m a passive set of ears. I mention Mississippi, just to punch up the momentum, and possibly moving there. She says something about a ride home, and can I drive in this shit. “Of course,” I defiantly declare. “Awesome!” she smiles. As if issuing benediction for the sum of my good deeds, in the same fluid motion as rising from my lap, she leans in, dabs a quick, timid peck upon my cheek. I feel the rustling tickle of her forward motion, the juicy impact of her moist, painted lips, an intimacy fallen faster than the flurries outside, lasting no longer than a snowflake would in here. I haven’t the time to register this kiss before she laughs, sprints into the kitchen. “Hey!” I call out, and chase after her. Driving Amanda home at a snowplow’s pace, I’m not sure what, if anything, I should say, and compensate as I always do by saying nothing at all. We talk about the weather and other meaningless nonsense on par with our heated cartoon debate, because I figure by some crazy fluke what I’ve done so far has worked, and there’s no need tinkering with the formula. Hang back, don’t blow it, seems so simple when it gels. I ponder the kiss and where it might lead, as I will undoubtedly do the rest of this evening and many more to come. Have Damon and Alan ever savored much a solitary peck, has such a small gesture ever meant so much to them? Doubtful, and maybe this is a worthwhile tradeoff. Appreciation honed through loneliness, or in other words, is more necessarily more? I liken their revolving stables to my overflowing music collection, a giant cardboard box I have filled to the rim with cassette tapes. Our desires lead us to endless acquisitions, and while only a fool would have it any other way, there’s no avoiding a corresponding loss. Like the difference between owning all this music, a fantastically diverse listening library, or possessing just five records, but for each of those five to mean the world to you, to play them all the time. Well, whether necessary or not, at least I’ve taken that cardboard box inside. Doug can lampoon my car’s squalid interior, but I’m not cleaning it out for Amanda, or anyone else. Though stacked to the ceiling with papers, clothes, a few cassette tapes straying loose from the coop, even an empty popcorn tin, I’ve got more important things to worry about than tidiness. Unless one of the items coincides with that which I need indoors, here it will remain, until time and circumstance move me forward to the next outpost. After the humdrum anticlimax of dropping Amanda off, I reverse direction, slink north through campus again. To avoid the congested turmoil of blizzard frenzied High Street, I stick to the back alleys running parallel in dirt, gravel, and cracked asphalt glory. Wedged behind the misshapen backside of buildings, the nearly solid wall of that bustling economic corridor, this alley demarcates those houses and apartments to the east. One lone bar actually faces the alley along this stretch, however, Mama’s Pasta and Brew, and as I’m arriving at No. 1 Chinese, I make a mental note to someday inspect that dive. For now it’s only three in the afternoon, though, and while this canvas of clouds reduces daylight down near dark, I’m thinking more dinner than drink. For myriad reasons, as we have done since landing here, the three of us frequent No. 1 Chinese continually. The food’s cheap, the service fast, the fare reasonably palatable. We’re too lazy to cook, our kitchen too trashed out to cook in anyway. These excuses never stop me from firing up elaborate dishes at four in the morning, returning from the bar with no other options, but are preventative enough otherwise. Not to mention the hassle of trying to locate The Fork or using a spoon if we forget to pick up plastic ware at the restaurant. Damon constantly eats No. 1 Chinese, in fact, even though he’s hexed with some weird mojo that insists they keep screwing up his order. Me, they’ve got my face memorized and my General Tso chicken cooking the instant I step inside the door, but not so Damon. Though all he ever wants is pepper steak with no onions, they either double the onions or forget the peppers or both more often than not. Yet, he remains a faithful sucker for this half baked operation. At least as far as today is concerned, Damon’s cursed with more than lackluster cuisine. Returning home shortly after nightfall, he recounts his trip in fine detail, appearing more distraught than grief stricken. He paces the equivalent distance to Cincinnati, right here in our kitchen as he does so. “I made it all the way down there just fine, I made it most of the way back just fine. But the instant I got to Columbus, traffic slowed down to about 15 miles an hour and I couldn’t see for shit. Then this semi almost knocked me into the fucking ditch! Finally I had to just get off 71 a few exits early, I didn’t feel like fucking with that shit anymore.” His eyeballs nearly pulsing from the stress, Damon pops heartburn medicine like breath fresheners, he’s got a test to cram for on top of everything else. He holes himself up in the third floor bedroom, his tiny corner of the kingdom. Sequestered away in the room without an overhead light, sitting on his mattress with the books cracked open, in the wake of a lamp’s pale halo and the warmth of his nearby space heater. Huddled over a far less serious book at the kitchen table, I have the boombox jacked to a local modern rock station when Alan barges in. The last thing I expect, considering his fiery encounter with Alexis earlier, is for him to sprint up the stairs, flushed and jolly, yet here he stands. Panting before me with an ear to ear grin, insisting, for reasons no clearer to me than the cigarette smog wafting around this kitchen, that I join him outside. Downstairs and onto the rickety front porch, the winter air reaches our lungs with bracing clarity. The blizzard like conditions raging outside for much of the day and early evening have long since ceased, encasing our neighborhood, as is often the case after these storms, in a seeming stop motion stasis. Trapped under a sheet of glittering glass, our vehicles and houses, an illusion broken only by the traffic zipping past us on US 23, and the occasional restless human. Three young children stand on the side of the road, directly across the street from Ruby’s, before the bus stop. With a tape measure stretched out across the slick pavement, each in turn takes a running start and skids across the ice, as the other two comrades measure his distance. Waiting out the occasional burst of cars zooming down the three lane one way route, the boys are admirably patient, they chirp merry gibberish to one another before consummating the next round. “Isn’t that fuckin awesome?” Alan enthuses, giddy from the spectacle. In flannel shirts, jeans, and cowboy boots, a trio of rough and tumble older gents drift past, chuckling heartily. By all appearances beer guzzling hicks bound for Ruby’s, they queue without pause and give one running start at this child’s game apiece. Each fares better than I would have expected, stumbling to a fitful rest maybe twelve feet down the line, though none can match the grace or distance of those kids and their tennis shoes. Hooting in the wake of this unseen diversion, or perhaps the fleeting memory of their own distant childhood stunts, our grey haired rustics glance up Summit for cars, they click their boots across the pavement and disappear inside the bar. “I’ve got a new game!” Alan announces, after the kids have long since departed, as he and I stand alone, mesmerized before the hypnotic swish of tires on icy road. “What is it?” I beg, jolted awake, enervated, by our spell out here in the cold. “Throw the Snowball at the Car!” he declares, scampering down the three cement steps from creaking porch to powder crusted lawn. We begin by standing in relatively plain sight, hurling meteors at passing cars as they sail south down our street. A week’s worth of ammunition rests readily all around us, leaving the only real challenge a scientific one, between the intricate arts of packing, timing, and firing. That, and the danger of being spotted, which drives us soon enough behind a pair of giant barren bushes near the sidewalk. Breezing along at accelerated speeds even under such adverse conditions, we can’t wait for these cars to arrive directly upon us, or they’re gone before we’ve so much as gotten the projectile packed. The trick, then, is to loft our charges out there ahead of time, let them hang midair until the vehicles arrive and impact. Of course this complicates matters in that an occasional wildcard police cruiser peppers the deck, but we can’t discern their identities until it’s too late. We see a pair of headlights coming and the crystal spheres fly, beseeching success. Stephanie steps out onto the front porch to enjoy a cigarette and let Stella run around. As the dog sniffs our tracks and then our ankles, disappearing around the side of the house for a moment, Stephanie watches our game with a wry smirk crinkling the corners of her mouth. Exhaling this frigid air in the same breath as her smoke filled lungs, but even thus obscured, given even the lack of comprehensive lighting, I can discern a difference between this expression and the one she’s always unfailingly worn up to this point. Just as this surfeit of snow signifies to me winter’s last hurrah, and the incipient arrival of spring, so too is our neighbor beginning to thaw out. “We’re playing a game called Throw the Snowball at the Car!” I beam up at her. “You guys are gonna get busted,” she laughs. Ruminating on this remark long after she’s retreated indoors, I determine Stephanie is probably right, albeit in a manner far removed from that intended. Finished studying, Damon emerges from his isolation, too wound up to sleep. Racked more by anxiety than any visible grief, at least from where I’m standing, he’s itching to grab a drink somewhere and I concur. Some nights, pacing upstairs as late as three, four in the morning, Damon gives up on rest and walks to an all-night computer lab on Neil, printing off porn. He has a curious predilection toward women being penetrated by animals, as a stack of pictures in one jam room corner will attest, though there is also a naked quadriplegic coed grinning from her wheelchair, taped to our bathroom mirror, with Alan! Thanks for the great time! scrawled at the bottom, in black magic marker, a cursive slant suspiciously similar to that endorsing the Marley poster. And though I will often accompany him to the lab if awake, tonight our feet shall trod no further than Ruby’s. Alan, sensing perhaps his train wreck week has not finished jumping track, begs off, retreats indoors, as the two of us disappear on foot. Friday night, Damon gone again with Get-A-Way, Alan and I emerge on the far east side of Columbus. Beyond the provisional gate of our I-270 outerbelt, we find Club Dance, nestled like a newborn amidst the runaway, half diseased strip mall sprawl between ghetto Whitehall and redneck Reynoldsburg. But Club Dance is no baby, having thrived here for nearly twenty years now, under a litany of names, and the same could be said for most of the strip clubs and restaurants lining this commerce laden section of Brice Road. Living where we do, the more prominent downtown skyscrapers visible from our front yard, and the distance out of town north a known, mentally traceable one, it’s easy to lose sight of our fair city’s heft, to downplay reports we keep hearing of its ever increasing size. But to navigate a course out here to the eastern extreme, to log the miles and chart the minutes, and only then reach the trembling lip of this outlying suburban wall, is to have these notions reduced to rubble on impact. Fleshed out months ago by our few trips to the western extreme, during Mandy’s short internment there, beyond its correlating outerbelt, my earlier, grandiose pronouncements concerning this city appear horribly misguided. Flashing like cameras somewhere deep within, the lights and landmarks I’ve absorbed during this lone jaunt to Club Dance disabuse me of the thought I’ll conquer Columbus in a lifetime, or for that matter in ten of them stacked end to end. And in terms of these ends, the east to west variety, they stretch so far I can’t wrap my mind around them. We can’t have it all, so each night we cast our chips onto the most promising square and give the wheel a spin. Weigh our options, the information based upon a continually evolving field, recalculated hourly. Nicole and September call, they tell us to meet them at this bizarre but insanely popular club, and we’ve no reason not to. Half hip hop hot spot, half urban cowboy watering hole, these polarly exclusive elements juxtapose with minimal friction. Within the former, red brick floors and dim lighting, throbbing strobes and ribcage shattering beats entertain the baggy panted masses, while the latter houses, underneath a bank of bright white lights worthy of our sun, a gleaming wooden floor full of line dancing zealots, surrounded by a near perfect oval of passive onlookers. In each half, the corresponding disc jockey panders the preferred genre and lingo, and the always rotating hordes engender the most stimulating hybrid either of us has ever seen. Cowgirls with amazing asses saunter past, waggling those prized possessions in pairs of impossibly tight jeans, the retroactive majesty of their tiny red boots, hair sprayed golden locks and exquisitely rendered mascara breathtaking to behold. But just then some wicked young thing in skimpy shorts wedged snug against her crotch displaces that view, chest caroming unrestrained beneath a translucent, ill fitting tank top, skin tropical island tan, as if rendered for holiday feast, and gymnast taut, body language wavering somewhere between carelessly fluid and inner city nasty. We’re expected to patrol these grounds, under these conditions, which counts also four functioning bars, a pizza joint, and a pool hall among its holdings, and somehow locate the two girls who summoned us here. Eventually, Alan and I find them at a table above the hip hop floor, buried in relative shadow. September a few drinks into a passably cheerful mood, claiming she’s finally over Robert, even though for some odd reason she’s brought his cousin Scott along. I’ve never met this Scott kid before, a lanky youth wearing football jersey and blue jeans, though he immediately inquires whether I care for a game of pool. Upon securing a table, Alan and Scott are paired off as partners against September and me, with Nicole, fulfilling her apparent niche in life, the smiling, passive observer. My roommate and I, new arrivals, have not yet finished our first beers and are only halfway into this initial nine ball foray when September, standing in the middle of the room, begins bawling out loud. Shielding her face, she then sprints out of the building and into the night. Despite the extra cargo she’s carrying, Nicole is first to follow, dashing in her best friend’s footsteps. Unsure just how to proceed, we males exchange quizzical glances, sip our beers for a wit gathering moment, then set our sticks down and waltz outside as well. No sooner have our feet hit asphalt does Nicole’s car come streaking up to greet us, as she rolls down her window and instructs Scott to climb in. Then, with only a perfunctory goodbye tossed Alan’s direction, she exits the parking lot, bound for Mansfield, the last we’ll see of them. “What the fuck?” he mutters, mystified. We debate reentry no more than a moment, before calling it a night ourselves. Saturday evening, I’ve just walked in the door from work and our telephone rings. Alan’s away but Alexis is on the other end, hysterical, sobbing, claiming she’s wrecked her car on the highway somewhere in the heart of Indiana. After their big blowout here she hopped behind the wheel to meet some friends she has in Bloomington, partied to beat the band, and from the sound of her voice I’d gauge she’s yet to outrun its aftershock. Now this. “Ohmygod Ohmygod Ohmygod!” she wails, “I really needed to talk to Alan! Oh...my...god....what am I gonna do....WHAT AM I GONNA DO!?....what do you think I should do?” “Uh...... call triple A?” I retort, and hang up the phone.

Whenever the phone rings at any point past midnight, it doesn’t take a whole lot of detective work to piece together the source. For though the three of us are well known progenitors of two thirty a.m. calls anywhere, even awakening at times a thoroughly disapproving Paul with our senseless communiques, one individual alone reverses these assaults. Erik, seasoned thirtysomething drummer for heroic rock group Get-A-Way, somehow claims the crown as the only soul ever calling us this late. Even as generally at least one person remains awake in this house whatever the hour, Erik has no peers on his end, more an indication of the pedestrian lifestyles everyone else leads rather than any true deference due us. And as there is no other time of the day Erik ever will call, we customarily answer. Enduring a woefully slight Tuesday, the three of us idle in Alan’s room just past twelve a.m., sipping beers and watching talk show reruns on the only station his black and white television receives. The phone rings, and Alan rises to accept, even though Damon’s usually the target of Erik’s merrily drunken jests. Erik punctuates most sentences with a sharp intake of breath and a titter roughly translated as ta-hee-hee-hee, a trademark giggle we’re twice as likely to hear during this, his half crocked prime time. Contrarily, Kami has made the connection, Damon’s young blonde weekend nympho, on a crackling pay phone. She and a friend named Angie are cruising the highways in some distant eastern part of the state but want to swing through here for a visit, though this detour lies hours out of their way. They estimate they’ll arrive somewhere around two in the morning and we’re psyched, the possibility of visiting ladies sculpting an instantly festive mood from scratch. Psyched for us doesn’t mean straightening up this pigsty one iota, or taking out the trash heaped in bags atop the stairs, or washing the mountain of dishes filling up our sink, spilling onto the counter. It does indicate, however, an extension of our current pursuits, a near drainage of the remaining beer cache in our fridge. The clock strikes four, though, and Damon announces he’s officially throwing in the towel, he trudges upstairs to bed. Five minutes later, a knock resounds in the foyer below, and I race down a flight to answer. The girls smile but shuffle past me with nary a word, making them either shy or stuck up. Kami, as advertised, is a sensational little number, for though her blank face betrays the mindless banality of a simple country life, her body’s smoking hot. In particularly, her tight little ass, reminiscent of the Club Dance dolls from Friday night, one Damon’s surely had pleasure popping these past few weeks now. Initially, I have taken Kami’s button lipped demeanor to indicate an inherent bitchiness, but she maintains this silence even as Damon appears. I realize, now, that against type Kami is actually less comfortable in her skin than I am in mine, and this somehow enhances her appeal. Still, she’s already spoken for, which means that if I hope, or Alan hopes, to hook up here, we must focus on the friend. Angie’s silken threads of long black hair and the innocent face of a not-so-innocent country girl are assets, to be sure, alongside her slightly more forward personality. Unfortunately, she’s also a touch too thick around the middle, though this hasn’t hindered us before, especially at four a.m. In fact she’s a touch thick everywhere, not just through the middle, but that too is okay - her pussy lips are also wide and thick, for instance, a fact we can easily ascertain in the camel toe contour of her cozy blue jeans. “We’re trying to get a hundred panties up there by the time we move out,” Damon explains to the girls, indicating our kitchen wall as he gives the formal tour. Immeasurably proud of those prominent pussy lips, Angie isn’t doing anything to disrupt their perfect framing. Kami strips down without hesitation, but her cohort’s having none of it. Beneath those faded, fiercely clinging denims, Kami reveals a thin set of baby blue thong panties, barely wide enough to cover the light brown patch of pubic hair shaved in landing strip formation just above her snatch. Angie sits, passive and expressionless, legs spread open upon Alan’s bed, but Kami slips into the kitchen with our mighty third donation and tacks them next to the others. Damon and Kami disappear upstairs into the nether regions of his room. Alan’s due in at the airport three short hours from now, but the lure of a lay is always strong. He remains awake, seated next to me on the tiny couch, as Angie stretches out across his bed. On the television our only channel now broadcasts the farm report - beans up three cents, corn down a nickel - and I continually glance over at Angie. Surely she’s noticed my attention, but she makes no move of her own, and though I’m well aware of a need to take charge, every pickup line I consider sounds unspeakably dumb. I rationalize by noting that ladies man Alan hasn’t come up with anything either, yet this doesn’t help bridge the gap any, the distance between myself and that bed. Curiously disinterested in fucking for once, Damon and Kami sit on the third floor simply talking, perhaps in consideration of his early morning class also just around the corner. By comparison a relative eternity separates me and my job, the ten thirty start time, but even with this padded window of opportunity I’m struggling to keep my eyelids open. The farm report isn’t exactly stirring our viscous circulation, but nobody moves to turn the channel, and Angie seems no more bored with it than she has anything else. For all we know, she may not find this farm report the least bit dull or weird, perhaps her own father rises every morning in the fields of Millersburg with this program as his gospel. At six Alan finally passes out sitting upright, and I recognize this as my golden opportunity to score with the raven haired bumpkin. Moron I am, I can think of no practical means of making this happen. The small amount of conversation advanced between us had led to quick dead ends, and some of the more outrageous extremes I consider, such as tossing a porno into the VCR, I lack the nerve to enact. With even a petri dish sized dose of encouragement, I can work up the courage for almost anything, I’ll roll the dice and take chances, on a rare night I might magically transform into someone wittily charming, but her unreadable silence has given me nothing to play off of. Not only this, but the logistics of the situation offer no easy resolution. We can’t readily bone in my room, because I crash each night in a sleeping bag on the hardwood floor. We can’t use Alan’s bed, because he’s lightly dozing now an arm’s length away from it, bound to wake up at the slightest provocation any minute if not sooner. True, all, but even so merely a few more examples, I know, of how my over analysis sucks the life from virtually every encounter. Disgusted again, I slink off to bed with only a quick goodnight thrown Angie’s way, defeated by no one but my all too passive self. Monday morning quarterbacking before I’ve so much as crawled beneath the covers, I flip on the overhead black light. Outside of a spiral carved wooden lamp those skateboarders had left behind, the black light represents my room’s only form of illumination, and I often fall asleep in its fuzzy violet wake. Stripping down to boxers, I turn on my own television to the farm report, inches away from where my head will rest on the floor, and prepare to dive inside the sleeping bag. Instead, knuckles sound out on my door. “Do you have any good movies to watch?” she says, after I swing it open. Rarely is a shot at absolution granted so swiftly, and naturally I’m unprepared for it. A million irresistible come-ons will flutter from my mouth in the morning, but at the moment I most need them, they’re nowhere to be found. Sure, why don’t we crawl into Alan’s bed and watch one only the most obvious of these, culled from a list of thousands. But from my small stack she selects some quaint drama, says thanks and shuts the door, before I’ve committed to any definite plan. The sun’s surreptitious arrival diminishes the black light’s potency, as I lay, unable to sleep until I can pin this problem down. Strategies come to me with assembly line rapidity, I’m simply missing the mettle to act upon them, I’m never convinced, given my spotty track record, that any of them will succeed. Or it isn’t even a case of spinelessness, really but rather some other, ill defined malady. Years gone by, isolated moments where things were truly clicking, I’ve amazed even myself with bouts of ballsiness, asking anonymous strangers out at random, at the mall, at a bank. But when a run turns ice cold, as it has these past few months, doubt creeps in. Because the whole house is riding on every bet, panic permeates every word, graces every motion. Aware of a need to somehow plod forward, yet nonetheless terrified of blowing even the tiniest of advantages, the lunge toward perfection proves utterly paralyzing. What I could really use is some thicker skin. Everyone mines such amusement from the seeming indifference with which I face my days, now if only I could believe the hype myself. On the brink of dozing off at last, I realize I can no longer whine about a lack of opportunities. Opportunities abound, I’m just too chickenshit to take advantage of them.

We hike down Woodruff with minimal conversation, absorbing the mid afternoon rays, surprisingly warm, that fall upon our shoulders. Hanging over campus in a soft yellow sheet, they signal nothing more than a gradual rebirth, and that for today, at least, the long faces walking among us number next to zero. Whether Kami talks more in the select company of Damon, I’m not sure, but as a rule her mouth is clamped even tighter than mine. Her silence thrusts me into the weird position of primary conversationalist, always a dicey proposition. My parents would probably say something about stepping outside of the comfort zone and I suppose there are a few positives in developing other strengths. Fortunately, however, negating some of the burden to speak, on days like this loud, disparate forms of music blare from seemingly every long shuttered house, as if the voice of cabin fever purging itself, now that weather permits, in one sustained collective blast of primal scream therapy. While the rest of us are away at our various daytime pursuits, Angie rises and drives home, leaving Kami to lounge around our filthy apartment undisturbed. The plan, apparently hatched at some point in the wee morning hours, is that she will remain here until the weekend, a most welcome house guest until Damon heads north again Friday night. She likely killed most of this morning in bed, given the lengths to which last night ran, as I would too if not at work. But in rising and dressing to meet the day, I’ve fallen under the spell of cooped up midwesterner’s euphoria, catalyzed by any balmy surge, and sleep is the last thing on my mind. Working efficiently on such a brilliant spring day is next to impossible, as my already wandering mind fights an incessant stream of daydreams. In the crook of our dining room’s spacious bay window, three small two top tables are situated along the curve, and whenever the weather’s exceptional I like to sit or stand here, dearth of patrons permitting, working up schemes for the night to come. Cars hiss down Olentangy, but the gravestones filling this massive cemetery across the way remain unmoving, as I’m sure they always will, the perfect backdrop to stare and dream against. I’ve already dedicated myself to a walk around campus before arriving home, clambering up the front stairs to find Kami sitting alone in Alan’s room. These talk shows on his television are a diversion no different, perhaps, than her customary afternoon in Amish country, but I wouldn’t presume to know how our doe eyed country fawn spends her days. At any rate, with Alan still at work and Damon yet to return from school, she’s visibly relieved to spot a familiar face. Or maybe that mine that isn’t an unfamiliar one, some weirdo wandered in off the streets. Sure, Damon’s the one banging her, but she says something about getting her belly pierced, and we’re out the door. Rounding the corner south onto High, the first shop we encounter is Viking Tattoo, on the second floor of a building that has Used Kids Records as basement tenant. Between them, elevated a few steps higher than ground floor, a restaurant and a hair salon, and an interior stairwell separating the two. Upstairs, next to Viking, sits a second hand clothing store. “Does this look alright?” I ask her, as we gaze up at the building above, as if this will tell us anything at all about the operation they’re running. “I don’t know,” she laughs. “Well, let’s see,” I suggest, swinging the front door open, as she and I climb the stairs. Its moniker emblazoned upon the right hand door, we step inside, and the clerk working the front desk whips out a book outlining Kami’s options. Forty bucks nabs her a piercing and a ring with a little ball on it, and after deciding which one, we follow the guy past some swishing curtains into the back parlor where the actual work transpires. Her belly rolls splayed out like soft white pillows upon the table, an overweight young woman lounges patiently face down, awaiting the tattoo artists’s subtle touch. A mystic symbol of interwoven bands, one green, one purple, one navy blue, centered between her shoulder blades, the minor masterpiece is finished just as we approach. Another chick, this skinny brunette, watches from a corner, but my attention returns to the girl on the table, familiar somehow. She stands, throwing her shirt back on, and I make the connection at last, that this heavyweight teen bags groceries at my store. Miles removed from my customary circle of operations, and further isolated by my limited hours, the distant meat counter I’m stuck behind, most front end people are virtual strangers to me. Still, she recognizes me immediately as well, and introduces herself as Barb. Eighteen years old, Barb has a sweet young face, indifferent body, and stringy brown hair resting upon the shoulders. She introduces the girl in the corner as Alison, explains that they’ve just gotten matching tattoos. “It’s a Celtic knot,” Barb explains, “different colors mean different things. You’re supposed to pick out ones that match your personality.” “We both got the same colors, though,” Alison says. “Yeah, but she got hers on her ass!” Barb explains, as they giggle, exit to pay for their crimes. Kami jumps upon the table Barb vacated, and this transaction passes with surprising swiftness. The man who’d led us back here lifts her shirt, swabs her belly with some kind of solution. He brings out a shiny silver gun and BAM! punches the trigger, and we’re done. Obviously far more accustomed to having holes punched in her body than I am, Kami hasn’t even so much as squealed. She pays the man and we’re out of here, off to have some lunch. We swing around the corner to a fast food restaurant. I put up some mild resistance but she insists upon paying, her method of compensating the tour guide. Sitting upon some exterior patio benches, I think of a conversation Alan and I had days earlier, talking about how we used to try to bend over backwards for chicks and buy them gifts, always pay on dates, but since then have learned to avoid these expenditures at all costs. What we discovered, shortly beyond high school, was that the girls never respected you when you paid anyway, you always came across as a chump. But to sit steadfast without once reaching for your wallet, it not only took balls, it also signified you obviously had plenty on your plate, you didn’t need the female’s company. Sculpted here as if by university mandate, in conjunction with half the other establishments along this stretch of High Street, this massive patio teems with bodies both human and otherwise. Birds hop across the stone parapet, between the flower beds lining these tables, separating the sidewalk. A manic look in their eyes, these primitive creatures prance on twig like limbs, beaks open. Hoping for a spare crumb, they outnumber even the bums begging for a different kind of crumb, the kind that chimes in the bottom of their pockets. Of course the throngs of students shuffling to and from class in every directions, outweighing every other element put together, ignore all. “My mom’s gonna be mad at me for this,” Kami smiles with relish, referring to the hole in her stomach. “Really?” “Yeah, but that’s good. I’m getting back at her.” She outlines a recent episode involving her mom, some petty dispute. The tale she’s spinning doesn’t make much sense but it’s such a relief to hear her talk that I don’t interrupt, and feign comprehension. Not that her sudden rambling spurt lasts long, for by the time we make it back to the apartment, she’s clammed up again, and with everyone else still away she will remain as such. Until Damon returns I’m left entertaining once more, filling in the silent spaces with a tv set and a radio. When Damon appears in the late afternoon, he and Kami ensconce themselves upstairs in his bedroom, not to reemerge. Alan and I, with nothing better to do, spend the better part of this springlike day and the entirety of the evening gathered around the kitchen table, throwing all we’ve got into a drinking contest. Because he’s lapping me in consumption at a rate of two to one, it’s really no contest at all, but I’m amazed that I can manage even this. Slurping these beers at a pastoral pace, at least in my corner, with our radio humming atop the fridge, we whittle hours away simply discussing Stephanie. After a few beers, I’m loosening at last to the taste of them, and our arguments rage unchecked. In terms of what Stephanie might know, the two of us agree upon little, and even less the philosophical implications of what we’ve witnessed thus far. I pose the theory that it’s more sexually frustrating to have this stolen visual intimacy of Stephanie and to not take that final step, that we’d have been better off never eyeing those features at all if we can’t find our way to bed with her. Alan, correctly, believes this notion preposterous, figuring cheap thrills are better than none at all, but even when I know he’s right I can’t refrain from playing devil’s advocate. Till two in the morning this unfurls, a kitchen table congress, as that pair upstairs conducts negotiations of its own. Alan, clinging tenuously to his chair, opposite my marginal buzz, the word Stephanie for him becoming a complex slur. “Dude, you must be immune to alcohol,” he marvels, and I’m beginning to wonder myself.

Following last night’s marathon in bed, Damon’s exhausted beyond words, he sleeps through the entirety of today’s class schedule. Unfazed herself by the preceding gymnastics, Kami rises well before noon, parking herself in cheerful speechless solitude at the cluttered kitchen table. Up until sunrise again, I toss and turn in the sleeping bag, I wander down to a convenience store on High for junk food at three in the morning. Even so I stir just after Kami, swinging her legs and smiling from that rickety wood chair, though the others will not join us for quite some time. As another gorgeous afternoon advances, they awaken in quick succession. Armed with the weekly entertainment papers, we idle around the house, sorting out the particulars of our pending nightlife. Damon paces back and forth, talking on the telephone, while chained to that kitchen table, Alan drinks beer beside the radio. Kami, in his room still after a torrent of daytime talk shows, watches trashy soap operas on Alan’s black and white tv. On ground level, in the dark recess behind our front door, I’m here, incredibly, for reasons other than the perverse. Spying not on Stephanie for once, but answering an unexpected knock. Here to inform us he’s laying some brand new linoleum in the foyer, maintenance man Ponch proves responsible, grinning, hands on hips, unconsciously mirroring that forgotten television star. Our slumlord Wayne Ault’s still roasting in a crock pot of hot water with the city, for mistreatment of his tenants, and the IRS, for evasion of his taxes, but somehow he’s got this grand idea about linoleum in the hallway. “You mind leaving your front door open for an hour or two?” Ponch says, “I need to come in here a little ways to finish.” As the hallway floor extends past our front door to the foot of the stairs, his request makes perfect sense. But as I swing the door wide open and he leaves the premises to grab materials for his job, I’m reminded of those holes we so brilliantly drilled in the wall, here at the foot of the stairs. One glance at the right angle from Ponch and it’s going to be obvious what we’ve done, how warped we truly are. I scurry upstairs to my bedroom for a Pink Floyd poster and some masking tape. I determine this artifact’s large enough to cover the holes, and slam the front door shut for a moment to enact this coverup. Curious nonetheless, since I’m in the neighborhood, I press my ear to the wall, and can hear Stephanie’s shower running. Only a maniac could leave this opportunity untended. Ponch has given me the impression he won’t be back for awhile, which means I have time to spare and can afford to gamble. Damon’s still pacing at the top of the stairs, his own ear jammed against the receiver which probably bears its imprint by now. Wishing to capture his attention, I flounder for ideas. As misfortune has it, Kami’s in the bathroom at this moment, and I can’t risk shouting up to him. At the same time, I’m not leaving this piquant post for anything. I root around in my pockets and pull out the only thing I can find, a half used tube of chap stick. Winging it upstairs, the closed bathroom door makes a perfect target and it hits with a crack, rattles around in the hallway. “Well, I guess I’ll talk to you later,” Damon tells his mother, hanging up the phone. Like old pros we can connect like this without words, and he interprets my signal to the letter, creeps downstairs to join me. Posted to each of the top two holes, we hear a toilet flush above and the bathroom door ease open, as Kami clicks down the hall to Alan’s room, oblivious to our machinations. Snickering down here in the dark, we’re as uncertain of her perceptions as we are those of our mysterious neighbor. Just as we perpetually wonder whether Stephanie knows about these holes, so too can we debate if Kami overlooked us entirely, huddled with our eyes to the wall, or if she spotted us clearly but doesn’t care. Stephanie emerges in the familiar light blue bathrobe, damp hair clinging to her back like seaweed. Crossing the room, she opens the drawer of a bedside table, bending over to snatch something from it. She straightens, but her eyes never meet the pinspots of intrusion, gazing lazily, rather, at some vague spot between us on the floor. Pausing as if for effect, hands clutching the garment’s cloth belt, she lets it fall as a curtain opening at showtime, and exhalations die quick, painlessly in our throats. At long last, her nude body stretches before us with the luster of exploding stars. Her tiny nipples and dark areolae, her plump dangling breasts and soft stomach, these I long to cling to in a warm embrace, to run my lips and tongue across, to touch and taste and savor. This dense black bush between her legs, shaved to a modest inverted triangle, and the bright pink folds of flesh, these represent the finishing brush strokes on her canvas, a final portrait we’re finally painting. Like a divining rod my erection rises, as if responding to the faraway siren of a high pitched mating call. A zombie, this organ, enslaved forever to the pussy. I picture myself diving into that squeaky bed atop her some night, the overhead lights left on but my voyeuristic roommates hopefully away for the evening. Standing here with such febrile fantasies, I can’t help conjecturing what kind of exotic aroma that foreign land between her legs must exude. Musky, and slightly sweet, I decide, like the rain forests of Brazil. We’ve stood at these holes listening to Stephanie fuck her boyfriend, more than once, but she’s always felt the need to consummate this act with him in total cave darkness, in near total silence. What depravity she might unleash if given the opportunity we can only imagine, one of the few remaining territories left for us to map. But this balding dweeb Stephen she’s aligned herself with assuredly isn’t drawing out the beast within, an assignment fit only for virile studs who’ve viewed the topography with more dedication than probably even he. She sits upon her bed, then rises again, crosses the room. As she stands before a mirror, brushing her hair, Damon tiptoes upstairs. He whispers a quick synopsis to Alan, who wastes no time arriving for a peek, attaches himself to a bottom hole. Returning to the bedside table, she roots around some more, her frizzy muff, moist from its daily wash, only inches from Alan’s face. And if for just one moment the laws of molecular structure would allow us to snake our fingers or tongues through these minuscule drill bores, we surely never hesitate. But, alas, ‘tis not to be. We tape the poster up to cover our tracks, and now the rift in our stance on Stephanie spreads twice as far as before. I’m convinced she’s on to us, yet Damon and Alan find grounds to disagree. My central argument hinges on our every motion, ascending and descending these flights of stairs, jostling in various combinations on the other side of her door, as she meanders unclothed. They counter by pointing out that these are old homes, with walls a foot thick, and that even if the boarded up door we’d drilled through is just wood, it’s still some mighty sturdy wood. What this division boils down to is one day, one of us, summoning up the balls to ask. Even if it means our eternal damnation, we have to know. Of course, if those two are correct, she may very well bust us out by then. some success 1

“Dude, I saw one awhile back, and this chick had two guys fucking her in the ass!” Alan announces. “Huh?” Paul and I return at once, in unison. “Yeah!” he blissfully insists. We exchange bewildered glances, Paul and I, but Damon smokes his cigarette with deliberate oblivion, staring at the floor. Preferring to avoid conflict at all costs, he typically turns a deaf ear to our fiery disagreements. Last time we were in exact same configuration, three weeks ago today, also drinking beers around the flickering display of an afternoon porno purchase, Alan dismissed Paul’s identical statement outright. Now, he is claiming it as his own, a sight witnessed first hand. One of Alan’s more amusing personality quirks, this occurrence is not without precedence. But after the careful scrutiny made possible only by knowing him for many, many years, I have come to determine that these fuzzy pronouncements are not the byproduct of a willful deception on his part. It’s just that he sometimes mixes up the exact order certain events have transpired, or, occasionally, at times such as this, he confuses that which he has experienced with that which he has overheard. Knowing this, Paul and I let the matter drop, and move on. Occupied with Jennifer, Radick hasn’t made the journey down here since that initial foray to Maxwell’s. Though I’ve yet to meet his petite brunette, everyone says she’s beautiful, and he’s understandably stoked to have taken her out a couple of evenings thus far. Obsessed, in fact, calling her on the nights they aren’t together, charting every last detail of their next encounter, his next move, in the spare moments between. Even less experienced in these matters than I, he sweats the potential ramifications of any step taken, for there are no greys in Paul’s universe. Either he doesn’t care one whit about something, or he’s in all the way. The first night they’re slated to rendezvous, Jennifer never shows, citing a relentless winter storm. In a similar situation the rest of us might chalk her up as lost cause, but Paul’s not the least bit discouraged. The kind of guy who can listen to one album by one band and nothing else for a solid year, who will recite a funny line in a movie forty times, chuckling just as heartily with each, his belief endures eternal. And who’s to say he doesn’t have the right idea - at least he remains focused. Committed to the case, he eventually escorts her on a couple traditional dates, as well as a whirlwind tour of our notorious Mansfield haunts and faces. Against his mother’s advice he takes Jennifer to one of Frank’s open stage jam nights, and a vicious catfight erupts five minutes later, directly between where she and Paul stand. Damon is forced to intervene, prying the kicking, screaming, clawing parties apart. The following weekend, Paul rides with Jennifer to a Get-A-Way gig in Shelby, becomes so wildly intoxicated he’s struggling not to vomit in her car on the way home. More recently, and significantly still, she and Paul are hanging out in her room late one afternoon, sitting side by side upon her bed. “I’m wearing a brand new pair of panties!” she cheers, bouncing up and down on the mattress. “Oh really?” he says, and nothing more. Agonizing ever since over this colossal gaffe, he’s wondering what a better response might have been, whether another opportunity will present itself, and has driven down here at last to grill each of us for answers. Because there are an unlimited number of witty rejoinders or blatant comeons which might have steered this encounter into a sexual direction, however, nothing we’re saying is accepted as definitive, he continually presses us for more advice, framing his questions in different contexts, attacking the quandary from myriad angles, figuring, in his black and white world, that there must be one absolute in there somewhere, one indisputable response that would have netted him those panties. Clearly, if Jennifer is becoming his next great obsession, then the rest of us are in for a long haul right alongside him. As the porno begins rewinding, our feet lead us down to Maxwell’s. Now that the weather has finally turned a corner, so too does this line of pierced and tattooed freaks, visibly antsy in their bad black makeup jobs and torn clothing, haircuts that appear crafted with the stylist blindfolded. Extending south on the sidewalk past the building’s end, the line bends sharply onto a grassy expanse where Papa Joe’s and the original Waterbeds N’ Stuff once stood, and we join its tail end. Though unique in that they were decimated by fire, those two establishments etch legacies as but the first of many disappearing university signposts. Still the incontestable center of this city’s nightlife, vague traces of an impending plague infest our beloved High Street, a blight known as Campus Partners. A committee thrown together by developers in conjunction with OSU, Campus Partners worms its insidious hands into this potential pot of gold, systematically buying block after block of south campus land. They will then demolish every last one of these buildings, all in the name of yet another strip mall. Looming like a gravestone across the street, Coeds is shuttered for good after our only visit, an early casualty in what looks a bloody war. OSU justifies their interest by quoting the perils of underage drinking, but maybe they should worry about death by homogenization. University officials and Campus Partners members believe they’ll curtail student alcoholism by shutting down the bars, but all it really means is that everyone’s going to drive across town to imbibe instead of walking down the street. Bored fratholes will riot on their front lawns and then in five years another committee likely emerges, brainstorming for ways to curb student DUI. “If they wanna clean up High Street, they should start with the bums,” Paul suggests, “seriously. They’ve got a sign that says Welcome To OSU at the entrance but every night there’s some bum sacked out on that sign, in a sleeping bag.” He’s right, of course. Not just about the guy crashing on the Welcome sign, but the derelicts in general. Sure, campus is replete with graffiti and litter, too, equally valid starting points for any clean up job. But if nothing else it’s hard to imagine the school’s recruiting department enjoys a very high success rate when someone’s eighteen year old daughter must wade through six blocks full of panhandling homeless guys just to reach the building she’s scouting out. Not that these fellows aren’t mighty entertaining. The Native American with a ponytail down to his ass who hangs out at the corner of High and 12th, in a jean jacket with a patch on back that reads COCHISE. Cochise says, “speh some change?” in a raspy voice whenever anyone walks by, and rumor has it he’s got AIDS, that sometimes he cuts himself and tries to drip blood onto unsuspecting passerby. But we’ve not seen any of this, in fact it sounds like horseshit. The only dirt I have on Cochise, really, is that I overhear him one afternoon tell a fellow beggar he’s going to “call it a day” and “head back to the apartment.” Or the bearded black man, who stands by Used Kids Records every day, one arm in a sling, wordlessly rattling his cup full of nickels. Earning my admiration with his passive approach, and that he’s out here with far more consistency than any of his peers. Yet the most interesting street character isn’t this guy, it isn’t Cochise, or even the dude sleeping on the Welcome To OSU sign. Around these parts, the most interesting street character doesn’t beg for change at all, he’s this maniac we dub the Screamer. All across this metropolis, the Screamer is a cult hero, though known to most by a different handle we never bother to learn. A tall, middle aged white guy with spiky brown hair, the Screamer’s game is marching around town all day with this boombox on his shoulder cranked to ear splitting levels. Anytime he passes anyone, he shouts out the name of a TV show, seemingly at random. Occasionally, he acts out scenes from his favorite episodes, playing all the actors, but these occurrences are rare. Damon and I are delighted to catch him in a parking lot on Woodruff recently, executing both ends of a kung fu match from Walker Texas Ranger, shouting out the dialogue of both hero and villain as he jumped back and forth. A colorful character, the Screamer. According to Stephanie, he’s even been the subject of a feature article in one of our city’s major newspapers. My own first encounter with him occurs just outside our house, as I’m driving off for work one morning and he passes on the sidewalk, shouts an unintelligible program title at me so loud Alan can hear him inside the house, up on the second floor. Another time Damon and I are all the way downtown, in his truck, and the Screamer crosses the street before us while we’re waiting at a red light. Boombox cradled in one hand and resting on his shoulder, as always, he glares in at the two of us and shouts, “THE FALL GUY!” before moving on. Gaining entry into Maxwell’s, we splinter apart in predictable alignments. Alan and I jump up on the dance floor, while Paul and Damon stand along the railing, Radick chatting incessantly as they litter the floor with cigarette butts. Damon’s still wearing his tattered camouflage jacket but Paul and I chuck our coats behind the back couch as Alan, ever the fashion maven, declined donning one at all. After a quick jaunt shaking tail in the misplaced boxing ring, Alan and I comb the club seeking Tonya, Valerie, our naughty babes in black. We stand by the back pool table and catch a couple of games there, we peek out onto the patio. We work our way through the network of bodies tangled together in the darkest corners of the dance floor, slithering along to either the disc jockey’s beat or one they’ve dreamed up on their own. Our damsels are not to be found, however, and yet a strange current zips through the room tonight, a static energy arousing everyone out of their floor gazing stupors. We should care more about the misfortune slipping through our figures, but we don’t. Three unfamiliar blondes approach Alan and me, ask us to dance with them, an exceedingly odd offer we shall certainly not refuse. The short one, Dawn, is modestly attractive, the taller girl a knockout christened Felicia. Rounding out their trio, the third blonde offers little to look at and her name is quickly forgotten, but we dance with her just the same, we dance with them all. Within this platonic circle, touching is kept to an absolute harmless minimum, eye contact says everything. This threesome should more than satisfy our famished libidos, but the encounter, somehow, lacks that integral spark. Whether through repetition, or some elusive chemical deficiency, these girls fail to stimulate our imaginations as the previous had done. Sufficiently game to play along, we nonetheless keep our eyes peeled for any upgrades at all, preferably in the form of those two we’d come here looking for in the first place. Damon’s sucking down the beers nearby with feverish intensity, to keep himself entertained as Paul rambles on about Jennifer. The two of them continue leaning against the railing with an eye on the action but remain passive observers. Myself, I’ve done enough watching to last a lifetime. I feel it imperative now that I create some action, and apparently the same renegade virus infests Damon. Fueled by alcohol, he leans over the railing to speak with a young, flaxen haired waif. “I want to eat your pussy,” he says. She shoots him a horrified glance before scampering away, losing herself in the crowd. And rightly so, for in a club atmosphere, there’s just no telling the difference between deranged sexual predators, or guys like us with twisted senses of humor. Damon cackles maniacally at the furor created. From Felicia and Dawn and the other blonde, Alan and I somehow meld seamlessly into another trio. At first we assume they’re with the blondes because they giggle en masse, and we comprise for a moment an even larger circle, eight of us swaying our hips to forgotten top hits of the 1980s. But the blondes move on, and we’re left adrift inside this current triangle, a serious step backwards. None are especially attractive, in particular the heavyset brunette with a funky purple hat. These girls stand out even more than we do, too, by way of their hippie attire. They look as if they’d feel more at home across the street at Not Al’s Rockers, or nearer our house, at Ruby’s. But the tall one’s named Sarah and she’s certainly doable, with long brown hair, pale skin, rosy cheeks, in corduroy slacks and a white blouse. She’s also wearing the Stephanie smirk, that of a thoroughbred smartass, an expression I recognize from spotting it in the mirror each day, from being labeled as such with equal frequency. Their ringleader, Carrie, has a shorter, lifeless bob of straight black hair and a pockmarked face, but her body’s in decent shape, adequately curved. Carrie keeps glancing over at Damon, standing even now on the other side of the railing, listening to Paul’s ceaseless Jennifer discourse. Damon, damn him. Alan and I are out here busting our asses working the floor, but Carrie only has eyes for him somehow, and everything suddenly makes sense. These girls spot us with Damon, and, responding to Carrie’s interest, they hunt down Alan and me out here on main street. Damon, attired in a camouflage jacket and horn rimmed glasses and with his hair about six times as long as anyone else in the place, doing absolutely nothing. But it’s him Carrie runs off the dance floor to approach, introducing herself cold turkey. Still, though it may amount to no more than our Tonya and Valerie connection has thus far, this is an epic achievement for Damon, for all of us. For anyone to reach even one of these campus chicks on any level marks a serious breakthrough. All these girls know more girls know more girls, it’s just a matter of making first contact. “I noticed him because he was the only guy in the whole bar not trying to pick up chicks,” Carrie explains. I can’t put together the pieces of this intricate puzzle for anything. First I’m the guy who doesn’t make moves when he should, now I’m apparently the guy who makes moves when he shouldn’t. But if it’s obvious that, despite assertions to the contrary, Alan knows scant more what he’s doing in this scene than I do, then it’s also irrefutable, to me, that the sit and wait for something to happen approach isn’t bound to succeed very often, either. Alan’s triumphs back home, or those blowjobs once enjoyed on the runway at work, they net him nothing here; Damon’s passive magnetism works wonders in this instance, but is assuredly some fluke. Acknowledging both goads me into action, propelled forward by both the grudging acceptance that Damon has trumped us yet again - just when we think the girls are biting, that we have this mountain conquered, we’re proven merely pawns in their game - and that everything we’ve done or thought thus far, Alan and me, has been wrong. Huddling around one table, panting, we take leave of the dance floor while Damon works Carrie. She’s all ears, laughing at his awkward comedy, immobile as her friends resist any effort Alan or I make to know them better. Far more effective is Paul’s grimacing disinterest, though, again, he has considerable experience conducting this stance, virtually the only one he knows. These girls are all so far removed from his bone thin five foot tall dream lovers that his loathing isn’t an act. Any time others occupy is time stolen away from him, time Paul could have to rhapsodize on Jennifer some more, or else his latest obsession, this kinky little tramp strutting across the dance floor. Bored with Sarah and the girl in the funky hat, I join Paul in admiring this beauty from afar. She’s a short brunette, skinny but stacked in all the right places, wearing a flimsy black blouse along with a leopard patterned skirt and black go-go boots hiked up to her knees. Her smile is so dirty it’s almost indecent, leveling every male in a ten yard radius with its wanton sexuality. She slithers to the music with the skill of a professional, yet remains detached, oblivious to the rest of the world around her. Paul continually harps upon those boots, and with reason, an inviolably seductive prop making her entire ensemble shine. A few years older than us, by appearances, but that matters not the least as I duck under the railing, determined to approach her. Maybe nothing I ever attempt will change the statistical skew, dictating that Damon and Alan always reel in more chicks than I, but at this moment I’m willing to expend ten times the effort they do just to slant these tables in my favor. Disgusted with ineptitude, I still believe fortuity lurks around my every corner, I only need wrest it to the ground. Bursts of inspiration have always come and gone in this manner. Expending my days in dispassionate languor, until some mysterious confluence of events sets my pulse racing, whispers in my ear that it’s time to take charge. A rare, glittering prize drifts before my line of vision, forcing me to stand up and take notice. At these infrequent intervals of painful desire, I can live with losing, but when making no effort at all my inertia haunts me without end, burning me up inside for days, weeks, months. She has her back to me as I approach, and I slide in behind, against the soft, furry landscape of her leopard spotted skirt. Without flinching she welds her body to mine, affording only a half turned head in my direction and another glimpse of that maddening smile. But beyond that, there are no words, just the two of us grinding together to the bounce of the bass drum and I’m feeling, for this one instant, a newly crowned king. So what if this woman is obviously intoxicated and the girls we came here to find are absent and Damon’s getting all the attention from the latest crop we’ve met tonight. The duration of this song, I’ve got a moment with my own little go-go dancer, golden. Emboldened, I stick a hand under her skirt, caress the soft flesh of her behind with a rhythmic back and forth motion. What this taut beauty must look like underneath, I can only dream, but in the meantime I’m determined to map out as much as I can by touch. I work my fingers around to the inside of her thigh, massage her pussy now, concentric circles through her flimsy panties. Who knows, by the end of the night these may hang from our kitchen wall as conquest number four. But she takes my hand in hers and returns them to their former position, beneath the backside of her skirt, keeping me in check with a hand upon her cheeks. The song ends and we separate, off to different ends of this pitch black galaxy. Paul’s dredging for every detail, which I’m more than happy to provide. Given to lengthy diatribes within the comforting embrace of our group, he’s twice the introvert I am away from it. He struggles with girls, with any spontaneity at all, unless his head is varnished with a healthy coat of alcohol. My trophy case growing dustier by the hour, I’m not the least bit opposed to filling him in, however, as the rare, crazy stunt invigorates like nothing else, adrenaline coursing like lava through my veins. Ten feet further along the railing, Damon’s busy acquiring Carrie’s telephone number, and she his. The three girls live in one of the high rise dormitories on West 11th, freshman girls complying with OSU’s strict housing policy. All first year students are forced to room in this manner, but ways around this piece of red tape are as plentiful as the dormitories themselves. Out of town addresses commonly given as the flunkey crashes on some friend’s couch down here, for instance, yet for every loophole seeking miscreant there are three campus Carries, filling up those dorms. Numbers exchanged, the girls vacate, but Paul and I scarcely notice. Our eyes graze the go- go girl, seated with some friends a few tables away, tittering at a volume that rivals yesterday’s pop songs overhead. Downing enough booze to impair a small country, becoming visibly, exponentially trashed with every passing minute. A sudden, desperate twitch seizes me, to stride confidently beside her lithe, compact figure, to place a hand upon her back and wow her with my witticism. But the circle she encloses intimidates, paralyzing me from the waist down. “You oughtta try and get her to come home with us,” Paul says. “Yeah, I know. How do you think I should go about it?” Questions such as this are rarely answered with any speed at all, but we couldn’t ask for a more prompt reply. The words no sooner leaving my mouth does our leopard skirted tramp pass out at the table, fall from her chair and onto the floor with a limp but ferocious thud. Immediately, a pair of bouncers dash over to whisk her on out of the bar. Such imperial fantasies, scotched again by indecision. I may have next week, but chances are the price paid for this gaffe is one I won’t recoup. House lights suddenly flare, the long march home awaits. At least Damon has punched through the icy sheen of leeriness standing between us and these girls, marring our endeavors to date. With those seven digits in his pocket, that skyscraper full of females dances before us all, a barely glimpsed imp taunting as it darts well out of our grasp. Incendiary, derisive, but edging ever closer. Paul and I troll behind the couch for our coats, but surface empty handed. I wore only an old school Milwaukee Brewers windbreaker - light blue, yellow catcher’s mitt logo on the left breast - but his is a high dollar winter fleece, shielding him in woolly elegance from these elements he so despises. Though foolish as I am in assuming this hiding place safe, it figures fussbudget Paul, of all people, falls victim to such a theft. Warm enough most folks coast with spring blazers or none at all, but not Paul, his blood reptilian thick, even as his skin’s notoriously thin. The duration of our slow grind home, Jennifer’s shoved aside in deference to this outrage. And the chick in the go-go boots? Forget her, because he has, if only for the time being. The latest extended Radick rant concerns this ridiculous Ohio weather and the worth of his precious coat, impossible to replace. “That coat cost two hundred dollars!” he howls, “this sucks!” Damon’s camouflage jacket may not cover much more than his own wiry shoulders, but it has saved our ass this evening in another sense, along with his hard to figure skills as a ladies man. Thanks to these, we can all tune Little Paul out, concentrate on something else. Like how the OUTSIDER stamp is now entirely erased from our foreheads, and that the charmed life may very soon be ours. “Just remember, McGathey,” Stacey rasps with a knowing, suggestive smile, “it takes two to combo.” Spouting one of the slogans printed on our tabletop placards, Stacey offers this latest cryptic remark for my eternal scrutiny. Whether roundabout flirtation or lighthearted trifle - or both - I’m left to determine on my own. Of more pressing concern is the happy hour she and roommate Michelle have walked over here, to my dining room, to propose. They’re trooping off at present to a bar in this same strip mall, Woody’s, and suggest I do the same. Michelle, introduced to me today, is a plain, blue eyed blonde with little body to speak of, her short head of curly hair worn like a helmet. But Stacey I would readily party with anytime, anywhere, even upon my deathbed, if not for the specter of that cumbersome second job. Due in there at five, I decline. The days fly by like gunshot, and though painfully aware of a need to stop this process, to slow it down, there seems nothing I can do to make these events transpire with any less haste. A sensation of missing out not only in what these ladies have to offer but the riotous campus spectacular in general, it spooks my every move, submerges itself beneath the fog of sleep. The defining window of our lives, our time spent here might prove, and I want nothing more than to trap each of these afternoons, these evenings, under glass like an insect, to analyze and deconstruct until satisfied I’ve catalogued everything. Done what I wanted with it, changed what I could, and only then moving onto the next. But as the weeks swirl past in a runaway slide show, even cradling this knowledge, of what else is out there, of how critical my total immersion is, time doesn’t allow one tenth the involvement I would like. Friday night, a Jack Kerouac memorial takes place at north campus jazz bar Dick’s Den, as world weary Beat students juxtapose reverent readings with somber Sunday morning horns. All weekend long, a documentary championing the early 90s Seattle music scene spools out at the Wexner Arts Center. Yet with each waking moment spoken for and plotted like the coordinates of a transatlantic voyage, I’m no more able to participate in either than I am a keg party Doug’s attending Saturday, at his ex-girlfriend’s sister’s house, a chick also living now in Columbus. Officially, for the three days comprising this weekend I manage a cumulative eleven hours of sleep, so the problem is never one of motivation, or even a deficit of free time. But the hours I have at my disposal never quite mesh with anyone else’s, tilting these late nights askew. Home alone once another work day has ground to a halt, at a loss with how to occupy these three and four and five a.m.’s. Damon and Alan, seemingly my only peers, materialize on Monday. America’s favorite senseless drinking holiday, but even here I’m useless, caught in the headlights of this hellish double ended stretch. Their weekly poetry open mic slanted temporarily Irish for St. Patrick, legendary campus dive Larry’s sounds tantalizing, as do countless other High Street destinations. But by the time I arrive home at nine thirty, my two roommates are already appallingly smashed, and Damon’s slurring his way through an hour long phone call home to his own ex-girlfriend, Angie. Having bounced from bar to bar for most of the past six hours, they’re in to stay. The sun rises again all too soon, but at least this morning dawns with more promise than most. Mandy’s driving down tonight, coordinating a birthday party for both Big Paul and myself, and we’ve invited most of our admittedly limited gang. Among those lucky souls I’ve spread word to, Amanda, but her appearance at the gala blowout looms sketchy at best. Her increasingly puzzling behavior has me scratching my head at every turn, but I’m not the type to bother calling anyone onto the carpet. Mentioning the party to her, she asks if we’re having alcohol, and when I naturally reply in the affirmative, she maintains this precludes attendance. Fair enough. But I wonder about the Rocky Horror midnight showing she recently insisted I escort her to, held at a small local theater chain named Flickers, the whole gimmick of which is that they feature dining tables and actual waiters, serving draft beer, as its films are playing. Apparently she feels the distraction of throwing food at the screen and shouting out song lyrics along with the other, more gaudily attired devotees, dissolves any temptation to lapse. But for my money, when forced to sit through this wretched “cult classic” I can think of nothing else but drinking heavily, preferably until I fall asleep. And for someone dedicated enough she also pleaded I hold her hand through this year’s AA awards banquet - as thrilling as it sounds, without question - it seems odd she’d put herself in any compromising situations at all. I speculate that her participation in this culture is nothing more than an amusing diversion, a fantasy, a facade, yet this assumption doesn’t make her any more likely to attend my bash. “I didn’t know it was your birthday! I would have brought you in a joint!” Gary laments, shakes his shoulder length braids back and forth as I’m waiting on an order in the kitchen. “Ah, I don’t really smoke,” I tell him. “Okay,” he chuckles merrily, flashing a perfect set of iridescent teeth, “a forty ounce, then.” Comparatively blase, my frizzy haired blonde is talking less today and listening more, fortuitous in that the reverse holds true for me. Elevated by tonight’s impending fireworks, this rare loquacious streak has me sputtering a trove of long dormant stories. Her attendant, atypical reticence thus becomes Amanda’s birthday gift, painful as childbirth. Correlative, though far more customary, she also believes we must grab lunch together somewhere upon banking out. With a smirk Mike enters the server station, one eyebrow raised, indicting eyes darting briefly against our faces. A private joke for him, these subtle gestures, as if hip to some secret between Amanda and me. Employed as we’re still just discussing lunch, and he has absolutely nothing else on us. Nothing that isn’t common knowledge, anyway. For while I’d love to think that Amanda’s rare reflective turn is entirely taken on my behalf, other wheels she’s set in motion this week figure far more prominently. Falling in precise paradox on the same afternoon as this nation’s great alcoholism gala, teetotaling Amanda puts in her two weeks’ notice on Monday, with no other position awaiting her elsewhere. She mentions taking some classes at CCAD, she mentions reclaiming her supposed managerial post at the campus Skyline Chili. But behind these cheery exhortations I sense even less substance than her usual rants, as if she’s having trouble buying it, too, this time. More believable, I find, are claims she’s leaving Brett. Or maybe my open embrace of the idea is merely wistful rationale, along with surmising I factor in the equation somewhere. But imagination gone amok doesn’t explain the strange whisperings and furtive glances coworkers shoot my way of late, their elliptical behavior in my presence wavering neatly between condescension and suspicion. “Brett’s such an asshole,” Amanda seethes, opening up at last as we cruise through campus, “he’s nothing like I thought he was.” 2

We’ve made it two and a half months without a garbage can, but a miniature, knee high plastic model now graces one bathroom corner. Christmas is the last time I slept on an actual mattress, but tonight I will. These and more, all gifts from Mandy Goff, heaven’s altruistic angel sent to keep us from killing ourselves. Brand new lawn chairs surround the kitchen table, in place of the busted wooden ones employed as seats to date. A birthday cake and potato chips to celebrate the occasion, a fridge full of beer, a pizza cutter for future nights coming home hungry from the bar. Though disturbed by the carnage we’ve created, she cleans our apartment top to bottom again. The dishes, the floor, the counter tops, the stove, sparkling by the time she’s finished. She does what she can, but some of the mess, both intentional and otherwise, seems unassailable. Because the modest receptacle she’s purchased will only accommodate so much, most of our trash will continue piling up at the top of the stairs. The empty beer labels we’ve stuck onto our refrigerator now nearly obscure its entire front flank. Where the flourescent light in the kitchen used to hang, a giant hole now punctuates the ceiling, a target we aim for in flicking our bottle caps out of sight. Those undergarments on the wall and that hideous mannequin, also dotting the kitchen landscape, Mandy recognizes as near religious artifacts in our eyes, refuses to touch. In fact, though Melissa declines becoming trophy number four, Mandy readily tacks her satiny black Harley Davidson panties to the wall. As if brought to life by the motorcycle logo’s majestic ascendance, Melissa’s sister arrives at our front doorstep, looking as though she must ride one of those highly prized hogs. A towering giant, this eldest sibling, with arms as thick as my legs, a beefy body throughout. Long blonde hair and a blue doorag on her head, she’s Sam Kinison reincarnate, cast in this life a lesbian mechanic after blowing it as comedian. Living in Columbus now, I gather that she and Melissa aren’t exceptionally close. “Nice collection,” sister grins, whisking Melissa off for an evening on the town. Though ostensibly held in honor of his twenty-fourth birthday, the party lurches forward without Big Paul. Transfixed still by his every move, Mandy maintains a steady pipeline of contact, but can’t force him to fulfill these verbal commitments, can’t pinpoint his whereabouts tonight. Given his propensity for spiraling into funks and disappearing for infinite stretches of time, I rate the odds of Linville showing even slighter than Amanda’s. We haven’t spoken to him for an eternity ourselves, but Mandy holds out hope. Cradling more loneliness in her jean jacketed bosom than any girl I’ve ever known, she scours the Mansfield bars every night of the week looking for a man, she fixes what’s broke for immature boys. “Saint Patrick’s Day I showed my parents how to play Beer Tree!” Mandy says with a snicker, already half plowed, “we all got really fucked up.” What a bunch of degenerates we are. Unable to bring our wishes to fruition, we drink. In actuality, I don’t even drink, at least nowhere near the levels the rest of these lushes do. Sometimes, this seems worse, as I no longer have so much as a modest crutch to lean my excuses against. These days, everything I touch continues falling apart, but for no reason other than inherent idiocy. Even when it comes to wringing the most enjoyment from my disintegration, I am a failure. My own St. Patrick’s Day already a joke, roommates wasted, that evening devolved further following a phone call Damon made, after hanging up with Angie. He invited Kara over, and a half hour later she’s knocking downstairs, dressed to kill. We tossed back beers in this kitchen for much of the night, as I blew what was in all likelihood the most agreeable shot I’ll ever have of nailing her, a turn of events I’ve done my best to block out all day. But crawling home tonight, I pick up the phone again to call her, and she’s adamant she’ll attend. For comic relief in Linville’s place we have Mandy’s older brother K.C. Extending beyond merely a similar 1980s metal fan’s attire and the eerie transparent green eyes, these Goff children carry physical resemblance to an altogether different dimension, near identical twins born two years apart. Though K.C. wears his sandy crewcut not only lighter in color but shorn far shorter than Mandy’s dark black borderline afro, though his motormouth revs at half the speed of hers, he hangs the same drooping cheeks from his face, the same lips-parted expression virtually begging for a cartoonist’s “huh?” A pervasive sadness leaks from their pores, these Goffs, stabs at drunken merriment be damned. For K.C. sympathy is twice as forthcoming, as he’s not just bored and lonely, he’s dealing with divorce. Living with Mandy and his parents back home, gone from Columbus since that bleak night in January when he caught his wife boning a supposedly gay friend. Some folks drink their miseries to oblivion, and neither he nor Mandy are foreigners in this realm. But these two, they also fight random strangers, in those frequently haunted dives, and we’ve seen, for instance, Mandy kick ass both male and female in the past. Drunk and rambling she’s already rehashed their most recent encounter so many times tonight, a narrowly averted scrape last week, that Alan and I are looking at each other crosseyed from different ends of the room, struggling not to crack. Nicole and September drift in directly behind them, and why these disparate parties can’t combine their departures from that verboten city to the north, I’m never sure. Toting a homemade batch of spaghetti in a giant plastic tub, and easy, unguarded cheer, the Club Dance debacle wordlessly swept aside as if feverish dream. Four months pregnant, Nicole doesn’t show it the least, maintaining a slender physique even as her ordeal is nearly halfway over. Motherly instincts apparently working double time already, though, for she can’t resist preparing this massive dish, to heat and eat at leisure, to insure we survive through this time next week. Seated around the kitchen, drinks rest cozily in every hand except Nicole’s and my own. Hoping for a ringer who actually hails from this city, we’ve left notes upon the doors of both downstairs neighbors. If Sherrie would grace this foul corridor, our knowledge of the nattily dressed hippie chick might advance beyond one thirty minute rant she’s subjected us to out on the front porch, concerning landlord Wayne Ault. If Stephanie did the same, we’d relish our first serious stabs at intimacy, at pulling this oblivious pinup girl closer than our pornographic fantasies. But we expect neither, and when the raps ring out in rapid succession below, their impact sends us reeling. In her loud, flower patterned dress, Sherrie guffaws hysterically for no discernible reason. Nothing new here. She hasn’t come to party, however, asking instead whether we can move some cars. We’ve got her blocked in and she needs to leave, bound for one of those all night fiestas she’s always rolling home from at nine o’clock a.m. The potholed gravel lot behind our house is unfailingly crammed three deep with crooked cars, the most haphazard parking arrangement imaginable, and on a night like this our friends wedge the shoehorn tighter. We roll out the vehicles in a long procession, to mobilize Sherrie’s sedan, rearrange ourselves in her wake. While away, Stephanie slips into our kitchen. The first social engagement we’ve had with our playmate of the year beside quick chats also upon that porch, her emergence lessens Kara’s failure to show. Stephanie, a more than adequate substitute, has a seat in one of the lawn chairs, every eye in the room tracing her exquisitely rendered movements. Those of us in the know undress her again with our x-ray vision, unable to comprehend that our living and breathing centerfold is here in the flesh, knocking back a cold one with everybody else. Smoking cigarettes as coolly as a film noir dame from the black and white 1940s, an enigmatic wall, her tinkling laugh a bowl of fine crystal on the mantelpiece. A wry knowing smile, thumb curled around her tender white chin, she holds the cigarette to her lips, blowing lazy streams of smoke toward the styrofoam ceiling. She doesn’t speak much but everything she says carries the imprint of a world wise soul, the kind of vibe I’d always hoped to ride with my own muzzled mouth, but never could. Compelled, as females, by genetic curiosity, Nicole and September pump our neighbor full of questions, eager to drill down into the core of her being. The standard q& a, she’s twenty three, a waitress, she hails from a town called Marion about an hour to the north. Mandy, meanwhile, an aberration, eternally jealous in the midst of other women, leans against the counter with a derisive, snarling leer, the third dimension of our cramped microcosm. Those other two somehow escape her scathing hostility, but Stephanie’s not so lucky, which may explain her early exit after drinking just one beer. And prompted by her departure, the rest of us spill out onto the streets as well, hellbent upon that bar two doors to the south. “She’s ugly,” Mandy confides to me as we enter Ruby’s, her illusions shining brightly as the awning spotlights above us. Mandy has never visited Ruby’s but falls in love the instant we set foot inside. At this moment, any estrogen soaked pettiness is instantly forgotten, subsumed by environment. She gapes at the bare wooden floors, scuffed, unvarnished, she marvels at the modest unoccupied stage. K.C. digs our favorite neighborhood haunt, too, mostly because this is one of the last establishments around still featuring actual cork dartboards. Everywhere else we encounter computerized plastic monstrosities, which tally the score, though offering nothing for aesthetics, the weight and feel of an actual steel tipped dart in hand, the joyous jolt of a successful toss. Beer pours heavy from tap into pitcher, as we coalesce around a thrown together table on the other half of the bar. Setting up camp between the dartboards and the stage, pushing together three small square tables into a larger conglomeration. In teams of two we wage war upon the cork, each game an attempt to dethrone the previous winners. Adamant but the notable exception of Damon, who’s half crocked before we leave the house and spends his time trying to worm down September’s pants. “Come on, baby!” he pleads, a corny deliberation to his method though concurrently dead serious, “why don’t we go back to my room and I’ll show you a good time?” “No!” “Why won’t you have sex with me?” he wheedles, “what’s the big deal?” “I don’t think so,” she grins, “you’ve got player written all over you face.” “What? Player?” Damon gasps, forges an expression equal parts shock and incomprehension. In the tavern’s cobwebbed basement, dust gathers on the ghosts of a bygone era. Robust years where a second bar, buried underground, thrives in autonomous glory and the booths, now dry rotted, cater to capacity. I look at these stained cement walls, barely visible in the lone light hanging at the foot of these stairs, and think of decade old conversations that died and dried against them, buried in spots by the handwritten, magic marker graffiti. I like to believe that the redolent swirl of voices and smoke and throaty barfly laughter never dissipated, but gradually morphed, through some mysterious alchemic process, into the mildewy stench that saturates the stillbirth air down here. Gone beyond reclamation, the basement serves no purpose at present other than he and she restrooms that were never relocated. Upstairs beside the first pool table, a fist sized hole in the floor peers directly into the ladies’ facilities, but this piece of information amounts to no more than a useless, well known curiosity. Voices occasionally float skyward from below, and nothing else, for not even we are perverted or depraved enough to risk sneaking a peek. Collapsing face first in a crowded room, cheeks flush against the floorboard as eyeballs strain and rotate in their sockets for one meager illicit glance, yeah, this might ruffle more than a few feathers. Why bother anyway with so many other, more worthwhile projects afoot, whether encompassing or extending past our motley tribe. I throw quarters down and challenge the reigning champion, hoping to engage with some of these remote women who float around the room. But though enjoying some small success here in the past, though loitering in the primary lane of traffic and counting, for competition’s sake, no less than three females among our band of seven, tonight the opposite sex just isn’t biting. Nicole pumps me with an onslaught of weird questions about my love life, and while certainly odd, this doesn’t really count. Equally bizarre, their drunken swaths intersecting for no reason other than overflowing bladders, Damon and Alan encounter Mandy downstairs, emerging in sync from the opposite restroom doors. Hooting and howling over inside jokes they likely couldn’t recall five minutes from now, my roommates make a modest request. “Hey Mandy....why don’t you show us your pussy?” In our many seasons of acquaintance with missus Goff, whiskey swagger aside, she’s always been the shy one, blushing and insecure around boys. Her fervent pursuit of Linville represents the lone anomaly we’ve yet witnessed, and in fact, we suspect she hasn’t had sex in years, a streak that makes my paltry struggles seem entirely inconsequential. Take Mandy’s blood alcohol level this evening, however, combined with her barely concealed envy of virtually every girl we’ve encountered and the lingering memory, in particular, of our fawning over Stephanie, and these elements combine for a potent cocktail, inviting action. Fully aware of the situation, enough to laugh aloud but not enough to care, she leads Damon and Alan back into the ladies room, occupies a stall with the door swinging open. She pulls down her jeans and panties just enough to reveal her pubic thatch, as curly as the tightly wound mop atop her head. Suddenly self conscious, she covers herself again, end of story. “So.....do you have a girlfriend?” Nicole’s grilling me, in between shots at the table. “No,” I sigh. “Okay, but are you, like, seeing anybody?” “Not really,” I shrug, as if wholly unconcerned with this trivial tidbit. September joins us from the darkened, dartboard half of the room, throws a curveball at me by asking to partner should I win this game. Imputing this request with Nicole’s translation efforts, I have a solid idea of some half baked strategy they’ve apparently hatched, even if I don’t know the variables. Sure enough, Nicole has a seat in one of the swivel chairs beside the wall length mirror, and every time September turns her head, Nicole’s elbowing me in the ribs. With pointed glances she pushes her eyes open as wide as they’ll go, the universal expression for urging someone else to wise up and pay attention. Holding my gaze she tilts her head at September like a bad sitcom sendup, and while even a halfwit could discern what she’s hinting at, I play dumb. “What?” I laugh in her face, palms upraised. Chances are I’ll never screw Amanda, I’ll never screw Kara, I’ll never screw Stacey. My dry spell runs now in excess of three months, but even so, this represents maybe the one occasion I would ever consider not hooking up as some sort of victory. Damon’s the kind of guy who would sleep with a universally acknowledged lunatic, sleep with her for a week straight, or a series of weeks, then bitch and pop heartburn medicine and pace the house for the next three months fretting how he’ll get rid of her. Agonizing endlessly, regurgitating to the rest of us every psychotic episode she’s ever flung his way, over and over again. Yet whatever the depths of my own hermetic hell, I’m not about to head down that road. Crazy though I am, though we all are, it’s safe to say September’s got a leg up on any of us. Just saying no is a victory for males around the world, proving that even the most desperate man alive still has standards. In spending quality time with his first true love, that of the sharp metal projectile, K.C. alone finds his stay here thoroughly rewarding, and is hardest to pull away. Bridging the short distance back to our house, some stagger, and Damon slips, cracks his head on the cement steps leading up to our porch. He spends a few unconscious seconds sprawled at the point of impact, as mother hen Mandy works to revive him. Shaking his head back and forth to uncoil the aftermath, Damon lets Mandy hold him by one arm, comically resembling a feeble old man as she leads him up to our kitchen. Once inside, as if sobered by the head trauma, a radical transformation seizes him. Though not the least bit mean spirited, he and Alan both occasionally have their violence-sure-is-fun moments when wasted. Transfixed by a packet of cheese left laying on the counter, Damon stands board stiff, focus unwavering. Then, with the sudden fury of a coiled rattlesnake, his hand snaps back and strikes, and by some freak force the cheese packet sails across the room, scoring a direct hit in the distant corner, upon the mannequin’s skull. With baited breath, suspense mounting, we watch in awe as she teeters for a moment, topples to the floor. Damon and Alan rush over to the fallen dummy, their shoe heels finding its cheap plastic surface. Tearing the mannequin to shreds, busting it into a thousand pieces, one of them detaches an arm, then the other, her left leg snaps off at the kneecap. And once wound up, their rampage is a fever, contagious as the whooping cough. They reach into the refrigerator, extracting that bowl of spaghetti, the batch Nicole and September have just brought down for us. Launching fistfuls of pasta across our kitchen, I can’t resist joining in. These two are trashed out of their minds, and while I’ve not sipped anything stronger than carbonated cola all night, it doesn’t take much enticement to string me along. We plaster every corner of the kitchen with spaghetti, and it occurs to me that this is the complete, perfect inverse of a high school party. Back then, parents gone, the guests destroy the house while a frazzled host cleans up the carnage, and now we’re effecting the reverse. Dismantling our own pad, as the visitors gape aghast from the safe distance of our central hallway. “Who’s gonna clean this up?” K.C. chortles merrily, his entire body jiggling. Almost as a reflex, we grin and glance over at Mandy. “Oh no!” she contends, “don’t look at me! I’m not cleaning this shit up!” Alan is the first to spot our unusable flourescent light, propped against a nearby wall. Since Damon replaced the entire unit months ago, this fixture has served no purpose at all, we’re just too lazy to move it out of the way. Alan yanks one cylindrical bulb and rips it free of its mooring, starts beating the remains of the mannequin with the light as glass shatters everywhere, pieces of it flying all over the kitchen. Damon, not one to let such a fortuitous opportunity slip away unemployed, grabs the remaining flourescent bulb and prepares for his strike. He raises this makeshift weapon high above his head, arms recoiling to blast the helpless department store ornament, but freezes for a moment. “Wait, is this okay?” he asks, pausing just long enough to garner my advice. On drunken nights such as these I’m the de facto babysitter, and when I nod my head, it’s a guilt free green light. Damon rears back once more and cracks the mannequin’s dome, as the end of his own flourescent light explodes, leaving him holding the remaining half. “One of them’s gonna get cut,” Mandy chides, shaking her head in grim admonishment. Yet the battle rages on. The two of them begin attacking each other with these stumps of glass sword, duking it out like high seas swashbucklers of centuries past. By the time both clubs are busted into stumps, each has sizeable cuts all over both hands and is bleeding profusely on the dirty linoleum floor. Undaunted, Alan dumps a bottle of dish soap, found underneath the sink, from one end of the kitchen to the other. For musical inspiration, I pop in the beloved Beasties Cookie Puss track. Alan’s skating around in the soap, showing off his impressive repertoire of silly dance moves, while Damon hops upon the kitchen table, shakes to the beat as if stormtrooping the elevated floor at Maxwell’s. Blood dripping from their hands, they continue in a similar fashion, even as the song ends and I rewind the tape for a second pass. Convinced Damon will bust his head open again to a much more critical degree, or the two of them will bleed to death upon our enabling hands, or that as a trio we’ll elevate our psychosis still further, the girls grab K.C. and lock themselves behind Alan’s bedroom door. We stumble onto a sack of potatoes, start chucking spuds at the barricaded door with all our might. Only when it becomes apparent that no force on earth will drag that tightknit clan out of hiding do we focus our attentions elsewhere. We hurl softball sized tubers down the stairwell, where they explode against the backside of our front door and surely delight a sleeping Stephanie to no end. Outside, launching what remains of our stash at the apartment complex across the street, a distance our arms aren’t strong enough to overcome, as the shots fail to hit their mark. “Well, Christ,” Damon sighs, “we might as well walk down to Insomnia, see what those freaks are up to.” Sobered fully by this exercise, both men toggle into altered emotional states. Damon achieves a restless wanderlust closely matching my own, while Alan levels off into the humorless, all business mien he’s always confounded me by assuming, sometimes, at the drop of a hat. Sudden collisions against a moment where nothing is funny, and everyone must leave. Due at the airport five short hours from now, he and Nicole are retiring, and could the rest of us kindly refrain from making any noise. They clean and tape their wounds, and our factions realign. In the brief instant spent exchanging prisoners, I notice Alan’s name spray painted in shaving cream upon his wall mounted mirror, the other army’s lone act of rebellion. September splits and the bedroom door slams shut behind us, as we remaining four begin our quarter hour hike. A favored shortcut steers us south on Indianola, meets the sweeping arc of E 16th. In the orange radiance of streetlights struggling through the trees, parked cars clog both sides of the narrow street, ass to mouth. Past the nation’s first ever junior high school, still functional, and a brand new building OSU erected to accommodate its Jewish student body, where broad, crescent shaped brick steps bow before a glorious glass foyer. Bands forever carrying gear through the Bernie’s back door, as 16th dead ends with a club foot against the High Street sidewalk. A unique configuration that lessens traffic, abets our breezy stroll. Regardless of hour, Insomnia is perpetually jampacked with bodies. Tonight, a few geeks studying even, as other clusters of bored roommates stoop over Jenga, cards, chess. Mostly, however, as is often the case, belligerent skinheads comprise a solid majority here, with a healthy dose of Maxwell’s goths thrown in for good measure. The Goff siblings share an uneasy glance, as Damon and I imagined they might. But for guys like us who live to keep the pot continually stirred, pairing our redneck allies with the weirdo contingent at this all night coffee shop is too rich a prospect to resist. The only one among us with so much as a nickel in his pocket, I spend nearly every cent I have on a steaming cup of hot chocolate. Feeling sorry, as I do, for K.C., who looks about ready to cry over these croissants behind the glass case. “Man I wish I had some money,” he whimpers, rocks on his heels, licks his lips, “those look good.” We find an available seat near the room’s center, sneaking surreptitious glances at the pierced punks. Just as we marvel at the industrious students able to focus here, where the wondrous fragrances of a million varied coffee blends waft and mingle with an equally diverse conversational mosaic. Yet with the exception of my steaming hot beverage, we collectively have nothing else to hold our interest. Lacking other means of absorption, we’re the true freaks here, the only ones in the room paying attention to anybody else. To our left, a well-dressed, clean cut kid, head shaved bald, stands talking to a pair of OSU pupils. Nearby, this black bum wanders in and out of the store, he shuffles around inside, mumbling to himself and harassing the customers with an occasional, unwarranted rude comment. He passes the kid with the shaved head, hisses “nazi!” before drifting outside again. Slamming on the brakes mid sentence, the kid’s features harden and he follows the homeless figure, flying through the doorway with one hard shove. Located below ground level, with its entire front wall a sheet of glass, the layout here fulfills our voyeuristic impulses honed through years of channel surfing. A tidal wave ripples through the patrons as they too are glued, for this instant, to the scene unraveling outside. Lying just beyond the glass, ten or twelve cement steps rise to meet a half dozen exterior tables. Filled near capacity, this cramped arena hosts the bum and the skinhead, slinging incendiary threats at one another with commendable gusto. Sensing trouble, the counter help leaps into this potentially explosive fray, sprints out of bounds before this heated exchange escalates into something else. “You guys ready to leave?” I ask. An employee escort removes the combatants from Insomnia’s culpability zone, though all parties involved continue sparring upon the sidewalk. Knocking off the last of this drink, a warm flood slowly coats my belly, and I can see them up there still arguing on the sidewalk, as I also readily spot the crazed look clouding K.C.’s gaze. Motivated by far darker impulses than our destructive streak back home, his expression is one I recognize all too well, allowing me to almost pinpoint verbatim what comes next. “Nigger better watch it, I might beat his ass myself,” K.C. mutters. “Oh dear,” Damon laughs. Outside, we physically shepherd our bigoted comrade past the tangled fracas. He cranes his neck back at the four of five individuals sorting it all out, but it appears we’ve averted the crisis. Wiseasses like Damon and me, we can chalk this up as a lesson learned, the price paid for deliberately bringing these explosive elements together. Back home, brother and sister claim sleeping bags on the jam room floor. I crash upon the brand new mattress Mandy’s bequeathed, she, the caretaker who cleans our house just so we can tear it up again an hour later, the surrogate mother we continually disrespect. Still, despite this alien comfort overwhelming my body, as I sink into this mattress, the mind refuses to snap off simply as the black light on my wall. I shut my eyes to the world, but this only projects the movies scrolling through my head all the more brightly, like one of those View Master child’s toys we have on every table at the restaurant, equipped with full color discs of our dessert menu. Against my will, neurons act independently, pulling the orange lever again and again, advancing to the next frame of this fugitive highlight reel. Yet the circular cache only holds so many photos, and whatever my guilt concerning Mandy, the only starlet these feature is Kara, every snapshot dates back to last night. Lounging around the knee high table, she and I sip our drinks at a more moderate consumption rate than the already inebriated. We decide a stroll down to the all night gas station at 17th and Summit is in order, an ice cream and cigarettes run. Racing each other home, the vanilla half gallon essentially becomes dinner, at least for me. Maybe she’s buzzing from the oxygen bump, or, far more plausible, zonked again on antidepressants. My roommates light their squares and one of them makes a wisecrack about me not smoking, as Kara whips her head, sharply, in my direction. She stares at me, open mouthed, as if I’ve just teleported into that chair from another planet, as if we’ve never met. “Wait a minute.....,” she says slowly, eyes wide, alert, “you don’t smoke?” Inordinately impressed with this tidbit, Kara’s behavior becomes all the more odd when considering she smokes herself but for some reason doesn’t want anyone to know, thinks even we are unaware. Not to mention the handful of occasions we’ve already gone out for drinks these past few months, ones where I apparently registered a cipher in her mental catalogue. Continuing this surreal twist, every small motion I make with my hand, every syllable falling from my lips, she monitors with unblinking fixation, her gaze glued to these and never once wavering. To their credit, the guys pick up on this vibe and run with it, switching with ease from ribbing me to pointing out my strengths. As though in taking stock of my recent track record with the ladies, they decide to bestow some sympathy. “He doesn’t drink, either,” Damon tells Kara. “Yeah, and did you know he’s written a novel?” Alan says, nods approvingly in my direction, then at Kara. “Really?” she murmurs, ensconced still in this trance, and I suppose it is that medication, some really good stuff kicking in heavy right now. But damned if I can’t see those wheels turning behind her pretty little forehead, damned if she isn’t looking at me in a new light. Before this moment, whatever our history together, I never existed. Not in the same capacity I now do, anyway. “He’s an accountant, too,” Damon explains. “Used to be,” I elaborate, tacking on a quick, panicky laugh, my gaze only touching Kara’s for one fleeting instant. Aflame with envy whenever the spotlight shines on someone else, I squirm in discomfort if it lands upon me. These two basic extremes, they spur my every move, explain the curious inconsistencies marring my lackluster past. A more perfect shot I can’t ask for, after all, than this, but a sudden urge for flight overwhelms me, a fidgety pulse rendering me nearly incapable of claiming this seat. At nearly the same miraculous instant, Damon and Alan both pass out now at the table, their heads lolling to the side as they snooze in the rickety wooden chairs. A sight never witnessed before, and improbable to ever repeat, another peculiar signpost indicating maybe even the gods regulating karma are doing all they can to pull me free of this slump. Kara and I float in a gravity free zone with only the space of the small table between us, no obstacles whatsoever if I can only think of what to say or do, but of course I haven’t the first fucking notion. Sorely lacking is Damon’s knack for turning a commonplace stroll down to the supermarket into this hilarious tale that eats up half an hour. I can ramble at length about any number of extraneous subjects, but the one feat I could never pull with any degree of skill is that which matters most, talking about myself. An in depth rumination about my restaurant might do the trick, or the potential cataclysm brewing with Amanda and me, or any other number of like topics examining the quotidian minutiae of my life. Yet I’m never convinced these materials will prove any value to anyone else. I never have much confidence in my storytelling abilities - not that I find the details dull, but because I can never think of a way to boil it all down into an interesting aside, an amusing anecdote. I see the big picture, how a thousand different fragments connect to frame a mural both heartbreaking and hysterical, yet broken into individual slivers, these amount to nothing. I shift gears, inquire about her schooling, her roommates, how she’s making ends meet, but these all prove dead ends as well. Need an amusing color man to hang out in the background with an occasional witty comment? I’m your guy. But to sit one on one with somebody, to carry the burden of an actual conversation, I just can’t do it. I stumble and I crash, I spontaneously combust. I have nothing to say. Isolated questions and sentences float, but we’re generating no steam, the pauses outnumber syllables. The dynamic shifts, the spell is lifted. Whatever interest I have held in her eyes is gone, no more than a mirage. Existence debatable, never glimpsed again. “Well, I guess I should go,” Kara says, standing, having endured all the uneasy silence a human can. “That’s cool,” I stand, too, stretching in bogus nonchalance, “I’ll walk you to the door.” For the duration of this long march down the stairs, I hope she’ll spin around, plant one on my lips. Or maybe just an encouraging word, a flirtatious gesture to build upon. Or that I’ll summon up the nuts to seize this situation myself, grab her by the shoulders and kiss her before she even knows what’s happening. Why is it, after all, that I can approach a total stranger in a club without batting an eyelash, but can’t even manage one clever word when it matters, one bold move, can’t ever say what I’m thinking? Months I’ve gone now without the touch of a woman and with each passing day I can feel myself losing any distant, tenuous connections I did once share with that exquisite, nobler sex. So neither of us offers a word of substance, and she leaves without looking back. I lock the door behind her, pissed off again at my total ineptitude, my unwillingness to act. Thinking of that blonde hair and that leather jacket, those red lips and those tight jeans and blue eyes and I’m going to bed alone again, it’s another opportunity lost or at least one I’ll never know for sure I had. The solution comes so swift and simple, I’m amazed it hasn’t occurred to me sooner. As I obviously suffer from a motivation problem, a dearth of proper male aggression, I need to hoard all the sexual energy I can, focus like a laser upon one specific target. Specifically, this means making a pact with myself that I’m disallowed from masturbating until I figure out a way to score. Talk about a goal that will surely net results, a challenge with serious bite. 3

Prowling the grounds, camera in hand, I feel like an arson investigator. The dish soap dries on our kitchen floor, but there’s still the matter of glass and spaghetti, mannequin parts and potatoes, topped with spotted blood like a light salad dressing. Not to mention empty bottles, empty cartons, beer labels which are always peeling off the fridge and caps we failed to flick properly into the ceiling maw. Damon and I begin the day piecing together the remains of our mannequin into a semblance of its former self. Now that I’ve documented all the evidence by photograph, the cleanup can occur at any point we choose in the near or distant future, so long as we address this poor display window doll immediately. We find a roll of masking tape, super glue, and the various plastic shards of our inanimate girl, manage what we can with these items. Though anatomically accurate, surgically reattaching her left leg no longer provides adequate support for the body above. Upheld by a wooden chair, then, as a senior citizen is his walker, she’s taped into place against it, head upon torso upon legs, the swath of tape a big brown cummerbund across her stomach. Too bad her face is irreparably damaged, her right arm in such shambles we don’t even bother reassembling the pieces. At least the left arm exists still as one solid limb, functional once more, and we’re able give that hand a section of fluorescent light to hold so that she might defend herself against future attacks. Finally, in a fit of inspiration, Damon stuffs her head cavity full of spaghetti before reapplying the wigged scalp, then glues the spare right hand flush upon her crotch. Desire excruciating in the lonely immobility of her mannequin world, we figure our broken Madonna may as well finger herself unto eternity. Camouflaged as a joyous rampage, this wave of destruction, these flings with substance abuse, are obviously just cries for help. Red flags indicating a need for more positive pursuits, these warning signs shove us into long forgotten avenues. As if subconsciously aware that should this crippling boredom continue overtaking us, at our weakest, most insatiably insomniac moments, we’ll soon find ourselves engaged in some seriously ignorant activities. Days pass, we wear ourselves out renting movies from a nearby video store, along with the occasional flick caught around town. Damon and Alan, scoring free passes somehow to a Private Parts advance screening in the standard strip mall megaplex of northeast suburb Gahanna. Inspired by a workday argument where Akash vehemently insists Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill are currently mired in low budget porn careers, I drag Alan to campus’s lone theater, the brand new Lennox 24, to catch a special edition release of The Empire Strikes Back. Digging in particular the snowy opening scenes where Luke Skywalker cavorts around Alan’s bedroom, rescued by Han Solo. Constructed just across the Olentangy River at the site of a former air conditioner factory, the Lennox features steeply banked seats as plush as a living room recliner, state of the art sound and screen. With its blinding phosphorescent strips of red, purple, and indigo lighting up the night, this giant bubble of a building almost resembles an alien spaceship, communicating with the stars. Joined already by a trio of restaurants, a book store, a clothing store - all national chains - and construction far from complete. Connecting halved hemispheres may assuage this sense of isolation I’m grappling with. Between both jobs and these exploits at the apartment, no faction has any cognizance of the others. Suspended in an amber solution without past or present, wherever I roam. These disparate wisps floating through the breeze, I feel that should I tie them together somehow, this lost, adrift sensation might pass. I mention my roommates to Doug or Doug to Amanda or Amanda to my roommates, but nobody has the first clue. Names dropped are met with a “huh?”, a “who?”, and I have to start from scratch each time, compounding this frustration. After awhile, a person tends to give up. I realize my storytelling abilities bore, confound the audience, and am willing to shoulder half the blame, but only half. People are such poor listeners it’s obvious I could recite the same tale fifteen days in a row and it will disappear into the ether each time, forgotten. I have to wonder, how did they, how do they, maneuver through their classes? I no longer speak. Doug marvels that for a kid my age I say so little, but motivations abound. Chief among these, impermanence, that every great quip we’ve executed with whipcrack timing, every fantastic deed we’ve amazed even ourselves by pulling off, it all fades away. Details become fuzzy, or tangled, or dropped altogether. At best, we might remember most of our own exploits, but even then not with the ironclad resolution we’d wish. And as far as anyone else, don’t kid yourself. We function with our eyes alone. I can namecheck Amanda till my vocal chords shred, but far more efficient is taking Damon and Alan to Flickers, showing them one small piece in hopes they glue a corner of this puzzle together. Grabbing seats inside the half empty room, we’ve paid standard admission though this theater is a 1970s era antique, our chairs a trifle rough to spend two hours in. A round, corpulent table before every three or four seat cluster frees hand and elbow room, however, a creature comfort tilting the situation tolerable. A waiter comes out to take our order, beers for the boys, yet diminishing any thrill this luxury might have offered is that fact that after that one quick trip to our table before the movie starts, the waiter deposits our drinks and collects his money but is never seen again. Ordering refills means heading out into the lobby again at some point during the movie, which negates the point of having tableside service in the first place. Jerry Maguire, the film we’re seeing, figuring the sports angle will outweigh any chick flick schmaltz. A misguided notion, it immediately becomes apparent. Fortunately, a pair of painfully gorgeous females, tall, graceful, dressed ballroom splendid, sit a few rows ahead of us, appear mighty comfortable in one another’s company. Arms upon shoulders as they talk, snickering playfully over untold intrigues, the house lights dim and we’ve plenty to speculate, whispering theories to one another as the film unspools. “I think they’re dykes,” Damon insists, but while a nice concept to fantasize over, Alan and I are not so sure. Long after the lights come up we remain in our seats watching them pass, and as they spend an inordinate amount of time milling in the lobby, we stand outside waiting for them to reappear. Loitering, a familiar face from our high school days drifts into the parking lot, along with a buddy of his. The kid from our hometown’s name is Ryan something or other, the kind of upperclassman jock who would never speak to us in the classroom or the hallways back then but brightens to spot someone he recognizes down here. Engaged in small talk for a moment with these two, Ryan asks what we’re doing just hanging around. “Ah, we were watching that movie and we’re waiting on these two chicks to come out, they’re pretty fuckin hot,” Damon explains. “We think they might be dykes!” I cheerfully announce. The two girls shuffle onto the sidewalk and we point them out, extolling their virtues to Ryan, that we hope to see them kiss just once. “Oh really?” he smiles, raising his eyebrows. The girls pull closer, eventually drift into our midst, as Ryan and his friend place an arm around each. “See you boys later,” they tell us, chuckling in the night as the four of them amble off to their vehicle. Along with a natural disquiet stoked by warmer weather, this urgent thirst to both exercise and exorcize propels us forward. Damon and I take to roller blading around campus at two, three, four o’clock in the morning, predominantly the university itself, as its various parking garages, handicapped ramps, and off kilter architectural designs make an ideal template. A skateboarder’s dream, with its teeming oceans of asphalt, the Wexner Center one especially favored destination. Figuring he might stave off black lung, Damon joins the OSU ‘B’ hockey team, a sport he hasn’t played in nearly a decade. The OSU baseball squad, meanwhile, opens a beautiful brand new ball park, on Olentangy River Road, and while my days flirting with America’s pastime are likely long gone, the field’s proximity to my day job suggests I might spend a number of spare afternoons camped in those bleachers, absorbing the sun, a destination surely nobler than the dingy dive bars hosting our happy hours. I drive my inoperable word processor, silent since Thanksgiving, to an electronics shop for repairs. Perched atop a scuffed wooden table the skate punks left behind in my room, its blinking grey screen my room’s only light, I hunch through these nights atop its awkward keyboard, an endless river of cassettes cascading into the tape deck nearby. I sit upon the floor amidst these piles of clothes and papers, scribbling in these notebooks. But the afternoon rays wink and slant through our dirt streaked glass, even in this always dim apartment, and with the rest of the afternoon dangling wide open I’ve got to get out of the house. Intent upon a whirl around campus, I strap on the threadbare roller blades. In a plastic grocery sack, the remains of the paperback stash Damon’s dad donated, those I’m unlikely to read and hope to trade in. South along Summit, cracked, lopsided, riddled with holes, the sidewalks mold my trek into an off-road obstacle course. Near E 17th, a break appears in the rush hour deluge, as I puncture and cross the one way flood of cars. 17th slopes and curves with a breakneck slant, arcing headlong toward Indianola. Majestic estates hover high above the road, woven with foliage barriers spring has already resuscitated, scrubbed green. Once dignified manors sliced into tiny cubicles, the rampant epidemic, eyepopping nonetheless in their walls choked with ivy, their circular driveways and conic eaves. Negotiating this steep decline, dancing upon the street itself now, I build up more steam than expected and panic for a moment, the brakes of these skates ineffective as I hope to either slow down or crash with the lowest measure of danger. Instead I skid out into the middle of Indianola, an oasis mercifully devoid of vehicles this singular eerie instant. Oncoming interceptors approach from both directions as though enemy linebackers. I scuttle over to the nearest sidewalk, forward to the spine of fraternity/sorority row. E 15th, nurturing an unbroken string of each, communal Greek houses despicable in their cookie cutter glory, as they taunt us with the implicit scripted rituals of their predetermined nights. Sand bottomed volleyball pits, halved by nets, front every third yard, and sunbathing beauties test credulity stretching out across just as many lawns, jump starting the season as they snap beach towels into shape along a corresponding number of roofs. Wearing their three lettered symbols like a coat of arms, supported by faux ivory columns, these fortresses boast more wings and stories than the White House. 15th dead ends into High, this district’s central intersection, its prime pedestrian nexus. A second Panini’s location resides on one corner with an enormous patio chock full of screaming drunken students, another mob visible inside through the two story plate glass facade. On the other corner, composed of irregularly shaped grey bricks, some jutting at random from the wall, Long’s Bookstore, where a time and temperature clock stretch high into the sky, unintentionally shaped just like a penis and its testicles. The Wexner Arts Center across the street, site of my last late night blading trip with Damon. My shins are still cut up from that excursion, cruising with no booties in my skates. Paying for it tenfold now, in particular following the frantic slide down 17th, chafing the skin raw again, reopening the wounds. I’ve got three pairs of socks on each foot and kitchen sponges across both ankles, but these don’t reach the top of my skates, and the abrasion becomes ungodly. Gliding up High, past a number of indigenous mom and pop restaurants, bohemian clothing stores, and too many record shops to count on my immediate right. Buzzing with bodies like an anthill gone berserk, aping the university labyrinth on the other side of High. Bicyclists whiz through this maelstrom, nosing between swarms, and an occasional bookworm sits crosslegged upon the cement walkway, oblivious as he studies his text. Or slouched against buildings in packs of two or three, hats backward and smoking cigarettes like the bums, though neither they nor the bums nor anyone else will elicit a comment from anyone, fading, all, into the background. I find a pair of stores with broad signs marked BOOKS EXCHANGED but by this, I soon learn, they mean classroom varieties. Out of luck, I continue chewing up blocks to the north, clunk down the cool, dark recess of stairs to the consensual champion record store, Used Kids, for no reason other than a treasure hunter’s greed. Submerged a flight beneath the ground, this sunken galley, sublime. Divided in two, each half shares the musty stench of a century old basement, both no larger than the average master bedroom. The guys working the counter are for the most part trendy, cranky elitists, but even they cannot diminish the singular experience of shopping for slabs of music here. In the left room, upright racks dominate the center of the store’s cramped quarters, with one side devoted to popular used cassettes in the three to five dollar range, the other taken up by bargain tapes for a buck. Within the latter, I find Daniel Johnston’s Fun, one of the “promotional only not for resale” varieties which creep their way here somehow with curious frequency. Fleshing out the remaining space, pegboard walls hold mounted display racks, with torn, faded posters filling in the gaps. Below these, used CD bins line two walls, with a third dedicated to brand new releases in both disc and vinyl. The truncated front wall, beside a door coated thicker with rock band stickers than our beer label fridge, a counter props up the surly help, often swamped past their heads with stacks they’ve yet to file. A lost gem spins on overhead speakers, a quality cut they’re well aware no one’s heard, justifying their smugness, this refined musical pallette of theirs, for even as they’re smirking at the merchandise you select, it’s just another component of this dungeon’s abrasive charm. Between the cracks, just enough room for promotional materials near the door, freebies, championing local bands, and on the right day room to shuffle sideways around a score of equally obsessive shoppers. One door over, the Used Kids Annex devotes itself exclusively to vinyl, much of it vintage, mint. A glass case beneath the register featuring rare autographed items and limited edition stuff, a rack by the door for used singles and another for videos. Brighter, less frequented, and a shade less dank, the annex staffs itself unfailingly with someone far more friendly than whoever’s working the other side. As if merely a minor league circuit they relegate new hires to, to cut their teeth and acquire proper smarmy attitudes, only then gaining entry into the main chamber. With the ongoing itch of these scraped up legs, this bag full of books weighing me down like a cement life vest, I’m eager to complete the circuit home. Stomping more than skating, I pant my way up Woodruff’s gradual incline. Below and to my left, Iuka Park fans out like a high density jungle, where insects chirp and chant for supremacy, though held in check by the walls of housing on every side, the crooked eponymous street Iuka buried somewhere down there, meandering through the tangled brush like a river. The short, ancient bridge of Indianola, currently closed for repairs, dangling above the park with the daily threat of collapse and taking out an acre of wildlife in the process. Its current dormant state turning this four way intersection into a three, one Damon glides into at this moment with his truck. “Hop in, man,” he says, “I’m picking Carrie up and some of her friends.” Damon I must commend for keeping his affairs in order. He knows what he’s doing and doesn’t waste time, for one scant week after meeting the girl, he’s already made these nightlife arrangements with her. Bringing to those negotiations the same manic energy he shoulders everywhere, identical to his methodical sweep south down High, sex drive insatiable, a wayward glance for every female his eyes can absorb. Rubbernecking till the last possible instant, he whips a sharp right onto West 11th, as his gaze now lands upon the cassette clamped tightly in my hand. “Used Kids, huh?” he says, “I don’t know if those guys are selling their tapes for drug money or what, but it sure is cheap as hell in there.” Scattered across campus like pocket change on a coffee table, twenty high rise dormitories dot the western skyline. Here on 11th, however, a handful such buildings are planted in one neat row, identical, red brick towers stretching maybe fifteen stories vertical. Distinguishable only by the grey streetside plaques with names in bold faced black, Damon selects the correct one, and slips into its meager parking lot. As freshman students are discouraged from owning wheels, any vehicles belonging to them are stationed on distant asphalt oases elsewhere. Room remains only for deliveries and visitors, a tiny plot our ladies presently occupy. Her countenance plain, acne scarred, the shadowy ski slopes of Carrie’s greasy black hair fall on a pea green army jacket. Accompanied by the tall, fair skinned brunette Sarah, healthier locks crimped partially into shape by a clip upon her crown, a scowling, unfamiliar, overweight blonde, Carrie questions the seating chart, and I voluntarily transfer myself to the capped back end. As a belated birthday present I’m hoping to wind up in bed with one of these girls, but it turns out I’m in the wrong kind of bed, and with the wrong kind of girl - Carrie and Sarah claim the remaining cab space, while the strange blonde heaves her hefty frame over the dropped tailgate, joining me. Damon’s bent upon a simple beer run, yet he tears out of the dormitory parking lot and passes a million gas stations, engrossed with conversation to the extent he completely disregards his surroundings. Up Olentangy and beyond, into thoroughly unfamiliar territory, I’ve no idea where we are, and am certain no one else does, either. We’re clear up on the northwest end of town for some reason and still he barrels onward, oblivious. “Where the hell’s he going?” I wonder aloud, but receive no reply from my truck cap companion. Thrust into cramped familiarity with the unforgiving metal seat is torture, and she’s not helping matters any. A future Used Kids employee, maybe, judging from the well sharpened attitude this lowly newcomer wields like a knife. Personable as the stuffed shirts manning those dormitory front desks, she spews a steady stream of bile from the moment we begin. No introductions are made and she doesn’t deign asking about me, for in place of these standard social conventions I’m treated to a laundry list of why she doesn’t have time for this nonsense and would rather not be here. By circuitous means, nearing nightfall, we arrive home with three twelve packs of beer. His laugh apologetic, Damon shrugs away the meaningless jaunt, mining positives in his fact gathering efforts up front. Creaking open with its distinctive high pitched whine - one reason we nearly always march upstairs first and then tiptoe back down to spy on Stephanie - the front door announces our arrival, and Alan peers down the dark stairwell with boredom’s curiosity. Home alone these past few hours, he surely sweats our return, but would never admit as much. He wears instead the open, inviting smile he often deploys when first meeting women, slightly calculated, but appearing natural enough, one that announces to the ladies than he’s a lot of fun and game for almost anything. If the girls are paying attention to Alan’s overtures, though, their impressions are no more obvious than what they think of this sordid sty. Poker faced champions fit for tournament play, from Carrie’s equally engaging smile, to Sarah’s smirk, to the dirty blonde’s scowl, expressions change not the least regardless of circumstance. And though we’ve done our best righting this ship in the wake of last week’s annihilation, cleaning up best we can, though even the mice haven’t made a single guest appearance since we did away with the peanut butter traps in favor of poisonous green pellets, though trash is neatly accumulated in bags at the top of the stairs and our bandaged mannequin now stands upon and guards the front porch, the matter of the panties still remains. Four pairs of panties dangling inches from their faces, but these girls don’t so much as bat an eyelash, cracking open lukewarm beers in unison, their only questions which drinking game we’re playing and when the first one begins. Crowded around the knee high table base in brand new lawn chairs, in the wooden varieties still utilizable, these ladies aren’t too interested in Beer Tree, as we explain it to them. Insistent upon something called Three Man, the overweight blonde argues at the exclusion of all other voices. Fully unaware of this sport the girls apparently adore, for all we know Three Man might describe our perfect ratio, unimpeachable aside from minor quandaries, for instance which of us is stuck wooing the grumpy chick. But we are willing to set this riddle aside for the time being, we are willing to learn what they mean by this term, too, absolutely. Involving dice, this forces me to dig around my room before unearthing a set of five giant bones Mom and Dad once brought back as a gift from a Las Vegas seminar weekend. Three Man it is, then, quick to learn, even quicker to tire of. Though pointless, repetitive, it keeps the girls entertained, and any endeavor that lubricates them up with alcohol will in theory increase our chances of getting laid. I can barely stomach the taste of beer but this may increase my odds, for in drinking slowly I’m guaranteed to stay on top of the situation, to focus on steering the party in a sexual direction. Seasoned professionals, I have to wonder where it is that a trio of eighteen year old girls have learned to pound drinks in this manner, with such staggering tolerance. Leaving Alan and Damon behind in a rooster tail of dust, as well, etches the impression they’ve partaken these activities since before their first bras. Caught in the grip of their furious pace, we’ve no choice but to keep up, and this endless series of laps eventually yields beneficial results. Moods enhanced by a modest buzz, the mouthy, personality challenged blonde, attractive in the face when she infrequently chooses to smile, appears an almost lovely conquest. Damon has the inside track on Carrie, of course, and there’s no denying both Alan and I have our sights set on Sarah. But the loser’s door prize looms far less tragic than even an hour ago, meaning the recipient will mount no protest should this transpire his fate. With the wordless communication enjoyed by long time friends, bordering upon the psychic, paranormal, we grasp this intuitively, a full command of the situation in one offhand instant. Responding to an ever changing set of signposts, we dance our way around one another, gauging eye contact, reading between the lines of verbal cues, we know at all times what the other guy is thinking and what’s he angling upon at this moment. The particulars are never spoken, because there’s no need. Just as Damon’s left alone as he works his wiles upon Carrie, whichever among Alan and me loses out in the battle for Sarah will gracefully step aside. The girls communicate among one another in a like fashion, naturally, and I feel that maybe this is the only manner in which the opposite sexes pair off and couple. Not only a telepathic link among their own kind, but connecting with their quarry along the same wavelength. Signals interpreted correctly, bridges crossed only on the stray planks of that which is left unsaid. And facilitating this connection, whether a conscious effort to shorten the gap, or, more likely, a fortuitous offshoot of her ceaseless sarcasm, Sarah attacks the blonde with a razor sharp tongue, ripping her apart with continual caustic jeers. Trampling over any barriers than remained between us and them, this gesture that indicates we’re not going to be stepping on any toes here whatever we do, her remarks open up a torrent of my own. “Need another beer?” Alan says to the blonde as he’s standing in front of an open fridge. “No, I’m straight,” she replies. “Nobody asked about your sexual orientation,” I quip, a cheap, obvious comment nonetheless met with riotous approval from everyone except its target. Paul arrives, down for his normal Thursday night visit. He declines joining into the Three Man fray, huffs through about a carton of cigarettes for the duration of this game. Disinterested in cheap domestic brew, disinterested, as far as I can tell, in even being here, he’s made this trip mostly as a break from agonizing over Jennifer. Even with his refusal to drink this swill, though, we’re running into a serious alcohol shortage, having grossly miscalculated during the beer run from hell. Thirty six cans goes nowhere, a point that’s driven home all too quickly, the further this game progresses. The blonde stands, repairs to our restroom. Perversions bound in no respect, we’ve got a gaping hole in the bathroom door, a missing knob that was never replaced from well before we moved here. None of the girls we’ve had over ever noticed its presence, possibly because this omission looks natural. But by sneaking into the hall and down two or three steps - depending on the viewer’s height - a clear, straight shot into the commode is made possible. Buzzing modestly, Alan concludes that this is the moment to inspect our plus sized temptress. He squats upon the stairs, eyes a compact squint to better glimpse her by, making no effort to conceal his intentions, his presence on the stairwell. Oblivious on the other side, the blonde has no idea he’s standing there but Carrie does, drifts into the hallway to see what’s happening. “What are you doing?” she demands. “I.....uh....must be someone in there,” Alan coughs, scrambles up three steps to the landing, rejoins us in the kitchen. The blonde emerges with a weird look strewn about the room, as if interrogating us for a crime she’s not quite sure of, before Carrie imparts a knowing glance that somehow hips her to Alan’s covert maneuvers. Beer stash cashed, Sarah and the blonde are leaving for a party on East 11th now, anyway, and skip away into the night, but Carrie sticks around. Glowing in reverence, she’ll clearly follow Damon whichever way he turns, adding a fifth pair of soles to the footfalls marching for Maxwell’s. Learning the what and when of this outrageous campus spectacle prove equally important to the who and how, all chapters of our own ongoing education. Wednesday nights each week, this club hosts a one dollar door charge techno gala, termed Maxwell’s House, while every Tuesday and Sunday, they sell pitchers of draft for the rock bottom price of twenty five cents. None of these hold a votive candle to Monday’s goth night, however, which itself dims literally and figuratively against Thursday Big 80s. For factors you can never quite determine, certain elements resound better against your own interests, the arc of your ambitions. In theory nothing should surmount scraping together a few dimes and nickels for the plastic pail drunkfest, but we feel most comfortable here on Thursdays, networking our faces and names then, without ever resolving why. Not that any guarantees are ever established, not that even upon a uniform canvas of music each Thursday, the night doesn’t skew drastically from one week to the next. Given the vagaries of these young scholastic women, nothing is ever as easy as it seems. Or even those slightly older, for in attempting to recreate the magic we shared seven days ago, I sidle up behind my go- go boot girl, shaking all she’s got on the dance floor once again. Mitts upon her hips, grinding my pelvis against her cottony, mini skirted backside, only to have these hands of mine slapped away, as she moves on to a different time zone. “What the fuck?” I call after her, “I was just trying to dance!” but the music’s so loud that I may as well be talking to myself. Since Paul’s distant obsession bests even my own, her indirect rebuff ruins what little hope he held for this outing. He hasn’t said six words since arriving at our doorstep, chain smoking away his distaste for everything else, and a half hour after shelling out the cover charge he’s ready to leave. Damon preoccupied, he ropes Alan into his bailout scheme, for once, stranding me here with the lovebirds. In lieu of dancing, Damon and Carrie prefer instead to hold down seats at the very table where they met, and I’m once again, eternally so, the third wheel ready for anything, but never quite fitting in anywhere, no matter the occasion. An exceptional optimist, or some dumb sucker, it’s really just a matter of perspective. But I can’t see that heading home, tail between legs, accomplishes anything. And how could it appear as anything except sour grapes to Damon, should all three of us suddenly decide to turn our noses and walk, now that he’s finally found someone? He and I escort Carrie to her dormitory, just around the corner, past a bar named the Cornerstone. A double deck affair with glass on both sides that face the two streets, and a bustling patio section hemmed in by an intimidating ten foot wrought iron fence, the Cornerstone spills past fire code spec with bodies, their animated chatter propping up the night for a three block square radius. Past a thriving fried poultry enterprise dubbed Cluck-U-Chicken, past a lonely house sitting alone in the middle of a parking lot, converted, with minor modifications, into a swinging pizza stand named Catfish Biff’s. Suffering under strict curfews, stringent bylaws, a clockwork rotation of upperclassman pricks squat upon chairs beside the dormitory’s front door. At this hour, the latest watchdog’s presence forces Carrie to enter alone, sign the dude’s log book, then slip around to a side door and admit the two of us. Her room’s located near the building’s apex, twelfth floor or so, yet after just two flights of stairs Damon’s already huffing and puffing - for this, he can thank his relatively newfound cigarette habit. As Carrie lets us into her room, we find that Sarah’s already here, sitting with a book on one of the beds. They share this meager space, the two of them, a cubicle barely bigger than my bedroom, though made hospitable with their female touches, the naturalistic decor they’ve softened the edges with. Carrie throws a Rusted Root disc into her CD player, and as an exceptionally long drum solo spills across the speakers, engulfing this narrow compartment, both Damon and I, independent of one another, start piecing together the same conclusions. That what we’re dealing with here, most of all, sophisticated pretenses aside, is a giggling, idealistic tandem of modern day hippies, would be Deadheads, inhaling weed and dropping acid each summer en route to the nearest Phish show. Sure, in baggy, tattered jeans, and frilly, flowery blouses, they dress the part, but we’re not exactly the most observant cats when it comes to the nuances of a woman’s clothing. I’m sitting upon Carrie’s bed, she and Damon on the floor, Sarah on her own bunk, melting in the soft warm light of a lamp in the corner as we shoot the breeze. Forget the crumbling abode on Summit, decomposing as we sneak beneath the trash atop the stairs; this feels like home, the only place for me, and I allow my fantasies to roam unencumbered. Days or weeks in the future, perhaps, stretching out in across this soft, springy bed with Sarah’s sweet aroma fleshing out the room, filling in the gaps where our faults and our passions, our hangups and our triumphs, fail to intersect, as spaces always lie between two people, two people can never truly mesh. But lying in this bed with arms around one another, as we allow the boundless hunger to connect with someone else span the gulf between us, the hallway’s bustle a soothing backdrop lulling us to sleep. Soon, maybe, but not tonight. Before long Damon and I are on our way, tramping across the university’s dark heart, through a wide, central expanse of grass known as The Oval. Foot traffic still strong at this late hour but only a fraction of its daytime self, the clusters of students carousing around us numbered substantially fewer. “Boy, if we could just get in good with this Carrie and her friends,” Damon muses, “you know there’s gonna be all kinds of girls running around that dorm. If we get to where we’re hanging out there a lot and they start to know us...... ” “This dorm thing could be our ticket,” I agree.

Fifteen months have passed since Alan last attended a college course, and even then, he wasn’t quite sure why he bothered at all. Chasing some vague business major, though it took a considerable imagination for any of us to ever see him hunched over a desk in some future high rise office building, crammed in a tiny, faceless cubicle where his knees scrape his chin, scribbling in general ledgers until his forehead explodes. But Alan’s the type that will always insist he knows exactly what he’s doing, that he has a sharp game plan, even when it’s entirely obvious to everyone else that he’s wandering aimlessly. Only to spend two years nearly flunking out, then dropping out, shrugging his shoulders with a laugh and telling us “ah, fuck it!” as if he’d never said a word to the contrary. Maintaining then that what he really meant all along was to work full time at the department store back home, eventually move to the big city, and land a job here at the airport. Throughout, however, he remains enlisted as a reserve with the National Guard, fulfilling his duty one weekend a month. But though the Guard will foot his bill should he ever negotiate a return to academia, at present Alan’s content with the paychecks they dispense for his part time efforts. Vague grumblings occasionally surface concerning his collegiate future, but nothing concrete, and nothing entirely audible, for his style in managing these concerns falls directly between mine and Damon’s. Alan will eventually throw all his cards on the table, but only when he’s nearly a hundred percent committed. Shortly following our initial move, he says in passing, “been thinking about leasing a new truck.” A week later, he swaps his battered white Ford Ranger pickup for the extended cab, electric blue S10 he currently drives, throws his keys on the kitchen counter and yawns, “just leased a new truck.” Alan leaves for Alaska, gone fourteen days. In addition to his monthly reserve obligation, twice a year he’s also stationed for a two week stint in some distant but friendly, United Nations sanctioned, corner of the world. Years past, he’s served in places as far away as Germany, but this jaunt has him rooted to native soil. America West isn’t thrilled to work around his sabbatical, though by law they have their hands tied. With Alan away and Damon off playing with the band, the weekend looms particularly monochromatic. A recluse at heart, I have no problem killing time alone, but it’s easier done through the week, when I can deceive myself that nothing else is going on. Come Friday or Saturday night, though, it gnaws like a bad habit, this solitude, and with no one else around the alienation often becomes unbearable. To amuse yourself, you root around through a box of cassettes, generating mix tapes. You keep a stack of projects by the radio and anytime a song comes on that fits one of these formats, your reflexes coil into motion and strike. Lightning fast, you snap a tape into the deck and hit RECORD, assembling piece by piece a collection you’ll title SONGS OF 1995 or COOL GROOVES or perhaps even U2 FAVORITES. Background noise, all, to fill the even drearier hours staring at the ceiling in bed. I also pay inordinate attention to the events transpiring around me. My roommates probably couldn’t name the mayor, nor could half the coworkers I rub elbows against at either job, but they’re likely getting laid, at least, a more than adequate tradeoff. On the northeast rim of town, miles of cornfield are being systematically bulldozed, clearing way for a giant shopping mall our cash heavy denizens apparently need. City leaders are pushing for a brand new arena downtown, to host our Columbus Crew soccer team, possibly, now enjoying their inaugural season with home games at Ohio Stadium. A half mile east of our house, near the 17th Avenue exit of I-71, in an eroded oasis of factories and the state fairground, the Ohio Historical Museum and the ghetto Linden neighborhood, neglected train tracks and graffiti caked convenience stores, minor league hockey squad the Chill toils in 5700 seat Coliseum obscurity, but they too might gain a new address should this measure pass. Bottom line, however, the lobbyists peddle this arena with a fervent belief that erecting such will land an NHL franchise, enlisting mayor Lashutka and even OSU president Gee to pander for support. No guarantees, mind you, yet the issue for this publicly financed enterprise goes to a ballot in May, a proposed .5 percent sales tax hike. At the corner of Spring and Neil, blocks away from this arena’s projected home, the contaminated, environmentally hazardous site of the Ohio Penitentiary, host decades earlier to this state’s death row, meets its own demise, as gorgeous, sweeping wings of Victorian architecture are razed into a pile of rubble. Throughout Franklin County, unemployment hovers at a paltry three percent. Alan’s last night in town, the two of us decide to take in a movie. Crash, alternately either excoriated or championed in every article I’ve read, spools out this week at the Drexel theater, a locally owned matinee in the affluent Bexley subdivision. Alan hasn’t the first inkling when I suggest this flick, but all it takes is a whisper of its NC-17 rating and an abundance of nudity to lasso him along. Fifteen minutes shuttling downtown by interstate, then east, nestles us snug within Bexley’s 1950s time warp. Descending this off ramp into a community isolated yet buttressed, the city’s greenest pasture both in money and the trees which overhang each funereal quiet street. Surrounded by ghetto but populated somehow with sprawling mansions and trendy cafes, upscale seafood restaurants and a tiny community college directly opposite the theater, Bexley is long rumored the inspirational backdrop for tv’s Family Ties. At any rate, with its narrow, pedestrian friendly avenues and quaint, half century old storefronts, parking and walking down the main drag here feels like a stroll down someone else’s memory lane. Still, this reverence for yesterday allows the Drexel to survive, thrive, a throwback with its meager screen selection and bulging backlit marquee. Warbling maroon headers protrude where wall meets ceiling, curve around corners, with one central stripe of blue neon added above the half oval ticket stand, running the lobby’s length, where concessions are also sold. Faded red carpet sprouts absurd plant patterns in white, black, and gold, and throughout, other Art Deco touches proliferate. Heavy on brass and mirrors, muted lighting, a ceramic exit sign, more blue neon spelling out TELEPHONE atop a WWII era booth. Framed vintage posters, and a small cherry dais supporting this tiny metal statuette. A similarly adorned coffee shop attached up front, as though last updated during the big band heyday. Chief selling points, these, along with the $3 admission they offer this one night a week. We settle into seats, grimacing at the initial painful spike of such hard and flimsy chairs, well past their prime, with awkward wooden armrests. Joining us in the darkened room are dozens of far too serious students, clutching notebooks and pocket flashlights, scribbling furious notes once the film starts rolling. Yet from the opening frames of a tall blonde starlet opening her blouse in an airport hangar, rubbing her admittedly exquisite nipples along the sleek, metallic surface of a glittering car hood, we’re not so much aroused or mentally stimulated as we are tickled out of our seats. On the heels of this promising intro, primary participants of a vaguely name brand cast descend into staging car crashes for sexual highs, an unintentionally hilarious premise. We’re the only two in the room laughing out loud at what amounts to a softcore porno, grinning with delight at the plentiful shots of naked female anatomy, except even this angle eventually loses its luster. Three quarters of the way through, I hear Alan snoring beside me, and while pupils from Capitol still hang upon every shot, I’m trying to recall the stated running time. Stretching our cramped limbs en route to the car, we spot a couple ahead of us on the sidewalk, last seen suffering through Crash as well. By coincidence they’re parked near us, and pull out into the Main Street traffic just ahead of our own ride. We stop at a red light side by side, our two vehicles, and as I rev the engine with a deranged glint in my eye, stealing glances their way, the genius bug of inspiration bites me in the ass. The light turns green and they putter forward, but I swerve to the left as if intent upon hitting them. Their eyes expand to the size of dinner plates and they look upon us with blank horror, convinced I’m about to ram their automobile. They move as far left as they can but I keep the pressure cooking, swerving into their lane, straightening up momentarily before making another lunge, straightening up, lunging. Alan’s overtaken with fits of hysterical laughter in the passenger seat, grasping immediately my impulse. “They think you took the movie seriously!” he crows. Struggling to shake me, they veer left onto the next major intersection, and I follow, maintaining the same steady pace beside them. Finally, assuredly nearing panic, aghast with wonder at the freaks they’ve unwittingly attracted, the guy at the wheel floors it. He whips over into the right hand lane ahead of us, then streaks up the interstate on ramp, rockets away and out of sight.

One night a week, the butchers saddle us with cleaning out their service case. Next door in the seafood shoppe, this task represents a piece of the daily closing routine, and as that counter runs about half the length of this one, whoever’s stranded over there, whatever the night, it’s a virtual dialed in algorithm by now, the science of shutting it down. A high powered hose zeroed like a laser beam on the ice, as fish fillets and shrimp are yanked, refrigerated just ahead of the blast, the collapsing arctic shelf. Two hours we typically spend scrubbing the blood away from this meat case interior, however. A two man job, they schedule three on these nights, preferably one of our slowest. Plastic wrap all the trays and slide them into the cooler, then attack the scouring process proper. Tonight it’s a few minutes past seven and Doug’s shackled with a new hire, but they’ve yet to begin. Because I always seem to sweep the safest route through any mine field, to chisel the surest, shortest tunnel for every jailbreak, I’m well ahead of the game here in the bait shop, smirking over at them. “You guys gonna pull that thing?” I ask. “Hey! Pull this!” Doug barks, his typical rejoinder. A command ending in the word this, textured by his indelible backwoods drawl. Pull in this instance mangled along the lines of pauwrl, just as his o sounds are stretched twice their intended distance. To compensate for his time mismanagement, often gab induced, Doug is also quite gifted at circumventing work. He exhumes genius stratagems on par with mine, often better. As he explains it to me now, the first few times he failed to accomplish what our boss had scribbled on a nightly checklist, Doug admitted, “ah, I was basically just fuckin around all night, my bad.” Master manipulator, he, these early candid admissions were merely decoys, setting up many more months of languor. “See, now I can lie my ass off, I tell em oh yeah, we were busy as fuck and they believe me, they think I’m this really honest guy,” Doug chuckles. “That’s brilliant!” I declare. “You’re not the brightest light bulb in town, are ya, Pockets?” Doug says, eyeing me with an amused leer normally reserved for neighbor children who are entertaining, but a little bit off. “Huh?” I retort, confused. Both at the direction this blind assault has flown in from, but also that this hillibilly is actually questioning my intelligence. “Huh?” he mimics with exaggerated goofiness, chuckling again. A weary shake of the head, he resumes training the new hire. The primary reason Doug continually battles the clock is that he can’t stay away from these girls. Owing to his birthright charm, he has this problem I and every other male working here only wish we possessed, a cluster of starry eyed chicks who won’t leave him alone. True, weighing equally are his good old fashioned campaigning efforts, shouting hellos still to all that pass. But even here he has a natural charisma to rely upon, bolstering his efforts. Whichever angle lures them in, whatever works, his basic attitude, he’s managing much better than the rest of us. One of the few girls Doug hasn’t met socially, and made no effort toward, is Barb, the chubby cherub I first formally encountered at the tattoo shop. In her official capacity, she bags groceries up front, but we find her more commonly pacing slothful circles around the store, ones that rarely stray too far from Doug. Unlike these slightly older girls who have a thing for Doug, at eighteen, ignorant of the intricacies governing this game, Barb makes no effort concealing her devotion, and he has a field day toying with her head. “Whoa, Sally!” Doug proclaims, as she approaches the counter, “whaddya know?” Barb has the day off, but, a trio of similarly green neophytes trailing in her shadow, she’s swinging through to suggest we join her later for drinks. Tittering amongst themselves, they shuffle away and disappear as suddenly as they arrived. Doug questions whether I’m game, and I am, for though Damon celebrates his birthday tonight, he’s accompanied solely by two parents and a sister. Treating him to dinner at our favorite Polynesian restaurant, Kahiki, out on the east side, a soiree I’m rather inclined to skip. Nine o’clock sharp, Barb reemerges with one of the girls from earlier, a short, skinny brunette. We shut off the lights and file outside, following the girls in my filthy auto. Slung upon the backseat, a modest stash of canned Busch Light. Acquired only after Doug twists my arm to pitch in. “Christ, Pockets!” he curses, as we’re standing in the beer aisle, “how do you expect to get laid in this town if you don’t even drink!” West to east along this wide highway, as Henderson Road fades from strip malls to thicket, Upper Arlington’s elevated crest dips slowly toward the river. Reemerging on the other side, past a school, beneath the 315 overpass, we now ascend a slight incline, and traffic thins into Clintonville’s somnolent gate. We slink onto a slumbering residential street two blocks removed from the High and Henderson intersection, the webbing of this joint, where Barb resides with her parents. With a sputtering cough this tired vehicle comes to rest behind hers, atop the uphill slant of an actual driveway, a jarring relic seldom seen down in my neck of the woods. To infer from the stale, muted decorating scheme suffusing this house, her parents are of an age somewhat advanced. And though out of town tonight, as we enter the hushed, immaculate tomb, its atmosphere is no warmer nor more inviting than a funeral parlor. Thankfully, Doug disrupts this unfortunate spell by belching, by flipping on a prehistoric television, to some college basketball game he’s dying to see. We throw our beers into the fridge after retaining one apiece for ourselves, and retreat to the dining room, the sound of our feet nearly absorbed in this ankle high carpet. Seated around an enormous table of thick dark wood like bulletproof glass, Barb tosses a deck of cards before us and introduces her friend. Alison, she says, and only upon hearing her name do I realize we’ve already met. “That was you at the tattoo shop?” “Yes! You didn’t know?” she grins. “It didn’t occur to me,” I shrug. Doug sits smiling, though clearly puzzled, intrigued. I’ve never mentioned the day I took Kami to have her belly pierced, because it’s just too much effort, all these details. He’s never met my roommates, he has no idea what’s going on down in that madhouse. Given Barb’s interest, illustrating this adventure for him might have made perfect sense, but I’m so accustomed to maintaining this silence, to having my stories met with complete confusion, that it never crossed my mind. You were with who? Some girl your roommate was banging? And you were at the tattoo shop? Why trifle with explication, when even to me my life appears a convoluted jumble. During the ride over, Doug and I did talk extensively, yet it only concerns the immediate, with sorting out the particulars of angle and dimension. He’s going to take the easy route out and nail Barb, he says, leaving me to “handle that one with the sideburns.” “Really? You and Barb?” “Yeah, fuck it,” he says, “beauty’s only a light switch away.” As time rolls on across the years, Alison I will eventually consider the strangest woman that I’ve known, that I’ll likely ever know. None of which is apparent now, so early into our acquaintance. Upon this speck in the hourglass, she’s a demure though chatty stranger in this unfamiliar upscale home, a friend of a friend of a friend. A proud, self avowed virgin, her flirtatious mien sings otherwise; at the same time, I find either extreme both entirely plausible and totally impossible. Acting alone, those faint strips of hair along the sides of her face preclude supermodel status. Pale complexion and big brown eyes, spiky hair tinted a similar shade, she doesn’t have much of a body but what’s present is plenty compelling. Nineteen, cut from the same cloth as Carrie and those other girls, Alison also tosses back these drinks with disturbing facility. On par with Doug, who explains to us upstarts his pet drinking game, Circle of Death. A regular deck of playing cards is fanned face down on this table, in the self described oval. Clockwise, we take turns picking one at random - two in a row of the same suit or same number means both parties must drink the amount shown on their cards, a string that can continue as long as the matches do. Pretty mindless game but we blow through the alcohol quickly, for this fringe free rulebook makes idle consumption untenable. Even with Barb sticking strictly to sodas, we are rapidly approaching terminal mass. Inside my car again, Doug and I floor it to the nearest gas station, an opportunity allowing us to reassess the battle plan, insure we’re still on the same page. He’s not the least bit interested in Barb but will take one for the team if it means my landing Alison. “She’s got a pretty nice ass,” Doug says of the latter. “Yeah, but I don’t know about them sideburns,” I murmur, a ruse of disinterest. “You’re too picky, Pockets!” he announces, “why you think you never get laid?” An academic argument, because I’m fairly certain Alison digs Doug far more than she’s into me. Uproarious as Doug is, deceptively suave and seasoned, surer of himself, rational thought discourages any preference toward me. Or is this just my usual self damning insecurity kicking in again? Feigning indifference though secretly on fire to nail Alison, because I’ll not risk looking a fool should she choose otherwise. Either way I have to address the question that if these tables are turned, will I pair off with Barb so Doug can have her, will I play ball. I’m not sure I have the answer. We saunter inside this gas station, only to learn that they have no alcohol. In fact, the entire Clintonville district is dry. Overrun with seniors Barb’s parents’s age and older, ones who continually vote for a booze free community. Stretching from the river out to Indianola Avenue, from Broadway up to Morse, this hellish zone of conservatism strands us a mile, in any direction, away from our poison, and we’re forced a number of blocks north along High. Upon return, we face a chorus of laughter from the ladies. “I forgot to mention that,” Barb giggles. Situated on a spindle analogous to this circle of wax backed playing cards, my thoughts continually drift to Damon. Upstairs alone at this late hour, I’m guessing, with Alan out of town, his birthday a relative wash. But with her left ear an omnipresent force upon the cordless telephone, offering only a desultory card flip whenever her turn arrives, Barb makes my decision a simple one, checking my intermittent urges to dial home. Bound still by these archaic notions of guilt, that we stick together and pull one another to the top of this summit, that we triumph as a team. During her rare intermissions away from the receiver, however, I move no closer to it, picturing the scene my call might set into motion. Place Doug and Damon in the same room as these two girls and I’m not getting any action, a fate even worse than admitting my only chance, at best, is with Barb. Meanwhile Doug plays the part of his usual charming hilljack self, working Alison over with the ease he crushes these cans. “I was thinking about getting a tattoo,” he says. “Really?” she perks up, “I’ll get another one, we’ll go together!” Though engaged in another wireless conversation, Barb shoots Alison a dirty glare across the table. Doug has the two of them fighting over him now, in effortless essence, which makes the rest gravy for someone of his ability. I’m once again the chump, and our suddenly sour hostess is showing us the door. After driving Doug home, I pull into a rare curbside spot directly before our house. Above, beside the lone tree branching out across this meager front lawn, Damon’s bedroom light blazes away. By contrast, soon indoors for a pinhole Stephanie peek, I find her quarters shoe polish black, though this absolute, atypical pall is soon undone by a ringing telephone. I entertain every female past and present in the fistful of seconds it takes sprinting up these stairs, believing them equally lonely and capable of a two a.m. outreach for overnight companionship. Sadly, no, it’s just Alan, half crocked and rambling from the other end of the continent. “We were at this killer strip club tonight called the Alaskan Bush Company,” he says, “then we went to this dance bar called Chillicoot Charlie’s and some drunken fuckin redneck cracked me over the head with his beer bottle.” “Why? What did you do?” “Nothing!” Well, not quite nothing, as it turns out. Alan’s dancing with two chicks out on the floor and as misfortune insists, one girl has an exceptionally jealous boyfriend who weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds. Without warning he splits Alan’s head open from behind with the beer bottle in question, at which point blood starts spewing from his skull by the quart. Alan, thinking fast, whips off his sweatshirt and uses it to stop up the flow. “My head’s throbbing now but at the time I was so fucked up it really didn’t hurt too bad,” Alan explains, “then I’m standing outside later and those chicks come walking by, they ask how I’m doing. I’m like, I’m okay, but if one of you gave me a blowjob, I’d feel a lot better!” “Did they?” “Nah, they just gave me a dirty look and walked off.” Lying awake in bed, eight o’clock in the morning now. I hear Damon creak down the stairs and pause beside my door, the knob turning away from its lock. He delicately nudges the three inch thick slab of wood forward, edges his eyes around its rim for a peek. Wondering if I might have brought a girl home and scored, his curiosity’s eating him alive, it’s the only scenario he can fathom that warrants my desertion. “What happened?” he asks, after discovering, with what I interpret as visible relief, that no one accompanies me. “I was out drinking with some people from work,” I explain, “I was gonna call, but I didn’t think we’d be there that long. Plus there was this one chick I was trying to talk myself into doing.” “Didn’t happen, huh?” he chuckles. “No,” I admit with a sigh, even though it’s half bullshit, “she looks good and all, but she’s got these sideburns.” “Yeah, well, anyway,” he nods, glancing around my room, at the piles of papers everywhere, the books, the bags of clothes, “I got home from having dinner with my parents, and I waited here forever and you didn’t show, and I thought, man, where is he? So then I walked over to Ruby’s and had a drink there, figured you might show up but you don’t so I come back here and hang out in my room.”

As Amanda’s days wind down, a clutch of new hires drift into our midst. Figuring that for every five they corral, one might stick around longer than a couple of weeks, management thrusts these greenhorns into our dining room lunches, leave them training with us. Yet none of these rookies are technically replacing Amanda, because neither they nor our executive body plans on detaining them in this dining room a day beyond necessity. Once properly trained, any remaining will shuffle over into the clubhouse, for though Amanda’s leaving, the administration still has five suckers they’ve unwittingly stumbled onto, willing to toil on this side weekdays, and isn’t shaking up this roster for all the banquet linens in the world. In this sense, we become customs officials, and this server station our border checkpost. Still, much as I hate to see my girl go, her departure will work wonders on my wallet. Though far from lucrative, our shifts shall split now five ways rather than six, between Akash and Mike Short, Kip and Brandy and me, leaving us each just a tiny more flush in the shakeup’s windfall. And while the veteran clubhouse nation scoffs at any and all reasons we would ever choose to labor over here, I covertly hold grand designs for this dining room. Looking forward, if I can only dispense with the other four, untold riches await me. I’ve done my math, and these integers always compute the same. Away from the clubhouse madness, veteran chicks bitching and clawing each other for tables, management breathing fire down everyone’s neck and those poor cooks struggling in the tiny kitchen to crank out lunch, I’ll enjoy absolute serenity. And the twelve or fifteen tables we typically get on a weekday afternoon over here will actually net me a greater daily jackpot than anyone in the clubhouse can possibly hope for, after they dice their own traffic up six ways. In the meantime, I can do nothing to root my cohorts out. I patiently wait to pounce. Free of charges this humdrum morning, Akash and I trade sports section pages back and forth in this cool, shaded grotto, awaiting our first customers. Now that the baseball season has begun, I’m giving up our Dispatch in favor of USA Today, as both run fifty cents but the latter has far more in depth box scores. Local developments take a backseat to this pressing need, an up to the minute rundown of injuries and batting averages. And considering everyone in the dining room is fairly reliable and that we can set up the operation with our eyes closed, Drew tends to overlook our two man reading circle. “It’s wise to stay informed,” he tells us, enjoying this rarest of birds, the luxury of leisure afforded by our stable roster. Once the shift gains steam, I know Akash will start reciting Tupac rhymes, polishing his flow for a hiphop record he hopes to cut. An aspiring drummer, he’s also continually tapping out beats on the floor and counter, even as, frustrated by inability, these rhythms fall apart, he constantly curses and starts again. To balance things out, I’m often chanting silly garbage from the Dangerous Minds soundtrack, although, just once and only once in our history working together, on the mystifying crapshoot of our overhead Muzak, we hear and rejoice over Regulate, perhaps the solitary rap song we both agree upon. Too bad we can’t entirely dispense with the occasional Mark Stokes guest appearance, even in this remote outpost. Ever dapper with his ghostly smear of stubble, his jet black crew cut gradually tapering to nothing just above the collar of his banker’s blue dress shirt. Thoroughly professional in both appearance and demeanor, for as grand overlord, duty compels him to swing through now and again. Everyone else can treat this land as a bleak, distant tundra, and avoid accordingly, but he’s paid to inspect, to censure servers standing with noses buried in today’s newspaper. “What?” Akash pleads after Stokes wordlessly snatches the contraband from his hands, “come on! This is a sports bar, I gotta stay up on my scores!” But of course Stokes simply shakes his head and walks off, saying nothing.

We part this cobalt canyon as a zipper does its teeth. Along this isolated country road an hour away from home, Damon in the backseat and Alexis riding shotgun, I drive. Grotesque fingers of forest pressing both flanks like a claustrophobic’s nightmare, steadily inching closer, they seem, though the clear, starry sky above retains its impossible regal distance. This trip, I must confess, turning out better than expected, far better than it began. Saddled with Alan’s nutty ex-girlfriend, high and warbling at a hundred miles an hour. “Each part of your body controls a different emotion,” Alexis explains, “whatever part you touch, it’ll make you feel a certain way.” “So, wait...... ,” I smirk, “.....if I sit on my hands.....it’ll make me happy?” “Yes!” Alexis gushes, “exactly! And see, I’m also into aromatherapy, that’s a whole different field of study!” Having left the highway moments ago, we charm our way into the village’s western rind. Ants across this listless night, with Ashland, supine before us, the unsuspecting victim. Ten thousand residents strong, Ashland lies some twenty minutes northeast of our former hometown, and is certainly among the last outposts I would expect to visit on a random weekday whim. Particularly given the cast, particularly given all that’s happening in our smoldering rearview, down on campus, at this instant. “Aromatherapy?” Damon responds, as if holding some repugnant, unfamiliar insect between his thumb and forefinger, “what the hell’s that?” Defying its limited reach, Ashland encapsulates a deceptive mix of outlandish contradictions. A fire and brimstone stronghold replete with harsh, bible bouncing zealots, with cathedrals on every block, only recently have its less puritanical citizens been able to enjoy a worldly diversion, such as MTV, which the rest of the universe takes for granted. Yet at the same time, burrowed at this hamlet’s core, Ashland University carries more trendy cachet than any other institute in a fifty mile radius. Those among our classmates who were ambitious enough to leave home, yet not so much they’d stake their identities to the mast in drifting to Columbus, or leaving the state entirely, have mostly shuffled sideways and wound up here. AU’s primary attribute, at least as far as those not enrolled here are concerned, remains its radio station, the finest broadcast anywhere from Cincinnati to Cleveland. The last mournful year in Mansfield I subsisted on its airwaves much as one would ramen noodle six packs, and I’d continue doing so even now could the signal reach that far. By contrast, our apartment on Summit lies within spitting distance of the largest college in the world, but we can’t tune in its inexcusably weak transmission. Even were we able to, OSU’s pathetic efforts in this realm surely can’t trump Ashland’s singular mine of current underground nuggets and select obscure treasures from yesterday. And nothing else in Cow Town comes close, either, a city with even worse radio than Mansfield. We have one passably effective alternative station in CD 101, but are otherwise treated to dreadful classic rock and modern pseudo metal, homegrown and nationally syndicated morning hosts which are, Howard Stern aside, aggressively unfunny. And even Stern’s arrival comes with some ambivalence, shoving as he does the only celebrated local jockey, gravel throated Suzie Waud (I’m sure Doug was a fan), off the air. Despite this well esteemed college, a hipness hub in AU, however, to refer to the nightlife here as flatlined is to grossly exaggerate. An offshoot of its stringent Christian constituency, repression empties the sidewalks, as even the bars doing respectable business find themselves deserted by ten o’clock. And why we’re here on Wednesday night, willingly no less, I really can’t say. Just as I apparently struggle with saying the word no. “You use certain smells to make people feel a certain way,” she explains, “When I’m in a bad mood, I burn these certain candles I have around the house, for instance, and it makes me feel better.” I have no doubt that the aroma of a marijuana pipe makes Alexis happy, but otherwise her testimony is riddled with more disingenuous drivel than the Old and New Testament combined. As I arrive home from the grocery store tonight, every light in the house is blazing away - and so is she. Alan’s television transmits black and white prime time with the sound turned off, for Damon provides the score, strumming his acoustic guitar on the repulsive plaid loveseat. Meanwhile, Alexis conducts a manic pace through every room of our house, crazed as always, puffing nonstop on her ever present bowl, replenishing it every few minutes as she stomps around. How this outrageous spectacle has come to pass I can’t imagine, but have a feeling Damon will tell me the first chance he gets. I’m in my bedroom changing out of the dirty work clothes, when she barges through the door without warning. “Jesus Christ!” I gasp, scrambling to cover myself. “You wanna get high?” she asks. “No.” “Man, what’s the matter with you guys? None of you smoke pot,” she sighs, leaves me alone, door open, to finish the task at hand. Even by Alexis’s standards, this demonic possession, tooting away in introspective abstraction, counts as mighty strange behavior. I figure maybe her drug dealer’s out of town and she’s flipping out, or perhaps her lesbian lover’s fled the coop, just two of the many likely scenarios. “She’s been hitting on that little bowl she’s got all night,” Damon whispers while Alexis’s travels have taken her to a distant room, “I’ve just been sitting here playing guitar and she keeps trying to talk me into smoking with her.” “What’s she even doing here?” I inquire. “She came here to see Alan, she didn’t know he was out of town. You don’t mind, do you?” I curse but don’t object. Damon outlines the whole sordid tale of what came before I arrived on the scene, and I understand to some degree her manic behavior. Alexis freaks out at our bathroom mirror quad chick, rips the photo into twenty some pieces and chucks them in the trash. She invades Alan’s room, where Damon sits playing an acoustic on the couch, paying her no mind. She begins opening drawers in Alan’s filing cabinets, going through his personal effects, then stumbles onto some letters Nicole had written him. Upon reading these, absorbing some of the more intimate details they contain, Alexis freaks out, launches this endless march across our hacienda. “She’s walking around the house like a fucking nut,” Damon continues in a hushed tone, “she keeps saying I can’t handle this straight! I need to get high, I need to get high! That’s when she whipped her bowl out. I feel bad for Alan, though, like I should have kept her from rooting through his stuff.” His judgement in this matter might have been an aberration, but his next call leaves no room for doubt. Inexplicably, Damon mentions our secret plans pointing north tonight, an undercover escapade descending upon some old cronies. As an impressive networker with scores of contacts throughout the Midwest, as someone who may have taken a few classes at AU, too, if memory serves correctly, it’s only natural that Alexis would invite herself along. Revitalized at once she joins our lot, though the journey suddenly carries all the promise of a Chinese water torture. Yet something about the road, or the time elapsed since she’s read Nicole’s letters, has a calming effect on the girl. The overweight brunette Jessica we met months earlier has gotten Alexis well versed in massage therapy lingo if nothing else, and we’re assaulted with a thirty minute treatise on the subject. Now this candle burning bit. Only fair that we should drive up this way occasionally to visit our people. What bothers me about the enterprise is that our nights are numbered, the window is continually closing, and any spent anywhere else is one we’re wasting away from campus. Nights like the last are more like it, Damon and I at Maxwell’s, over twenty-five cent pitchers, with Carrie and Sarah and some Latino chick. Having apparently borrowed the other girl’s funky purple hat from two weeks earlier, the Latino is stunning beautiful but every time Damon or I try to speak to her on the dance floor, she offers only an elusive smile, she twirls away from us. Whether elaborate game or velvet gloved rebuttal we’re uncertain, and give up to polish off a pitcher together on one of the couches. “That chick’s kinda weird,” I tell Damon. “I don’t know,” he shrugs, “she acts like she doesn’t like us.” Still, we’re willing to take these lumps, take them with a good-natured grace only the perpetual loser can ever possess. So what if she isn’t interested in anything we offer, even as Carrie repeatedly nudges me directly into the Latin American princess’s limber, writhing figure. So what if Damon doesn’t go home with Carrie or manage one meager kiss, so what if Sarah and I fail to generate sparks. So what if twenty-five cent pitcher night is somewhat of a gimmick because the bar keeps running out of pitchers and we must hang on to ours for dear life or else risk someone stripping it from us in a beer fueled frenzy. All true and more, but none of it matters. Any way we slice it, fine as these folks are, a night like tonight is an appalling waste. Stuck in deadbeat Club 42, Frank running his cheesy open stage jam night on the other side of the bar, Alexis darting around yipping to anyone who’ll give her the time of day. The rest of us are jammed into one booth, as though nothing’s ever changed, we’ve teleported magically to one year prior. “I wouldn’t even waste my time with those quarter pitcher nights,” Paul informs us with a dismissive sneer, “all it will ever be is skunk beer they’re trying to get rid of.” I snicker into my hand, both at this spiel and the glass shattering wail Frank’s just unleashed on stage. Though weeks now separate his last contact with Jennifer, Radick remains despondent, grieving over every botched detail. He continues clinging to these tired rituals, finding comfort in them, I suppose, while scoffing at everything else with even more venom than usual. Still hoping somehow, too, in between or above these stringent filters, to shake his life up in some yet unnamed manner. Having washed dishes at the same Mansfield Denny’s for years now, he’s understandably sick of that line, but can think of no other vocation, at present, that would suit him any better. He’s majoring in art history at the OSU branch, but a bachelor’s degree wavers some four years distant, and he has already accumulated more than double the allotted academic demerits permissible. Considering the long string of failing grades he’s posted, they may boot him from their hallowed halls any day, should have done so ages ago. Only chance has kept him alive this long, lost in the paperwork shuffle; only a matter of time separates him and his imminent departure. The problem Paul has, his teachers universally agree, is that he manages a near genius level grasp of the few odd subjects, or classes, that he actually enjoys, but bombs out miserably the other ninety seven percent of the time. His advisors note with considerable dismay that there is nothing in between with Paul, it’s either a zero or a hundred. But then any of us could have told them that. “No, I’m serious,” he says, “see, they’ve probably got more beer coming in on Wednesday to stock up for the weekend, so they charge a quarter and get rid of all the leftover shit.” He might be right, in fact I know he’s right, but his skepticism strikes me as oddly amusing. Same old Radick, unchanging as the stars in the northern sky above us. As predictable as Melissa laughing too loud at everything, which she is, as predictable as Mandy sweating Big Paul’s every move, which she also is. The only twist this night offers is Big Paul’s stunning revelation that he’s just gotten out of rehab, which explains why we haven’t heard from him in months. He’s altered his appearance a hundred and eighty degrees as well, having cut off all his hair and dyed blonde what little survives, which explains how, abetted by pisspoor eyesight, I have slid into this booth beside him and not realized for a number of minutes that he is the individual sitting to my immediate right. “Rehab? What for?” I question. “Everything.” “What do you mean, everything?” “I mean everything,” he affirms, eyes wide, meeting mine, nodding his head slowly for grim emphasis. He urges privacy, and this is fine, for we are an airtight society. Volumes have died between the Pauls and Damon and Alan and me, spoken betwixt ourselves but nowhere else. Linville should know better than breathing word to the satellites, however. By telling Melissa, Mandy, and above all else Frank, he’s insuring everyone in a tri county area will learn of his ordeal. Our hero Frank, the grand socializer, but nobody you’ll entrust with your secrets. We worship him ever so slightly less than in years gone past, this just one lessen learned. To keep the wheels moving and himself visible, Frank graces the stage a few times a night with varying lineups, but bides his leftover hours shaking hands from one wall to the other and back again. Cutting a smaller swath, her circle of influence tighter, Mandy makes up the difference with speed and volume, unchallenged atop the verbosity totem pole. Especially a night like this, drunk and on a roll, rambling at a migraine inducing clip, cramming whole paragraphs into a microsecond. She’s a roaring furnace of conversation, especially after a few drinks, her lips are made of fire. “Ooh, you’ve lost some weight!” she declares with an approving grin. “Oh really?” “Oh yeah,” she rubs my belly, “I’d say seven or eight pounds.” She sighs, changes tacks abruptly. “I need to find a decent guy. I go out every night of the week, but I never meet anyone. I’m getting tired of all these games.” “Well, you’re looking in the wrong places, cause you’re not going to find too many in these bars.” “I know, I know,” she says, “but I don’t really know anywhere else to go. I like to drink and I like to play pool, I like listening to music. I can’t really sit at home all the time, what else is there?” But what are any of us, all of us, searching so frantically for? Are we really exerting this much energy simply for a little sex? Doubtful, though at the same time, I’m not sure any of us are serious about finding our one true love at this point, either. Nor so desperate for companionship that we’re flailing out in every direction, crying for help. A combination of all these, perhaps, though I feel that the most defining motivation behind all our actions is a need beyond desire, to test the boundaries, to unearth and experience, strange lovers, unfamiliar haunts, cities that spring up out of nowhere. Insure we’ve missed nothing even in out of the way holes such as this. We know normality will plant its hooks in us someday, that our energies will exhaust and domesticate. The only hope is to scorch enough scenery to leave regret behind. Crawling with bodies, this place stands as the gateway between two worlds. Ashland’s peculiar amalgamation and the hillbilly countryside folk, neither of which hold much interest for us anymore. Melissa stands in our old spot, near the back door, cold contacting absolute strangers, reciting goofball parting shots the rest of us grew weary of a year prior: thank you for shopping Wal Mart, wha hee hee hee! Fortunately, Alexis finds these people every bit as enthralling as Melissa still does. En masse, we never break formation, we never leave this booth except to reach the bar. But Alexis encounters some old colleagues, and informs us she’ll be spending the night up here. Which spares Damon and me the hour ride home with her, which is about the only positive salvaging the rest of this fruitless night.

Amanda’s apartment complex expands sideways from the street. Arranged as so many are to maximize space, for tidy rows of buildings stacked like matchsticks in a box, its short side faces 11th, the domiciles themselves receding into infinity behind. Red sienna bricks composing the exterior bottom half, white stucco tops it off as if a story high layer of frosting, while a peeling helmet of overlapped shingles wraps around above. A sidewalk flanking all sides below, leading into the keyed entry doors. The same afternoon as my birthday, an OSU student, a small time pot dealer, is shot to death in a house just two doors down from her place. Local authorities mount poorly placed soapboxes equating his sideline enterprise with some kind of hardcore thug activity, inferring he deserved this grisly fate, but wherever the blame lay, blood splattered this close to home has Amanda understandably tweaked. She no longer bothers with the convenience store ruse, Brett be damned. From this point forward I drop her off directly in front of 83 East, whether he’s home or not, and wait until she disappears inside before pulling away. So the holding pattern shifts, and quickly shifts again. As if now that her days at the restaurant are numbered, we’re shaken out of formation. We feel this sense of urgency, and either I’ve grown bolder, or she has, or some combination thereof. Or was it not totally obvious all along that we would end up here? Sometimes I think it leads here because from day one this is the only place it obviously ever would lead. We both knew. From that first day on the job, meeting her as we fill out our new hire paperwork, and the rest was just a cat and mouse ritual we’ve spent the past three months engaging. Keys in hand, we park, and Amanda leads the way. By now, I know Brett’s school schedule every bit as well as she. Inside the building, I follow her up two flights of metal stairs, our non skid soles resounding like bombs at every step. Unable to avert my eyes from that shapely ass, bobbing in tight black dress slacks just inches from my face. Their relative dearth of possessions I find a bit alarming. Even in living still from bags and boxes, my own existence, scars and all, makes more sense to me, for a single early 20s vagabond. The seriousness with which she takes their bond clearly open for debate, however, I still expect a married couple to have more stuff, as if the compiling of furniture and knickknacks lends respectability. Or at the very least harmony, stability. It could just be that while clutter free and spotless, these sparse barracks portend a messy dissolution. Brokering the sun, two windows overlooking the walkway imbue this living room with adequate cheer. Furnished, as is ours, with only a loveseat to sit upon, and a meager coffee table before it. Hardwood floors beneath the feet, too, though it appears theirs has functioned less through the years as an after hours skateboard park. A tiny television across the room, representing the extent of their decorations, accommodations, and a kitchen beyond scarcely larger than that secondhand set. As her mouth spills over with its daily loquacious froth, my eyes steal past Amanda to the pink pastel aura of her womanly shrine, the bathroom. For two solid weeks, I’ve swamped the mailbox with form letters, pitching my first novel to anyone who’ll listen. Amanda squeals that I positively must let her handle the cover art, an unimpeachable request presented with impressive ardor. In the meantime, eyeing her antiquated bathtub, ringed by girly accouterments and a neon rose curtain, all I can think about is Amanda reclining within its porcelain realm, up to her chin in bubbles. Frenzied blonde tresses handcuffed in a samurai’s ponytail jutting from the back of her head, her soft, munificent breasts and walnut sized nipples floating upon the water, as she shuts her lids tight and blocks away the world. She leads me down the hall to her bedroom, to the cramped spare room housing a computer. Flinging both arms wide, she smiles like a well rehearsed realtor in showcasing the latter, proudly dubbed her “office.” She reaches a hand out to open her bedroom door, except that at this same moment the door whips back on its own volition, and standing behind in the doorframe is one seriously pissed off husband. Brett stomps out of the bedroom with bed hair spiking in every direction, awakened by our frenetic tour. Amanda asks him about school but he just mutters something, shakes his head, scowling. She introduces me, but he merely nods once without looking my way at all, grimace unbroken. “Well!” Amanda beams, pulls the latest Stephen King hardcover from her office. Adept at fabrication, she concocts this clever cover on the spot. “Here’s that book you wanted to borrow!” cherries 1

“I had to get a physical while I was out there,” Alan explains, adjusting his hi-hat, “and the doctor tells me my blood pressure is basically off the charts.” No sooner has Alan returned to town, and we’ve gotten him engaged in our latest, though long overdue, crackpot ploy. True greenhorns, these dreams have held us captive from day one. Hostage in a rosy mist that has us descending upon the city’s nightlife stages, wooing fixated crowds, mostly female, into swooning submission. We sacrifice a living room up on the third floor and fill it with our collective musical equipment, talk of playing out in big college town. But in the three and a half months since, we’ve never jammed together even once as a unit, these fictions idle. “I’m like, hmm, I wonder why that would be?” Alan continues, “maybe it has something to do with the fact that pretty much all I eat is canned ravioli.” To get ourselves into the proper mindset, it seems we must always place cart directly before horse. Even tonight, before striking so much as a single productive note, we run around instead with a camera. Snapping bogus staged photographs of ourselves “in studio.” Bulbous black headphones muffling our ears, wearing puzzled ponderous faces, we twiddle knobs, tune guitars. Sweating profusely, Alan executes a trying drum roll, Damon struggles to nail that perfect riff, my damp fingers stubbornly glide off the keyboard. Our next session will begin, we’ve decided, by blowing up some anonymous crowd photos to poster size, taping these to the walls, and rocking out before them. Instant concert footage, you know it, available at the snap of a shutter and a flash’s cementing sear. Too bad we can’t apply the same inspiration to this set list, or the physical effort needed to fulfill it. Two cuts from the first Violent Femmes record are a given, Add It Up and Blister in the Sun, the modern equivalent of traditional campfire songs. Word for word familiar to every college kid on the planet, and amply simple cinches for aping hacks like us. Yet toying with a number of other options surrenders only the tired J. Geils Band staple Centerfold, and we can think of no others. We spend an hour running through this rudimentary trio, with Damon on vocals, honing them no better than butter knife sharp. Frustration of a musical variety kicks our front door down, but we will always find some reason, however slight, to hit eject, to parachute from the current circumstance. Another Kara phone call catalyzes our night, another classic maneuver on my part complicates it. At least, situated upon the brink of collapse, Alan has sense enough to beg off. Kara and a roommate are meeting us at the Bethel Road BW3, but I’m forced first to deposit Damon there and make the detour home. Only upon arriving at the other end of town do I realize my ID hasn’t. So doing, I unwittingly exclude myself from tonight’s fireworks. Twenty cent wings draw a capacity crowd again, but the three of them manage a table in the beehive’s swarming center. Still we wonder why Kara prefers this location above the two on campus, although clarity arrives in the half hour I’m gone. Moments after they are seated, Kara’s erratic mood spikes beyond relief. “Oh my God! There he is!” she announces, her nerves already lathered in a jittery panic. “Who?” Damon asks. The other girl away in the ladies room, he’s left alone grasping for some answers. “The guy I was telling you about! The one I’ve been dating off and on for months!” “I don’t see who you’re talking about,” Damon admits. “Right there! Standing in front of us!” “Who?” he again inquires, exasperated. “Right there!” Kara says, “right in front of us!” “Who, that big black guy?” Damon blurts, more a joke than anything, referencing the brawny, well dressed gentleman nearby. No sooner do the words leave his mouth, however, and he regrets this offhand tone, as he inadvertently stumbles upon the truth. “Yeah,” Kara says, sullen, staring down at the table. So this is her big secret. Driving over here continually for a glimpse of her obsession. She claims to be dating this Eric but acts more like a jilted stalker, popping antidepressants, unwilling to discuss the situation outside of a few scripted words. And of course, the interracial issue, which doesn’t matter any to us - we fantasize about dating black girls ourselves - but is assuredly a big deal to her old fashioned folks back in our hick home town. By the time I make my grand appearance inside the bar, this rendezvous has already soured for everyone else. Typical chick, Kara comes here week after week hoping to spot her man, yet now that she has it’s ruined her night and she refuses to approach him. Not that I know any of this until the ride home with Damon. Initially, I’m left scratching my head, mystified that they leap from their seats the moment I show, they sprint out the door. Worst of all, never introduced, the roommate breathes potential, a short, slender brunette nearly as cute as Kara, equally demure. “We’ll do it again sometime!” I call out across the parking lot as they dive into Kara’s car. “Yeah,” they laugh sarcastically and tear off into the night, gone before I’ve even got my engine started. “What the hell was that all about?” I ask Damon. “Dude, you’ll never believe it,” he says.

Full of appraisal, these eyes open on another a.m. shift. Curiously, our rib joint looks much as it ever has. Curious because I recall management dragging all of us in early one snowy Saturday morning in January, equating us with dirt, slaughtering us before some golden altar they’d erect by March. Corporate bigwig John Votino ventures as far to say he’d bet money on it - if he was a betting man, mind you - and stresses that they’re taking only the “best of the best” employees into this modern engineering marvel. Well, March is long behind us, and not only is this magnificent facility not built, but construction hasn’t even begun, they’ve yet to break ground. Instead the corporate folks give Stokes $20 a week for incidental repairs, to tide him over until that elusive apparition finally reveals itself at the other end of our lot. And the questions still linger as to just which individuals are on this “best of the best” list, who makes the cut, who doesn’t. One list I know I’m still on is the Short List, because I see my name at the top of it every Friday afternoon. If I can stick around just a little while longer some veteran servers are bound to quit and I can sneak onto the bottom of the Long List, which will announce to the world that I’ve finally arrived, I’ve made my mark here. Until then I must abide my current status as the most tenured person on the Short List, as well as primary target on what I perceive to be management’s secret “people we must continually fuck with” list. In actuality, the past two months have flown past with nary a bump in the road. Somewhere just beyond the pointless January meeting, Smith stopped riding my ass all the time, and working with him became a relative cakewalk. But today it seems the cycle is destined to start up all over again, more managerial heat albeit from a different source. Votino’s in for one of his weekly visits, never peachy even under optimum circumstances. He orders lunch and picks the dish apart like a demented watchmaker examining all the pieces, then waves Stokes over to chronicle his findings. The salads are too brown or the burgers aren’t cooked to the proper doneness or the onion loaf’s not firm enough. Once these pressing concerns are adequately addressed, he will now sit scowling at the table, examining every server who passes, noting even the slightest imperfection in each. Votino enjoys camping out at along our clubhouse’s back wall, the highest perch available upon this three tiered floor, beside the server station. Customarily, isolated in my dungeon of a dining room, I can escape the clutches of his dragnet. But its kitchen is closed on Mondays, as Gary begins his weekend. I can’t avoid breezing through the clubhouse en route to retrieving my orders. This shift is reaching its termination, however, and I’m standing again on familiar ground, alone, cleaning counters over here in my own server station. Devoid of overhead lights, its spotlessness depends upon rays beaming in from the dormant bar’s connecting window, the dining area itself around the opposite corner. Stocking glassware three deep atop the shelves, I almost believe I’ve tiptoed through the minefield unscathed. Exactly what he wants me to think, to lull me into a false sense of security. And it isn’t as though he’s ever going to approach anyone directly, anyway, as chain of command protocol offers firewall protection for his passive-aggressive approach. Allows Votino to address Stokes, who passes commands to Weinle. Dave creaks the kitchen doors open, drifts into my den with a smile and disarming chuckle. I know already that I’m doomed. For a man of such staggering stature, Dave moves with a surprising light footed ease, nearly floating, however, and his diplomacy mirrors this trait. “Votino sees you walk by and he’s like who’s THAT!?” Weinle laughs, “he says, did we hire him looking like that?! and we’re like, well, yeah...... ” Past issues have ranged from wearing a wrinkly shirt to showing up unshaven to having lost my name badge - the one with the gold star Votino apparently doesn’t remember giving me, though it was the first ever granted in our restaurant’s history. But today’s topic is the length of my hair, specifically as it is now deemed too long to satisfy company dress code. Dave’s left mediating upper management ultimatums again, fast becoming his field of expertise. Although at least with Stokes, I know it isn’t that he’s too spineless to admonish me firsthand, so much that he can’t be bothered. If I stood right beside him, Stokes wouldn’t hesitate. But walking over here is simply too much effort, speaking twice so, particularly for a guy who says so little that even talking about the weather is strictly off limits. Not to mention the whole issue of caring, whereby he has to offer the pretense of giving a damn, on Votino’s behalf, even as it’s pretty obvious he seldom does. “Yeah, so, Votino says if you wanna wear a ponytail or tie it back somehow, that’s cool,” Dave tells me, and laughs, “either that or get it cut. Cool?” “Yeah,” I nod, “that’s cool.” Too bad these other buffoons can’t manage Dave’s effortless tact. If Dave asked me to climb up on the roof and start repairing the shingles, I probably would. As for Votino, I seethe and contemplate revenge. For the moment, though, compliance. Only problem is my hair’s not even all that long, and when I tie it back with rubber bands, John Belushi’s samurai cheeseburger warrior from the 1970s comes to mind. Jenny Hughes catches me walking past her hostess stand, shaking my head with this weird new look, and elicits this ponytail’s short yet pathetic history. “But your hair’s not even that long!” she protests, “that’s ridiculous!”

Tuesday nights, for the price of a cheap six pack, the St. John Arena rents skates and access to the ice rink. With its metallic white exterior and slanted grey vault, staring obsolescence in the eye, this squat shed screams horse stable more than arena, pleads to milk what meager revenue remains. Seeking to brush up his hockey skills beyond what practice offers, Damon often drifts down here for twirls upon the relatively deserted surface, and this week, a first, he drags Alan and I along. His first game slated for Wednesday, he has an unforeseen case of opening day anxiety. “If I don’t do it now, though, I probably never will,” he reckons with a reluctant sigh. Frozen in the ice of our elementary and junior high days, Damon skates across the state for competitive play, a young hockey stud. Having given up the sport somewhere around eighth grade, his long delayed return to the rink proves far less satisfying. Those fossilized moments of yore he cannot replicate, and this season opener passes in desperate gasps for air, spent panting on the bench, mostly, though he also cuts a few timid game time circles on defense. In all respects, far slicker teammates eclipse his efforts, yet neither he nor we expect any less. The opposing squad thoroughly trounces his, and this too is not the least bit surprising. More abrupt, dramatic, is the manner with which Shannon first appears in our kitchen. Alan and I never foresee this, but maybe we should have - weeks gone since Damon last brought any girls down, an atypical twist of events. Home in the afternoon and she’s just here, with him, the two of them lounging at our table with the ease of a married couple celebrating their silver anniversary. Exceeding, contrasting the advice he’s given Radick, Damon even tosses around the verboten girlfriend phrase, already. Used in conjunction with someone he’s never so much as mentioned, another oddity, given his garrulous extremes. They met late one night at Erik’s apartment, following a Get-A-Way show, and since then Damon has harbored this secret crush, crawled in stealth toward that goal. “I thought he was an asshole at first,” she admits with a laugh. Still, the chemistry between them is instantly obvious. Shannon outclasses the barflies Damon customarily adopts, is much more personable than a wallflower like Kami. Her slender frame, her frosted skin may never stop traffic, though attest an attractive catch, alluring in restraint. Elsewhere, above, accentuating features betray more than a smattering of Native American blood, with high, prominent cheekbones and long, lustrous black hair, arrow straight. She’s a small town version of Stacey Edwards, uncannily resembling my coworker in nearly every dimension, minus the makeup, and missing that smoky, worldwise veneer. That Damon is willing to lay down his hand and plant roots says everything. Since a four year relationship ended in August, he’s bounced from bed to bed. But the thrill of all these different women is bound to wear off, especially when most are not exactly of the supermodel variety. Quick and easy lays, sure, great for capping off nights with the band, nothing more. For every mellow chick like Kami there are ten Porkchops, and all the questionable tradeoffs a dash through white trash country invokes. Jealous boyfriends materializing out of nowhere, overprotective brothers launching narrowly avoided fists. Hours wasted idling in a truck, while said floozy disappears inside some boarded up house along a one stoplight town’s lone intersecting alley, bangs her landlord for room and board. Damon never actively campaigns to elevate himself above this miasma, but in stumbling upon a potential keeper he decides to give monogamy another shot. At least for a little while. “I love her hair,” he whispers while she’s in the restroom, “that’s what did it.” Call this vintage Damon, alone on an island of indecipherable quirks. Just as there’s no explaining his three months spent trolling campus for chicks in shaggy, often unwashed hair, dorky 1950s glasses, and a camouflage jacket, there’s no explaining his sudden whim to stop. Just as there’s no explaining his ritual of showering only back home, on weekends, no explaining his boundless laziness, which has him pissing in beer bottles upstairs most nights rather than traipsing down here to the toilet. Despite his unqualified thumbs up, however, Shannon’s jury must remain on lunchtime recess. Any woman willing to drive her parents’s decade old Cadillac an hour south alone, to negotiate these one way streets and park in that war torn lot behind our house, is likely a winner, true, but there’s just no telling. Shannon’s sober demeanor, which veers so sharply from these beer guzzling nineteen year olds we’re partying with down here at last, represents some backward moonwalk to an era we left behind long ago, and I can’t so quickly label this a blessing or a curse. When Shannon leaves a roundtable discussion follows, but my primary reservations are held in check, as they are mainly selfish by nature. We’ve burrowed our way into the sacred realm of a million angelic virgins, but Damon gives it three scant months and throws away the towel, chucks everything aside to establish something serious in the barren soil we left behind? Bullshit, I say. But I don’t actually say it at all, it’s none of my business, and it doesn’t matter much. Sure, in the name of adventure and charting this foreign terrain of unfamiliar pussy we’ve made this town our home, but who says he can’t tap unexplored resources from the mother land as well. And so even though our ringleader has taken himself out of the loop, we have no choice but to trudge onward.

Swimming with women, the crowd almost becomes another instrument. Some old guy standing in the middle of the room plays an actual one, clanging spoons together with every song, oblivious that everyone considers this racket as pleasant as an ear infection. Surrounding him throughout this chainlink tight room, masses of coeds clap hands and flip lids regardless which song’s playing, making believers out of Damon and me, that we can march down here with our tidy set and clean house. We have found one last seat in the bar half of this campus BW3, the booth most distant from its stage. Throwing on our glasses allows us to better view the bands, and automatically eliminates any chance of meeting ladies. We both run neck and neck now as biggest dorks in the room. Damon’s Buddy Holly rims are either twenty years ahead or twenty years behind the times, while my own seldom worn frames, held together with paperclips, are so bent they lean forward at a laugh inducing angle. Babe magnets we are not, not by any stretch. Following just the one practice, we feel we’ve got those three songs down well enough to serve our informal purposes. If nothing else, with a girlfriend now in Shannon, our frontman Damon spends much less time than he used to out combing these campus bars for women, time now applied to his first great love, that guitar. Other, more minor repercussions have surfaced as well, such as his inevitable fallout with Carrie. Still most every night, the phone rings at three or four in the morning. More often than not, as my bedroom’s closest to the kitchen, I’m the lucky recipient of these late night rants. Erik’s always drunk and in a silly mood but thankfully keeps his calls short, whereas in place of reaching Damon, Carrie settles for bitching endlessly to me. “He’s the strangest boy I’ve ever met,” she confesses during the latest such summon, “actually, you all are. Every other guy in the bar is trying to pick up girls, but all you guys do is sit there and talk. But you know,” she sighs, “if Damon doesn’t show some interest in me soon, I’m gonna say forget it.” “She’s gonna say forget it, huh?” Damon smirks when I relay this information. It strikes him as the funniest remark he’s heard in a while, and why not. He’s already instructed me to never put him on the line again when she calls, to tell her he’s not home. As is fast becoming his custom, Alan declines our invitation for a night on the town, preferring instead the comfort of his bed and a reasonable amount of sleep before work comes calling the next a.m. Of course once we polish our tunes and build the requisite confidence to play them in front of this potentially intimidating crowd, he’ll have to join us, but for now we grant a free pass. Damon approaches this goofy middle aged guy who’s running the show. He’s an anti-Frank Medley, socially awkward to fault, and I struggle to imagine how he ever booked this plush gig in the first place. He stands off the side squirming in his own skin, fidgeting constantly, and at no point makes any appearance on the makeshift stage, the minuscule corner spot where a few tables have been moved aside. In speaking to him my roommate returns less informed than before, as he attempts to sort out the nonsensical explanation given him, the particulars of cracking this jam night rotation. “He said something about how we have to come down at seven and sign up, then come back at nine and sign up again,” Damon says, eyebrows stitched together into one unbroken band of confusion. Compounding our distress is this annoying duo currently gracing the stage, Johnny Bravo. Well dressed fratholes, they’ve thrown together just barely enough musical knowledge to justify their presence, though this doesn’t stop their brethren crowd from cheering every move the two of them make. In all fairness the guy playing the acoustic guitar is solid and for the most part flawless, unobtrusive. But his buddy with the backwards baseball hat has the most annoying smile we’ve ever seen, the smile of a bad ham actor, turning our stomachs while the ladies eat it up. They pull out Sublime and Beastie Boys covers, but ham actor substitutes his own lines half the time with inside jokes about people we don’t know - their pals on fraternity row, most likely, as each name check is greeted with a raucous round of applause by the crowd. To their credit, most of the kids in attendance are clearly here to see Johnny Bravo, and maybe it’s just jealousy clouding our judgement. Easy to hate guys like these, who can shout out a simple, “Pete!” or an “oh yeah!” and have that sentiment met with whistles from twenty hot females. I think I’d almost rather hear the old man with the spoons solo than suffer the width of this set. Immediately following our interrupted escapade, Amanda also makes a circumspect retreat from the apartment. A shouting match pits her against Brett for the better part of two hours, and she spends the night at his sister’s house. The first such night, this is, though far from the last. Enthralled with sun drenched landscapes, with warm colors and impressionistic stills, with sailboats docked idly in a placid pier, when we speak she mentions again enrolling at CCAD. She insists change is imminent along these lines, that she’ll make herself the next Monet. Content not with stopping there, however, she swears transformation sways her further, and more believably, into a long pondered breakup. “Brett’s such an asshole,” Amanda fumes once more, the familiar byline. Work continues no differently, with the notable exception of her absence, and a uniform shakeup for front of the house staff. The garish bright pink polos we’ve worn since I started are replaced by the same navy blue and white ones, vertically striped, that the busboys have worked in all along. From a distance, we servers, hostesses, and bartenders now too resemble NFL referees, fitting for this sports bar atmosphere. Now that we all wear the exact same shirts, however, distinguishing bussers from everyone else in a crowded room proves difficult, at a glance. I’m working a rare shift in the clubhouse this fine morning, as management decides to close the dining room down entirely. Four o’clock approaches and I’m still on the floor, which is one reason I detest toiling over here; another is the mandatory tip outs. In addition to the bartender, to whom each clubhouse server hands 1 percent of sales, bussers command a .8 share, though most mornings neither contingent is needed. Both parties then must sign the bottom of our report, the only condition under which management will accept our bank out. It figures they schedule me alongside these beautiful clubhouse bitches only now, during day four of this goofy ponytail phase. My joy increases sixfold, too, as Votino squirms into the room, claiming his favorite back wall booth for this week’s encore appearance, an unexpected treat. If allowed to offer my appraisal of his own frankly ridiculous haircut, I might suggest a style far less dweebish than the hacksaw bowlcut bangs, so short the strands stand and wave up top, like a homespun effort by some little boy’s mommy. His reptilian eyes pick this place apart, however, and anyway I’m on the prowl for Tyrone, a hunt grown suddenly surreptitious. “I like the ponytail, it’s cute,” veteran server Sandy says, as I’m sneaking out of the clubhouse to hide from Votino. “Grrrr,” I reply, darting past her and into the hotel hallway. I’ve already given Tyrone his money, but forgot to get his autograph and for all I know now he’s already left the building, is riding the #18 bus home. Nothing else remains for me to do, and I should have long ago left, yet this search for the man they call T Bone refuses to end. So much time elapses that the first wave of night shift people are starting to drift in. Still no Tyrone, but I spot one such p.m. grunt meandering around the vacant dining room, a goateed, bespectacled hick I’ve never seen before. With my own appearance under siege, I scrutinize other males far more than I ever would, whether conceptualizing future looks, or trying to frame my current state into the overall scheme of things. This individual’s short, dark brown hair is plastered into a helmet against his scalp, quite fashionable at present, yet difficult to picture upon myself. Later I will learn that his name’s Scott Mehlman, but at the moment I don’t care, I just hand him a dollar. He grins, says nothing, willingly signs my report. Happenstance fuses Dave Weinle and me in the dining room server station again, a reprise of Monday. Drifting through en route to the time clock and he finds me here, seconds before I might have dodged another broadside. With an apologetic laugh, Dave defuses any hostility, while at the same time replaying the exchange that leads him here. “What the hell’s that? A ponytail?” Votino snarls, having spotted me from afar, “he needs to get rid of it.” “I thought you said the ponytail was cool,” Stokes offers, shooting him a neutral, sidelong glance. “NO!” Votino barks, “either the HAIR’S gotta go or HE’S gotta go!”

Shannon’s panties, cool and inviting as a pillow. Shannon’s panties, royal blue, satin, now gracing our kitchen wall. If we seriously intend to reach one hundred pairs before our lease is up, the time for lollygagging has long since passed. After landing those first four immediately, our interests went elsewhere, we left the monuments swinging in the breeze, sun bleached further daily. And now it’s half past March, we’re buried neck deep into April. But with this fifth pair, acquired effortlessly, our attentions turn again toward such singular home decor. Damon drives north after his last class, to Shannon’s hometown of Galion. Fifteen miles west of Mansfield, comparable in size if not temperament to Ashland, Galion decomposes across one of Ohio’s most unemployed counties, a pointless poverty cauldron. Pointless as Damon’s sojourn for Shannon, to have her and another chick friend follow in a separate car, for she’s already been here once and clearly knows the way. But who am I to judge. Another promising Thursday sits before us, as near and open as the latest round of bottles Doug and Alan empty. In his younger days, before relocating here, Doug would make the two hour drive, visit campus maybe once or twice a year. He now admits a faint nostalgia for this district, long unknown to him. Given the frequency with which these establishments change hands, change names, these clubs are no more familiar to him than this eccentric clan he’s meeting for the first time. Considering his relative ignorance, and the still sizeable gaps riddling our own knowledge, I propose we dip our toes in outposts never patronized. Or, given the uninitiated female contingent due any moment now, perhaps a whirlwind tour of our favorites. But Little Paul Radick, on his way as well, is oddly gifted at getting his way, often because the topic at hand seldom redeems the effort spent debating him. An unstable isotope, this campus, its chemical composition mutating nightly into a hitherto unknown element, and I for one can never extend my investigative circle far enough. It seems only natural to explore, to map exotic lands, yet he and I could not stand further apart in this regard. By my count we’ve visited Maxwell’s exclusively the last six times he’s visited, and, barring a divided camp, will do so again this evening, thanks to his astute political wrangling. His chief strategy involves harping on Damon for days leading up to any event, and though Damon may offer a weak protest, he rarely objects with any real force. With Damon in his pocket, Alan and I and whoever else seldom stray, figuring we’ll enjoy ourselves more in the context of a larger group, even were it at a bingo parlor, than splintered into another site. But a legendary club on High, Stache’s, is closing its doors a week from now and I’ve never set foot inside the place, I rely on secondhand stories for any perspective as to what it has meant. For a decade, the only live music venue, city wide, worth mentioning, a sweaty, beer soaked hall Nirvana played one week before Nevermind exploded, that every up and coming band in the galaxy, worth its salt, had to have drifted through at least once. All swept under the rug. Paul hates live music unless by a universally sanctioned act that’s played arenas for twenty years, and the rest of us are never quite as adventurous, either, as we would like to think, we never put our foot down nearly as much as we should. “I tried to call earlier to see what was happening, but you guys are never home between the hours of, like, six and eight,” Paul notes, next to arrive, “if I call early in the afternoon, there’s usually someone here, and if I call later on, you guys are starting, you know, to roll in again.” As he often does, Paul has left a series of messages on our machine. Far stranger, however, there is also one from Paul’s younger sister Shelly, asking him to call her as soon as he gets here. A fascinating study in polarities, these siblings, for while Shelly is somewhat of a bookwormish homebody, in person she has a thoroughly engaging, outgoing disposition. Whereas Paul is notoriously shy, and disinterested in making many new acquaintances, but parties all the time. Shelly has lived for years in the upscale Dublin subdivision, at the city’s most distant northwest edge, though as she never leaves the house, we three here in town never have any contact with her at all. Paul gives Shelly a ring, only to scoff in short order and hang up. She merely wishes to inform him that, having heard five Rolling Stones songs in a row on the radio this afternoon, she thinks one of them might have died. Dismissing her fears as ridiculous, Paul nonetheless tiptoes over to our fridge top radio, starts thumbing through the stations. “It’d be all over the place if something happened to one of them,” I assure him. “Yeah,” he agrees, though sweating missiles, I note, through the fabric of his button up dress shirt, “my sister’s just being stupid.” “Whatcha listen to?” Doug asks him. “Well, you know, straightforward rock and roll. AC/DC, the Stones, Zeppelin...” “I always liked AC/DC, but that last record really sucked,” Doug says. Paul’s face contorts into murderous distaste. Who the hell is this friend of mine, I read his mind from across the room, this Doug guy coming around with such outrageous musical theories. The dark cloud soon lifts, however, as a rare, immutable cheer has covered his countenance from the moment he stepped through this door, not so easily erased. Paul merrily announces that a small piece of advice I’d already forgotten giving him at Frank’s jam night paid out huge dividends in his attempt to reclaim Jennifer. Why he’s polling me at all, with such wells of womanly wisdom as Alan and Damon and especially grandmaster Frank at his disposal, I can’t comprehend, though I sometimes wonder if I don’t indeed know everything, if I don’t have all the answers, but refuse to meet this knowledge head on, refuse, through simple laziness, timidity, to enact. I recommended that he dial Jennifer’s number just once more, and rather than subjecting her to his standard half hour chat, at the conclusion of which he again proposes a date, that he spend only five minutes. That he summarily question what’s new in her life, then shift gears and prattle at length about his before hopping off the phone abruptly, but at no point making any mention of ever calling or seeing her again, that he then hang back a few days, examine whether she rings him up in return. He did, and she had. “Hey, you got any weed?” Doug asks Paul, abruptly changing the subject. “Nah,” Paul says. “You smoke, though?” “Last time I did was back in October with some chick from work,” Paul recalls, with the magisterial air of a tweed elbowed professor, reclining in front of the library fireplace, “I can take it or leave it, myself.” “Really?” Doug marvels, “I love it!” His complex grooming ritual completed, Alan emerges from the bedroom. Whether on his way to the club or shopping for groceries, he maintains this immaculate appearance, down to and including the slender goatee he dubs his flavor saver, a jesting cunnilingus reference given to diffuse any potential jeers, the gravity he truly lends his image. Damon, myself, even Doug, we’re just jeans and tee shirt guys for the most part, and while Paul might slap on a long sleeved cotton now and then, he’s essentially the same. But Alan without fail makes the additional effort involved in shaving and combing his hair, throwing on cologne, all presented with wondrous consistency. Soon after, Damon ascends the steps with Shannon and best friend Tara. A short, skinny blonde, Tara’s bob cut hair bounces with a buoyancy matched only by her lustrous physique. Laid with tracing paper looseness across her taut dimensions, her white tee shirt and faded blue jeans are at once, somehow, both baggy and suggestive. Bottom lip and left eyebrow pierced, she doesn’t so much speak as vocalize weird alien whoops, jarring off center giggles placed where they least belong. Slicing her face in half with gruesome self-satisfaction, Tara’s unsettling smile belongs to a first grade bully, a fire starter, an insect torturer, and whenever conversation drifts away from her, she’s not above flicking offenders in the ear with thumb and forefinger to regain exclusive focus. A completely annoying package if not such a visual joy to behold, but she knows this, and has exploited her gift to no end at the expense of countless hapless suckers. Fortunately I’m well versed in this archetype, she takes all of three minutes to summarize. Chicks like these, the more you ignore them, the harder they work to impress you. My calculated dismissal may explain the stunning swiftness with which she preys. Offering an ex-boyfriend on fraternity row as the sole reason for her visit, Tara nonetheless has no qualms throwing her affections elsewhere. These small town girls, they know no differently. I’m thrown for a loop, however, when, without warning, she reaches out and gives my ass a healthy squeeze. We’re walking south along Summit, our mismatched mob, and I haven’t spoken a word to Tara outside the textbook introductions, which surely drives her nuts. This born attention hound, I have a firm handle on what drives her motor, but can recall no antecedent, ever, of anyone showing such obvious interest in me so soon. As such, I struggle to respond, though figuring I could do worse than continue whatever intrigued her to begin with. A chick this forward, common sense would suggest she might have something to say, but apparently she’s the exception. Like a fool I make one token effort of drawing even and speaking, nigh impossible as she vacillates only between the dislocated cackle and an airplane drone I associate with forcing a three year old to eat his vegetables. A reciprocal grab of her own sublime ass is all that makes sense, eventually, and to move away from her, to the front of the pack once more. A few blocks east of High, we reach her ex’s house. Within frat central though not a component piece, he lives on the second floor of a third rate apartment complex, as we walk up a flight of exterior stairs to reach it. After knocking, the door opens and we’re led into a tiny pad where the pervasive pot stench is thick enough to wear as a winter coat. Though the 1980s revival is in theory confined to our eventual destination, I wonder if its essence doesn’t seep into the surrounding neighborhoods. Resembling a bad sitcom character from that class deficient era, the shaggy, unkempt fellow answering the door actually introduces himself as Spider, Tara’s former/future lover. Our situation soon slants awkwardly, as we don’t know this Spider and neither of the two chicks ever have much to say, period, they certainly aren’t helping bridge the ice here. We stand around the disorderly, smoke drenched living room, television murmuring its hypnotic chant in the corner, a mewling cat worming its way through our redwood forest legs. “What’s his name?” I ask, reaching down to pick him up. “Sid,” Spider says. “As in Barrett?” I suggest with a chuckle. Spider stands staring at me for a moment, unblinking, responseless, sinks into an easy chair. As if shouldering unspeakable weariness, afflicted to the extreme that even maintaining a skeletal ruse of hospitality is far too difficult. Having reached our own breaking points en masse, leaving Tara behind to complete this personality deficient tandem, the rest of us split this weird scene with comical haste. Shannon might not speak with any more force or frequency, but I get the feeling that her reticence is directly traceable to reserve, rather than any deep seated neurosis a la Tara, and will pass as familiarity plants its roots. And contradicting whatever hopes I might have held otherwise, at least initially, I also sense she will stick around awhile, that she and Damon will last. They’ve refrained from sleeping together to reinforce this point, a double edged sword that he insists upon. Letting her interest in him climb to a fever pitch, while also insulating against the primordial male reflex, of which he is as guilty a practitioner as anyone, whereby any girl giving it up too easy is automatically dismissed from serious mate consideration, becoming just a pencil mark on the bedroom wall. An unfortunate, unconscious contradiction for which no other tonic avails us males. “At this point I wouldn’t even care if our sex life ended up being terrible,” she admits with a strong, bemused chuckle, suggesting unfamiliar ground, “that’s how much I like you.” His ambitions for Shannon both pure and vast, Damon’s dedicated to opening up the books, revealing all. That she know us, and know this land, that she’s expertly at ease with the entirety of his universe. At any rate, with her lip and eyebrow punctured, adorned in a manner mimicking Tara’s, her pallid flesh and somber aura, Shannon should feel perfectly comfortable tonight, in this freakish club that’s somehow become our surrogate home. Enduring the customary block long wait, the clock above the bar already reads 12:30 and much of our night is shot. Alan and Doug go in on a pitcher of the cheapest brew available, and, hitting it off as well as I envisioned they would, stand in our normal central observation post, by the cigarette machine. Shannon’s suddenly not feeling well, on the other hand, checking Damon’s own enthusiasm, and I’m not compelled to drink at all. With an impressive adaptability he rarely extends, meanwhile, Paul’s good cheer survives the bartender’s word of a Heineken outage. Though detesting the skunk draft beer, as he calls it, Paul orders a plastic cup of foamy Michelob, and, continuing his astonishing if potentially short lived transformation, agrees to join me as partner in a game of pool. For a change of pace we put some quarters upon the front table, in this corner of the bar we rarely occupy. Waiting our turn, joined by Damon and Shannon, through the mammoth plate glass window we watch college student swarms file past en route to other watering holes. Two clean cut, carbon copy males, constituents of that same army, have run this table for a while, but my first turn out I sink five consecutive balls. Though a considerable liability, my partner has little work ahead of him as we quickly swat these lads from their pedestal. “He’s awesome,” Paul whispers to Damon, who nods in polite disinterest, as if plotting his escape. Addressing me, Paul adds, “that was cool how you came out of the gate like that, showed em who’s boss.” “Hell yeah,” I grin. Paul never plays pool and watching him stab at the cue ball with his feeble left-handed shot always provides some much needed humor. Occasionally he strikes gold, but for the most part represents a pure handicap. Still, as the ring of onlookers gradually morphs, aspirants to the throne, we’re now up against a pair of tall cheerleader types, their abilities neatly delineated into the same demographics as ours. The sandy haired one, she’s a shade worse than Paul, while the Nordic blonde, squinting when she speaks, introducing herself to me as Amy, has impressive command of the table. We promptly dispatch them, impressive in its own right, doubly so considering the relentless force of Paul’s chatter, scarcely coming up for air as he analyzes, with renewed optimism, every strand of the Jennifer saga. Under normal circumstances, Damon we could not pry from an opportunity such as this, even in his strictly observational role. But citing Shannon’s mysterious illness, they evacuate. When the rotation of turns permits, Amy and I stand against the bar’s backside, separated from its cooler by a thin plywood wall, spray painted black, cracking wise about the world outside this window, those dressed with unintentional hilarity within, the ineptitude of our partners. Moments later, following our latest victory, Paul too absconds with puzzling velocity, not a word said. A clumsy instant transpires, the three of us eyeing one another, before I seize the modest foothold secured by this benign, serendipitous rivalry. With a bold stroke uncommon in my hands, though obvious perhaps to the rest of the human race, I suggest Amy take his place, and she acquiesces. Equally important, too, in a situation where jealousy or stubbornness can easily derail any intrusion, the other girl gamely goes elsewhere, presumably rejoining some displaced circle of friends. Cute in the face, even, or especially, the way it compresses around the eyes, expands into an automatic toothy smile, every time she talks, her cheeks the size and consistency of couch cushions, Amy has the voice of a cartoon chipmunk, but I scarcely care. We dismantle all takers foolish enough to come our way, extending beyond the half hour mark, and still no Paul. Scouring the bar for his girl in go-go boots, I presume. Not that I give him more than an afterthought, except in longing for a witness, someone to verify this unreal encounter. That the chemistry I detect isn’t a fanciful flight of my overworked imagination. Amy has a good six inches on me, too, but for once even this deal breaking disparity seems to have been suspended. History dooms those with long memories, however. If only I could have the robotic ability Alan possesses, to hit the reset button and forget on a nightly basis. Recalling myriad past encounters splayed out in similar fashion, all eventually crashing into the dirty slate floors of three dozen odd bars, I assume nothing will come of this, I act as my own chief assailant. Productive streaks in the past have presented themselves, too, based on such maneuvers, but when things are sour these distant victories are easily forgotten. Negative results generate more negativity, a self-perpetuating run broken only by some exceptional outside force. Asking for some chick’s phone number, only to realize, upon this request’s explosive impact, as her mouth droops at its corners and the lights leave her eyes, some impropriety on my part, a mistaken signal, that naught exists between us but the green felt and swinging lamp above. Or patronizing me with an actual dispensation of this seven digit code, sometimes real, sometimes invented, but either way given devoid of any intent, of any chance. Even so, only a question, and one I should drop upon Amy. Expecting failure, intuiting this a lame, expected move, and not wanting to paint myself so easily read, and anyway doesn’t everyone know that girls never go for shorter guys, and anyway isn’t it entirely possible we’ll bump shoulders later on tonight somewhere inside this club, and if not tonight then surely next Thursday, I don’t. Our procession of takers ends, and with blank expressions our eyes meet, and we let sticks roll from our fingers onto the table’s receptive surface. She slithers away toward the rest of her people, I rejoin mine. I encounter Doug and Alan where we left them, untold pitchers ago. Doug, a newcomer to this particular establishment, hesitates not the least, striking up conversations with each and every person walking past, whether some tall beauty in a tight dress, an average college joe, or some garish mutant fulfilling the club’s fishnet fetish majority. Unable to hear most of his rap, what does reach my ears is either illicit or crass, dependent upon the target. “Doug is cracking me up,” Alan turns to me and says. Impeccable dress aside, he of all people can relate to my crazed coworker. Doug’s rough and tumble bravura, graceless disregard, the ability to pound shot after shot of liquor on any given night. As far back as examination allows, junior high even, Alan always had it, or at least solicited it with greater force than we, that indefinable x factor of testosterone and swagger. The rest of us are making prank phone calls while he’s lifting weights, and military enlistment came as only the next logical step. Now with every impropriety Doug unleashes, Alan, gripping his cup fiercely in one hand, snaps back at the waist and wheezes his breathless laugh, eyes thrust open with maniacal delight, meeting mine. In a slightly curved line, I’m watching Alan who’s watching Doug, the chain of reciprocal amusement by which Paul is able to slip in beside me, unobserved. “I’m takin off, man,” he groans into my ear, the pounding dance beats at their voluminous extreme in this central post. “I drank about half of that Michelob and went outside to puke.” “What?!” I exclaim, the inferences I’m drawing wholly transparent. He’s quick to diffuse before I’ve said a word more. “Oh no, no, it wasn’t the beer,” he insists, his good cheer gone, splattered in the grass and Papa Joe’s ashes, “my mom cooked dinner before I came down, I think it must’ve been something I ate.” He skulks away as unobtrusively as he’d appeared, and I turn my attentions back toward the other two. Refilling their cups with the dregs of the latest pitcher, the cigarette machine’s rooftop their makeshift table. “I can’t believe Damon fuckin split like that,” Alan’s commiserating to Doug, “whatever, dude.” “Eraaah,” Doug begins, his peculiar trademark intro to speculative stabs, matters of opinion, “I can’t fault a guy for goin home to get some pussy, though.” A great talker, but not much of a dancer. Content with his role, shooting the breeze here, Alan and I leave Doug behind, we throw ourselves to the lions again upon this dance floor. Our specific targets, scouting in advance - for why set our sights any lower than the most distant, brightest nebulae, why waste time on anything else - two tall, gorgeous blondes swaying with a detached, oddly alluring eroticism near the middle. Maybe overworked imaginations again, but they keep looking our way, we agree, with curious expressions, vaporous, intrigue laden smiles. We arrive at our solution simultaneously, somehow, start dancing with this trio of average looking ladies just next to the blonds, to fan the flames of their interest. Reality soon smacks us in forehead, however, as the blondes truly don’t give a damn about Alan and me, steal away to showcase their beauty somewhere else. But the consolation prize is we’re now dancing with this other trio, average only by comparison, without even intending to. Pressing our bodies against theirs, as they share far more obvious expressions of open interest. All three look too young for this place, not that it matters. The most attractive one introduces herself as Jackie, accompanied by a Phoebe and some Russian girl whose name we can’t quite get a handle on. Jackie continually insists they’re each between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-seven, which we’re not buying, but the house lights explode into action all too soon and, chorusing communal laughter at our disbelief, they whip out their IDs in unison. These we believe still bogus, yet the stamped on dates jibe with their stories convincingly enough to have gotten them in the door, if nothing else. I rack my brain for something witty to say, as the five of us huddle amid this rapidly emptying floor, making inane small talk. Even Alan appears at a rare loss for words, his usual charming repartee, or, barring that, some drunken inappropriateness. Just when I’ve given up hope and the girls bandy weighted telepathic expressions of an imminent departure, Alan leans over, says something into Jackie’s ear. She smirks, shoots him a lascivious lateral glance, mutters something. Though unable to hear either end, with a response like hers, he clearly threw out something juicy, met with complete endorsement. The girls wave goodbyes and bail, while I impatiently probe for answers. “What did she say to you?” I demand. “Said she’d probably be back next week,” he tells me with a shrug. We rejoin Doug, who’s wrapping up his discussion with some old guy in a black leather jacket, then this gangly brunette, basically everyone who filters past en route to the exit. Alan’s looking around the now well lit room in every direction, and I figure he’s breaking his neck scanning for females, except he wears this look of absolute confusion. “Wait a minute.....where’s Paul?” he asks. “He went home a long time ago, man, didn’t you know?” I tell him, “said he took one sip of his Michelob and went outside to puke.” “WHAT?” Alan wails, “he went outside to puke? Are you serious?!” “Well yeah,” I shrug. “Oh! Oh!” Alan screams, “He shall NEVER live this one down!” I enjoy arguing with Paul as much as the next guy, but nothing, nothing, ever generates the heat those two do when locking horns. If Alan makes a point of filing away this morsel, he surely will, if only because Paul would do, has done, the same. The night alive with its touchstone yelps and whistles, foot traffic gradually thins the further north we walk. Bodies fill streets and sidewalks with the restless, directionless energy of those not yet finished partying no matter what clocks and closing bar doors might insist, but even these lost souls will find a port somewhere, eventually, be it a house, a coffee shop, be it over all night donuts. Or better still, an unresolved encounter with the opposite sex, a bedroom end zone whose goal line represents the one true palliative beyond any intoxicant, guaranteed to shutter this evening to sleep. Nearing the corner of High and 16th, where we make the diagonal cut home, a chick shouts down to us from some rooftop, striving to seize our attention. She implores us to draw closer, and we do, squinting to locate her. Barely visible in the crook of shadows between two peaks, she’s spotted above a bank and some closet sized convenience store, a basement dive called Not Al’s Too. Craning our necks skyward, however, even Doug and Alan, with their far better eyesight, can’t discern whether she’s anyone worth meeting. “Hey there Suzie!” Doug hollers up to her. “How do we get up there?” Alan wonders. But she’s shouting some intelligible gibberish now, howling like a lunatic, laughing at jokes we can’t begin to comprehend. With a crash this bottle of beer shatters on the sidewalk by our feet, glass exploding on the concrete, followed swiftly by another, then another. Whatever psychoses drift through her pinhole head, they lead this lunatic astray, launching all her empties at us for no detectable reason. “What the fuck?” we announce more or less in unison. “Fuck that bitch!” Alan says, and, spying a brick on the sidewalk nearby, grabs this piece of masonic retribution, heaves it with all his might up at the girl. Just barely, he misses his mark. But now we look up and some dude joins her, reinforcements for this puzzling attack. They rain a wide arsenal of projectiles upon us, and while I remember from history class that the army with the highest ground almost always wins, Doug and Alan are doing their best to fight a losing battle with bricks and rocks and anything else they can find laying around. I press my body against the side of the building but there’s no talking sense to those two, they’re both drunk and ready for war. “Pussy!” “Motherfucker!” Still, I’m perfectly aware that for us to continue standing here, we’re sitting ducks. Hard telling what our rooftop enemies might come up with once they run out of bottles - arrows, a boiling pot of oil, a cannonball they catapult in tandem. “Come on guys, let’s get the hell out of here,” I suggest again but this time they listen, finally coming to the same conclusion I’ve drawn moments earlier. We vacate, and if the remainder of our walk is spent bitching, I’m fine with this passive approach. It still beats waiting for the next glass bomb to burst upon our scalps. Safely inside again, we find Damon and Shannon on the loveseat in Alan’s room, watching National Lampoon’s Vacation on video. Spent, Alan soon crashes on the jam room floor upstairs, while Doug, by attrition, inherits his spacious bed. Rented from the downtown library, this is the third time we’ve viewed this movie in the past two days. “You should hook me up with Tara,” I recommend to Shannon. “It’s funny you say that,” she laughs, “I was just telling Damon I should hook Tara up with you.”

Twelve pack in hand, I ask our cashier girl, “what’s the damage?” Without listening to her reply, I respond with a reflex whistle, meant to indicate an exceptionally steep price. As I fish through my wallet for the dough, Alan explodes into laughter behind me, and we exit this all night gas station at 17th and Summit. “Dude, that was totally my dad,” he chuckles, repeats the transaction verbatim. “That’s funny,” I note, as we cross 17th and continue up the sidewalk, “I probably got it from my dad. Certain sayings I think you were required to learn if you were born in the 1950s.” “Definitely,” Alan agrees, “shit and fall back in it?” “Right. Or what about go piss up a rope? Your dad ever say that one?” “Oh yeah,” Alan nods, with the gravity of a bearded sage, “all the time.” Considering what a week he’s had, Alan’s levity might strike some as peculiar. But though I’m frequently cited as the world’s most apathetic individual, Alan never garners enough credit in this regard. No one ever notices the degree to which he too can let everything roll off his back. Watching, by some weird fluke, the evening news one night with him, we catch a segment detailing this ring of postal workers recently busted, cashing checks they’ve stolen from the mail. Sure enough, a day later the phone rings, confirming that his own missing checkbook had fallen victim to this same coterie. He subsequently files two separate statements at the downtown police station and two more at the bank, but they’ve yet to sort out just how much he’s due, and when. Yet as mellow as he remains, you’d think, contrarily, that he might have won the lottery. Last seen and left behind at Frank’s jam night, Alexis returns from Ashland even loopier than she went. Announcing that she’s dropped out of school, she’s also breaking her lease on account of an inconsolably “psycho” roommate, and asks Alan to ask us if she can move in here. As is often the case, Alan presents the request with complete seriousness, though pretending he’s half jesting and already knows the answer. When Damon and I share incredulous glances, fire these back at him, he then laughs along with us as if inside the joke as well, all this time, he had no intentions of letting her room with us. Days later, Alexis and bizarro bisexual friend Sara show up, soaking wet, attired in layer after layer of tattered hippie rags. They claim to have sprinted here from a few blocks over. Holding tickets for a Primus show at the Newport Music Hall in an hour, they were partying at a house on campus beforehand, and dashed here in the rain to see if we cared to join them. Alan’s not home, but Damon and I politely decline. “Aw man!” Alexis curses, as if genuinely expecting our compliance. Next thing we know, not a week gone by, Alan’s showing up with a half dozen cardboard boxes, filled to the bursting point with canned vegetables, dry goods, and other basic kitchen staples. Alexis split the scene, she quit her job and moved back to Mansfield to live with the folks. These mass produced name brand gifts, though likely to go unused, represent her noble donation to our cause. Yet as if some unseen exchange program demands reciprocation, Damon’s sister visits, scouting out this town for her own pending transfer. A short, full figured blonde, Melissa counts down the days of her senior high school year, contemplates her collegiate options. As blue eyed and baby faced as her age would imply, she allows the three of us to wheel her around the portion of campus she’s old enough to see, though we’re forced an eventual return home for the grownup beverage climax, roundtable beers in Alan’s bedroom. “I feel like you’re my own little sister,” Alan confesses, “I pretty much used to change to your diapers.” “Oh whatever!” she merrily protests, her checks bunched up and blazing red, like cherry tomatoes. Nearly shivering with the thrill of glimpsing this adult world, she nonetheless takes Alan seriously enough to crash in his room, on the musty brown and yellow plaid loveseat. Trusting him, though advising that if he tries anything improper she’ll run upstairs, negotiate lengthwise the nailheads protruding from our jam room floor. Alan asks about jacking off, but exacts a similar response. Thanks to Nicole’s resurgent interest, neither scenario is necessary. Morning pulls its abrupt breaking and entering act on us, that degenerate thief, and Melissa departs, replaced now by Alan’s suddenly sex crazy playmate. Mitigating his other hassles, these past two weeks Nicole has thrust her eager, near constant presence prone upon his queen sized sheets. Whereas for a month prior she visited not at all, this liaison frenzy suggests Nicole has taken stock of her pregnancy, realizing that intercourse soon will become impractical, resolving to cram as much dick in as she can before her third trimester. Presumably the father, whom she’s still purportedly serious with as well, will begin asking questions at some point, too, about these frequent disappearances, though this doesn’t concern Alan any more than it does her. She arrives in the early evening, during the magic window where Paul claims we’re never home. Frequently, perhaps not, yet tonight Nicole’s brought a sideshow attraction to keep even Damon and me around. With Alan entertaining his guest behind a closed bedroom door, we utilize the kitchen radio, it’s true, to tune out any pleasure fraught gasps she might unleash. But we also have Lisa. An enormous piece of flesh accompanying Nicole in lieu of bipolar September, Lisa must keep us occupied for as long as our attentions hold. Beyond her uncommon heft, this Lisa can at least claim an engaging personality, a smile resplendent as our downtown skyline come nightfall. Unfortunately, the short list of her attributes ends here. Dishwater blonde locks trace saucer sized curls, curtailed at the shoulder in a grandmother’s gravy bowl cut. And with plastic, light pink eyeglasses nearly as round and wide as her monstrous pant seat, gaudy slashes of bright red lipstick, dangling gold heart earrings, her substitute schoolmarm appearance is virtually complete. We sit around the table by thoughtless ritual, as its surface serves no practical purpose. Beer, cigarette, and fast food empties crowd every available inch, joined at the moment of this anthropological dig by a number of half empty glasses, pop cans, someone’s checkbook - not Alan’s, I’m guessing - salt and pepper shakers and the soy sauce bottle, remains of our No. 1 Chinese dinner. Crammed into these stiff lawn chairs, though such terms, weighed against her, only loosely apply to Damon or myself. Whether conscious compensation, whether unknowing self- protective instinct, or, far more likely, whether some evolutionary synthesis of the two she’s developed across the years, Lisa projects at all times an extroverted sensibility tweaked to the extreme. With no visible traces of either irony or modesty, she eats up two hours in an associative warble, stumbling jaggedly through the garden of her, so she claims, extensive sexual past. We hadn’t asked, but now that she’s on this haphazard reminiscent roll, Damon and I cannot resist besieging her with every question imaginable - positions, frequencies, preferences. All answered with soul baring candor, unless we mistake what’s merely an impressive imagination. “I know I’m hot, though, I can get any guy I want,” she tells us ten or twelve times. Leaving the room to empty her pinspot bladder again, Damon and I release our pent up laughter, crippled by it. In this spirit, she also volunteers her unsolicited, and surely sizeable, panties. Not the kind of conquest we typically strive for, but we’ll take them, bringing our collection to an even half dozen. Her body an easy two hundred pounds plus, Lisa’s pink, cotton blanket now spans a greater diameter than any other item upon our kitchen wall - a collection that includes a No. 1 Chinese menu, an actual 1997 calendar opened to the correct month, the Bob Marley poster and its bogus autograph, as well as one advertising local reggae band Dub Enforcement Agency’s upcoming gig at Ruby’s. I once considered September’s candy apple red ones a somewhat large specimen, but these babies are more than twice that size. “And see, the thing is, I’ve got four breasts, too,” she explains, though it’s not exactly a subject we’ve spent much time pondering. “Wait. What do you mean, four breasts?” Damon asks. “I’ve got four breasts,” she insists, “my mom has em, too, and they’re all fully functional.” Lisa lifts her shirt and pushes the bra aside, but detecting this alleged mutation apparently requires a microscope. Below each flat yet somehow jiggling tit, true, a pair of mole like spots are found, near symmetrical, though even so, and never mind how it is she conducted her investigation anyway, referring to these as operational nipples seems preposterous. Still, the moment begs for permanent capture, and Damon runs upstairs to get his camera. Returning, he snaps my grinning caricature, as I point to the alleged anomalies in scholarly fashion, a closed, proximate pair of scissors my wand. We switch places, and he sits beside Lisa, captured in this flash facing him and roaring with her chest exposed forevermore. Damon slinks off in the space between her frequent restroom visits to take a leak himself. While he’s gone, Lisa hops from her chair into his, and while such a move halves the distance between us, her transfer has nothing to do with me. Oh, she plays it off as such, turning exceptionally chummy, though I refuse to believe she’s failed to observe, as I just now have, that the lawn chair most recently vacated is mangled beyond all hope, unsalvageable. Her two hundred plus pound cargo? Yeah, well, it’s almost snapped her seat apart, right down the middle. Or it could be that she honestly doesn’t know. A remote possibility, at best, but she certainly flaps her gums with oblivion, maintaining the unfettered flow. Whichever the case, Damon emerges, and instantly, unwittingly, blows away with a finger point any cover my silence has given her. “Look at that chair!” Damon squeals, stopping cold near the kitchen archway, “it’s bent all to hell! How the fuck did that happen!?” Why it doesn’t occur to him that Lisa’s gargantuan frame is to blame for this disaster, I cannot say. I’m concerned only with conveying, through body language, that he must desert this line of inquiry, immediately. But Damon remains, though genuine, obtuse as well, unable to seize my drift. “No dude, it’s always been like that,” I rebut, shaking my head and drawing a finger across my neck. “No, I’m telling you!” he insists, “that wasn’t like that yesterday!” “Trust me,” I reply, jabbing my own index finger now in Lisa’s direction, on the sly while her head pivots toward him, “it was. It’s been like that awhile.” “I swear to God, man, it wasn’t!” Damon chuckles with disbelief, shaking his head. He has a seat in the ruined chair, but by night’s end, it leans in disgrace against one wall, spent. Even so, once Nicole has left with Lisa, and we’ve laughed our stomachs sore, nothing Damon or I have to say about any of the preceding compares with Alan’s timeless quote, uttered as he shuffles, sleepy eyed, into the kitchen. His bristle sharp hair looking ruffled as it ever can, his unblemished eyes landing on that bright pink panty curtain. “Whew,” he whistles, just as I’d done at the gas station yesterday, “that’s one of those things they use to stop jets on an aircraft carrier.”

Revenge lingers at the forefront, but, again, compliance sells out any interim. I feel like such a fraud. Only an idiot plays rebel, I know I know I know, surfing just above poverty, with a tab in the neighborhood of nine grand from everything he screwed up before. Compromise still rankles, and I lament the absent imagination, the phantom balls, to come up with anything better. Intimidated by Alan’s trendy salon in the underground campus mall, feeling I surely lack the requisite cool those sophisticated stylists demand, I end up below the street regardless, at a place called Colors. With a name like this, I should have known better, should have peered beneath its university locale. Buried in the basement of a building at 11th and High, next to Skully’s though boasting a separate sunken stairwell, this barbershop goes by the moniker Colors but there’s one predominant shade, and it isn’t mine. I don’t consider myself a racist, yet in breezing through their door as if nothing’s awry, while at the same time noting that all three barbers are black, and that each head protruding from those silver bibs is also black, and the way they smile at one another as I enter, as does the small troupe of waiting patrons, also entirely black, I flop into one of the cracked leather seats and pick up the nearest magazine without pausing to register its title. Fidget, continually examine the mounted wall clock, and after five minutes that feel like hours, I rise and bolt. One slow march home and a phone book consultation later, I’m in my car, cresting the hill of West Lane Avenue beyond campus. The unfamiliar altitude atop this hill, Upper Arlington, its pastoral tree lined prosperity, the flush green lawns between these well spaced houses rich, detached, immoderate, much like the residents themselves. As if fertilized by proxy through the conspicuous manure aroma, enameling the breeze here via adjacent OSU farms. I find myself at a modest wooden shack, painted bloodsucker red, lost amid this opulence, a mile west of the university. This charming little old school barber shop reminiscent of ye olde Mayberry, with two elderly gentlemen chopping locks and, somehow, a really hot brunette chick whose waterfall ringlets drop halfway down her back. Time slows down in a warp light years removed from the outside world, though comfortably, for reasons half a universe away from my Colors experience. Eight dollars apparently doesn’t reserve the brunette’s chair, but it, and a two dollar tip, will buy a brand new me. “It’s perfect!” Keisha squeals, as I’m gliding past her hostess stand. Keisha rarely works morning shifts, but will periodically pick up a weekend morning, such as this, a Saturday shift representing just the second we’ve worked together. I float along the three carpeted steps into my deserted dining room, and after clocking in, emerge from the tunnel now beside Keisha’s post. Joining her already are a handful of other females, whispering with warm cheer as they cast their approval my way. “We were just talking about how terrific it looks,” Danielle says, with a broad grin, rarely exposed and goofier than her gruff demeanor might imply. Though pulling lunch shifts together since January, she and I have probably not spoken three words to one another. Heavy set and squat, Danielle’s straw tinted tassels spill equally across both shoulders, split by a clip perched halfway up the back of her head, with one small, literal shock near the bangs a permanent, pigment deficient white, neatly aligned to a similar spot on her right eyebrow. Her nose slightly large, drooping, she samples not only hair color but the calcified sneer, as well, of a crotchety old woman, finding this world a continual fountain of idiocies that never fail to both enforce her poor opinion of the human race while at the same time, paradoxically, amuse her. By lateral extension, though often cranky, she isn’t calculating like the other chicks over there, which makes her own moodiness somewhat of a riot. Danielle is also far more dependable and trustworthy than the rest of that squad, she doesn’t swipe tables. She works the clubhouse exclusively, but isn’t a clubhouse bitch. Recessed inside my own familiar den, I’m training others to do things the dining room way. Or not, according to those who sign our checks. Rookies shadow Sandy in the clubhouse and she’s designated “star trainer,” it says so on her name badge and she pulls down $7.50 an hour, plus tips, for the honor; these same amateurs trail me or anyone else in a similar manner, and we’re not officially training them, we’re still only making our three thirteen. For this reason alone the waitress congregation despises Sandy en masse, but to me it’s a meaningless anger. Sandy or no Sandy, none of us are seeing that kind of cash outlay. One such charge I’m given, an already jaded sass named Ashley, spends this dull afternoon hyping Studio 35. Short and delicate, dark haired, she paints her nails before coming here each morning, an oddity. Far more common is the relentless attitude she projects, too bored with everything to even bother being bored. She drinks about a gallon of soda per shift, and is out by the dumpster taking smoke breaks the rest of the time. A Courtney, a Tom, a Sean, these are some of the other new hires dropped into my feeble paws this week, but today I’ve just got Ashley, and this tall, blue eyed, hoarse throated kid with a blonde crewcut named Chris McAuley. Chris wears this faded red ballcap into work each morning before whipping it off and getting down to business. He speaks nothing else but of the Damon’s he once worked at in the Mill Run subdivision, a monomania already earning him the nickname Mill Run; that, and as a hardened movie buff, he’s constantly quoting semi-obscure lines, which is how we got on this subject in the first place. “You guys haven’t checked out Studio 35 yet?” Ashley says, amazed, I think, though in this murky alcove our faces aren’t entirely visible. A dilapidated dive tavern, she says, in the heart of church solemn Clintonville, which just happens to hoist a full size movie screen against its back wall, which buries the whole tacky Flickers franchise beneath a mound of shame. Studio 35, surely I stumble into your dim, smoky aisles some evening on my own accord, with or without the intervention of this righteous nymph, surely I wrap popcorn buttered fingers around a frosted mug of ale while seated on a barstool I can’t even see. Conning roommates along for the freakshow thrill, we’ll crane our necks to imbibe the latest reel of film, as vicious cramps creep slowly up these same necks, absolved only through the continued application of still more alcohol. Surely, o holy tabernacle, surely. But the way she’s drumming up its merits, I feel like chucking everything else aside this instant. If nothing else, Ashley might have a bright future in advertising. “I think they’re playing Scream this week, you guys should go check it out,” she insists. “Dude, I just saw Scream the other night, and I have to admit it freaked me out,” Mill Run chuckles, “I mean, it wasn’t great or anything, but I was going through one of those phases at the time where I was thinking a lot about how someday I would die, you know? So I’m already all depressed. Then I saw that, and I couldn’t sleep for shit, I was basically up the rest of the night.” If only Ashley could show the same enthusiasm for her trade as she does hawking nightlife. With this glorious summit as the apex of her efforts, she never works another shift. Well, I’ve got troubles, but I drag my idle mass here each morning, at least, and to the moonlighting gig behind it each night. Though in the case of the latter, maybe not for long. Doug’s got me drinking cocktails from a water bottle behind the meat shop counter, lamentable if not for the luxury a part time job affords. Where termination wields no sway, for everything I net here counts as gravy. Actually, blaming Doug for this on the clock debauchery isn’t quite accurate, as conception rests upon my lap alone. But I feel his outlaw presence lurking beneath these renegade impulses, and anyway, he’s mighty distressed this initial amaretto sour foray, to learn that I haven’t brought him libations as well. “You dickhead!” he curses, and each subsequent eve we drink in tandem. My day ends twelve hours after it began, slumping through the narrow divide between these two brick houses. A resolute barrier permitting no light, each stands three stories against the inkwell sky, framing this ominous tunnel, the walkway connecting both buildings underneath my feet. I round the corner and stumble headlong across Stephanie. Still a mystery, this downstairs neighbor, nearly forgotten somehow along these madcap weeks. Tennis shoed soles grazing our cement front steps, knees advance at forty five degrees, and her tight behind rests lightly upon the porch’s wooden edge. Absently petting Stella, murmuring indecipherable lullabies into the ragged mutt’s ear, her oblique smirk rises to meet my own, as if caught in the act of some minor crime, guilty but defiant. I flop without a thought beside her. Beaded sweat gathers along her collar, her brow, the undercarriage of her skull. The mounted porch light, infrequently equipped with a functioning bulb, scatters our distorted outlines onto the chipped sidewalk, yet isn’t necessitated, per se, for she too is glowing at the moment of my interruption. Not quite post-coital, but more in the manner of someone just returned from the gym. “Thank god you guys finally got rid of that mannequin,” she chuckles, in typical dark fashion, she ignites and breathes life into a cigarette, casting a sidelong smile my way, “that thing was starting to creep me out a little bit.” Its head crammed full with spaghetti brains, we leave the mannequin rotting in our kitchen as long as the stench will permit. Once this becomes impossible, our plastic goddess defends this castle externally, raising her jagged fluorescent sword upon this very porch. Weeks transpire. At some point, however, motivated not so much by disgust as by the hassle of continually standing her upright, and the aesthetic horror of a joke worn out, we determine she’s ready to meet her maker. Even in executing this theoretically simple task, however, normalcy never manages a toehold. “Dude, let’s make her feet stick out of the dumpster!” Damon enthuses, “maybe the cops will think it’s a dead body!” And so fifteen minutes is spent arranging this. Stephanie drives a late 80s Taurus, parked directly before us, and while our conversation proves no less pedestrian than her choice of automobile, I’m so starved for action this meager morsel feels heavensent. Her restaurant, she explains, has a triangle shaped bar, a hybrid menu both trendy and casual. Jazz and lobsters on Sundays, its trademark hook. She has vague plans for a secretarial future, an office job, something professional, while I feel the need to mention my writing. Alone listening to our kitchen radio, an ungodly crash resounds from the floor below. Reclining, I snap upright, and set this book aside. We parted ways not five minutes ago, allowing my attention time to scurry elsewhere, burrow deep within this paperback, though she’s certainly reclaimed it now. Subconsciously examining our recent exchange, too, as I read, but wedging itself between these preoccupations, that incongruous peal, if I’m not mistaken, was the distinctive clang of a drawer slamming shut. A drawer? A drawer....maybe a drawer.....a dresser drawer...... Hell yes! Comprehension pierces the horizon and I fly down these stairs with all the force tiptoed feet can muster. Still, even in lining up behind the familiar peepholes and analyzing her nude body again, even as she faces me with a slow, erogenous strip tease, something about the encounter, a subliminal discord I can’t place, skews awry, a nagging sensation at the back of my overstimulated dome. Stephanie removes her familiar white cotton bra, cups her breasts and inspects them with that same maddening smirk. She slips her fingers, two on each hip, between the thin waistband of her faded, housewife modest panties, shimmies these to the floor. Lazily meandering, she quits this room. I hear her shower sputter to life. Only in reviewing this remote encounter later can its disharmonies fully register. For starters, while she still stops short of facing the peepholes directly, imagination alone can’t construct her progressively liberated carriage, the satisfied leer, upward tilt of chin, squared off against that door with increasing irreverence. She doesn’t know about these holes, or so we’ve always believed. But second, and most important, though last to sink in, the method by which she summoned me, or appeared to have, whichever the case. Surely it’s no coincidence her dresser draw slams shut with unprecedented impact, awakening me from near stupor way up on this second floor. No coincidence I audit this commotion, discover Stephanie at this instant shedding clothes, with a sensual quake, before my roving eye. Or is it? The trapdoor yawns above another maze, creating ten more questions for every one it’s answered. I will present these latest findings, this most up to date twist, when my roommates return, but they emerge from my tale, too, more puzzled than they’ve entered. Barring the blunt edge of direct interrogation, we may never discern just how much Stephanie knows. Whether she did in fact broadcast her disrobing, beckon me to her chambers. I can turn this novelty over and over again in my hands, however, and no definitive results will surface. Far more effective, I rewind our earlier conversation, I think back to the positive reception at my day job. No real secret here, the name of the game is aggression, but goddammit I can’t bullwhip myself into motion for anything. From whence originates such excessive passivity? Well, refraining from masturbation hadn’t worked, a peak far too imposing to surmount. One incident a week seems much more reasonable.

Doug manipulates his way through social circles with a mastery seldom seen. Some of his more obvious tactics revealed themselves long ago, but as the workweeks stomp forward, I become increasingly aware of the subtleties, accruing and refining the intricacies of approach. In the wake of their open flirtations that night at her dining room table, Barb has developed considerable animosity toward both Doug and Alison. She has also, whether related or not, quit her job here as a bagger. Lesson number one, then, makes its presence fully felt, that of the subtle upgrade. Every female, regardless how average, always has a hot friend or two, it’s merely a matter of extending your influence. Establishing contact with Alison, she’s calling Doug up at work now on her own, and Barb is cut from the loop entirely. Alison is no gem, but she’s plenty attractive and boasts an actual personality - two qualities sorely lacking in her overweight friend. Twice thus far, Alison has called our place of employment, asking if Doug and I feel like partying, either alone or with some Gina chick, a roommate, after we close the shop down. Just as I defer to him in arranging our adventures, without a license or keys - I still have one, but not both - Doug has little choice but appeal in my direction for a lift. By some astronomical fluke, on both occasions I have essentially unbreakable plans elsewhere, and yet these inadvertent blowoffs likely enhance our standing. We’re playing hard to get without even meaning to. And throughout, I feel a gaining momentum. Two hillbilly girls in the deli, both falling in appearance somewhere between Alison and Barb, ask Doug and I out for drinks one night; nothing major comes of it, but I for one am far more eager than body language would indicate. Just so, considering the success we’re having sticking to his formula, I hesitate veering too sharply from it. I entertain the notion of working one or both of them on the side, particularly as Doug seems disinterested. But as the younger acolyte regarding his instructor to the letter, attempting to match his casual cool, I exhibit no interest, either, I hang back and follow the lead of a burgeoning legend. Friday night is here at last, and with it Alison’s long awaited party. Alan drives across town and parks here just after nine, as we load up on a small arsenal of alcohol. Originally plans call for all three of us to make the short jaunt over in my car, but one potentially major snag occurs to me now. “You mind taking your truck?” I ask Alan, “I just realized my plates are expired.” “That’s cool,” he nods, “how long?” “Almost two months,” I grin. A half mile beyond our store, Sawmill intersects Bethel. To the west this road we’re on dips toward the far from majestic Scioto River, rises again along the far bank and rolls into a gradual countryside. Sawmill shoots north, into a series of strip malls, department stores, and apartment complexes, filling in with considerable distaste the distance between here and Dublin. Ten years ago even Mansfield radio, Mansfield television, are rife with spots, burnished onto every other ad, touting Sawmill Road as the latest mindblowing commerce mecca, sprung to fruition overnight. Now, it’s hard to see the hype, or how anyone could have ever generated much enthusiasm for such a visually tepid zone. A straight, flat line virtually devoid of vegetation, constructed of the blandest materials. Buildings arranged with no imagination whatsoever, just another commercial blight in a city chock full of them. This passes for progress here in the Midwest. Alison lives off Abbey Church, a side street another half mile up Sawmill. These townhomes curve around in idiosyncratic clusters, and her back door faces the four lane thoroughfare, where OSU plants its omnipresent hooks into still more land. Across the boulevard, a sprawling field dotted with pork and cattle, and the university’s own airport, its minuscule Don Scott Field, congests with minimal fanfare the heart of this otherwise bucolic meadow. A small tower, a beacon, a banked light runway for its minor takeoffs and landings. Four seat planes climb high into the night, bound either for instruction or diversion, but our own dreams remain steadfast upon the soil. Irrevocably bound to and by the social chains assembled in a still new city, evolving in patterns imperceptible to the naked eye. These gatherings, full of idle chat and loud music, rarely noteworthy, interchangeable from block to block, and yet the culmination of so much, for each fragment of this restless mass, who and where we are, that which we are seeking. “I don’t know about these young chicks, though,” Doug pontificates, debating Alison and her ilk, “an older chick, now, she knows what she wants. I was at this older woman’s house not too long ago, I just came right out and said hey! Why dontcha come over here and blow me!...... she said okay and went to work.” “Oh yeah?” Alan nods his approval, squinty eyed and sideways, as if receiving the greatest wisdom nugget ever fallen on human ears. Doug just has a way of making even the most absurd ramblings resound as such. Driving with his usual one elbow crooked upon the wheel method, hands free, Alan whips into Alison’s third world parking lot. Half dust half asphalt, as if the contractor ran out of cash or simply forgot to finish, tires bounce and coast across the cracks, the potholes and the peaks, whipping past the other camped out cars and eventually coming to rest deep within her front lawn, near the door. Here, apartments are tied together in groups of three and four, rather than one contiguous building, but in keeping with this district’s theme, a nature lover’s nightmare, trees are found nowhere, the sandpaper stiff landscape has as much variance as your average ironing board. “Hi!” Alison enthuses, smiling broadly, clearly thrilled to see us. Answering the door herself in sharp evening attire, a blouse and slacks, painted face and gold earrings, all commendable upgrades from her standard appearance, “I’m glad you guys could make it!” Smoke thick and conversation deafening, living room lights blaze away and house the majority, but as if acclimating the attendees gradually, she’s left the kitchen dark, virtually empty. I introduce Alan, we ask where to put the beer. Opening her refrigerator, however, our eyes nearly burst from their sockets to witness this array, stacks upon stacks of beer, bottles and cans, whole pyramids of brew. We both agree that never before have our eyes beheld a reserve this plentiful and, struggling to cram our twelve cans into what few niches remain, give up, sling the half full cardboard box onto her counter. Doug, as expected, belches and declines comment. We make our way into the living room, where a sea of unfamiliar faces await, the only exceptions being Barb and this hyperactive bagger named Sean O’Hara, all of sixteen. Doug doesn’t much care for Sean but he’s an amusing burnout even at this young age. Often arriving for work with his arms scraped up from skateboarding, also, boasting of some run in with the law. “He talks too much, all these young kids talk too much,” Doug says. Yet my own silence is never a calculated stance, it’s simply an extension of the basic personality. I sail through each day saying as little as possible, figuring it’s best to show the world just a taste and have them adore me, than to put the entire wax effigy on display, as they dismantle it piece by piece. But people just aren’t that perceptive, and I’m beginning to understand that piecemeal revelation isn’t the greatest strategy. Unless beating them over the head daily with the wealth of your attributes, they’ll never notice anything about you. I liken myself to a band member in a popular rock group whose solo records always bomb. A solid fraction of the core, yet someone whose subtle strengths, however formidable, fall unheard when presented alone. This philosophical outlook rarely impacts much at a party like this. Or maybe this cipher status stems merely from having any kind of philosophy at all, for anyone doing any thinking of any nature at a social function isn’t going to score. I’m just never sure which direction to turn, occasions like these, how to proceed. Every such happening, a small ration of females is outnumbered three to one by the horny male contingent, and this tremendous advantage, only naturally, inflates all womanly stock. Feeling as beauty queens all, they act accordingly. So while perhaps believing, deep down, most of these clowns don’t possess one tenth the merit as I, to stand back and let intrinsic virtue speak for itself is often impossible. Nobody cares. And ignored long enough in this melee, against all intentions to the contrary you’re jumping into the fray, the fourth moron pawing over some chick you’re not even all that interested in to begin with. You tell yourself that any girl is better than none, and besides, you’re not going to let one of these idiots beat you to the punch. Barb eats up half the couch with her reclined sprawl, and another girl of similar heft beside her does the same. Attempting to stand on some imperceptible higher ground, Barb turns a cold shoulder to Doug, feigning complete engrossment in what her sidekick is saying. I doubt, however, Doug notices the least, too busy orchestrating a Circle of Death game on the coffee table to jump through hoops with some jealous nineteen year old. Rustling up a veritable militia of participants, the circle commences in earnest, and Barb tries making a huge, vocal issue of her refusal to play. Barb’s own people pay her little attention, though, and she soon, miffed at this across the board snub, abandons this fiesta in a huff, never to return. Alison vacillates between the two rooms, entertaining guests, unable to break away and relax for any length of time. As the evening progresses, she’s spending more time in the kitchen, where casual conversationalists not interested in the drinking game are gathered. Meanwhile Sean’s got this gigantic dragon bong he’s purchased at the campus Waterbeds N’ Stuff, highly touted even before this party, and the entire living room becomes a cloud of pot smoke within minutes as roughly ninety percent of party’s population takes turns hitting it. “I probably would if I wasn’t in the military,” Alan says. “Yeah, same here,” this Jim guy sitting next to him adds. Like Alan, he’s a weekend warrior with the national guard, and the two of them initiate an extended dialogue on the subject. The beer we’ve purchased mainly for the benefit of Alan and Doug, I maintain, instead, two bottles by my side throughout. Kneeling on the thinly carpeted floor, surrounded by nearly a dozen participants, these rest against my left leg, that of the rock bottom vodka, and strawberry daiquiri mixer, my glass kept within arm’s reach upon the densely packed table. The sugary crimson sludge meets its mate at the bottom of the glass and these people all think me disgusting, for drinking this concoction warm, without the buffer of a single ice chunk. But removing myself from the table and wading into the kitchen every ten minutes to prepare a refill is out of the question - too much effort, and besides, I don’t dare allow myself to fall behind. Our group tires of pounding drinks at Doug’s frenetic pace, though, and we shift into the far more innocuous card game euchre, another unfortunate staple of this whitebread belt Midwest. I know little but the basics, and that two or three matches a night push my tedium to the limit. Fortunately, this Melanie chick I’m paired with both enjoys and excels at such contests, welding us together as a modestly successful combo. Boisterous doesn’t even begin to describe Melanie, another cute young thing in our outfit du jour, that of the khaki slacks. Seemingly all these girls wear, anymore. In Melanie’s instance accessorized by a thick wool sweater, dark milk chocolate in color, and minimal dabs of makeup in similarly autumnal shades, lustrous brown locks sweeping round and down in roller coaster whorls. She’s a little plump, but her soft, well aligned features, tinged pink from continually executing such violent gales of laughter, more than offset the difference. “Alright partner!” she cheers, giggles, gives me a high five every time we score some points. Melanie’s either an eternal optimist or excessively drunk, although I suppose the two go hand in hand. Our cylinders clicking with the telepathy euchre necessitates, we’re on a real hot streak, established unbeatable by each contesting duo. I wonder is there any chance our chemistry might extend beyond this card game and the confines of Alison’s coffee table. Then again, the coffee table works just fine, if only everyone else would leave. Instead, at the conclusion of our fourth undefeated reign, Melanie announces her own departure. Lamentable, but I make no move, referring rather to the procrastinator’s favorite copout: we will meet again. Definitely, definitely, she agrees. At around 11:30, Alison declares she’s heading upstairs to sleep, and for this she should be institutionalized. Our virginal hostess, obliviously uneducated in the realm of throwing house parties just as she is in bed. A house full of these folk and no guarantees against destruction or theft, though in her defense this is a rather subdued congregation she’s thrown together tonight, nary a peep outside of Sean’s harmless boasting. Some guy who’s just shown up talking about his motorcycle, Alan wrapped up in his discussion of the military with this Jim and I’m content to have made that kind of connection with the best looking girl in attendance. Everyone else sits around merrily stoned, it’s by no means a wild bash but pleasantly tinted just the same. “See now, they put this chemical, saltpeter, in your eggs, to decrease your sex drive,” Jim’s telling Alan, a thorough mess hall discourse the latest topic. “Really?” Alan nods, lips pursed, “I didn’t know that.” “Oh yeah.” Once the female population scatters, these parties have a way of breaking up, and this one is no exception. Video games, loud music, or inane discussions about sports are the only others forces keeping men together in a situation like this, and none of these are readily available tonight. Here in the literal no man’s land we won’t willingly occupy, vaguely uncomfortable, where nobody’s gotten drunk enough to make continued obliteration the single, tunnel visioned focus, and all know so little of our fellow comrades that sticking around to make ourselves so evokes a certain dread. Well, Sean is that wasted, and baked on top of it, but he represents the exception. In a rapid procession the stragglers filter out, one by one, until just Sean remains, and I, and the two people who rode here with me. Young fool he is, Sean runs his mouth aground, boasting he can outdrink and outsmoke anyone who came through those doors tonight, Doug included. “Okay Johnny,” Doug says, “tell you what. You drink that down to here,” he points to a spot about halfway down the peach schnapps bottle sitting upon Alison’s television console, “and I’ll drink the rest.” Trashed already, Sean totters to his feet and, to his credit, doesn’t blink in knocking back the requisite amount of liquor. He sets the bottle down and flops into an easy chair, challenging Doug with this cocksure, wordless grin to complete his end of the bargain. Tension mounts. Doug’s reputation, to some extent, hangs in the balance, and I can almost feel the weight of a shift in opinion, or reinforcement thereof, gathering around our shoulders, dropping from the ceiling like a curtain. Alan turns to me, says, “that guy was full of shit. They don’t put anything in the eggs, it’s just a rumor.” “Fuck you, I’m not drinking it,” Doug laughs, dismissing Sean with a wave, “come on, let’s get out here.” Our last look at Sean finds him wandering around the spent shell of Alison’s once vibrant home, clutching his treasured dragon bong. An impressive piece of glasswork, that monstrous medieval reptile, and yet it’s not bringing him much mirth at the moment. Empties everywhere, glasses, overflowing ashtrays, a deck of cards half on the coffee table half scattered randomly about the floor, and Sean, reluctantly alone. At this moment, he reminds me of a preschooler on the brink of tears because his parents have sent him to bed. Alan drops me off at the grocery store, edges near my back bumper and doesn’t budge. Doug jumps out of his truck in a slight rolling stop detour, barely interrupting our straight shot home. Poised with potential but gone, this night, and now the interminable insomniac turn can begin in earnest. Now evening again already and the cycle repeats. And I thought we were obliterating routines out here on the fringes of society, you anarchist. Right. Sean leans across the meat counter as I approach, sharing a warm, belly laugh laden recap with Doug. Seems the master might be warming to the pupil after all. Smiling ear to ear both, they ask me to unbutton my meat apron, to see what I have on. “You’re wearing the exact same clothes as yesterday,” Sean laughs. “Yeah, so?” I grin. “So are both of us,” Sean says, as Doug stands shaking his head.

Stache’s shutters its doors after one last local bill blowout Saturday night, and auctioning off every worthwhile piece of memorabilia on Sunday. Next will come the bulldozers. Dump trucks to cart away all residual rubble. Somewhere down the line, a relatively meek strip mall will occupy this plot instead, as the unrelenting stomp of gentrification mashes down north campus now, too, albeit with smaller, softer footprints than those stampeding across its southern counterpart. But I suppose if I genuinely cared, I would have been there. Leading lights of yesteryear flame out, yet their passing can, at the very least, draw us with heightened awareness to everything else that’s left. I burn with a paranoid mania to sample the surrounding blocks, as though anticipating that they too will meet some gruesome fate tomorrow. Between destruction and the squeeze of these goddamn franchises, the pulse is still visible above the skin but surely five years from now it won’t be. On foot from the house I find Goldmine Records, on High Street near Blake, tucked away in a white building resembling at first glance a dentist’s office. Helped little by its complete lack of proprietary signage, unless the tiny logo dangling from the front door’s window counts. Though specializing in classic albums from the 60s and 70s, cramped aisles and a pitiful selection, as well as some hard to place pathetic aura, almost certainly spell disaster. Used Kids shares the same space and merchandising issues, but our shopping impulses are often indefinable, what works, what doesn’t, and why; the air here is stale, oppressive somehow, and I doubt the small, bearded sage behind the counter - who gives the impression he must own this place, is possibly its sole employee - has any idea how large the likelihood is his little operation here is doomed. Feeling as if his survival depends upon the remaining shards of my tip money, I hereby justify purchasing a used Pink Floyd LP, and some assorted posters. Jack and Benny’s sits behind a wedge of window at the corner of Hudson and High. Considering the other three corners are overrun with a fast food taco restaurant, a drive through hamburger stand, a gas station, one existing video rental megastore and another across the street from it under construction, all national chains, one gets the sense this unobtrusive mom and pop café is hanging on for dear life. Serving breakfast and only breakfast all day long, in a dining room no larger than one of their pancakes, rumor links them to a spotty oeuvre but I can’t find anything to complain about. Of course, I would say this. Not as though I’m challenging myself any, picking a safe, American diner from the luxury of options lining this avenue. Accept this perfectly traditional ham and cheese omelet, glass of orange juice rather than rolling the dice on some Middle Eastern fare from Taj Mahal, induced though the eye is at every pass, by car or hoof, to its ridiculously extravagant patio. A waist high white brick wall surrounds this lavish terrace, as black iron spears join hands above, six inches apart, for the railing. Made from this same metal, chairs and tables, wrought in lace like patterns, are held captive on the other side. All quite the calling card, if offering no idea what to expect within. Glances full of mumbling, abject horror exchange between help as their ignorant guest grapples with the exotic menu, I imagine, and anyway, I’m the kind of guy who prefers a plate glass window front to gauge in advance what lies ahead. Between the patio and the ivory fortress proper, a dozen odd steps rise to meet a broad front porch teeming with potted vegetation, and this distance exceeds my valor’s limited grasp. I can also say as much for Indian Oven, directly across the street, its striped canopy and narrow stairwell jutting from a second floor corner like the line on a capital Q. Trepidation extending beyond unfamiliar eateries, however, to even a casual browse, for I can’t draw the nerve to enter, along this random stroll, Neo Tokyo, for instance, proudly billing itself as the Midwest’s first anime specialty store. Or an adorable organic grocery shop, squashed letter opener thin, in a block long potpourri of merchants beneath one uniform redbrick shroud. Regarding these in the same light as certain follicle trimming establishments, as though unworthiness is immediately apparent at the door, is met with curt inquiries and raised eyebrows, a qualifying exam. Abandoned on the weekends, this apartment can appear at times equally forbidding. Spacious in the gaps between our debris, bleak unless filthy, its quirky layout alone provides only so much charm. The rest we bring. Irradiate the clouds away, each along his own respective wavelength, and every body added lifts the gloom by a factor of five. I encounter Damon home at last from his weekend tryst with the band, Shannon quality time, and Monday morning classes, though not quite the Damon I typically greet. Today he paces around the kitchen in slow motion, shoulders sagged, as if someone strapped the refrigerator to his back, clearly burdened by some terrible piece of information. Terminal illness, a death in the family, tragedy along these lines. He sighs heavily and droops further, thus denoting that obligation alone inclines him to speak. “Well, I’ve got some good news for you, and I’ve got some bad news,” he says. “What’s that?” I fire back, my concern only the information he has, not the order he presents it. “Well, the good news is, I guess that Tara girl is really interested in you,” he says, rubs his chin, paces the room some more. “Oh yeah?” “Yeah, but the bad news is, I guess she’s got these.....genital warts.....that she can’t get rid of.” My initial reaction, while calm on the surface, is a flailing, speculative confusion. Trying to read Damon, to figure out why imparting this knowledge should trouble him so. As in, are we really this close, that my struggles getting laid would lead him to a nervous collapse. As in, might other motivations come into play. Circles as tight as ours exist not because we’ve never found faults with one another, an impossibility. On the contrary, while circumstances draw you near those most in common with yourself, only ninety percent of the time, at best, will you gel with any given individual. What makes us good friends is we’ve learned how to skate around the rest - peculiarities to overlook, topics to avoid. If Damon suffers a mild internal freakout whenever any chick drifts onto the scene and wants anyone else but him, regardless how many or what kind of girls he’s already nailing, yet at the same time doesn’t realize we’re cognizant of this trait, this is alright, we can work around it. We know the why of his behavior. But what we never know about one another, or possibly even ourselves, is the why behind the why, because we never probe. We never ask any deep, pertinent questions of one another, this is not our way. Paul draws the lines he does because he sees a newspaper print world; no big deal, but at the same time, there is much we will never know about it, how he came to view the world in this fashion to begin with. Or the sense I get that Alan often acts not in the manner he wishes, or that which comes most naturally, but as he believes the most properly masculine individual should, forcing himself into this mold. And questions they hold surrounding my own tight lipped mien, the root causes, sneaking suspicions that I never give anyone the whole story. Once again, why. “It’s too bad, man,” he adds, “but you might wanna steer clear of that.” If thinking clearly about the situation at all, I realize Shannon was the primary force pushing for us to hook up in the first place. Yet he now claims Shannon’s cautioning against our union, which doesn’t make any sense. Still, though well aware of his competitive nature, this minor personality glitch, I can’t see him inventing such a tale whole cloth. No secret, this long slump of mine. “Hmm,” I laugh, “tell her to fuck off for me.” And anyway, compelling reasons to focus on that girl, or any girl, for any length of time, they don’t exist. This big top circus plants its stakes three miles across, nearly as wide, and each ring runs a dizzying array of attractions around the clock, whatever your background, whatever your budget, we’ve got it. Anal retentive control freaks lose their tentative hold, crumble into perpetual befuddlement. The party colored lights of a hundred campus bars wink four blocks down the hill, and in between there and here, a thousand kids for each, shouting above the din of their stereos, starting fires in the dumpsters behind their apartments, rioting in the streets. Hosting block parties in their frat houses with every other pledge in town jumping up and down in their front lawn, challenging God from their rooftops. But whether atom splitting sharp or fleeting as phone pole handbills, the density and duration of my gaze, I can discern no angle from which it would possibly burden anyone else. This brooding undercurrent remains a mystery. For if no one else among us, Damon, who essentially gave up on campus life a month ago, who alone willingly surrenders bachelorhood, should have a single mindedness to his motions. That, and cause to celebrate. Alan slumps up the stairs, home from work, and Damon chooses this moment to announce that he and Shannon have finally consummated their relationship. Following his month long holdout, their weekend is spent in bed. The three of us now chart a course along approaching nightfall, dinner and what else, and true, Damon’s spirit rises again to its usual elevation. A residual unease lingers nonetheless, or seems to. Studio 35 collides against the eastern rim of Clintonville’s dry district, able to serve alcohol by a matter of feet. Dating from the 1930s, this building features a wedge shaped marquee, dangling above the street where we park, and a glass bubble ticket window expanding out into the sidewalk. Each night, three paltry dollars buy a triple bill of second run features, the most reasonable admission in town. And while we’ve missed the first of these, whatever it was, the heavily hyped horror flick Scream awaits us, followed by some unknown comedy titled SubUrbia. Here, the movies themselves might garner lowest priority. We’re five minutes late for the second leg of this triad, yet it scarcely matters, for the main attraction is a dark, smoky tavern occupying the theater’s back third, allowing full view of a regulation size screen. Beyond, rows upon rows of traditional seating flesh out the remaining space, but we don’t give those small, uncomfortable chairs a second glance. Stools around the bar, they speak to us. Falling into line astride them, we inspect their sizeable array of bottled beer, ultimately settle upon some well priced drafts. The bartender also brings forth a menu from the relocated Papa Joe’s, which has this unique arrangement with Studio 35, which operates next door in a tiny, lifeless pizza shop galaxies removed from its once riotous, now legendary, campus institution. Sympathizing with their plight, we order a large pepperoni. Our heads crooks sidelong to enjoy the show. With equal frequency, our heads also tilt in the opposite direction. Lured by her salacious rasp, the blonde at the bar’s distant end has us captive. A voice more lewd, animalistic, than any we’ve ever heard, she leans on the bartender’s every word, responds in kind with her own. Punctuates each offering with a husky, kittenish chuckle. Damon, for one, chain smokes anxiety away watching her, as if aware he can’t match the seductive film noir cool of her own graceful drags, lazy exhalations, and won’t even bother trying. Just as we’re certain that, with every chair between her and us resolutely unoccupied, our drooling leers must hang all too obvious in the aquamarine glow of the small, sad fishtank behind this bar. “I swear,” Damon says, “I could sit here for hours and jack off just listening to her talk.” At intermission, having dusted off the pizza, we stand to stretch and look around. A row of booths line one side wall, and then the lobby, where a flimsy film of red carpet daubs the ground, worn raw by week after week of cutrate attractions. Smokers head outside now to mingle fresh air with their flaming butts, but we interrogate the contour, from the countertop popcorn machine to the pair of 1980s video games, one on each wing, to the movie posters lining every square inch of these walls. The profiles, titles, and slogans adorning these advertisements are cut out, overlapped, stacked atop one another with impressive originality, and taped on balloons stream famous soundbites from select actors’s mouths, so that even a trip to the restroom stall requires facing off against Clint Eastwood and one of his timeless lines. I envision this as a hideout you’d visit alone to disappear for a few hours, inviting and anonymous. Contrasting so distinctly with the tacky, fading prefabrication of a Flickers franchise, this kind of dogeared character you just can’t fake. Returning to our stools, inexplicably, the blonde now sits two spaces nearer than before, meaning just one seat separates her and Damon’s left shoulder. And whatever the dynamic of rivalry, in this instance I’m content that he’s the one in a position to strike. Situations like this gone past, if sitting where he is, I often have approached the target in question, always adroit at finding some idiotic pretext to initiate conversation. But the difference lies with intent, and results, and maybe intent actually dictates results - never expecting any real success, so rarely experiencing any success, my whole thrust merely a showoff exercise. “See? I’ll talk to strange chicks, hot chicks, I’ll talk to anyone,” a point to make with the fellows. Him, though, I anticipate not only moving in, but emerging a victor. The second movie starts, notable only in that the main character resembles a kid we’d vaguely known from high school named Sean Gardner. “I swear, he even whines about everything the same way Sean does!” Damon marvels. Also, an older, wiser cat who hangs around the main crew of kids, far too slick to show any emotion whatsoever, though speaking his mind no matter the occasion or subject. “Frank,” Damon chuckles. True to form, the lead female actress thinks the Frank doppelganger’s revolting at first but winds up banging him with zero effort on his part, just because he tells her how it is and is never impressed with her beauty. A lesson my charming roommates apparently know no better than I, however, for as the blonde’s sweet voice resonates through the bar with erection inducing carnality, like fools we sit silent, motionless, and the credits roll, house lights, akin to closing time at any other bar, come alive. Tittering still at the bartender’s every utterance, our seductress stands, shoots us one weighted glance, departs. With casual wrist flicks, I fling the pieces of our morning expo line into place. The same tired routine, altered only by Stacey’s presence beside me. She’s bitching about one of her female coworkers in the clubhouse, no surprise here. Responding, I kneejerk into smartass mode, and this, too, is not exactly shocking. These caustic rejoinders I don’t even consciously form, most of the time, they just come rolling from my mouth. I pay attention well enough to shape an adequate notion of what someone else is talking about, but the bulk of consciousness runs away elsewhere. “Now, now,” I mutter, “one mustn’t badmouth one’s coworkers.” Drew stands behind the cook line at present, investigating, yet again, an aberrant printer. Like a dozen or so others I’ve known, former classmates, assorted friends from elsewhere, Drew had a bit part in The Shawshank Redemption when this movie was filmed, on location in Mansfield, some four summers ago. Befitting someone versed, then, not only in stage but film, his every motion seems calculated at times for maximum dramatic impact, as if taking into account lighting and distance from an audience. His speech, twice as much so. “Thank you Jason for taking the high road for once,” he announces, startling us. We had no idea he was listening. And what does he mean for once, anyway? A relatively new banquet server named Brian breezes into the kitchen, moving also as if a bank of cameras trace his every move. Synchronized with his steps, he unbuttons his white dress shirt in a choreographed dance routine, whips it off, revealing a tight white tank top and bodybuilder’s physique beneath, slings the dress shirt over one shoulder. Apparently, his work is already done for the day, whatever it had been. His mousy brown locks, just the perfect length of fashionable shagginess, are frosted with blonde tips, parted down the middle, scooping just past and under his chin like bird wings. “What is this, a GQ fashion shoot?” Mill Run cracks. Wandering around the kitchen, unshaven, spiky haired and most likely hungover, Mill Run looks either confused or dismayed by his whereabouts. This Brian character, whom I’ve met just once before today, pauses near the three of us, jumps into some bizarre story halfway from its beginning. Leaves us entirely spellbound by stupidity as he continues through the swinging doors to the time clock. “I wish he’d just shut up and ask me out,” Stacey says, breaking the iceberg heavy silence. Not that Stacey’s hurting any for takers. Baseball season in full swing, the Columbus Clippers, our AAA farm team affiliated with the New York Yankees, lodge at this very hotel when they’re in town. They often have their lunches and dinners in our restaurant, and while, as a true fanatic of the national pastime, I get a kick out of rubbing elbows, this thrill is mitigated plenty by the sickening devotion these girls pay those players. When they are in town, the rest of us turn invisible, we don’t stand a chance. It’s like this every summer, I’m told. So much for my chances with Stacey, if ever I had any, at least until this crap blows over. For not only is she an avid baseball nut herself (“Don Mattingly, mmmmmmm...... ” she often says, salivating over her favorite retired player) rumor has it she’s currently dating one of the Clippers. Bothered not the least that he likely has a Stacey lined up in every town along their road trip circuit. So utterly predictable. Much more jolting is the sudden awareness that it’s now early May, springtime is halfway over and we’ve wasted a third of a year screwing around, spinning our wheels. In this light, just thinking about the various radios forever playing around our restaurant makes them the primary chronicler of our times. The only hint we have that days move forward, marking off the seasons with hit songs that gradually fade into and then out of heavy rotation. Gary always blasts the top 40 hip-hop station full board and the prep cooks, when they’re not listening to this same old Fela Kuti cassette - Suffering Boy’s music of choice, still - have got the local metal station cranked for some reason. And then there’s the clubhouse kitchen, with its steady pipeline of hot modern rock. We move into town the first weekend of January and every five minutes it’s What I Got by Sublime, reminding us in case we ever forget that the wintertime here seems to drag on for years, but that those California beaches are eternally golden and warm. “That song reminds me of you guys,” Mandy tells me once during the early days in town, back when she and K.C. were still living on the west side, “I don’t know why, but that part where he’s singing about lighting cigarettes and strapping on shoes.” But as the weeks pass What I Got blends into Lovefool by the Cardigans becomes Sweetest Thing by Lauryn Hill melds magically into We Got to Pray by Kirk Franklin which in turn metamorphoses as Lakini’s Juice by Live transforms itself into I Believe I Can Fly by R. Kelly reconfigures itself as Sunny Came Home by Shawn Colvin or maybe it was Swallowed by Bush blossoming into You Were Meant For Me by Jewel until now it’s early May and every five minutes we’re treated to the guilty pleasure Push by newcomers Matchbox Twenty. Vaguely tolerable music by mostly faceless bands, hummable and catchy enough to pass the hours but forgotten the instant they disappear from the radio. This is top forty, these are our lives, but no matter what the season it’s a terrible year for music. A twenty top has its way of liquidating the doldrums, though. The cooks can crank whatever grating rubbish they choose, they can come unraveled with every large party such as this, so long as these windfalls keep falling in my lap. Mill Run and I alone in the dining room this afternoon, and Drew doesn’t want him anywhere near it, so I inherit the twenty top singlehanded. This is something the clubhouse wenches will never understand. Something I’m not going out of my way to make them understand, either. Speaker boxes atop every table over there require bolting said table to the floor, which in turn eliminates most opportunities for serving a huge posse. Here, I get two or three a week, which more than makes up the traffic differential. During lunch these groups are generally in a fired up hurry anyway, meaning I often net thirty bucks for one hour’s work. Those girls can crack jokes all day long about my devotion to this dining room, if it means burying their heads still further in the sand. Easily provoked of late, I believe it has some corollary with my newfound masturbation strategy. Since enacting it’s as though I’m one solid nerve. Three six top tables pushed together and one seat at each end, I walk from person to person collecting orders, yet all I can really think about is this one killer blonde, second most distant on the left. Finally, by the time I reach her, I’ve got a hard on as sturdy as the table they’re seated around, and it takes every ounce of my willpower to maintain composure. Instead of turning to the side to face me as all the others had, however, she tilts her head back and looks up at me upside down, smiling, open mouth just inches from my crotch as she recites her order. Badly rattled, I race to the server station, whisper, “goddamn!” and lean against the wall for support, literally to keep from falling over. “Are you alright?” busser Mark May laughs in passing, unaware of my plight, “you look like you’re gonna pass out!” “Yeah,” I croak, managing a weak smile and a nod of the head, “I’m fine.” The first time I ever meet Lisa, she grasps my putter loosely in her hands. Well, technically not mine, it’s hers, but she doesn’t mind sharing. I left mine at home, never knew we’d need it tonight. “Eraaah, Mike’s kinda like you, actually,” Doug says, scratching his goatee, rebuffs my comparisons of his roommate and my own, Alan, “doesn’t say much, never really got into the drug scene, drinks a little bit but that’s about it.....” This impromptu game greets us in Doug’s living room, as he and I open the door from our latest closing shift. Roommates Mike and Lisa are rearranging the furniture, halfway into their makeshift miniature golf contest. Eager to join them for the next eighteen, Doug pulls a bag of clubs from the downstairs closet, and the participants double once their match concludes. We employ a drinking glass for the cup and keep running tallies in our heads, change the configuration of these couches, chairs, and tables with every round. “I’ve never been golfing,” I explain, blundering my way through the latest hole, “I’ve got a set of clubs, but never been.” “I’ll take you sometime,” Doug offers. “You any good?” “I am when I’m stoned,” he says, “but for some reason, I play like shit when I’m drunk.” Belying his party animal image, Doug takes to the links at least once a week, either with Mike or some of our coworkers. By comparison, Nelson looks every bit the golfer, with the conservative yet tasteful threads he’s unfailingly adorned in, and plays accordingly. Aside from the incongruity of that drunk driving conviction rendering him unable to drive, and a poor financial outlook which has left him residing on a living room couch, Mike comes off as reserved to the point of gruffness, his demeanor as professional as his appearance. He grins a lot but rarely laughs, and though it’s true he says little, asks no questions, I disagree with Doug’s analogy. Mike’s a pleasant enough guy for small talk, but distant. No one could ever say the same of Lisa, however. Filling the void left behind by Mike’s grinning mastery of whatever obstacles lay ahead, she specializes in both volume and speed no matter how trivial the subject, how little it interests the rest of us. As an assistant manager at the only department store near campus, in the Lennox shopping plaza on Olentangy, she knocks off a more substantial wage than we, and, enthralled with the power she wields as well as the paycheck it commands, Lisa’s tangled rants uniformly veer into shop talk. Though I suppose she’s just hardwired with the verbosity gene. Mike works in the same capacity as she, but says not a word about it or anything else. Whereas between Lisa and Maria, her sister, who also resides here, words fire with assault rifle rapidity, lending credence to the theory of hereditary storytelling. Claiming one upstairs bedroom apiece, they bicker constantly - if tonight is any indication - and if this vein of antagonization should run its course, zero in upon the outlying males. Maria as the catalyst, for things are far calmer, however tedious Lisa’s job related cant, before the younger sibling appears. Tall, big boned, heavyset both, Maria has a few inches and I’m guessing fifty pounds on Lisa, a sleek, ebony bob cut to Lisa’s longer, tawnier head of hair. Maria slams the door with authority, tramples across our game, disinterested, flings her purse to a skidding halt atop the glass kitchen table. Launches into some broadside at a volume even her elder sis can’t match. Mike and Doug, equipped with adequate doses of y chromosome aggression, indifference, deflect Maria’s charges of unpaid utilities and neglected chores gracefully, but poor Junior, the fifth roommate fresh up from his basement dungeon, cowers in the crosshairs. A soft spoken weirdo, to say the least, Junior crashes down there with his poofy black coif and little squib mustache of a 19th century painter, the same wild Hawaiian shirt he wears for days on end. So feminine everyone assumes he must be gay, Doug and Mike address Junior as “Johnny Flamer,” yet he seems considerably less troubled by this, seldom disturbed by them in any other fashion, than Maria’s chronic nagging. They toil together at the same Upper Arlington strip mall clothing chain, so he receives it from every angle. “Junior!” Maria screams, “what the FUCK did you do to my car?” “What do you mean?” he mumbles, his natural speaking voice. “That dent on my door!” she howls, “how did it get there?!” “It’s been there,” he mutters, “I told you about it.” “Not on that door, on the other door!” “Don’t ask me,” he moans, a furtive smile cast to his audience, “I just know about the one I did.” “Well, they’re both dented in now! What the fuck did you do!?” But Junior doesn’t answer because he’s already split the scene, disappeared to his basement once more. He won’t show his face again tonight. Rarely emerges from his subterranean lair, I’m told, and I can see why. And meanwhile I’m thinking not just two bedrooms but two vehicles for five people, and these screaming females an added bonus, Jesus what a madhouse this must be. None of which is to suggest Lisa and Maria aren’t the most gracious hosts. Weekend is here again, and there’s a keg chilling on ice upon their back patio. Guests streaming in at a steady clip, and with the golf game concluded, Doug’s couch, his quote unquote bedroom, left parked in the middle of the floor, I sit upon one cushion with a cold plastic cup in my hand, surveying the scene. Two months Doug’s lived here before throwing this inaugural bash, but it’s a worthwhile wait. Attendees abound in every corner, around the kitchen table, out on the patio, and refreshing percentages of each are attractive young women. Entertaining the kitchen contingent, Doug as chief provocateur, the Circle of Death underway is a given. Yet, surprises abide elsewhere. Cheap draft beer flows into my belly like water, which is strange, and a spunky redhead with giant tits plops down next to me, we’re a half hour into our chat with no signs of flagging, now, thrice peculiar. Jennifer McBride, her business cards says, with wide, watchful eyes like freshly brewed iced tea, lashes lined out to distant, dusky points. A mouthful of chewing gum while she speaks, though her lips retain their faint pink gloss. She has a great squealing snicker of a laugh, the kind of girl who drapes a hand across your arm while doing so, and dense freckle constellations dotting her face, arms, the length of her chest. The latter I verify via this black top she wears about halfway unzipped, as I struggle keeping my eyes away from those massive globes. “So I figure, you know, once I’m promoted as far as I can go with the bank, or else just get tired of it, I’ll probably get into teaching,” she says. “Really? Think you’d like working with kids?” “Oh, yeah! I’d love it!” “Hmm,” I nod and take a sip from my plastic cup, sneak a quick peak at her bosom. Everyone else has long forgone Doug’s maniacal drinking game, except for two Sunday school clean young girls he has somehow drafted into the evil clutches of his circle. Heavenly attractive, attired with class, these ladies are, and Doug does his Boy Scout best to get them wasted, but it’s just not happening. They smile knowingly, hip to his devious plot. A courageous piece of furniture in this wild environment, the glass kitchen table, and as if gradually weaning him away from it, fearing the worst, additional women infiltrate. Shoving Doug aside, appropriating it for their euchre campaign, and as the back patio constricts with both sisters and even more womanly talk, the only remaining refuge for gents is a living room dartboard. In one mass migration, we flee to it. A tall, plain redhead named Rachel makes her late arrival, continues past us and around the couch. I soon learn that she and Doug occasionally share a bed, though judging from their cool detachment, exchanging at most three words the entirety of this gala, appearances belie any intimacy. Her lifeless, colorless mop like a cloudy day version of Jen McBride’s, wearing no discernible makeup, she does claim an open, engaging personality, free of pretense, and a smile that lights up the otherwise dim features. Yet I initially regard their distance as an active reputation defense, on Doug’s part, minimizing association with the so-so catch. Until awareness grants an eventual insight, that it isn’t just him, or them, it’s everyone - this is how adults who’ve slept together act, at least the slick ones, here in the city. Still accustomed to small town life, where experience is hung out in the breeze, the notion of universal downplay strikes me as odd. But like everything else the party deity does, I file this information away for a later date. “The more fun you’re havin, Pockets, the less you can talk about it,” Doug explains. Hanging against the white backdrop of a living room wall, one near solid ellipse of pepper sprinkle holes surround their dartboard. Doug, Mike, myself, and some old pals of theirs from the Steubenville days pair off, in various combos, for Cricket. Befitting a guy who has the Pittsburgh Steelers logo tattooed onto one calf, Mike excels, it seems, at any sport we care to throw his way, and the others cluster somewhere around average, which places all of them, in turn, leagues ahead of me. These Steubenville tough guys I can’t readily appraise, because they grunt nothing beyond the most elemental phrases, but beneath the rugged veneer, the confrontational humor, I think they’re probably okay. Externally similar to the fraternity mob, really, in baseball caps and crew cuts, sports attire, knee length khaki shorts, their weakness for cheap draft beer. Only difference being these blokes have no interest in making a hamfisted spectacle everywhere they go, appear unconcerned with the vagaries of popular opinion, winning people over. That, and each looks as though he could punch a guy into the apartment next door. Poor as some of us throw, by the time we’re finished the wall might look like a body went sailing through it. I’m surprised the sisters tolerate this steel tipped carnage. But it’s none of my concern and anyway, despite terrible eyesight and relative inexperience, I’m tossing well for once, even winning a couple contests. Not that this deters anyone from maligning my unorthodox style. “You’re not pitchin a baseball there, kid,” Doug says. “Batter up!” Mike cracks. However prosperous my major league windup, I can work up only a limited enthusiasm for this game. After more than an hour, someone suggests we set these darts aside, and they encounter no resistance from me. With regret we realize it is now nearly three a.m. and the last of the good looking girls has just left. Just how our sex can find itself so easily consumed time and again by such idiotic pursuits I always find amazing, though surely it has something to do with ancestral memory. Our heritage as hunters from epochs gone by. I’m just glad nobody breaks out a Nintendo, or we’re likely here hitting one another in the arms until sunrise. This party may continue till then regardless, as Mike pops a porno into the VCR. Maria storms upstairs in protest, merely the latest straw. Pissed off about the damage Junior inflicted upon her automobile, escalating hence, she’s carried this foul attitude around all night. The rest of us crowd into and beside Doug’s bedroom, which, thanks to the contour of our last miniature golf hole, has resided in the middle of the living room all night, facing the television. The primary occupant of this fine couch commandeers one end, allows Mike and me to fill the other two cushions. Rachel camps on the floor, directly in front of Doug, and Lisa below me. “I don’t see how you guys watch this stuff,” Lisa snorts, as the first scene unfurls. “Yeah right,” Mike grins, “you know you like it.” Possibly Lisa has trouble correlating this outdated model of sluttiness against her own, much more recent brand. This ultra cheesy 80s skin flick, with both male and female hair teased as high as the boom mics visible overhead, comparably ridiculous makeup smears, pickup lines, cardboard cheap sets and far too harsh lighting, collectively removed ever so from the myriad liaisons Lisa orchestrates and cherishes. Or so I’m told. And with all I’m told, like a flashlight submerged underwater, this evasive twinge of destiny and wonder floats beneath my ribcage. Inevitability begins to surround my involvement with these people, as though, no matter which highway I skidded onto that January afternoon, direction irrelevant, all exits were equidistant, alike. By some means, no matter how circuitous the route, our paths collide. Though absent tonight Lisa’s current main flame, Roy, plays on Doug and Mike’s softball team, hails from Mansfield. The only bar I ever attended with any frequency then held the same status for him, yet somehow we never met. Stranger still, Roy’s roommate Scott Lucas slings drinks at my restaurant; Scott’s girlfriend, clubhouse bitch Janine, attends the same beautician school, shared a number of classes and partied with Alexis until the latter so famously freaked out and quit the scene. Lisa slept with Scott awhile before moving on to Roy, but if I find that odd, Doug says, then I don’t really know Lisa. I wonder what he would offer about the arm she has wrapped around my leg, her face pressed against the same. Sprawled across the unforgiving floor, now, but flirting throughout the night, in the occasional niches a party will carve, by ever changing concerns and dimensions of any particular room. If no one else is around, who knows what happens, but everyone thinks me a goofball and her an overweight lunatic, we’d never hear the end of it. Why this matters I can’t say, but I’m still trying to frame my conduct in the light of all I’ve learned, with crude renditions of Doug’s actions, Doug’s words. Around here, you lurch along with the ship, arrange your affairs in stealth. Nobody reaches openly for anything.

Issue #1 fails, which spares us momentarily the half percent sales tax hike. But intent as our elected delegates are upon landing an NHL team, I get the feeling, whether shot down or passed, the whole charade is chiefly undergone to convince hockey officials we’re a major league city. That an adequate number of trash can lids are banged together, creating a large enough ruckus, that prominent local businessmen, that members of our executive and legislative branches sufficiently care. Neither I nor anyone else in my acquaintance can comment much more than halfheartedly, however, for while taxpayers all, none of us voted. And whatever the case, only a handful more than that care one way or the other. Between both jobs and Doug’s household and our Summit Street trio, call us irresponsible citizens, but the interest just isn’t there, a representative sampling, I’m sure, of the general malaise. Mostly, I attribute this inattention to stubborn mobility. I have yet to confirm one soul among us who was actually born in Columbus, and the number apt to reside here five years from now I gauge about the same. Talk is talk, granted, but that’s just it: nobody mentions flight. Just a premonition I have, that we are not long for this city, none of us, that the landscape already has and will continue to alter so harshly from month to month as to make itself unrecognizable by quarter’s end. As far as 1990 ½ is concerned, half our entertainment stems internally, anyway. We could live anywhere, I suppose. Much as we try to integrate, in varying degrees, with this community, bottom line is our minds are wired as such. We will always find our own antics more entertaining than virtually anything else happening. A free afternoon leads me now a block east of the house, to the Indianola Shopping Center on 4th Street, between 17th and 19th Avenues. If a more downtrodden retail plaza exists anywhere in North America, I’d be astounded. In the 1920s, a state of the art amusement park sat upon this very site, but, long since leveled into the ground, these grimy buildings squat atop and resolutely refuse any illustrious past. This seedy auto towing establishment, its metallic jungle of rust rotting behind a ten foot barbed wire fence, lurks as a distempered mutt in the market’s deepest recess. Grouped in one dense cluster before it, a pool hall, a convenience store, some fucked up all night diner that recently opened, and a Salvation Army thrift store constitute the balance of its holdings. The last of these will swallow the bulk of my time. Determined that, regardless of the rejection letters accumulating daily, I will soon begin work on a second novel, and organize the tumbleweeds of random papers blowing around my bedroom, this four dollar file cabinet, metal, offwhite, is calling my name. Though heavy, and though having walked here, I’m certain that carrying it home will present no problem, begin doing so. Bump into Paul Linville’s friend Brian just outside the door, and his Oriental girlfriend Joy, say hello to them. Slinging this cabinet proves more cumbersome than imagined, and sliding it across these uneven sidewalks slabs a comparable nuisance. Distract myself thinking about the cycle of coincidence, whereby months pass without seeing someone, and then they’re popping up everywhere. Last week, Brian and Joy running into Damon, Alan, myself outside Insomnia, then two nights later Alan and I playing pool with them at Ruby’s, also by chance. Finally, I latch onto a method of pushing this burden end over end back home. Damon’s in his favorite post scholastic pose, stretching our telephone cord to fluctuating measures of tautness along the hallway, the kitchen, burning up the receiver. Waiting for him to finish, I spy the latest phone bill, and eagerly rip it open. Another prime example of manufactured enjoyment, these invoices provide untold riches even months and months post facto. Too bad there’s no record of incoming long distance calls to accompany this outgoing list. Last month’s blockbuster issue revealed, for instance, that, the night of my birthday party, at one forty one in the a.m., somebody placed a one minute call to Radick’s house. Taking Paul’s entreaties that we terminate this behavior to heart, for in the past these summons were typically made at three or four. And no less entertaining, if for different reasons, the familiar foxhole of business dealings we crawl through each time. Damon scribbles a star next to charges he’s responsible for, and Alan initials his, while I absorb the difference, and always, the common blind spots for which we’re paying, though mercifully overlooked, left unmentioned by the others. Sundry ex-girlfriends supposedly given up for dead, though somehow managing to appear once or twice apiece on every statement, and I’m just as guilty as the rest. Inside this envelope lies one of the more quiet months in memory, however. Notable only for a single manic seven day stretch Damon generates alone. April the 22nd, a Tuesday, he begins by dialing Erik at two twenty nine a.m. Then, at one minute past four a.m., a thirty four minute exchange with Shannon. Twirling the clock hands ahead, beyond his theoretical sleep and classroom activities, another thirty minute discussion with Shannon at eight fifty seven in the p.m. A brief, presumably alcohol laden lull ensues, interrupted in grand fashion, at eleven twenty four, by a forty seven minute chat with his once beloved Angie. Further activity fleshes out this pattern, as well as Paul’s notion about our available hours. On the 23rd, at twelve fourteen a.m., seven minutes with Erik, and no sooner than hanging up there does forty one minutes with Shannon follow. Beginning that evening, to a corresponding time frame on the 25th, her digits appear five more times. At one thirteen in the morning, on the 28th, he calls home, motivated by lord knows what, and finally, the earliest figure anywhere on this spreadsheet, another forty seven minute transmission, in this instance to Shannon’s house, at eight forty five p.m. That among us Damon struggles most cutting old strings is a given. Witness Shannon, witness the speed with which he’s abandoned all hopes here. Appreciable reluctance accompanies his move, a necessity. The past few months he’s obsessed with sorting out every snapshot, band poster, and miscellaneous memento into impeccable linear order, an uncommon sentimentality frenzy that leads his mom to quip, “Jesus! You act like someone who thinks they’re about to die!” And yet, without the social benefits earning a wage around town offers, it’s inevitable, in many ways, that he perceives himself outside the loop. In theory, any campus belongs to its students, any tract of land to its residents. But neither eclipses the ownership inherent in holding even a half assed job. Enrolled at OSU, he has scores of potential friends to make and women to bed, yet somehow, sitting in a classroom never forges the same strong bond between individuals as working together does, toiling side by side in trenches forty hours a week. So he gives up months ago on bookworm Meredith, despite all the hours spent on the phone trying to lure her out of the house. Instead, that effort closes the book on his own involvement here. Damon now explains that he’s spending his summer in Mansfield, but we’re a zip code or two this side of shocked. Companionship loss aside, nothing changes on this end, with our lease running through December, the rent he’ll continue to pay. And the brutal intrusion of classes, again, when fall quarter resumes in September. Once that last final crosses his professor’s desk, however, three weeks from now, a sabbatical awaits. Cocooning once more in the childhood home, a warm weather social circle wrapped around Shannon and Erik and Paul. Alan’s already about a six pack into his weekend. He still has Mondays and Tuesdays off, celebrates them accordingly, and as I’m holding a coupon for one free hour of pool, Suzy Cue’s emerges a foregone conclusion for keeping the festivities rolling. The prize jewel of Indianola Shopping Center, to which we’ve paid nary a visit, though oft discussed. Yet with a moniker like this we really can’t lose. Sounds like something Doug might name his own pool hall should he ever open one, and this is good enough for us. While this trail defines a block generally accepted as campus housing, these homes on 19th visibly degrade with each step taken east. Then waiting out the three lane whir of vehicles barreling heedless north up 4th, to join this gentle creekbed of bodies as they flow toward an unseen nexus, startling in its vibrancy, and realizing that glamour has not necessarily tied itself behind us on the tracks. Its emerald aura a glittering sheet which beacons all takers, Suzy Cue’s opens as a single large cinder block room, three walls painted white and the last, or rather first, one continuous window divided only by the door. Where a backward looking ambience, and its place within this dim blue collar neighborhood of ancient, oversized houses, declining now through a battery of decades, reanimates some distant past even our parents are a touch too young to recall. When wives doll up in elaborate but none too revealing dresses, inch long lashes and brilliant lipstick, when husbands pack an after dinner pipe before family vehicles deposit the entire community here, same night, same place, every week. Could be the 1920s sprout beyond the soil, after all. The upright cooler behind the bar flaunts an impressive beer selection, with sufficient diversity to keep even Little Paul satisfied if he ever cares to venture beyond Maxwell’s. Adhering to the wall decor, thick, motorcycle helmet sized cubes, glass and nearly opaque, comprise the modest bar, illuminated from somewhere underneath with alternating pastel splashes. Plenty pool tables to go around, although, as is often the curious case in billiards establishments such as this, the overhead lights burn with ridiculous astringency. Additionally, the insistent acrid stench permeating this room, akin to burnt carpet, dissuades our loitering past the gratis hour. But the crowd’s reassuring, college aged normality counterbalances all misgivings, and a fine sweet dusting of eye candy, sprinkled throughout like confectioner’s sugar, justifies this excursion. Colleen, a hostess at my Damon’s Place For Ribs, shoots pool near the entrance, with a gentleman I assume her boyfriend. We no sooner grab our table, in the most distant corner, and the first taste this city gave me, that initial auburn barb of incorrigible lust, Tonya, flies through the front door in heels. A black, miniskirted dress and matching mesh hose compliment the package, bringing, around again back to January, the chain of incompetence full circle, as she joins her friends across the room. How moronic, to believe then that we had anything figured out at all, that a winning smile and some lame offhand shtick were the only prerequisites to success. Cruelly hilarious, even, our since waylaid optimism, in some perverse, stomach churning manner. To realize we still don’t hold any cards. Alan evokes a gruff, staccato chuckle when I point out her sublime silhouette, and I suppose that other extreme, that contrary danger could just as easily subsume me, too, a permanent loss of enchantment, allowing cynicism to creep around the corners. In which case I’d rather just go on being the idiot. Not that Alan has anything to worry about in this department, adamantly unsentimental for opportunities melted away like a light, fitful flurry. Shrugging off any suggestion he doesn’t know what he’s talking about or doing, either, with a laugh and a simple, “yeah, fuck it.” The need to squint for heartache is negated by nearby scenery, asserting itself with such vitality we’re no use shooting stick. This scorching brunette in a microscopic skirt commands our attention from the moment we begin play, and she knows it. Sitting on a stool along the side wall, she meets our gazes with a kind, flirtatious smile each time we risk a look in her direction. Now she shoots a sly sidelong glance over at her date as he’s lining up for a shot, uncrosses her legs, leaves them this way. Her eyes find their way back to ours again, and all the while daring us with this sensual smirk she wears as a badge. This cycle reaffirms itself long enough for the dork’s she’s with to catch wind. After a half hour absorbing this unadulterated peep show, we now face nasty leers he’s sending our way as well. But it isn’t as if we care, for getting under his collar somehow makes what’s going on in the shadow of her skirt all the more interesting. And by now, there’s the additional allure of neighbor Stephanie breezing into the poolhall with her own dorky boyfriend, Stephen. “Stephen Perkins,” Alan mutters under his breath as we view the two of them, a half dozen tables over, in the throes of their polite courtship ritual. “Oh, is that his last name?” Damon says. “No, it’s the drummer for Jane’s Addiction,” I explain, as Alan starts cracking up alongside me. It’s our own peculiar brand of inside joke, the kind Damon rarely understands and never really laughs at. He purses his lips, makes a half shake of the head and lines up for a shot. Standing at the other end of the pool room watching our tastefully dressed neighbor sip at a Red Dog beer and share quiet laughs with her beau, it’s difficult to picture the Stephanie I’ve seen naked almost too many times to count these past fourteen days. The ritual of watching her undress has become nearly as predictable as opening shifts at the restaurant, sealing my suspicions that’s she’s fully aware of those holes in her wall. Damon and Alan disagree, but to me it’s a three point swish. Twenty three years old, having lived in this city for the last handful, Stephanie’s a trifle more experienced than the rest of us. To take that information and infer she disrobes for us intentionally is quite a stretch, sure, yet this is precisely what I suggest to them after this latest turn of events. I come home from my night job and flip on the radio, have a seat in the kitchen, read a book. Within the half hour, I’ll hear the slamming of her dresser drawer above the music and tiptoe downstairs to our darkened foyer. By the time I reach that sweet secret spot she’s facing the door and either already entirely nude or in the process of removing her powder blue bathrobe. My aural cue, this slamming sound, and she doesn’t disappoint, it’s a ritual we’ve developed. Five nights out of the last fourteen, this exact scenario has transpired. Fresh out of the shower, expressionless as she throws on pajamas. I can hear her every movement, even when she’s in another room, can even discern Stella’s location within the house, yet somehow Stephanie doesn’t bat an eyelash, she continues undressing. The trace of a vaguely sweet smile now dancing on her lips, she stands triumphant. Running outside to knock on her front door crosses my mind, propositioning her outright to jump into the bed I’ve spied her sitting upon so many nights as she watches tv. But this gambit seems a bit risky, she might take offense and curtail the peepshows, and so the voyeurism continues. Occasionally, standing instead still in her black dress slacks and long sleeved white cotton shirt, its unbuttoning a chemical reaction setting the others in motion. Her panties, unfailingly commonplace in design, though this minor disappointment is in a sense expected. She’s got a boring dweeb boyfriend and sits around most night drinking Red Dog beer of all things, she’s obviously not the flashiest chick on the planet. Well versed in the Martian landscape, we find nearly as much pleasure in debating the depth of her database, how much it is she knows. I’ve heard Stephanie play Saints Go Marching In on her piano too many times to ever consider the girl a wild child, perhaps, but the question of knowledge still lingers. Leaving us to wonder if she is aware of those holes, if she gets off on having us watch. Am I just lucky now, or can those drawer slams signify she’s getting bolder in what she chooses to reveal. Should one of us say to hell with it and ask, throwing caution to the wind. For my roommates, however, these discussions are academic. A fascinating piece of fodder for continued debate, nothing more, for Stephanie no longer excites them. They’re both getting more pussy than I, and if it is at all possible to tire of seeing one woman’s naked body, they have. Kind of like watching the same porno over and over again, eventually it just grows stale, at least to some extent. Alan happens to catch her stripteasing for Stephen one night and even he’s bored with it, he just sits there on the bed yawning. I must develop a plan to pry her loose from that dolt, an infidel in the temple. 5

I’m just heading for out for my night shift at the store when our telephone rings. On the other end is Frank, and everything his name implies. Straightedge huckster, Get-A-Way bandleader, all seasons mentor, jam night raconteur, these just a smattering of the possible permutations. He is also the guy from which we’ve gleaned ninety five percent of our knowledge about women. Obviously, I’ve not been a very attentive student through the years, but Damon and Alan have, and it’s the latter he wishes to speak with. “What’s going on?” I laugh, fully aware Frank hasn’t dialed our number once since we’ve lived here, much less at four thirty in the afternoon and asking specifically for Alan. “One of my daughter’s friends is having her eighteenth birthday party here at the house,” he explains, “I need Alan to come up and strip.” Call this vintage Frank, a man above all pigeonholes. Forty two and having sired somewhere between nine and thirteen children, even he’s not totally certain of the tally. Much more youthful in appearance and conduct than age would indicate, he still beds babes younger than his oldest, girls in their late teens, with a regularity leaving even his critics flummoxed. And so while exerting his Christmas list of strange ideologies on us since we were high school pupils, his primary focus, always, the female constituency, his chief selling point to them an immoderate, uh, frankness. He’ll talk dirty to our own mothers without batting an eyelash, and these ladies love it. I summon Alan to the phone, split for work. And speaking of stripping, well, Gina looks so much better without her clothes than she does with them on. Alison, too, otherwise why waste our time. Has the Frank Medley essence given me that tiny extra edge this evening requires? I really can’t say. He’d have no use for the case of beer we brought, but certainly endorses the game. The names have changed yet this latest round parallels what Doug ran on Barb a month ago, this masterful bait and switch exercise, as he accepts a hostess’s invite, then immediately begins working on her substantially hotter friend. After blowing Alison off for a few weeks, party aside, we’ve finally made this intimate tete. Just Doug and I, and these two naked girls. Though her legs are a touch thicker than preferred, Gina is otherwise flawless. Light brown hair parted down the middle, cut short, this era’s fabulous trend, and a more perfectly sculpted pair of breasts than we customarily view. Not as large as the redhead Jennifer’s or even Doug’s own roommate Lisa’s but shapelier, a well defined handful reminiscent of dear Amanda’s marvelous rack. Green eyes and sensuous lips painted red, the kind of squinty smile that for some reason always gets my wheels turning, thinking that she probably makes that face in bed, too. The stereo sizzles with Alison’s treasured discs, and as drinking tourneys roll out proper, Doug is partial, again, to his firstborn son the Circle of Death. And again, these females so young, both nineteen, perform with admirable fluidity, leaving me to wonder how it is most girls now spend their formative years, exactly. Drinking quite a bit, I say, which wraps Alison’s virginity claims, or Gina admitting she’s slept with just one guy, into a pretzel of near impossibility. Even in our twenties the plan every night is to numb these beauties with as much alcohol as possible in hopes that the panties dissolve. Veracity debatable, though I for one am buying their inexperience, regardless, the problem with Circle of Death is its unwavering repetitive nature. Fine if your goal is sheer obliteration, for any highwire acts which require at least a modicum of subtlety, however, other endeavors are suggested, and once the Circle grows stale, I slide right into its chasm. Rustling and shuffling the deck in honor of a contest called Beer Tree, additionally armed with some leftfield inspiration for getting these girls out of their drawers, I draw up the rules on a sheet of notebook paper. Astounded my pervert roommates haven’t stumbled upon this twist themselves, for is it not I who perpetually struggles, to assert my control of a situation, with these ladies, rather than the situation asserting its control of me. To build the standard Beer Tree, you start with a drinking glass. A deck of regulation playing cards, though it doesn’t matter if one or two or even ten are missing. The aforementioned notebook paper for drafting an arbitrary list on the spot, designating different values for each of the cards. Ace, drink five. Two, make rule. Three, social drink. Four, spin. Jokers, per tradition, the wild cards. Draw a card from the stack and lay it on the top of the drinking glass before following its conscripted assignment. As the game progresses cards fan out from the top of the glass, a sapling squashed flat by the surrealist’s eye. Pull the dreaded spin card, and you’re forced to grasp this tree with either one or both hands - techniques vary, and the arguments supporting them - finagle a three hundred and sixty degree turn with said tree in hand before placing it once more upon the table. Knock or drop a card from the tree at any point, spin or no spin, and you finish the rest of your drink. And personal preferences aside, the ideal velocity to rotate, whether clockwise or counter, agendas enter the playing field. Those who live conservatively, or folks like me, and Alan if he was here, who teeter their cards on the most distant limb manageable. Praying the next sucker will jar it loose, as we tolerate the occasional burn. “Your turn, Alison Road,” I prod. “Ooh, I love that song!” she cheers. Harmless, relatively, yet the bulk of this routine, I realize now, acts merely as a smokescreen for the make rule cards. Months ago Linville teaches us this fine sport, but he’s apparently not half the libidinous reprobate we are, he never perceives the sexual territory this tree will plant itself into. The electric current of lust finally reaches my brain, however, and I see what everyone else has missed. First the socks come off, now the shirts, and these girls think themselves comediennes retaliating, with variations bawdier than anything Doug and I have dreamed. Yet with every rule they only dig a deeper rut, because we’re bound to come over top with more preposterous challenges for them. Pants removed, so maybe Doug and I are sitting in our underwear, but Gina and Alison are both down to just their bras and panties. Developments all, about an hour into this contest. Someone dislodges a few of the leaves, meaning our game begins anew. Chalkboard swabbed clean in regards to the rules, for we’re reset to pole position, the ground zero listed on notebook paper. Cards corralled into stack form again, still, though any of us could have by law now stitched some clothing onto the bare bits, nobody does. Articles retain their scattershot skew around the room, and I spot a like pattern in the pending hours, a rainbow of disparate futures. Wilder grows this tree. Meanwhile, the plumage covering our own bodies graphs an inverse curve. Gina’s body doesn’t disappoint, mordant though this lighting abundance, and if Alison’s even skinnier than I thought, by no means is she a turnoff, either. Far from it, for disregarding the ordinariness of her tiny breasts, standing at attention, the thought of that virgin land between her thighs and being the first to map it adequately fires imagination. Not to mention her exquisite rear end cushion, a soft, firm bubble, and the Celtic knot tattoo visible on one cheek. The girls break out a camera, cementing these focal points on film. “Okay, I want you to take this magic marker,” Alison says with a laugh, handing me the instrument, “and autograph Gina’s ass.” Gina stands and I kneel behind, scribble my name across her plump, white cheek, as Alison throws the flash - CLICK! - momentarily across the room. With the next rule card, Doug’s repeating the act upon Alison’s only slightly inferior specimen - SNAP! - and Gina mans the lens. CLICK! I’m autographing one of Alison’s mosquito bite tits. SNAP! Doug has the enviable task of scrawling upon Gina’s lovely set. CLICK! I’m recompensed by eating an olive from her bellybutton. SNAP! And Doug another she presses between her breasts. CLICK! Gina’s lapping lemon juice from this same region on Alison. SNAP! And it is only when I’m asked to lick inside Gina’s thigh does she raise the first protest of the evening. “I don’t know...... ,” she says. “I haven’t shaved my bikini line!” I squeak in a mock female voice, high pitched and shaky, which defuses apprehension. The girls share a sisterly twitter, connoting an accurate hunch, and Gina tells me to proceed. “You have to close your eyes, though,” she cautions. “No problem,” I chuckle, going to work, though she and I know genetic code obliges me to probe, with sight as much as taste, despite her disclaimer. The tree crashes down again, occurring with greater frequency, as it always does, the further the night progresses. Inebriated, these women appear well on their way to total abandon, and Doug I imagine is perpetually in this state. So many months gone by myself since last experiencing this particular brand of buzz, the creeping amber glow of alcohol numbness, though I’m not there yet, nowhere near where the girls are in this regard. Believing anyway what Paul commonly says about always insuring the girls are drunker than you, that this allows me firm command of our current circumstance. “Every red card anyone draws,” Doug announces, next rule making opportunity he has, “both girls have to kiss me.” Like so many of Doug’s maneuvers, I classify this one as brilliant. Initially, the roommates offer merely tandem pecks on each cheek, but now they’re sticking tongues in his mouth, reciprocated, and I don’t waste much time contemplating my piece of this action. The first amendment drafting session I have, every black card lifted from the stack means Alison and Gina perch together upon my lap. And oh, this first kiss, another long forgotten sensation flooding in like a twenty foot wave, crushing me upon impact. Tracing the texture of their mouths, savoring style. Alison a rough kisser and Gina more the gentle type but they make for a nice yin and yang, the polar extremities of the universe balancing each other out upon the modest coliseum of their couch. All these months wondering if I’ve lost my touch expelled in the space of a few minutes, as both girls, finished with me, stop and light a cigarette. “Okay,” Gina declares with a dramatic, though self-conscious, laugh, “we’ve established that everyone’s a good kisser.” We also dispense with even a modicum of illusion. No one bothers drawing cards. Gina straddles Doug, mashes her body against his in that chair while I dry fuck Alison on this couch. Eyes closed, Alison groans with each thrust, suggesting that for her this is the real thing. Meanwhile I can’t stop sneaking peeks at Gina’s jiggling backside, bouncing on Doug’s jock, and in an Alan-esque moment, he meets my gaze and grins. Someone shouts “switch!” after a few minutes pass, and the girls flip-flop positions. Three or four rotations transpire, however, and with each, Gina spends increasingly longer intervals atop Doug, rather than under me. As for Alison, the opposite holds true. This runs contrary to the predetermined alignments Doug and I forecast in my car on the way over, again mimicking our supposed Barb-Alison pairings, though obviously at a time like this all scripts are cast aside. And at last we give up any pretensions of switching off partners, sticking instead with what works. Gina remains rooted to Doug’s hip as she humps him in the chair, separated only by his flimsy tight white underwear, while Alison moans underneath me, lids still firmly clamped shut, as we too rock away, one chaotic mass of hands and mouths all over. Yet that albatross inexperience, a ten thousand pound weight strapped around my neck, it drowns me in a sea of half steps and false starts. Coupled with this virgin Alison I clearly need to take charge, but we grind to a halt and I can’t string together the right words to suggest heading up to her bedroom. Grappling, too, with the age old question of worthiness, asking myself does she even want me in her bedroom in the first place, do I feel justified in taking this away from her at this drunken hour, becoming her first. “Hoo, what time is it?” she says, stretching as we upright. “Five o’clock,” Gina replies. She and Doug have wrapped up their own frolicking, at least for the moment. “Jesus,” Alison laughs, “I gotta be at work in four hours.” And disappears upstairs. Indecision clutches like a vice grip, thinking I should follow, thinking I should wait a few minutes and creep up there armed with a chuckle, jumping sidelong into her sack - if nothing else I can always play it off as a harmless joke - thinking I should maybe ply my wares with Gina, thinking I should just stretch out on the couch and say to hell with it, call this a fantastic night and forget about it. And in the end, as is too often the case, this last option is the only one exercised. The path of least resistance always wins, laziness takes over, because cowardice reigns supreme. Now Gina’s in the bathroom and Doug’s whispering questions about what comes next, how we need to govern the aftermath. “I say we steal the camera, get the pictures developed, then bring it back,” I hiss in response. “No, don’t do that,” he mutters, “let them do it, give us the pictures.” Gina shuts off every source of illumination save their television, swapping its background chatter for that of the stereo. Popping Caddyshack into the VCR, she has a seat next to Doug on the loveseat. Stretching out across this couch alone I can hear those two making out behind me, too discouraging to stomach, and the spotlight burns too brightly now to consider moving toward the stairs. Sleep my only recourse, but at times this inexhaustible stamina feels more like debilitating disease, a serious problem, for even half lit I can’t let go. Lips smack and murmur back there unseen, it’s six a.m. and finally, a descent, into slumber’s exonerating wash. Alison scurries around the house in preparation for her job at the video store. Running late, though work is only two blocks away up Sawmill. She’s gotten as far as slapping on a red and black franchise shirt, khaki pants, a name badge penned to her chest and a tad more makeup than she wears, apparently, anywhere this side of a full blown house party. She searches now for her shoes, up a flight of stairs and back down again. Hey, maybe we have more in common than I thought. And while possibly attributable to the eastern sun surrounding her frantic figure in a body wide halo, she’s looking damn exquisite this morning, near angelic, divine. But this same nine o’clock star also burns holes into my eyes, snapping them shut again. Sexual inclinations a distant postscript, anyway, thanks to this hangover, the first I can recall. “I gotta go,” Alison tells me, “lock up when you leave.” “Where’d those two go?” I groan, shielding against the glare. “I don’t know,” she says with a grin before bailing. Turning last night’s final cd over for another spin, I hum and tiptoe upstairs, knowing the effort futile but determined to inspect. A pair of ruffled beds, no cadavers, and in no real mood to take notes, to inventory the girly accouterments suffocating their quarters, I retreat, pause only by the kitchen table. Waffling for a moment, I decide Doug might know best, and leave the camera here. Hand against head into this daybreak so bright it’s like driving straight through a ball of burning gas, any inquiries I have for him or Gina will have to wait.

Horrendous as the clubhouse kitchen music is, it pales against the terror of working with those cooks. I get so spoiled dealing with Gary that it takes his Mondays and Tuesdays off, otherwise known as the Alan schedule, to remember how good I have it. Come to think of it, those two may as well party together. If only Gary could work instead what is fast becoming my singular schedule, and mine alone - opening, every day, as I have since the beginning of May. So desperate management has become for dining room servers, weeks now separate me and my last morning off. Recognizing one money hungry fool, who in addition to twenty odd consecutive opens here has put in four or five nights a week at the grocery store, they drop the hammer flush against the bell. And with Kip, Mike Short both heading to Colorado as soon as school lets out, to begin their white water rafting instruction anew, with Brandy and Akash and the few straggling newcomers all demanding clubhouse shifts or else, my job security at present rates off the charts. The only real danger is one of these clubhouse cooks pushing the wrong button, precipitating a walk out. Jeff Lucas aside, the mellow, longhaired guitar god basting under those heat lamps most lunches, bringing scarce commodities such as a quiet, unflappable composure to the fry vat with him, nearly the lot of them I find ridiculously surly and abrasive. Furthermore, whenever management rolls ups its sleeves to pitch in behind the lines, they seldom do so anywhere but here, and while barbecue buckets more levelheaded, professional than the psychopathic cooks, their tireless formalities are another hassle I shouldn’t have to suffer. My early Ryan schisms, Ye Guardian of Thy Lemonade, have left only a faint vestige upon the kitchen tile, fading by the hour. Once attuned to his actual, all consuming indifference, that he only screams company policies for obnoxious hazing ritual, I’ve gotten along with him just fine. I still cling to my private nickname, however. Mine alone, for long established nomenclature bylaws here dictate instead some loose adaptation of first or last name. Thus clubhouse cook Mark, my most prevalent sparring partner, is universally referred to as Mark B, and nothing else, to distinguish him from Stokes and May. In the former’s case an abbreviation, yet it could refer to grade, though I suppose in this scenario we’d more accurately dub him F. A beefy brute, brown haired but balding despite his paucity of years, Mark B’s central power play involves yanking recently sent tickets from the printer, reading even the most minute discrepancy aloud, then calling every server within earshot over to the window. Waves the ticket in their faces, asks in impressively staged disbelief if they have any idea what the offending party intended. All a dog and pony show, however, for regardless how varied or reasonable the responses, he’s going to ask the group to send someone out to retrieve said perpetrator from the floor. Called upon the carpet in this manner at least once each of the first five shifts I’ve worked with this buffoon, it took less than half that time to recognize the pattern, anticipate it. Today he pulls his angry “lunchtime’s over!” card, dredged with relish whenever anyone transmits an order off our smaller, cheaper, early afternoon menu so much as a minute past three o’clock. Concerning a pulled pork sandwich and fries I ring, my number is drawn as his latest victim. I suspect, but have not yet proven, that he stands drooling with steely eyed determination every day at this time, blocking out the external world in hopes of another platinum opportunity to pounce. Were this the case, it would almost classify as sad, thus deserving sympathy; unable to ascertain its validity, though, my theory is shoved aside in favor of open contempt. When challenged, my responses are customarily crafted devoid of ego, to shut the other person up with utmost rapidity. I don’t care, I don’t care. I have nothing to prove, I just want you to leave me alone. “Oh, okay!” and a smile works best - simple, swift, and non-confrontational. I’ll even take full blame, sure, whatever. But whether told once or fifteen times, it makes no difference, because I’m not really listening. I give an impressive ruse of adherence, which amply pacifies most. And the select few who do see through this front are only rewarded with additional frustration. They almost wish I would assume an argumentative stance, for then they could measure some success, a calculable impact. Contrarily these shrugs of mine drive them batty, to know that no amount of force they exert could possibly make me care. Variations can and will splinter from the mainline, nonetheless. Confronted at the wrong angle, the wrong instance, startling occasional blips to the surface. As if since I walk around in this self-absorbed bubble, making neither the effort to reveal myself nor correct their opinions of same, that anyone attacks anything I’m doing sometimes jars me rudely awake. Times like these, recipients are shocked all the more, to discover not only that I do have a tongue, but that it also stings. “What time is it?” he growls. “Huh?” “What time is it?” he points at the wall mounted clock with a spatula, “it’s three oh five, and that means lunch is over!” I turn on my heels, round the corner to our nearest computer terminal. Grabbing both a lunch and dinner menu, I march back to the kitchen window, and shove my discoveries underneath his face. “Same prices, same sides, same size,” I offer with a sickening sweet smile, “just thought you should know.” “I thought...... ” he trails off, shakes his head, distant, as if contemplating a dirty smudge on the ceiling. Side effects of spending far too many hours in this place, I suppose, my broadside, paired with too little sleep. Factors all, but this newfound aggression I lay directly at the feet of sexual insolvency. Initiating the once a week masturbation policy, and sticking strictly to it, I have felt quite the savage, pure firebrand, pulsating with this constant hum of electricity shuddering through my cells. Female anatomy and copulation the only thoughts I can grasp for any duration, it’s even worse than before. And the Alison-Gina episode merely sublimates this wicked kettle. A fortunate offshoot of this sensation, though, is knowing that it can’t go on forever, that this foreign ferocity will force me, at some juncture, into action. Still shaking every time I think about last week’s twenty top, I glimpse a distant victory. An outrageously hot blonde in a bright yellow blouse and tight denim pants claims a seat in my station. She’s accompanied by some overweight ninny who, though sporting the shirt and tie of a downtown office worker, comes across as a slob, beneath her. Or perhaps I project these qualities upon him because it’s what I wish to see. Never before has such determination seized me in this setting, for, unable to peel my eyes away from these breasts virtually popping free of the V cut blouse hem, I resolve to ask her out before she leaves. My blue eyed fixation with straight sunshine tresses, farmgirl darling in her faded jeans. Without considering result or consequence, as these concerns I may have permanently jettisoned overboard, all I need is for her gluttonous lunch companion to vacate the table for any reason, any interval. I watch and can hear his continuous guffaws across the room, prefacing her polite smile, but he never stands, stretches, never so much as migrates to the restroom. Seething, I entertain paranoid delusions that somehow he knows. Hands tied, I’ve nothing left but to sweep plates and drop their check, suppress my lust, save it for somebody else. “So,” Mike Short smirks, as the three of us who’ve worked this dining room today are seated around table 61, rolling our getaway silver, “you talk to Amanda much these days?” “Uh, yeah...... a few times...... ,” I stammer. “Hmm,” Mike says. His head not moving a centimeter, smirking still, he rotates his eyes at a glacial pace over to meet Akash, then back to mine with no greater speed, “and how is she doing?” “Uh, she’s doing good, you know, uh...... ” “Hmm,” he says again. My method for rolling this silver, like many other workplace philosophies I hold, is constantly under attack. To me it only makes perfect sense, but there are, what, sixty other servers here, and they all uniformly disagree. I have not a single supporter. And they don’t just disagree, actually, but rather all strongly take issue with my technique, some going as far as to suggest I might be retarded. My only question is, does the name Henry Ford ring any bells. This monotonous task closing our shifts has us locating every clean spoon, knife, and fork on the other side of the dishtank. Fine, I guess I really can’t argue that point, but it is from here on that our respective doctrines respectively branch, pitting them en masse against me. For everyone else, their procedure is to take the knife/spoon/fork combo, wrap it in the napkin, then stop and band it with our Damon’s Place For Ribs sticker that neatly circumferences the roll. Then wrap another, then band it, wrap another, band it. My whole point, or rather it wasn’t even a point, it was just the way I naturally fell into wrapping silverware, because it’s indisputably the most sensible way to do so: wrap them all, then go back and band them all. End of story. Only when constantly maligned on this divergence did I start to consider how these people ever made it out of sixth grade. You’d think this notion a simple one beyond debate, but no. And a certain fraction, especially the clubhouse bitches, viciously attempt debunking it. Laurel challenges me to a sixty second rolloff, which takes a little foresight and planning to make my point, but I’m confident I can manage. If left with a mountain of rolled silver but no bands, I’ve proved nothing, so I must budget this minute impeccably. Yet even as the windup timer sounds, and I’ve got five more rolls completed than she, it seems I still make no headway, for she locates a convenient excuse. “Well, you’re just faster than me period, that’s all! It doesn’t have anything to do with the way you roll them!” “You know,” Drew speaks up now behind Mike and Akash and I, with his uncanny ability to blend into the background, observe his subjects as though behind a one way mirror. Refrains, somehow, from polishing his glasses for once, leans against the flimsy wall, watching us, “that’s actually very intelligent what you’re doing.” No, really, it isn’t. And it isn’t clever, either, and it isn’t revolutionary, it isn’t anything. Just rational, which is all anyone should need. “Try and tell these people that,” I scoff, “repetitive tasks! Haven’t they ever heard of the assembly line?”

Any excitement leeches away from performing the job itself, and we turn instead toward fresh gossip to keep our spirits aloft. A neighbor calls to complain about Sean O’Hara, smoking weed behind the store during one of his many breaks, and he loses his lucrative position bagging groceries on the spot. A reminder that eyes everywhere document our dealings, not all of them as obvious as the black camera pods clipped above each aisle. I’m scooping a pound of ground beef out for this elderly gentleman, daydreaming of the encroaching nightlife, when a freight train loaded with intent barrels around the corner, single minded for this meat counter. Barb, accompanied by some other fat chick, shouts across this swiftly dwindling expanse, and though offensive, I will not object. Whenever gossip commerce dies along its tracks, there’s nothing like a fluke catastrophe for greasing the wheels anew. “DOUG IS SUCH A WHORE!” Barb screams, having reached me face to face, as the old man purses his lips, stares down at the floor. “Hey, those two were acting on their own free will, it’s not like we forced them to do anything,” I explain, somehow managing to keep a straight face as I hand over the beef. “Yeah, well, those are MY friends, and I don’t appreciate it!” “Whatever.” “You tell DOUG that I said he’s a WHORE, and to stay aware from my friends!” “Whatever.” Acting as a jilted lover, making a total ass of herself in the broad back aisle, I know seconds likely separate Barb and store management. Spacious or not, nothing here escapes attention for long, and right on cue arrives Julie, our newest assistant supervisor. Red in the face, pointing an angry finger at Barb and her hefty silent partner. “Who are these girls?” she demands, apparently forgetting, or not present for, Barb’s own short lived bagging stint. Then again our nineteen year old prima donna didn’t exactly set the world on fire with her work ethic. “Oh, that’s our female fan club,” I retort. “Yeah, well, they need to find somewhere else to hang out,” Julie barks and storms away, graceful in high heels. The other two disappear as well, and the old man, so stoic through this tragedy, continues his order at last. I figure somehow he’s related to my homeboy Mark Stokes. These dazzling pyrotechnics pull me through a hasty cleanup, but as I fly down Bethel and hop south onto 315, the night ahead alone occupies my thoughts. Aaron Lantz, another former schooldays chum, is paying us a visit, will hopefully enliven what has become an all too predictable Thursday routine. Jazzed, but equally lazy, it isn’t that I fail to notice my gas gauge nearing empty, rather that I calculate a reserve capable of making it home. I can deal with this tomorrow. One exit later, at Henderson, I’m pulled off and parked up the hill’s steep incline, hazards blinking, after sputtering to a violent halt. A half hour traipsing up this incline, purchasing and filling a canister, then retracing my steps, all preliminaries, I’m convinced, to the moment a cruiser pulls up, or is already waiting for me there, and the officer, though initially offering help, discerns my lacking insurance policy, unearths the suspended license, tags, and registration. “So then,” Alan’s telling the bedroom congregation, hunched over their umpteenth beers, “there’s this older woman there with a video camera, and I strip down to my underwear. I’m getting real close to the birthday girl, like sticking my shit in her face, rubbing against her, right? Well then it turns out that the chick with the video camera is the girl’s mom! It’s just me and Frank and a bunch of girls in his living room and he’s craaaaaaaacking up.” A floating telegraph, his ballad, hovering as I rise to meet it in the stairs. Intercepting me in similar fashion, Damon blocks the hallway, steers us into the kitchen under the rubric of scoring some beer. Lids peeled back to their physical limit, he adopts his intentionally bad B movie astonishment face, often employed to wordlessly convey distress. “Jesus Christ, dude!” he says out the side of his mouth, in singsong fashion. A string of identical notes, as though muted trumpet blast: ber-der-dert-dert. “Where have you been! You’re missing out on all the good shit!” “Ah, fuck it, you know? It’s twenty bucks,” I hear Alan summarizing, down the hall. “Like what?” I question. “Dude, you wouldn’t even believe it! Haven’t I been telling you all week this Aaron’s something else?” Damon somewhat clarifies. Back in grade school, a disastrous mid 80s era that has us all sporting football helmet shaped hair, Aaron owned the thickest, most lustrous, most perfectly proportioned bowlcut of all, an evolutionary triumph. We springboard now ten years ahead, and Aaron adjusts to these times with commendable panache. Grooming with his finger closer to this epoch’s pulse than any of the rest of us. His trademark hirsute pinnacle having long since given way to a thoroughly modern crew cut, standing just a few inches taller, Aaron accessorizes with a polo shirt and jeans, bulging forearms of muscle. Even if he is just as zanily naive as ever, judging from Damon’s tales. Sharing a class with the lad this quarter, he treats us to frequent updates on the always fascinating Aaron spectacle. The way Aaron’s earnest, jawbone spanning grin disarms all but the most crusted over cynic, positioning him as a favorite, though only in a purely platonic sense, with the female population. Perpetually seeking to ride bicycles around campus with Damon, though Damon doesn’t have one here, and study, though Damon only grumbles apologetic disinterest, feels a blackhearted miser later for doing so. Aaron’s frenzied, thunderous chortle fills this room with whimsical precision, rattling these windows in their shaky frames, and it could be we’ve found a new hero. Though oblivious, or, rather, owing to this oblivion, he unwittingly slices through the disingenuous gauze wrapping up this age in so much game playing and doublespeak. “I think he’s the most innocent person I’ve ever met,” Damon says all week, hyping this encounter. Commonly comparing Aaron to someone from the Brady Bunch, I guess that would make this the episode where Greg first begins partying. Or perhaps not, for Aaron quickly establishes he can drink six beers to our one, with no visible side effects. Yet, also nearly impossible to discern, bright though ultraviolet, at the other end of the Aaron conundrum stands his impressive transcript. Equipped with backstory we can ascertain otherwise, but viewing him objectively, the first image that would spring to anyone’s mind is that of a simple midwestern farmboy, sweating Ds like bullets through high school before giving up to manage the family ranch. On the contrary, Damon claims that Aaron’s comprehension usually betters his own. “Hey Aaron, how about a little Ween?” Alan suggests, rifling through his CD collection in pursuit of the next selection. “Ooh, that’s okay,” Aaron grimaces, rubbing his belly, “my stomach hurts, maybe some other time.” Finding comedy merely in leaving a stunned, silent Paul alone with Aaron, Alan joins us in the kitchen. Earlier, Alan and Damon drove across campus to pick Aaron up, they whisper, and at the gas station, returning here, everything went haywire. “I get out to pump some gas, and then I go into pay for it, okay,” Damon explains, “so I come back out and Alan’s sitting there in the truck, his face is beet red he’s laughing so hard and I’m thinking, Jesus, what the hell just happened here.” To eliminate suspicion, Damon passes the baton, adjourns to Alan’s bedroom. “Well when Damon went in to pay I’m just sitting there and all of the sudden Aaron starts freaking out,” Alan whispers, “he’s like OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD! DID YOU SEE THAT! and of course I almost jump through the roof, I’m like, what!, you know, wondering what the hell this guy’s talking about. Then he’s like, LOOK AT THAT LITTLE GIRL! OH MY GOD! SHE JUST MADE A FACE AT US! and I look back and there’s just this little girl sitting there in the car behind us, but Aaron’s about ready to die from this laughing fit.” And continues this manic fit, I’m told, for another half hour after they land here. 19th becomes Woodruff a block directly west, and Paul extols changes made since Alan and I spoke to him last. Prompted by the unrelenting gloom of post-Jennifer days, Paul throws down his dishwashing towel in favor of a black briefcase, selling insurance policies now with his father. Meeting clients at their homes, confident that, if everything goes well, his salary ceiling triples what he made before. Left at the three way stop, Indianola, our timeworn shortcut curves toward the fulcrum. As if earning blemished plots as payment for deviant conduct, a small clutch of fraternities up here, away from the prizewinning tribe on 15th, lean on termite stilts. Lawns a topographical absurdity, covered in trash and torn to shreds - yeah, it’s safe to say we vibe with these folks. If ever the frat house type, nowhere else beyond this pockmarked avenue could we envision laying our heads. A faceless brethren viewed at three a.m. from afar, as we slog our way home from late night beers, routinely spotted on balconies, shouting insults across the street to one another. Launching projectiles, some occasionally aflame. South campus has its post football game riots every fall, featuring tear gas and rubber bullets, a burrito vendor wheeling his sidewalk wares around, even the occasional uprooted telephone pole. But by now it’s all become so predictable, committed by lunkhead zealots in scarlet and grey bodypaint who take their idiotic devotion too far. Whereas in this neck, they have front yard bonfires on a Wednesday for no reason at all. Stereos broadcasting around the clock into daybreak, signal stronger, sadly, carrying further, than the OSU radio station. Locating parallels between their unplanned atrocities and ours, we appreciate them all the more; however, if the frequent twirling red and blue beams indicate anything, there are others not so readily amused. Arcing along 16th past the junior high to High, we round the corner where Doug and Alan and I nearly had our skulls realigned. A vicious encounter of another sort awaits us now, split seconds removed, as we make the turn, from rear-ending two fine young ladies who stand here. “Damn, look at those asses...... ,” Damon mutters, encapsulating, I’m sure, the general sentiment. But as we swing around this pair, their faces turn and light up with merry recognition. “AARON!” the girls coo in unison. “Jesus Christ!” I curse under my breath, and the choir chuckles in accordance. We idle out of earshot as Aaron converses with the ladies. Guileless, his every word is eaten alive, and why not, for here’s one individual who truly isn’t on the make. Even granted this and a bottomless well of other corruptions, he maintains a simple sincerity, guffawing outrageously at everything, as if still seated upon our couch. Girls, they respond. Damon, because he tends to think this way anyway, and myself, attributable only to the last night we ever laid eyes on her, we have claimed a stake in Kara’s irrefutable interest, but neither he nor I, for example, have anything as solid to latch onto as Aaron. “I just figured that if neither one of us ever got married, that somehow you and me would just get married someday,” she has told him. Yet even in relating this potentially salacious tidbit to us, he’s never boastful. Genuinely touched by the sentiment, he giggles. He breaks away and we continue walking, though only as far as the convenience store abutting 11th. Familiar to me from clandestine Amanda dropoffs, to the others as their personal cigarette emporiums. A textbook thin shanty, run by sole proprietorship, it houses a deceptively wide and odd selection, one these boys continually sample. Paul won’t spend money on anything except the brand he always smokes and an occasional stogie, but doesn’t mind testing what others have splurged upon. Making up by volume what he lacks in curiosity, though, he and Damon together could keep this place afloat by themselves, capable, and we will swear on a stack of pornos asserting this, of putting away a carton between them on a good night. As they recently did during one of these same Maxwell’s outings, puffing, rambling, and drinking nonstop from six p.m. until closing time. Aaron and I wait outside, catching our breaths and up on old times, when another dandy twosome, blonde and brunette, approach for a quick hello. Innocent or not he’s now run into four girls in the space of five blocks and disbelief has me floored, forcing a reevaluation of every relevant text. To highlight what we’ve overlooked, debunk the bums theories disfiguring these past five months. Parted down the middle, her gossamer strands shaggier, strewn with more indifference than today’s average woman, Dawn’s ash blonde hair complements a comely, ovular face, unlined, blue eyed, given to ready, runway bright smiles. Affixed below, a somewhat larger bottom half, but only somewhat, whereas for her counterpart, these allocations reverse. Suggesting that gravity, by squashing her shorter, Stephanie’s body has also forced the coal-to-diamond compaction into firmness, a killer frame distracts from her indistinct visage. Cherubic if forgettable, true also these mousy brown locks, explaining why it takes me a moment to connect her with our high school, that she used to date one of my closest friends. “Hey Paul!” she says with a giggle, as he emerges. “Hey,” he grumbles in return. Stephanie hasn’t landed any photo shoots for Playboy and therefore Radick, he of the impossibly high standards, isn’t interested. The girls aren’t sure where they’re headed and saunter south on High, while the fellows pack their cigarettes, then light one. Memorial Day weekend just around the corner, which brings U2 into campus’s Horseshoe on Sunday, carries also warmer weather and not only a greater overall influx of souls crowding these sidewalks tonight, but also the percentage of them we’ve known, either living here now or driving down just for this isolated instance, from our formative years north. Aaron and this Stephanie, merely the bellhop and hostess opening these reunion doors. Waiting for our eyes to adjust, we loiter near the entrance, and a high pitched wail reaches my ears. Chelsea Jackson, screaming with delight, attired in some variation of the hippie rags she’s always wearing, manages a sneak attack, amidst this dimness, even while running right at me. Throws her arms around my shoulders, laughing as if relieved, says she moved down here a week ago. And with an exchange of phone numbers, it turns out the couch she crashes on is just two blocks down from ours, at 17th and Summit. She offers empty glances at the others before rejoining her friends, and it initially strikes me peculiar, that she doesn’t know them nor they she. But this approaching summer won’t mark the only time our camp has or will split into factions - after all, it isn’t as though the core foursome ran through high school an autonomous unit. Just as this Lantz character joins us tonight, there were always others, connective tissue reassembling in ever changing configurations. One night stuck behind babysitting siblings can alter everything, burning holes in experience and acquaintance that are never repaired. And so Chelsea draws a blank, but they’re all now waving to a trio on the dance floor, apparently girls a grade below us then, and I don’t recognize any of them. They approach and stand stiff as cement pillars between the hustling masses, shouting into the girls’ ears above this din, as I watch from afar. And now one of those satellite colleagues who faded away, Ben Kick, skulks past, a walking chalk outline. Puzzling, but no mystery, his decline and disappearance, traceable to the heroin habit he’s acquired after years of dabbling in everything else. How he even cobbled the three dollar admission I’m not sure, but he’s got bushel sized bags beneath his eyes and can barely stitch two consecutive words together at the moment, much less a coherent thought. Trailing off mid sentence, he ambles off to a corner to rest his aching bones. After the five of us grab a table along the dance floor railing, Dawn and Stephanie emerge, pull up chairs. This tiny disc we cram around too small by half, but we somehow cope, snaking arms for beers and ashtrays like some paraplegic game of Twister. Enthralled by all these other developments we’d temporarily forgotten about the girls, yet, though they check out the Edge before crossing over here, their crash landing at elbow’s length surprises no one, feels almost a given. On impact, Dawn affixes herself to Alan’s hip. This bastard has the most incredible fortune with first impressions, as girls are always instantaneously digging him when, to the naked eye, I can see no difference between his mannerisms and ours. Leaving me to conclude the attraction is physical alone, and so maybe it’s the goatee clinching these deals, or that he’s taller, or more muscular, or that he just looks like a soldier. Even a smooth operator like Damon has to at least exert some effort, but Alan never does. It isn’t that he gets all the girls, but the girls that like Alan, they like him from the beginning and all he has to do is stand there. Of course, ballsy shenanigans aren’t hurting his cause, either. Two cops puff chests and swagger through the crowd with leisurely intent, inspecting for minors, and as they reach our party, Alan makes a dramatic flourish of pushing his beer away. Shining flashlights into his eyes they ask to him to stand and produce ID, and, once establishing the authenticity of his age, grill him from every angle. “I don’t know,” he explains, with a cocky shrug, “I just didn’t feel like drinking anymore.” The officers plough deeper into the bar and Alan cackles mightily, follows Aaron and the ladies up onto the dance floor. With a flick of the finger these marbles reconfigure, trapped, with Damon and Paul, who will probably split in fifteen minutes anyway. I glance over at them, pulling life support drags on their cigarettes, sipping beers with only the occasional note gathering glance around the bar, otherwise firmly embedded in lengthy, music related discussions, broken only by periodic dips into obsessions past and present. Content to sit, as they always just sit. Maybe the rare chick like Carrie is impressed by nonchalance, but I can’t fathom it will work very often. Paul justifies inertia by pointing out our success rate on the dance floor is exactly the same as theirs at this table, zero, but I know this is lazy rationalization, I know that time and the law of averages would tilt these scales in our favor. But where and how to establish concrete proof eludes me, particularly as I am at this instant, adrift. Talk about an insignificant speck. Passive sidecar. Should I choose to wedge into their conversation at any moment, I could, but it continues unabated, unchanged, with or without my input. Should I choose to elbow between Alan and the others out there, I could, but is this not a pointless meddling, have the girls not already made their preferences clear. Irredeemably pathetic, meandering around this club alone, scuffling for a score, yet I feel as though my skin will melt off the bone if I sit here any longer. Inconsonant, individual, these private struggles swallow each of us whole, however, and while from the outside theirs seem comical, perhaps if occupying Damon or Paul’s sneakers I might behold such complaints with a bit more gravity. That tonight’s music sucks so bad, for whatever reason, that it’s making both of them nauseous. Glorious 1980s night, still, but whether change of DJ or some other unfortunate circumstance, obscure, droning cuts with no discernible dance beat proliferate tonight, not that the elevated central floor is any less crowded. Unimpressed, these two decide that only a shift to one of the rear couches will level out their stomachs. “I know this sounds crazy,” Damon says, “but I swear beer hits me different if I don’t like the music.” “Oh, definitely,” Paul agrees, “that one time I was in the car with Jennifer and we’re coming home from your Plymouth show, I was wasted, you know, and she kept fooling with the radio. Every time a rap song came on I thought I was gonna puke, but then she’d change the station and Zeppelin would be playing and it was like, alright, I feel okay now, I can handle this.” Sinking into cushions along one particularly gloomy corner, beneath and abutting the dance floor’s western flank, they face but ignore the action at a nearby pool table. These two perpetually choose the most remote outpost to carry forth their speculations, but if I’m going to tag along, then I need at least some semblance of interaction with the outside world. I claim a seat upon the railing, directly above them, viewing the small swath of nimble contortionists my eyesight allows. Misery compounds, however, and I have no sooner settled in when a mostly full beer bottle rockets into sight on a line drive, moving with far too much force and momentum to respond, drills my crotch directly, hard enough to shower them with lukewarm brew below. “Jesus Christ!” Damon curses. “Hey, what the hell’s goin on up there?” Paul shouts, but fury leaves me incapable of response. I jump to my feet, enraged. For someone to send this projectile my way with such impact, and at a basically unambiguous angle, spells not only malice but design. Enemies, sure, we’ve all made a few, yet none of the scenarios I’m turning over, cruising light speed through this rising blood, make any sense at all. Huffing in indignation, balls afire I resolve, poor vision or otherwise, to track down this assailant, begin weaving my way through the syrup thick twirling rabble. Faces float like grotesque phantoms, expressions only momentarily incandescent, a blur in the fleeting stabs of machine generated color. Carried away from the beam by their own erratic orbits, or sucked involuntarily back into the pitch black blanket, and who am I kidding, there are no answers here, certainly none for me. Still, if only to pace around, I have to move. Chelsea gave the impression they’d soon leave these premises, and apparently have, for I can’t find her. Should never have left her side. Illuminated as if by overhead spaceship, Alan and Aaron and the ladies bask in a warm, transient yellow glow, and Dawn in particular looks pleased at this moment, rupturing laughter as Alan whispers something in her ear, an enticing tableau. But I’m not getting into a pissing contest over any girls, much less these two, would rather watch from afar. Seated on a wall lining bench near the front entrance, the fiercest depression washes over me, a void as vast and cobwebbed as the overhead rafters. It’s gone way beyond sex, even, by now, into some other realm of disfigured self-esteem. This tiara of idiocy, the falling asleep alone, while everyone else around me holes up in their bedrooms, hotel rooms, some girl’s living room, often their second or third conquest of the week. Sick of this giant stigma attached to my name: the guy who shows up everywhere by himself. Alison and Gina, so what, one naked night means nothing if everyday life reverts back to what it was before. With each tidal shift I drift further out, becoming a touch more awkward, more weird, unsure how to conduct myself, not just around these women, but the human race en toto. Wondering what I’m doing wrong, why this continued leper treatment as the girls sidle instantly up against Alan, Damon, Doug, whoever, or, in selecting me, soon change their mind. Tired of this endless struggle and wishing nothing more than that it would go away, yet running out of the energy necessary to make it go away. Even so, nothing will happen hiding out, isolated, in the shadows of this club. Almost in a trance, I glide out here to join them. And receive no resistance, only generous cheer, clearly the move I needed to make. Dawn and Stephanie smiling, nodding approval in time with the beat, Alan doing the same though pulling intermittently at his beer, all bundled neatly by Aaron’s faux Egyptian dance and our vague approximation of rhythm. Funny how just the simple act of putting yourself in motion starts unlocking doors, as if to say it doesn’t matter what you do, only that you get off your indecisive ass and raise a ruckus. And now, creating a whole different kind of motion, this one as predictable as the football riots following every loss, Damon and Paul approach the dance floor railing. Damon’s leaning in to shout at my ear, while Paul stands only a few feet behind, arms crossed, squinting in vain for the go-go boot girl he’s still hung upon, bored as usual. “Hey, we’re gonna head on back,” Damon explains. “What?” I feign incomprehension, “why?” “Ah, you know how Paul is, he keeps pestering me to go,” Damon says, “and it looks like that blonde girl likes Alan, and we figure you’ll be trying to hook up with the other one, so there’s no sense in sticking around.” I dismiss the notion of getting anywhere with Stephanie but tell him, “okay,” and they’re off. Less than an hour has transpired since their departure. In twos we stand along a jagged stone parapet, outside Aaron’s house, while he rustles around in his kitchen for a pen. A cool, pleasant early morning on East 13th Avenue, where, citing early work schedules, the girls have thus far led us from Maxwell’s. Aaron lives here with, as he describes it, about twenty other maniacs, but his residence is pin drop quiet tonight, in fact the breadth of campus rings oddly silent for this late prime hour. University weekends still begin on Thursday night, yet the upcoming holiday has everyone filing back to their hometowns. Aaron insists we simply must jot down his number, and while waiting, Dawn and Stephanie challenge my assertion that we need not transcribe theirs, that my mental chalkboard retains any and all information they’ve chosen to pass my way. In trooping up High Street moments ago they rattle off their digits, only to now determine, with good natured disbelief, future recall of said combinations is impossible. So, Alan on the front porch now whispering something to Aaron, I spit the pair of seven digit codes back to the girls now, while they slump, and I slouch, against this front lawn demarcating wall. “Damn. I’m impressed,” Dawn says. “See, Alan likes having me around,” I tell the girls, “because he can ask me what someone’s number is, and I’ll tell him, then he can say it and look all cool and shit.” A fairly solid simulation of how events sometimes transpire, and these ladies mine comedy from it, laughing heartily, with knowing, inside joke faces turning to Alan as he returns. Zany goodbye waves from Aaron on the porch, his charming horse chortle fading behind us with every step, and to think, none of this ever happens without him. Meanwhile my rare undercurrent free punchline, moments ago, a simple observation skirting all irony, or bitterness, or over the head cleverness, somehow strengthens the chemical bond uniting our foursome. Dawn looks to Alan much as she has all night, eyes alight with a post coital glow, as though they’ve already had sex and the rest is a formality. If she’s not quite ready to jump his bones tonight then it’s apparent she soon will be. Analyzing the trends, charting my dismal success ratio, I’ve concluded that I’m precisely five years behind both Alan and Damon in playing this courtship game, thus can expect, as they did then, spotty results well into the foreseeable future. Yet occasional bursts of luck are better than none, and give me hope for this Stephanie pairing, which hovers uncertain still in the air between our shuffling bodies. They reside on 14th Avenue, a block east and five south of our own apartment. Crossing Summit, we approach their complex, practically hidden, buried by nightfall, a heavy quilt of trees obscuring this stretch, a relative dearth of security lighting. Though rooming at separate addresses, Dawn and Stephanie occupy the same second floor wing, their front doors within throwing distance of one another near a crook of the external walkway. Standing three stories in all, every last brick painted either bright red or grey by some overboard OSU zealot, this imposing cube frames a central courtyard, lush with vegetation. Metal stairwells ascend like spines to square catwalks above. “Well, this is us,” Dawn sighs, as we cross underneath the skeletal frame of stairs, into this courtyard. The girls sit side by side a few steps up the first flight, Alan and I standing before them. They talk circles around to safe, neutral topics, their jobs, their schooling, and where the two in conjunction will hopefully lead, though nothing too terribly original dots their resumes here. Ohio State students waiting tables on the side, they may epitomize the cliche with a bit more accuracy, but we’ve all broken off our own pieces of it. Fleeing some inconsequential small town elsewhere in the state rounds out prerequisites, and Dawn complies by pointing out she hails from the flat, barren northwest quarter. Stephanie drives the reiterative nature of our stories home with a mumbled rundown listing all the other Lexington grads who squat in this same complex, but this line of inquiry, illuminating recurrent patterns, will suck the life from any rendezvous, boiling everything down to its sameness. How unspectacular our random collisions truly are. Far better to highlight and withdraw, elongate what few unique strands exist. So what if, as a reputable news source recently reported, Columbus has the most restaurants per capita of any city in the world, and half the people we meet work in one. Dawn and Stephanie slave away in establishments right beside one another, and me, on Olentangy, which gives us at least a toehold of common ground. “How you like it?” I ask. “It’s okay,” Dawn says, breezily, “but you know, I never was a racist until I started waiting tables.” “Ah, say no more,” I tell her. I don’t consider myself a bigot, either, and refrain from vocalizing my stance here the same as everywhere else, yet what you’ve seen is what you’ve seen. And slap any label or none at all on the situation, button your lips, but even so, ignoring familiar cycles doesn’t mean they suddenly vanish. The elderly couples leave on average about fifty cents for their tip, true, or so it seems; and, along these same lines, the gigantic black families that come in, mostly on Sunday, also leaving nil. Dawn doesn’t have to name them specifically, for there is nothing else her comment could signify. She might come right out now and declare herself a racist, but I’m not certain, and anyway she couldn’t possibly be as bad as Scott Lucas, who gives away all his black tables, period. “Yass, yass!” he declares, in his best Ebonics accent, whenever he sees them approaching his station - as clubhouse bartender, on Sunday afternoons, he has three tables just to his right of the bar, “here comes a goooooooooooooot (rhymes with foot) Juan!” And gives it away. I don’t know what to think about these enormous black families. Scott is able to find takers for these tables because we divide right down the line, those who maintain optimism, those who reluctantly speak just like Dawn. Aware how extreme and impolitic such comments are, yet airing them with conviction just the same. My position straddles both camps, I suppose, in that I always take the tables, though clutching this silent belief that if situations repeat themselves with sufficient force, whether couth to state so or otherwise, a theme is nonetheless established. The closest male friend I’ve made at the restaurant is Gary, who just the other day asked whether I’d like to barhop around the black east side with him. And I will. Yet I must admit a wordless concurrence whenever a colleague rails against the latest invasion. To quote an actual percentage is wanton speculation, but these scenarios unravel with striking regularity. Sinking their teeth into the courtship ritual, the young black man and his lady friend dine with textbook courtesy, he the flashy clotheshorse, she the elegant maiden. Upon their meal’s conclusion, he customarily leaves a generous tip, palming it to us like some secret code. But fast forward fifteen, twenty years, and our once strapping Casanova now heads a large household. The entire clan resplendent in their Sunday best, though etiquette abruptly ends here. His children run and scream circles around the restaurant, as if reenacting some war, a war whose dead bodies are manifested by crackers and bread strewn beneath the table, ground into the carpet. Piles of vegetables heaped upon the table, meanwhile, symbolizing defensive ramparts, with the spilled soft drinks, splashed around their eating surface, coating every chair, a stand-in, I suppose, for blood spilled. Long past starry eyed romance, the harried housewife wages inadequate opposition, scolding these rebels with the wealth of her lungs’ reserve, but they’re paying no mind, and throughout, dad sits, always at the head of the two or three tables we push together to accommodate them, laughing, laughing, laughing his ass off, a king drunk on the comedy thrown by these jesters in his court. And so certainly not a peep reprimanding such gifted performers, nor on behalf of his dame, and they leave, and our trashed out stations stun us into temporary paralysis, and no tip. No tip, no tip, no tip. We waste an hour or more on three dollars and thirteen cents, less than that after taxes.

“You got problems,” Linville says, and I know he’s right. Seems like a dandy idea at the time, though I wonder already why. Sneaking out for one last steps-retracing venture up here, to Mansfield’s lone happening club, a sports bar, to try and figure out if there’s something I might have missed. Big Paul counters this dingy interior by removing his formerly resolute shades, he makes do without the leather jacket despite this air conditioning gone mad. I too am coming unraveled layer by layer, for this halfbaked plan backfires and misery prevails, as questions how I’ve spent these five plus months are only avoidable to a point. “You hooked up with any Columbus women yet?” he asks. And this is the other major dilemma, the code we can’t crack. I had once felt that meeting girls presented the only real challenge, that once we had, whatever games the three of us ran up here would work the same there. Clearly, this is not the case. This secret return, I’ve hoped, would help me pick up some pieces I overlooked and reapply them, slight nuances lost unaware. But though this inane swirl of small town tramps abates not the least in my absence, holding watered down citrus cocktails and shaking their tails to horrible country music, it’s obvious we’re not going to leave this booth and approach any of them, it’s obvious I’ve nothing to learn here. “It’s not...... you don’t understand, I...... ,” I babble, “none of us....we uh.....it’s just not....” “You got problems,” he reiterates. Trying to convince ourselves we’re having a bangup time, we riff with enthusiasm on any top of the head topic, however lame. The steady stream of words is a mask we wear, it covers up what’s going on beneath them. Linville hides behind props and epic chemical benders but despite his derogatory remarks, we never see him with any females, either. He mentions being obsessed with Tara, and I don’t have the heart to tell him that according to Shannon, based on one brief meeting alone, all Tara ever asks about is me. Yet it isn’t as if, even had she not that unfortunate venereal condition, I would make any effort to nail her. It would either happen or it wouldn’t, I’m just a passive bystander. In between butchering cover songs Big Paul and Damon record their own and in between reading books I write them, but none of it changes our inability to legitimately connect with so much as one member of the opposite sex. Girlfriend, no girlfriend, it’s all the same. And Radick’s cold public veneer contrasts directly to the guy we know in private, chattering our ears off about his favorite bands and plans for the future, but at the heart of it all he’s even more depressed than the rest of us. I need to get out of here. May accelerates, nearing closure, and our city opens up like a time lapsed flower. Colorful, fitful. Stache’s former owner premieres a brand new music hall, Little Brothers, in the arts gallery district, the trendy Short North, that bridges downtown to campus. No liquor license opening weekend, but he does have blues legend R.L. Burnside, and a few hundred attendees either in the know or curious. At Sullivant Hall, an austere grey building whose car sized bricks and wide, vertically imposing front steps befit flowing robes of justice and nobility, our nation’s capital, more so than university classroom, the OSU Association of Women stage their annual rally. An overnight candlelight vigil protesting any and all forms of violence, it transpires upon those same monumental steps the women have somehow scaled. The Wexner Center for the Arts showcases, for a number of weeks, a gigantic stuffed cat as its primary exhibit, its patchwork body winding throughout the funkily designed building’s plentiful rooms. In a far less capricious mood, as if overhearing one of Paul’s abundant sermons, elected officials announce they’re going to start targeting this panhandler plague with unprecedented aggression, beginning with the beggar swarms on campus. Damon contends this weekend with Frank on a booking rampage. Four gigs in three days, or twice the standard dosage. Aside from their obligatory Friday and Saturday night shows at hillbilly bars in the Mansfield area, they’re also slated to inaugurate a Mt. Vernon strip mall jewelry store’s grand opening on Saturday afternoon, possibly the strangest performance space Frank has yet cornered Get-A-Way into. Then, just to prove that with Medley all manners of weirdness are possible, some oddball charity benefit on Sunday, a cause he absolutely doesn’t give two shits for. Assuming he knows anything about it at all. “Hey Pockets, it’s Doug. Listen, bring us something to drink to work. I don’t care what it is, anything but rum.” The between jobs lull brings me here, our kitchen, and this message he apparently left shortly after one p.m. Dependent upon business, I sometimes have no break at all, but this rarely occurs during the five day banker’s workweek, clustering, if ever, toward the end. Particularly following our post Mother’s Day swoon, a decline demarcated by the year’s second busiest event, I’m told, at any restaurant, trumped only by Valentine’s. Typically, two hours of down time splinter these endeavors, a window I’ve often used for rejuvenating catnaps. But lately I swear off of these siestas - the disturbing dreams mar any real sleep, the foul moods upon awakening a burden to shake loose. Severe disorientation, a bodily rhythm jostled all out of whack. Objects and curses hurled around the room with a ferocity I wouldn’t necessarily consider healthy. Doug and Mike spent yesterday fishing for walleye two hours north of here, on the lifeless, zebra mussel infested waters of our native Lake Erie. Horrific sunburns ensue. Doug, who, though booze slurping, pill popping madman, has missed no more shifts than I - which is to say, none - despite often working at a much earlier hour, does attempt calling off this morning. Is consequently told by our boss, “if you can walk, you can work,” and given no choice but to show. “I told him if he wanted me to come in, he had to send someone down to get me,” Doug explains with a rueful smirk, “so he did.” Unlike most nights, this evening he and I close down meat and seafood, with no additional interference, hence his phone call. Testament that even the most straightforward individuals have no less than one completely incoherent attribute, Doug I characterize as pretense free, and fairly easily read, but he’s told me this story of the rum many times, and why he won’t drink it, but with none of these tellings can I sniff a whiff of cohesion. Something to do with his mother being a rum fanatic when he was growing up, that he can’t stand the smell. Particulars are irrelevant, anyway, though, for the beverage of choice is Southern Comfort. As part of the shrine we’ve built along our stove’s back end, stretching over to the countertop bread box, one empty bottle of SoCo is already parked. This latest obsession I lay directly at Damon’s feet, turning me onto the mighty though never harsh, vaguely citrus tinged intoxicant. Now neither of us can ever do without. Rounding out our temple, an untapped bottle of Butterscotch Pucker also leans against the kitchen wall, as does a nearly drained specimen of Alan’s beloved Goldschlager, one or two swallows of peach schnapps, and the dried out, fruity cordial carcass of a Chambord bottle slain eons ago, a lasting reminder of Damon’s old fuckbuddy Stacy. None of which, nor any other variety, is given the least amount of consideration today. “Christ, Pockets!” Doug laughs, when I breeze through the swinging doors brownbagging this whiskey, “I figured you’d at least mix it up or something. I can’t believe you brought it in like that!” I can only shrug. What’s done is done. Of more importance is establishing what we’re fusing this tasty compound with. Doug, hobbling under sun poisoning duress, in need of something strong. Sunburnt to the extent he can hardly walk, as the wisdom of boating shirtless all day soaking up rays and beer escapes them until they make it home. “If you think I’m bad, you oughtta see Mike,” Doug cackles, snags two dollars from his wallet, sends me off to the break room pop machine, “he looks like a lobster.” Limping around the department, he pours a couple potent cocktails in some spare plastic cups. He stashes the bottle in a remote corner of the cooler, in a box of raw meat, and reemerges, grabs a hose, begins backroom cleanup duty. A wad of chaw in his mouth, of course, as it always is when he performs this operation. At present Doug’s not exactly of the proper sunny disposition for dealing with our often elderly clientele, thus leaning against the customer service case becomes my responsibility. Little business to occupy me, but plenty of time to think. I now realize this is the first we’ve socialized since the night at Alison’s, that a question burning me up since seeks resolution, though temporarily forgotten in the current frantic sweep of things, and before this, trying my best to be too cool to care about i.e. call him up and ask: the Gina denouement. Bedroom absolutes are only ever within the grasp of the participants, and even then what happens is merely a matter of opinion. But as I press Doug for information he’s more than willing to oblige, his dossier of facts checks out as perfectly plausible. “I ate her out for forty five minutes but she wouldn’t fuck me so I had her drive me home,” Doug grins, summarizing with a terseness even Paul would be hard pressed to match. Four hours and one empty bottle later, shut the lights off. Doug’s frying up the walleye caught yesterday, and to downgrade from this whiskey overload we acquire a twelve pack of cheap domestic beer. Excessively merry, we make far too much noise checking out, yet aside from one young Asian kid bagging groceries a lane over, nobody else pays us any mind. His eyes harden, seesawing from mine to Doug’s and back again, as if aware, and offended, by the manner in which we’ve spent this shift, condemning us for it. Otherwise, we emerge from the pressure cooker unscarred. Doug plays chef, despite the ailing back. First slicing away the fish’s green gold skin, scaly, fading down to white near the belly, he accumulates a pile, sets his knife aside. Now systematically dips the walleye in a bowl of batter before firing them at the hot grease filled skillet, all in one liquid motion, chugging beer after beer with his free hand. Working up a sweat, he whips off his shirt, unearthing a hilariously round mound, redder than the lake of fire, with a corkscrew mat of hair covering every square inch, and rising, then, like copper tinged tendrils of steam. Has his right nipple pierced, too, a surprising ornament. Mike meanwhile lies groaning on his couch, the living room lights and television left mercifully off. I call Alan, giving him directions here, as we’ve more than enough fish to go around. “I don’t see what you guys are making such a big deal about!” Lisa protests, hovering around the kitchen throughout, “I’ve been burnt way worse, and you didn’t hear me complaining about it all day!” “Yer dick stinks,” Doug says, his way of phrasing my ass. And now properly lubricated, he elaborates upon the Gina experience, chuckles, “I don’t think she was too happy,” about the way he got her hot, then left. As in, protestations aside, she really did wish to sleep with him, but expected a bit more persuasion, not a guy like Doug, who doesn’t play games, who promptly says fuck this and bolts. I admit to calling Alison and Gina a couple of times, attempting to have them over, but that they never come. “That’s because you don’t invite them over to your house!” he barks, as if exasperated by my repeated idiocies, “you invite yourself over to their house!” Shakes his head, continues dipping the fish. “You’re killin me, Pockets,” he adds. Doug claims he’s made no attempt to contact Gina since that morning, which, though difficult to fathom, is probably true. What I fail to mention, however, because the excursion accedes such pitiable fruits, is that I’ve already revisited their apartment myself. Here, my efforts with Alison are neither disastrous nor especially colorful, falling like everything else I attempt in some grey area between. She calls me at work late one night, suggesting I come over, and bring some beer. In return, she promises to cough up the lurid pictures of our drinking game gone wild. Hot damn, I’m thinking, here’s where we conjoin, where we test out her mattress’s acquiescence and bounce. Except I arrive and Alison’s sitting around watching this televised beauty pageant with some other girl, two guys. She offers to pay for the beer, and while normally I would never accept, this time I willingly snatch the dollar bills from her hand - not only is it obvious that I’ve been duped into beer running for this group of underage kids, but she doesn’t even have the pictures developed yet anyway. I drink one can of brew with them and split, closing, in my mind, the book on Alison. Always the chump, regardless how well I play. But for all his talk I’m starting to realize that even a guy as smooth as Doug has to throw tremendous work into his game, it’s an unassailable aspect of life as a single male. For every interstate you stumble across, a straight shot into the silvery, ghostlike mirage of that enchanted city ahead, there are a thousand dead end roads, dozens of false leads. All you can do is accept the process and retreat, try another route, as to think about the struggle in rational terms, about time and energy spent, is to drive yourself crazy. Doug and I may not see eye to eye on operational methodology, but he now agrees with me that above all else we should have nabbed that camera. And that I contribute, however slight, to the scientific inquiry, somehow underlines the degree to which we’re all paddling along in this same metaphorical boat. Nobody has ever dialed the procedure down to formula, there are only varying degrees of ineptitude. Disinterested in either the seafood or our conversation, Lisa abdicates her throne as administrative expert. Withdraws to her bedroom, whereas a writhing Mike, visibly diseased, refuses still to budge from his palliative nest. Alan arrives, and he too cracks up at the shirtless Doug, collapsed, beer in hand, panting, in a chair at the kitchen table. Dinner’s served sometime around eleven, excellent to a fault. We mention heading out on the town from here, Alan and I, but Doug vehemently shakes his head, declines. We call him the kind of names he’d call us, situations reversed, questioning his toughness. “Fuck no I ain’t goin anywhere!” he snarls, “forget it!”

For the second time in about as many months, management is rolling out a uniform change. Now servers are to provide their own long sleeved white dress shirts, how convenient, and ties, in addition to the standard black slacks and non skid shoes. My strategy at present is to load up on the used, two dollar variety from a thrift store on Summit, rather than rely on my admittedly inconsistent motivation to send me laundering, or to break down, purchase an ironing board, and rise fifteen minutes early each morning to steam. And anyway, from a time-is-money standpoint, it makes more sense; I average ten to twelve bucks an hour at the restaurant, so frittering these precious minutes at a washing machine, or hunched over an iron, will never overrule a simple drive to buy more shirts. Showing up for work this morning, I learn that Mark May has been fired. His last shift he was busted shuttling a small freight’s worth of baby back ribs from the freezer to an accomplice’s car, idling on our back dock. Now his brother Tyrone is our lone remaining lunch busser, which basically means we will have a busboy only half the time. Not that I ever benefit much from their efforts in the dining room, but the clubhouse chicks are flipping out. And as with any firing, not only is the gossip grapevine cracked and withering from overexposure, but is has everyone looking over shoulders even as their gums flap, as if expecting axes to start falling all over. Still, when Dave approaches me in the kitchen, with a valley wide grin and a five dollar bill, I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. Pawing through the prehistoric mist of a recently completed dishwash cycle, in search of a metal canister to store sliced lemons, I put the operation on hold. “What’s this?” I grin in return, extracting the money from his grasp. “Here’s what I want you to do,” Weinle explains, softening the blow already with a chuckle, “it’s a nice day outside. I want you to take your time, you know, but take a niiiiiiiiiice leisurely stroll down there to the grocery store,” he chuckles again, “and use this to buy some razor blades, and some shaving cream. That way,” another disarming chuckle, “we can keep those things here, like hidden in a cabinet somewhere or something, and you’ll always have them on hand if you need them.” Okay, I get it, and I’m touched. I might be a handful, but management really does want to keep me around. They like my style, my unhinged positivism, the effort I bring, most of all my attendance record. Already I’m certain that this white dress shirt business is going to be an absolute debacle, as far as my end of the bargain is concerned, but for the moment I’m on exceptionally good graces. If a house cleaning seems afoot, that’s only because it is. After months spent spewing his best of the best nonsense, Votino grows eerily mute. Then it emerges that, rather than building another Damon’s Place For Ribs onsite, ownership has purchased a separate plot of land, nearby, will erect there a different operation entirely. Will keep both a going concern, rather than leveling this one. Now, in place of threatening gobbledygook, their double tiered gameplan appears as a) a modest posting, presented without fanfare, without mention, on the hallway bulletin board, should anyone care to transfer over there and b) a tightening of the ship, for those who stick around here. The Buckeye Hall of Fame Café, they’re terming this latest venture, great, just what campus needs. A couple miles south of here, also on Olentangy, past the brand new baseball field and the Jack Nicklaus museum, past the Lennox spaceship shopping center, directly facing the river, this building they hoist with land speed record time, as though toiling around the clock. Buckeye football fans are already the most annoying aficionados on the planet, and this added fuel I can barely stomach. A cursed shrine to OSU heroes of yore, as if these nuts don’t already vomit scarlet and grey factoids three hundred sixty five days a year. For what, a season that lasts all of eleven games. Back when we are moving in, on the third of January, to be precise, ten thousand people crowd into a rally at the St. John Arena, to celebrate a Rose Bowl victory. Folks, I’m sorry, but get a life. Every spring, the Buckeyes play an exhibition football game, serving no real purpose, except these too are always inexhaustibly attended by another capacity mob. Crew soccer games in the springtime, fine, and the OSU brass band, this galaxy’s largest, can practice here each fall as well, but rock shows alone redeem Ohio Stadium. Ostensibly one beautiful piece of architecture, this epic arena, as though lifted brick by brick from gladiatorial Rome, with its ivory hued stonework and overwhelming arches, its cloud scraping rim, systematically notched with holes for light and aesthetic appeal. Yet only the occasional touring juggernaut can rekindle the feverish spirituality of such ancient rituals this structure suggests, or so I believe. Certainly there is no magic in a quarter million boors wearing pomegranate jerseys each autumn Saturday, half filling the stadium past its spillover point, the other half grilling bratwurst and listening to bad 70s funk cover bands in the parking lot. Whereas even a thus far poorly reviewed, modestly attended U2 cross country jaunt, some bloated, techno laden postmodern extravaganza, can sweep into town tonight, and set this university humming with an almost religious fervor. More invasive, somehow, for all its subtlety, further reaching, a refrigerator’s purr set against the roar of a vacuum cleaner. Relegated to the sidelines by this unforgiving work schedule, and a refusal to call off, my punch out point at the grocery store is well past showtime. Knowing not another interested soul, Alan has the afternoon free but declines going alone, maintains the same pose he apparently has the last several hours. I change, intent upon sightseeing, whereas his shoulders recline against the wall, propped slightly upright by pillow, enabling this mute absorption of the black and white cathode rays. Forty four thousand tickets sold, and thousands more loiter, camping, carousing, able to clearly hear if not see, in this field behind the action, the empty expanse of land between an OSU library and the Lincoln and Morrill Towers. Another merry swarm, collegiate and younger, mostly, rules the campus streets, too, centering upon Lane and High, but fanning both outward and inward across virtually every spare scrap of land. This may not equal, quite, the open container free zone of a Saturday morning tailgate bonanza, which the cops have given up on policing entirely and close off the surrounding streets to accommodate, but it comes close. Between here and there I encounter a dozen front porches sagging with keg party saturation, densely packed and chirping above random U2 albums, cranked full tilt, or a local radio station broadcasting the same. Local band Silo the Huskie works the parked car cabal, meanwhile, sliding flyers beneath windshield wiper blades, advertising an after concert show they’re playing at the Short North venue Chelsea’s. Home, bored, attempting to write something for hours now in this disheartening dustbunnied bedroom, soundproof but for the muffled tv drone escaping Alan’s now closed door, I evacuate for round two, as the clock reads half past two. Discover that, without exception, the same houses reveling the last time around continue to do so, if sloppily, louder, but that High Street itself, stretching from roughly Hudson Avenue clear down into the Short North, is an absolute madhouse, wilder than any Thursday night, even in dreams. The Chelsea’s afterhours canceled, given up on by its queued hopefuls after an extended wait, so that by midnight, when the drunken owner staggers up with keys, only the furious Silo foursome remain outside, though stick around no longer than it takes to grab their equipment. No shortage of alternative venues await this howling horde, however, whereby even this all night convenience store I’m raiding for ice cream bears a shoulder to shoulder parking lot congregation, assembled for no discernible purpose, and with no other entertainment, unless their skateboards and boomboxes count, their rosy reenactments, across the street shout outs, one hit bowls and forties.

Damon, on the brink of collapse after the wearying weekend. Damon, arriving mid morning this holiday Monday, swiftly passed out in his room. The first day in a month I’ve had off from the restaurant, and fortunately, granted a blank dash on the grocery store schedule as well, these glorious beams cook the climate to 70 degrees plus, inspire me to a long overdue cleaning of this pigsty car. The sun a serendipity bellwether, allowing me to assume the best of this night to come, that, though she’s ridden shotgun on countless occasions, if all goes well Amanda may occupy her seat again, but that, given the circumstances, its significance would dig so much deeper than ever before, therefore I should scrub the interior immaculate. Alan’s birthday fiesta, the organizing principle these events coagulate around. Timed propitiously, this celebration, more than any other in the history of the known universe. If ever a man needed diversion, now is the moment. Alexis arrives at our doorstop yesterday, car packed for an impending impromptu move to Bloomington, Indiana. Made necessary by a recent altercation between Alexis and her parents, within whose house she’d been residing, at the conclusion of which, sources indicate, she is quoted telling them to “fuck off” and is promptly shown the door. Follows this whirlwind success with a crash landing at Alan’s parents’ house, confronts them with an immediate vitriolic broadside outlining everything theoretically wrong with their son. Her visit there, though passionate, and presented with impressive volume, is a mysteriously truncated affair. Finally, the unannounced doorbell ring. Alan opens the door, and she greets him with a swinging boot airmailed directly into his crotch. Much shouting ensues, while a reflex shove, rebounding in the wake of her ball busting kick, sends her sailing across the patio. With a few derisive comments concerning her drug intake and an obvious mental corrosion, he tells her to take a hike and locks the door. Exhausted much as Damon is today, though in his case by the one-two uppercut of work and this conflict, Alan trudges slow motion up the stairs, retires behind another closed door, that of his bedroom, for a highly coveted nap. Manning my familiar crossword puzzle at seven o’clock, above the local alternative station I hear our telephone chime. Reasonable to expect more outlandish fodder continuing the Alexis episode, but no, it’s only September, oddly, inviting us to meet her and Lisa out at Club Dance. “We just got here,” she says, calling from a pay phone. I inform her that Alan’s sleeping, but that when he rises we surely will. She calls again at eight, once more at nine. Incredulous in each instance as to the duration of my roommate’s evening snooze. With only vigorous, though empty, assurances to offer, my replies are met with frustrated sighs and speculative inquiries wondering when he might awaken. At half past nine, Alan emerges toting one laundry basket and a far sunnier mien than he went to bed with. Debriefed on September’s relentless surveillance, he wrenches his face into a dismissive smirk, refuting her overtures with a wordless cocky head shake, disappears to wash his dirties down the road. Twenty minutes later our manic depressive friend calls again, though the irritation she’s wrought from me earlier is gone, as I replace it with a carefree flippancy. “You guys still coming out?” “Ah, actually, Alan just left to do some laundry.” “He left to do some laundry?” She flounders, as if struggling to conjure up a mental image of him performing this task, “but...... you guys are still coming out, aren’t you?” “Yeah, I think so.” Alan returns and we agree that meeting those two out there sounds about as exciting as filing last year’s tax returns, opt instead to sit around the kitchen drinking with the radio on. September never calls again but her plain jane red panties hang beside us, a constant reminder, alongside Lisa’s giant pink jet harness, of just what we’re missing out on tonight. “Look, I have a confession to make,” Alan says, thoroughly trashed, eyes misty with alcohol. Unprepared for where this alluring introduction might lead, I scarcely expect him to blurt, “don’t ask me why I did it, but I was really fucked up one night at this party, and I ate that Lisa chick out.” “What!” I shout, planting all four chair legs and both feet on the ground, suspending, for the moment, my rocking motion. “What on earth would inspire you to do that?! I mean, I can understand having her blow you or something, but...... ” “I don’t know man,” he laughs, “like I said, I was really fucked up. See, this guy I worked with at Montgomery Ward’s was having a party one night, and I went out there, and I got fuckin haaaaaammered. All I know is next thing, I’m passed out on the floor of this guy’s garage, right, in a sleeping bag? But then sometime, it was almost morning, I wake up and she’s in it with me, totally naked. So I start going down on her. I don’t know, dude, what can I say, it just happened.” Like species evolution, all major events seem to collide in short, dense bursts, where everything happens at once. Long periods of complete inactivity, followed by these rapid life altering clusters. Or is it rather that with a couple strange occurrences, we’re finely attuned to assimilate, to pounce upon, any disruption of the daily routine, grasping the small details that ordinarily slip under our radar. While backdated, that this revelation airs only now unites it with Alexis and our Maxwell’s Aaron trip, walking Dawn and Stephanie home from there. Into Alan’s frantic week, even pointless pseudo celebrity sightings are thrown, a triad of them in the span of just these past few days. At the motor vehicles bureau, renewing his driver’s license, Alan’s stuck directly behind OSU linebacker Orlando Pace, a man so large Alan “can’t see the counter from around this fuckin guy.” Hurrying down one airport terminal, he passes the actor Rob Schneider, who’s talking into a payphone. Without breaking stride, Alan calls out to him in the voice of his most famous Saturday Night Live skit, “doin the phone thing!” and Rob, a gracious enough sport to look over, and nod, and smile. Bumping into z-list actor Chris O’Donnell, during a between flight lull, in some isolated, scarcely populated terminal. Alan pulls up directly before him and clicks his fingers, trying to recall the hack thespian’s name. “Hey! You’re, you’re, you’re...... the Boy Wonder!” Last seen reprising the role of Robin in another dreadful Batman flick, and little else, ever, outside these movies, it’s an understandable tag, but one O’Donnell apparently resents. He sneers, without comment, and steps around Alan, keeps moving. Shy of fumigation, my Escort’s as clean as it will become. We speak on the phone, Amanda and I, under the rubric of returning her Stephen King hardback, having finally finished it. As I chew through the ten or twelve blocks with excessive eagerness, stall tactics must now come into play, or else risk betraying how anxious I really am. And so a muck about these shops of south campus, track coverage. The fantastic and aptly titled Discount Paperbacks is still my number one haunt, a dark, mildew drenched catacomb replete with low ceilings and tightly woven mazes of old magazines, comic books, hardbacks, softbacks, a corner full of porn, most of it used and available on the cheap. Spider-Man painted on the front door, with a caption balloon inviting you to sink beneath ground level, descend these three steps and join him. A block further down High, Magnolia Thunderpussy and Singing Dog Records, competing music stores virtually across the road from one another. Armed with a full arsenal of new and used releases, huge sections of vinyl and posters and the current crop of fanzines. Singing Dog more formulaic in design, but with a better selection, particularly in old LPs, and friendlier help. Whereas despite the funky layout, like a collapsed, pressurized H, and offbeat merchandise, an impressive glass counter running the building’s length, the Magnolia’s staff strains to cop proper dismissive attitudes, owner included, as if, fully aware their store carries neither the atmosphere nor cachet, they really wish they were working at Used Kids. I burn through these on an aimless browse, and backtrack down 11th. When we conversed an hour ago, Amanda told me to just come on up, apparently forgetting that her building has no keyless entry. I rattle the outside door to no avail, shaking the door as if the force I exert will ever overcome this security system, designed to weed out angry drunks and shady drug dealers far stronger than me. Walk down to the payphone, call twice, but no answer. Typical chick, I’m thinking, always the sneaky blowoff, never direct. And now a return to her place, one more go at the door. I’m just about to give up when I hear my name sounding out from above. Risking a glance two stories overhead I see Amanda leaning out her second floor living room window, framed there like an angel in the space between me and the bright blue sky. Just to see her smiling face I can stand here all day, let my mind run wild with a thousand lewd thoughts, the golden sunlight a halo that surrounds her and the swirling clouds beyond a movie screen backdrop. But she disappears and comes running down two flights of stairs to let me in, panting with exertion. “I thought I heard some noise down here!” she laughs, “sorry about that.” So familiar, this scene, as I trail her up the metal stairwell, digging the way her plump ass jiggles in my face with each step. She looks incredible in a beige, flower patterned sun dress, her face highlighted with more makeup than I’ve ever seen her wear. I wonder if she normally walks around the house on seventy five degree days attired like this, or if upon receiving my phone call immediately went to work dolling herself up. What’s more, her man Brett is nowhere in sight, a fact she keeps harping upon, throwing in my face. That and her monster breasts, barely constrained behind a lacy black bra, on the brink of breaking loose each time she bends over. Which she does repeatedly; she bends at the waist to root through her purse for a pen, she bends again to write my number down. This act a compulsion, she can’t help herself. “Brett gets so jealous,” she blushes, ejecting this weathered refrain once more. “I think he found your number and threw it away.” Amanda flops beside me on the couch, and still my heart races whenever she draws near, vying to capture grand prize at the upcoming Tour De France. She claims to have my book cover completely laid out, on some program in her office, but this is revealed as just more idle chatter. What she means is she has it conceptualized entirely, but hasn’t actually gotten around to starting on the actual, you know, work. Says this as if believing the thought process was the most difficult part, that the rest will fall in place effortlessly - a prevalent attitude for people who are ninety five percent talk, which she is. Forget the old ratio concerning water, and the percentage of our bodies it comprises, because for Amanda, this fact becomes fable. Again, like everything else she touches. And still, no job, no car, though she’s assuredly enrolling at CCAD any day now. “You remember my two stripper friends from AA? Well, they’re talking about all of us getting together and going up to Cedar Point sometime soon,” she says, fluffing the downy blonde pillow of hair on the back of her head. “I don’t know, I was thinking maybe you’d wanna go with us.” Ah yes, the stripper friends from AA. They won’t last, at least not for long. I doubt they’ll clean up anytime in the next twenty years, because everything comes too easily to them, hot as they are. No fuckup too great that some horny male, preferably armed with cash, won’t extend another chance, based upon their beauty and a string of bullshit lines. And needless to say, these girls can turn on the waterworks when they need to, for they are nothing if not accomplished actresses as well. “Sure,” I shrug, “let me know.” Hands shaky I know the situation calls for my leaning in and planting one on her lips, cheek, neck, wherever, or at the very least to throw an arm around Amanda, pulling her closer. Anything but sit here tossing off inane parcels of small talk. But even though this stain of regret soaks deeper and wider with each passing second, paralysis exerts its common dominion. Arrested by my sole, months old encounter with her husband, I could claim, for Amanda and I haven’t met inside this apartment since, yet some worthless rationale always lays close at hand, regardless, exonerating immobility. “Come here,” she says, rising from the couch. My heart breaks through its ribcage barrier as she leads me down the hall. I follow her into the dark belly of her home, anticipation lost in the cavernous expanse between my fear of Brett exploding out of the bedroom again and an inability to breathe, assured that this is the moment I’ve pinned all my hopes upon. Exhaling in fits through clenched teeth I’m heady with the thought that she’ll push me gently down upon her soft wondrous bed and climb on top, that I’ll discover inside Amanda the moist warm heaven of which I’ve often dreamt, that she’ll screw me till I’m seeing stars. Instead, I’m privileged only a peek at the promised land. Her bedroom, so inviting with the shades drawn, the dimly lit playground I can easily picture romping through for days on end. Unable to concentrate, I’m going through the motions of comprehension and assimilation, pretending to absorb the steady stream of words flowing from her ever active mouth. She has a seat at the spare bedroom desk, begins running through some computer applications as I too try to locate the correct program, allowing me access to her password coded panties. “See, I can do the cover on this, I’ve got a really neat art program,” she explains, “like I said I’m planning on taking some classes next quarter anyway and I.....” In this northeast corner the sun shines twice as bright, momentarily, as anywhere else in the house, a literal haze adding to my metaphorical blindness. Years into association with Frank Medley, blatant sexual references come easily, but only when the girl in question is of moderate interest. I mention tonight’s festivities, however, which is a start. She stands, and I notice now if never before how nearly equal in height we are. Her cornflower eyes meeting mine, she smiles, tucks a speculative tongue under her top, painted red lip. Points out the binary obstacles preventing such an appearance, unnecessarily. I’ve heard it all countless times before, and anyway I know what she really wants. Does she spend an hour primping before the bathroom mirror, just to extend a polite goodbye? No, but these females are so cautious, so cunning, they’ll never directly state their angles. Therefore while she ruminates on viable escape options, how she’ll sneak out of this house and reach mine, I must submit an appropriate reply to what’s being said, correctly interpret what isn’t. I mention a ready vehicle, fit for transport, or that I’ve covered this distance on foot and she could do the same. Which tells her by implication let’s cut the games and fuck, though I’m not about to make my move here. “You walked?” she gasps, an odd sentiment for this supposed queen of New York City, the land of the permanently parked automobile. Strange too, that given time for a second thought, insane or otherwise, I may reconsider everything.

Damon wanders around the kitchen upon my return, haggard, withdrawn, though claiming complete recovery from the labor intensive weekend. Bolstering this assertion, he suggests that with Alan off gathering supplies at the grocery store, we should buckle down and clean if nothing else this table, these counters, our linoleum floor. He displays none of his usual enthusiasm for recounting the band’s adventures, though, for there are limits to how much Damon can recoup with such a meager ration of sleep. I momentarily pity his downtrodden state, until considering that it isn’t as though he has to endure the forty hour work weeks Alan and I trudge through. Whatever his condition, I know he’s looking forward to this approaching party as much as Alan and I, and for identical reasons. Damon has a girlfriend but is no less the pervert, he just finds creative ways to get around the issue without actually cheating. Watching our neighbor Stephanie undress in her bedroom is by no means off limits, nor would it if she somehow happens to do so in our soon tidy kitchen. He applies this enthusiasm to our imposing cleanup project, and the same measure of breathtaking ingenuity. Of course, why we even bother the most rudimentary decontamination makes for a strong debate. After all, our shady slumlord Wayne Ault is still under investigation by the City of Columbus, while from the other direction the IRS examines his every paper trail. Our downstairs hippie chick neighbor Sherrie, she began filing her rent money in escrow awhile back as well as a laundry list of problems Ault refuses to correct. He can’t get his money without correcting these faults but the issue will soon end with Sherrie moving out, she tells us, and a dissolution of her lease, with her apartment remaining exactly as she chooses to leave it. No wonder Ault loves us, three carefree guys who never complain about anything. Yet to entertain chicks atop our trash heap, we won’t have the chance to vocalize half this explanation before they flee the scene, screaming in horror. Theoretical posits as to how trashed out we should leave the place are fine when sitting around discussing jackass Wayne Ault, but as a practical matter this filth doesn’t fly. Mandy has not visited us since the spaghetti outrage more than two months ago, and in our maid’s absence, this place degenerates well beyond ever gleaming again. Fortunately, Damon excels in these mechanical matters, or we might not attempt our mild polish now. Thanks to him, the light socket mushrooms are ancient history, ditto the brief mice problem plaguing us back in the wintertime. And commonly that which he either can’t or doesn’t solve, such as those raccoon tracks blighting still our bathroom wall, is rendered innocuous through time’s great filter, almost charming. Even so, the central concern, and primary contaminant, nobody has ever given much thought to, perhaps considering the solution out of reach: these trash bags upon our stairs. And now that the early summer heat hangs in our apartment like a truckload of mulch, the stench has become ungodly. No trash can on the market will support the gargantuan avalanche of garbage we toss out on a weekly basis, and the journey from here to the dumpster out back far exceeds the demands our collective laziness is willing to meet. How to shorten this distance becomes a question for the ages, worthy of the nation’s greatest engineers. Either that, or a diabolical mind like Damon’s. Requiring, as it turns out, merely the adequate focus we bring tonight, and no obstacle will stand before us long. By grabbing one side of this dumpster, and giving it a spin, of sorts, it travels a lot further than when we both attempt to push. And with my car parked off to the left, near the white and gold VW van that hasn’t moved in the five months we’ve lived here, our parking lot is fortuitously empty at the moment, which, as it alternates between equal portions concrete, gravel, and weeds, is not the most desirable terrain to shove this monstrous beast through. Or should I say spin, and somehow, we manage. Flush against the brick exterior wall, directly beneath our back kitchen window, we know we’re in business and run inside to begin this trash flinging bonanza. Bombs away, a city under siege. Everything must and does go. Bottles bring greatest satisfaction, especially a long string of them smashing into one another successively, or else missing the dumpster wholesale as they explode into a million fragments on the sidewalk below. Stella barks without pause in the apartment beneath, which only serves to enhance our fun, though, thankfully, Stella’s owner isn’t home or this deranged episode likely shuts the door on our ever speaking to her again. Enraptured junkies jonesing for the next fix, after ridding the kitchen of its detritus, we actively scour the house for a continued ammunition pipeline - phone books, dirty plates we don’t feel like washing, basically anything even remotely disposable - and before we stop to assess any progress, the two of us have removed every soiled scrap in the house. I drive out to pick up Doug, our only solid commitment. The grim prospect of a tedious stag party stares us in the eyes, made far less entertaining already by Aaron’s cancellation. And on top of all this Damon’s got a hockey game later on, his final outing of the season. Alan returns with the booze by the time we return, and to while away this ambivalent interim, Doug starts telling them about the wild drinking card game two weeks ago with Alison and Gina. But though his stories are almost universally met with uproarious laughter, male bonding nods of admiration and approval, he receives from them now the treatment more in line with what I’m used to. In my own attempts at relating the Beer Tree incident to them, in the days immediately following its occurrence, they both abruptly change the subject, without comment, as soon as the words have left my mouth. Considering the accumulated wealth of their exotic and erotic adventures, and the accompanying tales I’ve spent all these years patiently accepting with a good humored ear, this reception knocks me speechless, and I can’t imagine my own piddling episode could possibly make anyone, much less guys with track records as rich as these two, jealous. Some other force compels them, then; perhaps they believe Doug and I sit around cobbling fabricated details to hermetic seamlessness. At any rate, Damon and Alan stand side by side in this kitchen, hands on hips, listening to his tale, smirk and rotate their heads, ever so slightly, to exchange Mike Short sidelong glances. And again say nothing. Nicole and September arrive at six. Wholly unconcerned about his upcoming game, possibly because he doesn’t expect much exposure on the ice, Damon pounds beer after beer with unprecedented abandon. And now Paul, now Mandy and Melissa climb unforeseen into our home, though any shock value their surprise visit warrants is overruled by the appearance of dark horse candidates Dawn and Stephanie. Neighbor Stephanie, meanwhile, hasn’t responded to the note we’ve left on her door, but fifteen minutes after sweating its demise, this party has an impressive six to five ratio without her. “Good evening, ladies,” I greet Dawn and Stephanie, marking the genial mood I’m in by cracking open a brew. “Drinking a beer?” Paul says, “whoa!” “Yeah, it’s a special occasion,” I reply. Our two new recruits are giggling, which can only mean they’re not excessively sickened by the inhospitable living conditions of 1990 ½ Summit Street. This makes them already the coolest chicks we’ve partied with since moving here. Mandy tries, however, to seize once more her deserted crown, clutching a pair of silky white panties with red and purple flowers. Says she wishes to donate them to our burgeoning collection, inducing a brief conference. We roommates have never properly defined the parameters of this undergarment shrine, thus, does the months ago bestowal of one Harley Davidson branded specimen preclude her additional contribution. In the end we allow Miss Goff’s magnanimous endowment to stand, tacking it to the wall as exhibit number seven. And in so doing, we hammer a reconstructed paradigm into place, too. Our lease expires at the end of the year and we’re falling woefully shy of the hundred panty pace, but if we can find fifty chicks to donate two pair each then we might have a realistic shot. Nicole and September drive back to Mansfield at eight, a scant two hours after they land here. Their token appearance seems pointless, as Nicole, her belly distended noticeably at last, if slight, hasn’t hooked up with Alan for weeks, and declines doing so now. He appreciates her birthday sentiments, I’m sure, just as surely as he had a different gift in mind than the card and peck on the cheek. With the earlier kitchen cleanup effort, a task worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize for environmental purification, Damon manages to purge himself, also, of the bad mood acquired from his overkill weekend with Frank. Since our project concluded, he’s knocked off an oil tanker’s worth of beer, and as nine o’clock approaches, he’s wasted, but I’m running his half crocked ass down to the hockey rink anyway. With stick and pads he follows me down the stairs, a feat that represents, in this state, his coordination ceiling. “I can’t fucking believe I’m actually gonna play this game,” Damon admits, blazing through one last cigarette as we shoot down Lane. Whipping into the St. John Arena lot, Damon climbs out with the laugh of a pure defeatist, deprecatory shake of the head, forecasting disaster in his drunken gait. As I return to the party, Mandy and Melissa flank Doug in Alan’s bedroom, both unwilling to budge for fear the other might stake a claim on this tantalizing new prey. In separate, secret discussions away from the pack each confesses to me that they find Doug cute, and ask his availability. He just has it like this with the ladies, a certain special knack, while guys like me are left playing matchmaker, shrugging chuckles and telling them I’ll do what I can. Yet even in disregarding my long held opinions that Mandy and Doug would indeed hit it off upon impact, early forecasts have Melissa trailing by a wide margin anyway thanks to some ghastly cold sores covering her mouth. “I was willing to fuck her until I noticed that shit all over her face,” Doug mutters, out the side of his own mouth, as this loose congregation moves next door to Ruby’s. Still, he’s a good sport, astute in grasping the politics of this dicey engagement. Alan and I have designs on Dawn and Stephanie, respectively, but we’re never going to get anywhere with them as long as Mandy and Melissa are in the mix. Those two are notorious for driving away any females we’re trying to nail and Doug, to his eternal credit, intuitively senses this, sequesters them off, away from the rest of us, along with a reluctant Paul. They pair off on a dartboard in the other room, leaving Alan and I to ply our wares against these two in a handful of heated pool games. Ruby’s curiously deserted this holiday evening, which allows me during between shot downtimes, conversational stalemates, to consider the law of averages, that it all evens out in the end. So much effort expended sometimes with nothing to show, it’s only fair that occasionally two young fresh things such as Dawn and Stephanie would land in our laps out of nowhere. By the time I leave to pluck Damon from his season’s lackluster finale, another loss, his buzz has worn off and he’s ready to avenge the lost hour. Huffing as if every ragged pant might be his last, only when we pull in behind our house does he finally catch his breath, assuring me that his performance on the ice tonight was not pretty and he likely is finished with the sport for good. But if Damon’s had occasion to sober up, Doug’s toed a crooked line in the opposite direction. His incremental drunkenness the only means for coping with these dandies we’ve handed him. Mandy and Doug, as anticipated, have hit it off well, two unpretentious alcoholics from the backwoods of Ohio, talkative to a fault, unconcerned with appearances outside of jeans and an old concert tee shirt. Melissa’s sour mood is apparently contagious, however, as she’s jealous of the attention Mandy draws from Doug and neither girl will talk to Alan or myself outside of a few snide remarks about our dates. Maybe Damon and Paul have the right answer, just fading away entirely. Doug pulls Mandy and Melissa away from the dartboard in favor of cutthroat pool on the alternate table, but Damon and Paul, they disappear. Per usual, they latch onto a dark, remote outpost in the distant half, sit polishing off one premium beer after another, bunkered beneath a cloud of smoke and this unimaginably intricate discussion of music and girls. Not that the dirty glares we’re receiving from that second pool table diminish, in any manner, our experience here on the first. Dawn and Stephanie, the perfect party chicks, shrug off any hostility with gracious giggles and a sip of their beers, they don’t give a damn any more than we do. Digging us in an offhand manner that suggests they enjoy themselves equally everywhere, without a thought given to much beyond the immediate. Closing time draws us home again, and Doug’s completely annihilated, the only distinct casualty in a night that never fights to retain its even keel, as smooth throughout as our efforts with Dawn and Stephanie. Giddy and buoyant, but never out of control. Alan preaches patience, in our discreet situational assessment, and we allow our girls to leave with only vague plans to connect again. And with Doug wearing the half closed drunkard eyes, eerily resembling and most commonly associated with Paul, Radick apparently feels his role is covered, splits as well. Meanwhile as Doug sits in a kitchen chair struggling to hold his head aloft, Mandy and Melissa mill around as if waiting for divine intervention to coach them on what’s next. “Why don’t you take Doug home,” I suggest, feeling, after a day like this, adequately deific to satisfy the role, “it’s right on your way.” Shy, she would never admit it. But as the apparent victor in this small scale epic, Mandy may have finally forgotten Linville, if only for tonight. More than willing to transport her new dreamboat crush across town, to smooth out the rough edges of his drunkenness by gentle, motherly hand, brace his feeble stagger from car through lawn to threshold. Atypically, however, Mandy entrusts someone else with driving duties tonight, and this someone, Melissa, has the keys, has other designs. Melissa has no qualms abusing this infrequent power fully. In a fit of spite, she refuses our simple favor. “Forget it!” she sneers, and the door slams shut behind them. Doug, he finally has his chance to try out the jam room floor. With the alarm clock reveille violating sleep at nine, I throw on the wrinkled restaurant garments and shout his name up the stairs. Doug wakes curiously silent, but cheerful. A side effect of this glorious morning sun, which officially announces, to those more academically inclined than he and I, that a mere two weeks remain in the OSU school year, and two truncated weeks, at that. We cruise up High and he’s whistling All I Know by the Screaming Trees, inarticulate, stuck in this pensive mode I never would have guessed him capable of. “We should have gotten that camera,” he says at last, breaking the long interregnum, “cause I don’t think Damon and Alan believe us.” “Yeah, I know.” Another reason I no longer speak is that when you tell someone a story your whole being hinges upon and they either don’t care, or, as in this scenario, dismiss it out of hand, you feel about one inch tall.

Dave chuckles and rubs his chin, oversized, protruding slightly, like everything else about this giant man. Though standing nearly seven feet, his features always appear to me disproportionate, arms and legs longer, than even a man of his stature’s should. Sprouting a healthy crop of black hair, parted down one side and piled with chaotic irreverence along the other, nearly split apart by his captivating grin, his head seems on the brink of toppling from the ionosphere any moment. Yet commensurate to his mountain moving charm, Dave carries this freight with impossible grace, at once alien and angular and fluid and cool. “You look like a wrinkly movie star!” Weinle grins, appraising my appearance with what I guess is a qualified thumbs up. When I’m on, I’m on, but finding and maintaining success with consistency is what counts, and where I fall to pieces. I have a plastic bag filled with shaving cream and razors stashed high above the server station cupboards, though maybe Dave’s right, maybe an iron wouldn’t be such a bad idea, either. Lord knows we have the room, stashed as these cabinets are with dusty, gunk covered crap: disabled printers, rusted toasters, and other tiny appliances of yore; strange table linens nobody’s used anytime this decade, funky wooden baskets that will never see a breakfast buffet again. The trick is to isolate and neutralize any possible conflict causing agents before they take root, benefitting both desperate parties in this loosely bound contract. A week after his brother’s termination, Tyrone stops showing up, leaving us without a single reliable daytime busser, while Kip and Mike have already filed their leaves of absence, their departures less than two weeks away. “Hey,” Akash questions, gliding into the server station now, “what do you say when you’re greeting a table, and there’s both guys and girls sitting there?” Oh, how I live for these academic debates. Inclusion alone, to have a viewpoint worth polling, represents value, that you bringing something unique to the table. We continue some ancient folk tradition, an oral history shared with each successive wave of new hires, with each location change, information passed along through nothing but a verbal exchange of what works, a gradual elimination, natural selection style, of what doesn’t. Those that have something meaningful to contribute, those with singular insights never before considered, their ears are picked with greater frequency, thereby elevating the game, hopefully, of all interested truth seekers. The rest, they remain stranded, back on some island of meager tips and outdated, limited knowledge, hemmed in by their own closed-mindedness. “Cause I always say how you guys doing?, but I hate that,” Akash elaborates, “if it’s just girls I say ladies, but when it’s both I never know what to say.” “Folks,” I advise, “I always say folks.” “Folks. Folks. How you folks doing?...... I like that,” he nods, wagging a finger in my direction as he ventures, preoccupied, off to his just seated table. As if undergoing a systematic withdrawal in preparation for their move, Akash already spends fewer afternoons video gaming with Mike and Kip than he has in months past. I not only swing by his apartment most mornings, but give him a lift home as well, though for two guys who occupy this much time in each other’s presence, we rarely have anything to discuss at all. Our rides often transpire with chunks of silence a dozen blocks long. With Akash as quiet and indifferent as I am, while sharing virtually none of the same interests, what these proceedings could use is a return of motormouth Amanda, or someone else like her. Still, for such a lazy individual, he moves most everywhere with a curiously focused fanaticism, be it down the hall for our morning sports page, or jumping out of my moving auto to reunite with his bong. Keisha and I, if only we could work together more often. Now that hostesses are wearing the dress shirts as well, she is revealed an absolute goddess, and I wonder how it is that before this day, I never would have appraised her quite at that level. Of course, our heinous bygone uniforms fail to showcase anyone in a positive light, but I consider imagination my strong suit, and would expect myself better at projecting how she might look in street clothes. Working a rare morning earlier this week in place of Jenny Hughes, which makes this only the third or fourth time we’ve shared a shift, she explains that warmer weather means a revival of what she calls her OCT tradition. “Outta Control Thursdays,” she explains, accompanied by the obligatory snicker. Her central features bunch together with such wicked beauty, laughing like this, a look I call angelic mischief, and she murmurs a strident invite to this week’s bash. I’ve not given her overtures much stock until tonight, when Damon, Alan, and I return from our nightly bow out for a bite to eat. Thursday here at last and Paul’s on the way, but there’s a message from Keisha, barely heard atop a chorus of partying maniacs in the background, insisting I simply must find a way to her house. Returning her call, she repeats “hello?” a few times, unable to determine identity or content above the falling landmass roar of bodies around her. Retreats to her bedroom, shutting the door on this din, and outlines, with urgent merriment, in her cracking, high pitched voice, that Jessica, Sonja, and Cheri are reportedly driving down from Mansfield, and that I’ll kick myself in the pants if we don’t hook up. “Keisha?” Alan jokes, as soon as I’ve hung up the phone, “what, are we partying with black girls tonight?” Damon predicts Paul will not like this change of plans one iota, and he’s right, though we pay no mind to Paul’s protestations. For ten minutes alone again with Jessica I would throw away the past five months, which possibly refutes everything I’ve ever said about moving down here, but contradictions, and backsliding fits of nostalgia, shadow us all. Particularly the contradictions, from which no one is immune - Damon claims undying fealty to Shannon, but his eagerness for Keisha’s bash surpasses even mine, while Alan, wisecracks aside, can’t hustle us out the door fast enough. “I don’t like big crowds,” Paul says, defending his neurosis, his compulsion to avoid this soiree. Why insist upon Maxwell’s, then, its grimy floor doubtless sagging with twice as many souls as this bash. His Jennifer obsession abates not a smidgen with the passage of months, but it’s difficult to imagine how Paul hopes to meet any new chicks if we listen to him and avoid building any social contacts. And anyway, Alan and I are making the largest, potentially suicidal, sacrifices of all: Dawn and Stephanie ring us up earlier, looking to get together, but Alan suggests we save it for the weekend. “You’re never gonna get laid here,” Paul says, his handy rallying cry for any situation he doesn’t want to be in. As with all statements such as these, ninety nine percent of the time it’s inevitable that he’s correct. But to sit in some dark corner of a goth club for fifteen minutes before heading home scarcely cuts the mustard, either. Bottom line is that if we ever hope to get anywhere with these university girls the four of us need to take our game to a higher plateau, and though painful, the bright lights and cramped living rooms of these household gatherings are the perfect forum to hone our craft. She lives on Norwich, two blocks north and a half dozen west of our compound. Poorly lit, even for a campus street, with parked cars crowding the right-hand side of its narrow, bumpy, one way avenue, Norwich has the uneasy vibe of some illicit back alley, and revels with the degenerate life of one. A notorious party zone jammed tighter with apartment buildings than styrofoam shipping peanuts around an antique lamp, and each unit carousing at a greater intensity than the last. Second and third floor balconies overhang the sidewalk like greedy predators, threatening, taxed with hundred body load limits that vacuum beer and shout song lyrics, to snap off at the base any moment now. Heightening our confusion as we squint for address numbers. A forsaken tennis court sandwiched in here to our left, with fallacious good intentions, and finally Keisha’s complex. And though her third story flat may contribute substantially to this grand melee, nothing about its outside appearance indicates overindulgence, decadence, any of the above, primarily as this looming edifice faces perpendicular from the street. The common space saving measure, with parking space minimal, and tenants piled sky high. “JASON!” Keisha squeals as I knock on the screen door, tiptoeing, like the football practice drill involving strategically placed tires, through a sea of bodies to reach it. On the job Keisha favors a permanent sly snicker but now that’s she loaded the good humor speeds up and elevates into some previously undreamt ascendancy. Confirming that providence gratifies the already well endowed, when not thrust apart in a side splitting chortle, merry lips curve upwards to meet her radiant green eyes, stacked atop jiggling double D cup breasts, beneath the vibrant red hair streaked with blonde. She throws her arms around me in a generous laughing bear hug - though nothing funny, technically, has been said - and the moment they lay eyes upon our hostess Damon and Alan are instantly assured that this is without question the spot for us to be. Beauty aside, Keisha’s gushing generosity is enough to defrost all but the chilliest hearts - Paul’s still scowling, with his arms crossed - and to further sweeten the pot she’s packed this tiny apartment with an insane number of gorgeous young guests. As I grab beers for each of us from the fridge, we integrate the best our modest abilities will allow. Alone, Paul’s refusal to participate in this blanket strategy, not just here, but anywhere, proves an enduring enigma. I scarcely know a soul outside of Keisha, Damon and Alan even less, but the only way to battle unfamiliarity, your crippling timidity, is to check all reservations at the door. Plug yourself into the mix and mingle, approach those strangers, mouth that inane smalltalk. His aversion for large crowds is well documented but he’s not helping his cause any in adopting such a hostile stance - the scowl, the crossed arms, nodding and yawning with boredom should anyone actually speak to him but offering nothing of his own. Then he’ll claim there’s not any hot chicks here anyway and insist we leave, but half of me always feels this is just an affected copout rather than a matter of taste. Not that I spend much time sweating Paul’s malaise. How can anyone fail to grasp that this is it, hot damn, that the collective vision we’ve held all these months has sprung from the bottle at last, in this sitcom bright apartment before us. A vision held so long we eventually just gave up. We always imagined spending every weekend if not every night in this manner, in a setting such as this, with a rowdy collegiate crowd and an equally brutal stereo, with the constant cheer spreading flow of a well funded beer pipeline. Our faith that this lifestyle lurks somewhere beyond our limited scope, just out of reach, it never dies but lies buried somewhere, forgotten, between spare scraps of paper in my room, or cat food bags residing still below the kitchen sink, or the tracks across our linoleum, beneath a pile of clothes upstairs, stuck to the bottom of empty bottle clusters on Alan’s nightstand. Yet as these minutes melt and our identities acclimate, with the upward turn of her lips Keisha revives these moribund dreams, suddenly as lustrous as the day we came to town. Fifteen or twenty figures lounge around the plush white living room carpet, casually stabbing these offhand pastimes. Colleen, a slender blue eyed hostess at our restaurant, her hair a dark long mass resplendent with tightly wound curls, sorts through a pile of CDs stacked loosely by the stereo, circulating the best of these into rotation as background music. Jenn Hanratty, one of Keisha’s two roommates, collects brown waffled locks in a scrunch tight against her scalp while on the job, painfully so, I’ve always reckoned, which would explain the constant glower contorting her face. But seated upon the stone fireplace lip, her familiar judgmental grimace peering out above the beak nose, she lets these follicles tumble without restraint, so that can’t be it. From Hanratty, the most virulent clubhouse bitch we have, to Keisha, though, both my least and my purest favorite coworkers are represented, a gamut signifying the four of us can surely find our niche in here somewhere. Damon ponders all of five minutes before deciding where his might be. Across the way, standing in kitchen semicircle, our newest hire Gina Wade brings the slight husk of her chuckle to a colleague’s joke. Wearing a lime cotton tank top, her breasts, while average, strain against the flimsy material, and further below, the soft cushion of her frame fleshes out a pair of faded jeans. Her strongest physical attribute, I feel, is the silky spiderweb sweep of black crowning her head, parted down the center and tucked behind each ear, but Damon disagrees. “I’d like to hook up with that,” he mutters and leers, claiming from this couch that Gina’s physique perfectly matches his ex-girlfriend Angie’s, “I’d know that body inside and out.” Keisha manhandles me over to the coffee table, insisting I park here and learn a card game they call Drunk Driving. Alan and I sit, even as Keisha is too busy darting around the room to involve herself anyway, finding some measure of solace in the form of our dealer, Julio. A slick, well dressed Latino, Julio stacks the deck openly, for the girls are oblivious, insuring they grab all the good cards. He catches our clued in grins and winks, laughs and repeats with each shuffling off the deck. “So wait, you work with this Keisha, that’s how you know her?” I hear Damon ask, as he and Paul sit directly behind our shoulders. “Yeah, but see, I was hearing stories about her even when we still lived in Mansfield,” I explain, fleshing out the connection, my acquaintance with Keisha’s aunt, that Damon too has met her. “You remember her, right, that chick we all called the Blowjob Queen?” “Jason!” Colleen gasps, “I didn’t know you had a mouth like that!” I offer a shrug and crooked, guilty smile, but it’s not as though Colleen and I know one another well. We’ve mapped our knowledge out through one solitary conversation after work, over lunch at table 42, discussing our mutual admiration for the songs of Matthew Sweet. On the job she addresses me by mister and by last name, in a fake, clipped British dialect, and while a pleasant enough lady to spend a shift alongside, sunny even, she’s a bit too skinny and pale to match my tastes. Earns bonus points, however, for showing up most mornings blurry eyed and bloodshot, yet always high of spirit, able to summon her admittedly perfect beam on command. We drift outside for a breath of fresh air and a change of scenery. Too many males have swollen the party to a bloated roadkill carcass, and while nearly as many folks clog this wooden exterior stairwell, for some reason superb females comprise the majority out here. Absorbed thumping chests and pawing over the slimmer buffet indoors, those idiots never take proper stock of their surroundings. Maybe survival does favor the clever, after all. We immediately meet a stunning curly tressed brunette named Becky, with a blue jean blouse tied off midriff to flaunt her taut, tanned stomach and belly ring punctured navel. Accompanying Becky, who recently relocated here from Chicago, we encounter Lauren, obviously quite dense and, with her wispy, tawnier mane, her unguarded, open mouthed expression of continual awe, a shade less instantly alluring. “Something about her makes me think she’s slutty,” Damon mumbles. And yes, fortunately, there is always that element to level a girl’s playing field. An advantage she needs, for one of her wide, blue eyes is somewhat lazy, as is, apparently, her workout regimen. Lauren crams her bottom half into jeans that map the jutting derriere’s every finest detail, selects a button up blouse leaving two inches of pale, white, slightly flabby flesh between. A beauty anywhere else, and certainly no one we’d refuse anytime soon, but hampered by association. Becky volleys conversationally with impressive casual speed, she even cradles the aluminum can with something approaching grace; young, but with the benefit of big city blood coursing beneath the tender skin, she’s socially complete in a manner we can’t begin to comprehend. Becky’s visually upstaged in short order by a blonde introducing herself as Joy, hotter than a riot fire. Figure skater tiny, though padded in all the right places, Paul should backflip three stories for this chance to speak with someone so closely matching his ideal dimensions. Instead, he claims a migraine headache, leaves Damon and Alan the honors of flirting with Joy. Stands noncommittal against the rail, rubbing his forehead, while I, content with the exemplary prize she too personifies, and finding no need to ask for more, remain engaged by Becky. “Can I rub your belly?” I ask, in a forward, gambling frame of mind. She smiles and establishes eyes contact, sips her drink and grants permission to do just that. Joy moves indoors, in far too great of demand to tether herself down anywhere for long. We can make the same claims of this party as a whole, in particular the focal point Keisha, a spectacle larger than the apartment’s selfish, restrictive reach. She announces a relocation around the corner to her treasured club the Jailhouse, and Paul alone dissents. Slack jawed we stand on the sidewalk watching him retrace his steps down Norwich, as the remaining horde moves in the opposite direction, and in eventuality we’re bringing up the rear. Unable to comprehend his sour mood, we recognize that when Paul gets like this there’s no rousing him from it, so we don’t even bother. We’ve withheld this Jailhouse from our repertoire since the Wednesday country-western night in January, and if enjoying ourselves reasonably well then, it’s quickly apparent that Thursdays are an altogether different animal, that we need to work this back into our mix pronto. Already one o’clock, which is possibly the perfect clubbing hour, and this Jailhouse, exquisitely named considering the number of clearly underage drinkers here, is packed to the point that idle contemplation a la Maxwell’s is simply not an option. A claustrophobic constituency so potent we virtually have no choice but grind up against the girls in our group, as we collectively storm the dance floor. Which isn’t to say we mind, only that absolutes are appreciated, eliminating second guess. With the walk and an extended stand in line, lost time and the DJ’s skittering beats add an urgency to these motions. Though joining us out here, Damon does mostly lean against the cell block railing, determined to mentally capture every noteworthy creature prowling these grounds, employing a cigarette smokescreen to dissuade all attempts at making him dance. Alan and I, meanwhile, pounce on these passing moments, determined to master them rather than the other way around. Keisha slithers between us, trashed and laughing as we mash our bodies against her, a tag team executed in this sanitized playground with all our clothes still on. Her bluish purple satin blouse and tight black slacks, not to mention her proximity, invite textile examination, and as she pumps against him, Alan grips her ass cheeks firmly in his hands, squeezing them, while I support her elephantine breasts in mine. Then he and I switch places, swapping duties, as Keisha continues howling her fool head off, shouting what a blast this is. Like a gas filled balloon, physical laws dictate that these particles will never hold one constant position. Clusters break apart and scatter, reassemble elsewhere in temporary random sequences. Becky emerges, we drape one loose arm across the opposite’s shoulder, seal our interlocking pelvises together as one as we obey the hyperactive beat. Whereas Damon refuses yet this dance floor’s siren call, he manages hands full with Lauren’s backside, and she gamely shakes everything she has into them. Lauren now turns to face, and gyrate upon, his stationary mass, as I move from Becky in behind her, hands mobile, resurrecting the Keisha skewer executed moments ago. The hourglass betrays, however, and our disc jockey’s amplified bellow announces, with as much merriment as possible, impending last call. Hordes deplete with tsunami force, depicting Maxwell’s as a Sunday knitting circle by contrast, and I pause for breath along the rail with Damon and Lauren, the three of us bound together, and little hope of locating the others within this mad stampede. But jokes about her looseness aside, Lauren’s dumbfounded gape fails to stir these loins. I can’t quite figure out why, but she bothers me. Striking off into this still grooving swarm, for half have gone nowhere, for the music continues and colored beams swirl where house lights have yet to come up, I stumble by what seems a miracle onto Becky and two of the other nameless girls, stepping lighter now with the rhythm, here where the dance floor cuts off near the bar. “What’s your number?” I shout into her ear. Without breaking her backbeat stride, she barks out the seven digit code. “Call me!” she urges, now abruptly throws her arms around me in a parting embrace. I find Alan and Damon comparing notes by the door, and we exit together. We take only a handful of steps outdoors, however, and a brawl erupts before us, drawing our feet up short on the sidewalk. Two wiry males, shirtless, and one rams the other’s head against the Jailhouse’s brick front wall. Now a smattering of friends join the fray from both sides, and the battle spills out onto Lane Avenue itself. Traffic at an actual standstill, though whether in deference to the brawlers or simple rubbernecked curiosity is impossible to establish. Late breaking cops rush now on foot across this grassy expanse at the southwest corner of High, and all other factions, opposing or otherwise, disperse.

Dawn has left four message already tonight on our answering machine, hot for Alan’s body. Seems his ploy of waiting till the weekend might pay handsome dividends. I would expect no less than his ornery smirk as he lets these dispatches accumulate, and he doesn’t disappoint, waiting until almost nine to place a return call. Risky maneuvering for a Saturday night, but he knows his game well. We hop in my car for the short jaunt down to their apartment complex, walking distance ordinarily except for these torrential sheets of rain. And so this swing through the gas station at 17th for beer, a left hook onto this gravel alley running parallel to and between 14th, 13th, parking in the lot behind their building. Inside Dawn’s second floor suite, she and Stephanie lounge around already cracked open cans, joined by an unfamiliar third accomplice, Deetra. Well, well, who knew Dawn had a roommate, and that she’d look like this. Attired in a white dress blouse beneath red sleeveless sweater, and beige business slacks below, I have to wonder if she’s joining us, or has just gotten home from the office. Inky plaits descend as sleek and straight as the rest of her feline figure, Deetra, green eyed, thin, and pale, though with the compelling facial structure one finds himself unable to look away from, bones prominent and elegantly nuanced, like those girls in black and white lingerie ads. Better looking than the other two combined, and outclassing their casual threads as well, forcing Alan and me into a subtle reconnaissance. “Where’d you meet her?” Alan asks, when Deetra slips off to the restroom. “She seems so proper and conservative,” I remark. “Yeah, well, she’s a slut,” Dawn fires back. Stephanie starts giggling, she and Dawn turn to one another and titter in unison. Disregarding this momentary rally, Dawn and Stephanie have received us thus far in a quiet, weird funk. In consideration of the storm pounding against her picture window on the other side of those blinds, Alan and I had discussed trying to corral them here, get them good and sloppy on their own turf, in our preliminary outlines drafted along the way. The girls need a distinct loosening up whichever direction we tumble, though, and as they outvote us three to two in favor of examining the nightlife, Alan and I will voice no complaints. We pile into my car, move laterally across campus. With celestial ardor, these rain slicked streets shimmer, in orange, in white, and the houses beside them so stark in their majesty, like cardboard cutouts, or props from a motion picture set. Everything else is made blurry in the wash. Through bleary brakelights these tires swish negotiations, and the clubs on High offer a muted thump, these sidewalks bloom with an actual surfeit of like minded scouts. The afternoon, it taunted with an intermittent sun, but no rain. A consciousness arousing rally titled Hempfest ‘97 is held all day down at the South Oval, to a rapturous throng rife with baggy pants and hackysacks, frisbees and activist leaflets. For those of us uninterested in legalization issues, bonny young flesh, though often a trifle pasty, is bared elsewhere with attention grabbing skimpiness, and a third world country’s yearly intake of draft beer pours, cheaply at that, from the Ohio Union at the oval’s distant eastern rim. Safe to say that few are here for the music. Typically, upon this rustic platform, beside tiny manmade Mirror Lake, jazz bands and orchestras are the only outfits found, the only ones coming anywhere near Browning Amphitheater. Yet in the name of a good cause, campus allows this flood of hippies temporary congress. Which is acceptable if these jugglers, comedians, flame throwers and other oddball acts fulfill the day’s itinerary alone. But a whole slew of unfortunate Dead retreads also take the stage, from Triggahappy to Uncle Sam’s Dream Machine, outfits we either have already caught at Ruby’s or could at least once any given week. I expect the extensive shrubbery surrounding the lake to shrivel up and blow away, the geese to either migrate or collapse, its central fountain to back up and flow the other way, though apparently none of this happens. These girls have chosen Panini’s, our best option for chatting at a table with relative ease. Sufficient lighting that we might see one another’s faces, without having to shout above the music. Parking in an alley on the building’s graffiti riddled posterior, we stride with purpose, with as much swiftness self-consciousness will allow, down to and along 10th. At the corner doorway, Alan and I crack up to discover that the blonde smartass with glasses, Matt, who famously dissed Damon’s haircut our only other visit here, is now stuck in a chair checking ID, only half sheltered from the rain. So reserved in her living room and during the quick ride over, Deetra instantly reveals her true colors by disappearing into the modest, almost laughable, makeshift central floor, where tables are shoved aside to accommodate any booty shaking urges. The rest of us slide into a booth along the wall, with its bank of large, chest high windows swiveled open onto the sidewalk, level, suspended on flimsy arms. Stamped underage, Dawn sends Alan up to the bar with her money, to purchase them a shot of the unabashedly cinnamon Goldschlager, in addition to the beers we’re already cradling. Just a few moments pass and now she’s dispatching him off for another, though this time I accompany, nabbing no frills, though equally potent, shots of plain old vodka for Stephanie and myself. We return to a table that, including us, now numbers seven strong. Deetra has already rustled up two dudes, Mark and Steve, further complicating matters in this already microscopic booth. With his messy tangle of hair, drooping nose, and smarmy bookworm grin, as if unable to believe this unprecedented great fortune, Mark’s plainly a card carrying member of nerd nation, even more awkward in this claustrophobic arrangement than I, or this tagalong Steve character. Steve, with the curly hair, five o’clock shadow and goofy eyed squint of a young Bruce Springsteen. In fact, his grubby attire lends all the more credence to this comparison, his ability to play the part, and I imagine at any moment he’s going to start crooning My Hometown. All these geeks around town getting play from hot chicks and I marvel that it’s never this effortless for me. Guys like Paul and me, I speculate we fall somewhere into the central wasteland, neither commanding enough to seduce them nor patsy enough to empower them into seducing us. These past two weeks have been somewhat torrid ones for me, as though finally getting my act together, but what a struggle landing here. Mark and Steve are affable fellows and still I wish they’d die, just the same. I sense no real budding romance between Stephanie and me, maybe because I don’t match her customary profile. So much of this pairing off process seems to me the girl deciding there’s a chemistry, and then going about creating it; it isn’t so much that Dawn has hit it off so wondrously with Alan but that she determined early on that he was the type of person she’d like to hit off with, subsequently does everything in her power to bring the chemical union to fruition, with the guy, of course, game for pretty much anything anyway. This actuality presents a complete reversal of the way we believe our bonds are built, and awareness of it liberates any pressure. That and this late hot streak, which allows me to relax where I never could before. If I’m not what Stephanie, or anyone else, would consider a worthwhile acquisition to her portfolio, then I’m not. No amount of effort on our part changes another person’s perception. All the same, true, I’d hoped for Deetra as a possible backup plan, and now these dorks crash the party. And so the wheel revolves back to start regardless, it makes no difference whether you’ve rehearsed and coopted every minor detail a girl might find attractive, as has Alan, or if these attributes were yours to begin with. Alan and Dawn are making out in their half of the booth, with Steve wedged in beside them, and the rest of us forced into watching. Steve swigs his beer with uncomfortable haste, peering about the room aimlessly, and Deetra has goofball Mark to converse with, while Stephanie and I can barely scrape three words together. She giggles heartily with every humorous rejoinder, but then the next awkward pause descends upon us. Floating along as the daydreaming space cadet good for a few hilarious wisecracks serves me well in certain situations, the only means I’ve discovered for coping with these pathetic jobs and the near indifference of the entire female population yet, nonetheless, situations like this illustrate the ground left to cover if I ever hope for more than weekend passes to ladies man land. Although now, this unexpected twist threatens everything. Alan’s secretly struggling here, too, but for entirely different reasons, a whole other strain of bad alchemy altogether. Namely, that between cinnamon flavored shots and watery domestic beer. What strange fate has befallen this battle wizened warrior, normally so indestructible in his alcoholic consumption, who whispers to me in an aside that he feels on the verge of vomiting. Eager to stem this potentiality off at the pass, to avoid losing Dawn, he calmly recommends we all head back to her place and attack the twelve pack left behind. Itching to pry ourselves out of this clumsy dynamic, his suggestion is enthusiastically endorsed by everyone. The unrelenting downpour ceases, and over the roar of gargling gutters, half our group announces they will walk back home instead. Dawn and Alan climb in the backseat of my car, resume their intimate inquiries, as Stephanie makes her preference well understood by trailing Deetra and the geeks on foot. As we pull up at their complex, Alan tells us to wait, he needs to run around the side of the building to take a leak. Dawn and I mill around in the parking lot a moment, and the others we first hear, then see, trudging up the muddy gravel lane. Dawn’s hearty cheer echoes off the surrounding structures as she strolls over to greet them, though I start to question what’s taking Alan so long, wander off to find him. Rounding the corner, I spot him by some bushes, doubled over with a trickle of spit dribbling from his mouth. Shrouded by these spouts working overtime, fat drops falling from trees like fat onto fire, we couldn’t hear him over here puking his guts out. With this unexpected sight I detonate a laughing seizure, and despite all his troubles, Alan joins me. Though again he always has been one of these hurl and rebound types. “Don’t tell Dawn,” he pleads, grinning, a finger over his lips. Inside again we rejoin the others, and Stephanie whips out a bottle of cheap vodka, polling the crowd for willing conspirators. Steve and I volunteer, and as we cluster in a semicircle around their minute kitchen, clicking our glasses together before tossing back the lethal slugs, it isn’t lost on me that the single ones in the group are always most game for these distractions. In the living room Dawn cues up the stereo but looks around, confused, assuredly wondering where Alan is - first he bolts out of the car then he stomps in here and sneaks off to the bathroom, without a word said, confusing developments all. But the trick of the trade, Alan tells me, is to always keep these girls guessing, and at that he is doing a splendid job. In reality he’s hunched over the commode, puking again, but when Dawn comes nosing around she pushes open the door and he straightens up just in time to avoid blowing cover. “What are you doing?” she asks. “You don’t know how bad I want to kiss you right now,” he says, deflecting her question entirely. In one liquid motion he rises and plants one on her lips, despite the bile sheen coating his. Somehow they wind up in Deetra’s darkened bedroom, rolling around on her mattress, giggling and making out with the door open. The missing hours, we never understand where they go. Nights always evaporate just like this. Nearing one thirty in the morning already, and a wild impulse seizes certain fractions of our group. Mark, Steve, and Stephanie are trashed at the proverbial flip switch, jumping through all gradations in one imperceptible bound. They frolic around this living room, swinging, careening, off each other’s arms, roughly in time with the beat and feel of the music, howl in drunken delight at this improvised routine. I nurse a cold bottle from the couch, and Deetra’s on the phone, ordering a pizza from some south campus institution, on High, named Gumby’s. She shouts out solicitations, only halfheartedly met, requests for toppings and sizes, hangs up and flops down beside me. Amidst all this, Alan stumbles into focus. A sailor returning to port after years away, one who has never quite gotten his sea legs but does a great job of covering it up. I’ve seen him knock back ten times as much alcohol in half the time but tonight it has his number, an all night binge just isn’t in the cards. “Dude, I’m heading home,” he tells me, “I gotta get up for work at seven.” And walks on out the door. Dawn emerges as soon as he leaves, throws the Pulp Fiction soundtrack onto her stereo. Throughout the house she lights candle after candle before dimming the overheads. She abruptly yanks me from my seat, grinds against my body as we twirl through these whiskey colored flames, which dance no less fervently than we, with she and I in sync to one another if not the music. Deetra sequesters Mark in kindred fashion, while Stephanie, by default, is left with Steve. A trifle shady perhaps, this spirited grope, but I can at least claim Dawn’s roped me into her world, instead of the other way around. Alan hasn’t banged her yet, anyway, and even if he’s still here he wouldn’t sweat a dirty but harmless tango. Dawn throws me to the floor, pounces, tries to pin both my arms underneath her knees, as I laugh and buckle her aside. Except Stephanie falls in alongside Dawn, and by conjoining forces they successfully manage this coercion, fasten all four limbs to the floor. And now the tickling motions begin, excruciating, as I continually strive to burst free. Meanwhile, Deetra’s hands are full upon the couch, for Mark and Steve corral her in the same manner Dawn and Stephanie have me. All this physical exertion, coy flirtations under the guise of wrestling, of taunting, ignites our dormant impulses as little else can. Perfect atmospherics above any further refinement, Dawn’s framing the room in candlelight, her choice of music, are also unqualified strokes of genius. Our double helix strands spiral and peel apart, flip upside down and sideways, spinning off into brand new hybrids by the second, every guy with every girl in every conceivable combination. Light foreplay, filling the air with the scent of inevitability that this will soon lead somewhere else. Dawn nails Mark against one wall, atomizing crotches as she duets with Dusty Springfield on Son of a Preacher Man. Deetra tenders no more than a token resistance while I restrain both barely struggling wrists against the living room floor, one handed, the other probing her smooth white skin beneath this sweater and blouse. Steve lies across Stephanie at the kitchen archway, shirt up over her head, massaging her coffee cup sized breasts. An insatiable cackling spell paralyzes Stephanie, ruling out resistance, and as Steve flings her shirt aside entirely she protests not the least, laughter rising to match the rest of this room insane with it, and additional clothing items detach elsewhere, and nobody else objects, either, but now in the worst moment of timing in the collective history of our six lives the doorbell rings, freezing us. The pizza man. Jesus Christ. It’s four in the morning and anyone who still dimly remembers calling him has lost hope long ago of his ever showing up. Hours have passed, amazingly, since Deetra’s delivery order, each of us far too occupied to think about something as mundane as food. Blown through the Pulp Fiction disc twice and then some with all of this horsing around but here’s the Gumby’s pizza man, grinning, expecting his cash. After pooling dollar bills we dine on the greasy, half cold sludge. Some observant soul realizes we’re completely out of beer, which means Stephanie’s rank vodka is our last remaining resource. Lightning swift, the party grinds to a standstill, candles and stereo snuffed out, overheads restored to illuminate the wasted remains of this once promising affair. Whatever fleeting alignments we have drawn up in the past few hours matter little now, as wordless pacts are made in preparation for the end. As if masking some deep seated psychosis, an unwarranted fear that should anyone harvest too stringent a glance, that their every basest deed will stir anew and prance before them, Dawn and Deetra both refuse the direct inquiry of bedroom lights. Relying instead upon the hallway bulb, and doors left open, with ambiguity we visitors are beckoned to their barracks. However unlikely he scores, considering such precautionary measures, a complete lack of privacy and nary a peep heard, Mark I last spot with Deetra, their chins supporting not quite innocent grins that just barely extend above the plush, drawn up blankets. In her quarters so dollhouse spotless, an assessment made obvious with only the most cursory peep, I give our geek champion credit for finagling this much. And while Stephanie’s pulling out the couch bed for herself, for whomever else, while Steve stands around with his own goofy grin, looking lost, Dawn invites me back to her own innermost sanctum. No less cozy, if by excess rather than tidiness, the room abounds with downy creature comforts. A large, soft bed in one corner, chanting lullabies in a low cricket murmur insisting I climb inside, as have already a small stuffed animal squadron, a department store inventory’s worth of pillows and blankets. Her slender chest high dresser nearly fills an entire wall, against which its central mirror rests, and gathered around this mirror, in haphazard edge to edge piles, beauty aids of every imaginable stripe conspire, as if humble offerings left before some shrine, a plea to the goddess of bountiful nightlife for continued excellent returns. To take a more active stance in these matters, a treadmill sits in the last remaining corner, though, given Dawn’s somewhat plentiful trunk, she apparently chooses more often than not to cast her lot with fate and let it ride. The neglected gear could use a bit more love. Contemplating this, a roll in the hay, a litany of like delusions, dashed all when she reaches into one of the many dresser drawers and withdraws this set of black panties. “They’re velour!” she beams, grabs a fruit scented bottle of perfume from the dresser and treats these panties to a fire hydrant blast. “I want you to give these to Alan!” “Okay,” I smile and nod, stuffing them into a pants pocket. She collapses into the velvety folds of her bed, asleep on impact. The tail chasing fever ignited by our antecedent romp now runs aground as well, and as I wind down, the apartment’s brisk central air truly reveals itself to me. The only sane buffer against this stifling Ohio humidity, another example by default of the savagery we tolerate at home. Shiver idle for a moment and look at her pondering shall I, shall I.....but no, this is not a good idea. Stephanie’s dead in the foldout bed’s middle, with Steve slung off to her right. But she has cleared a sizeable gulf to her left, and into it I dive, relief erasing entirely any sexual notions at all. To picture even the meager walk to my car seems tiresome as running the Boston Marathon. Maybe a veteran more familiar with this peculiar arrangement attempts rousing Stephanie by some means, ignores this strange guy passed out on the far end. But sleep washes over me soon enough and when the sun comes up and I suddenly spring awake not even two hours later, revitalized, a furry beast awakening at last from winter hibernation. The sun’s climbing higher by the minute as I crawl from this foldout bed, bunkmates dead to the world. In my car and the short drive home, finally tacking Dawn’s aromatic underwear to our kitchen wall as specimen number eight. Standing here admiring our impressive handiwork and Alan’s alarm clock begins its daily wail, just a few hours before I’ve got to get up myself. “Dude, what the hell is that smell?” he says, stumbling into the kitchen half asleep. “You’ll never guess,” I grin, and point to Dawn’s mounted bounty. Another conquest, though still not the kind we’re looking for.

“Mark was fantastic, but he was a thief,” Drew pronounces, with the gravity and command of a role nailing script read. Brandy and I lean against the expo line, lamenting the loss of our Chuck Berry lookalike, busser extra ordinaire. Smith eavesdrops and launches this typical sneak attack, interrupting behind the cook window. Oh, and here comes the eyeglass shine. Grown so accustomed to his antics, we have, though these too will soon take root elsewhere. Votino quietly removes his Buckeye Hall of Fame Café sign up sheet after a month’s posting generates just two names, from the more than a hundred employees available - a part time p.m. prep cook I’ve never met, and Drew Smith. I greet his pending departure initially with absolute horror, convinced they’ll draft some hardass to fill the managerial post, obliterating this cushy paradise I’ve built. But it seems our superiors feel there’s no need to replace Drew at all, that this dining room requires little if any supervision, that one whip cracker can handle both halves each morning. I couldn’t phrase it better myself. And as Akash, as Brandy, routinely grab a clubhouse opening shift or two every week, they beg for still more. Wheedling for complete and permanent extradition, which, should this transpire, would complete my master plan. Total alienation from the rest of the human race isn’t going to keep the other half of my mattress warm at night, but it might help me sort out the continual onslaught of collection notices. Akash has the high 120s today over there in the clubhouse. On the tri-level, rainbow shaped floor, these cluster along the middle deck, far right. Word circulates he’s waiting at this moment on what passes as our greatest recurring celebrity, a spectacle I’ve thus far missed. Last season, they tell me, both Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden were constant clubhouse presences, during rehab stints with the Clippers; just my luck that this year we’re accorded instead a Japanese import, pitcher Hideki Irabu. Brought here after the hype machine and an intense bidding war dropped him into Steinbrenner’s back pocket, the history shattering king’s ransom his signing bonus. Irabu polishes his act here before an eventual call to the big show, a possible microcosm of what folks think about this city in general. I happen across the clubhouse just as Hideki’s finishing lunch. A veritable mountain of dishes cover every square inch of his two top table, as he reclines and lights a cigarette, with his fantastic Buddha mound of a belly nearly reaching the eating surface. I confer with Akash in the clubhouse server station, who beams and whispers, counting off the dishes on his fingers, everything the star twirler has knocked off, and only in baseball, I’m thinking. In the papers George will refer to his golden boy as a “fat, pussy toad,” and yes, to the naked eye, the Asian sensation is disastrously out of shape, but so long as that arm is lively he will justify the millions spent, you can chisel his enshrinement plaque as god. Early evening, and the four of us chill around their living room. Alison and I, Gina and some other guy who wouldn’t appear attached to either chick. Taking Doug’s advice I purchase a twelve pack, call them, announce my impending arrival. Alison brings home Four Rooms from the video store with her, she brings home Scream, out already and illustrating, for me, how charmingly far behind Studio 35 is in their second run bookings. Alison and Gina vacillate, as we view the horror flick, swooning over the primary heartthrob’s appearance while they denigrate his efforts to seduce the leading actress. “He’s got a bubble butt!” Gina salivates. “Johnny Depp wannabe,” I scoff. “He is not,” Gina says, “he just looks like Johnny Depp, he doesn’t act like him.” Well, she’s got this much right, at least. “I can’t believe he keeps pressuring her to give up her virginity,” Alison notes. “But they’ve been dating for two years!” I point out. “So?” Gina challenges, “what does that have to do with anything?” “Well, she’s gonna lose her virginity someday anyway, it might as well be him.” “You’re an asshole,” she says, a sentiment devoid of any undercurrents, presented for face value consumption. Only half joking, she recommends a way I can spend the rest of my evening, telling me, “why don’t you go home?” Pointed though it may be, Gina’s opinion means little. I don’t exactly drool over this frail little figure skater Alison in the flesh, nor fantasize about her when away, but she’s the one I’m here to solicit, and am having the most trouble reading. The girls develop their pictures, but while Gina admits finding them harmless, hilarious even, Alison’s freaked out by the whole episode to the point she burns every last photo. Yet in person, she’s perfectly game and affable, Alison, physically embracing my visit. Inexperience rears its head as timidity, maybe, and still I receive no signal that intimacy ever connects us again, while, concurrently, no conclusive evidence either that it won’t happen in the future if the others aren’t around, that I should or shouldn’t give up entirely. Home, I’m surprised to see that Paul has paid us an off night house call. The pixilated parcels of his confusion, once arranged at random, realign themselves to document a much more lucid picture, that of Jennifer, and some new boyfriend she’s apparently been seeing for quite a while. Driven off by a ruthless heat that has already made the third floor nigh unbearable, and steadily creeps its way downstairs, they absorb Paul’s commiserations out here on the porch. Kicking back in sheer darkness with lawn chairs and beers, a Metallica live album blaring from the cassette deck they’ve extension corded down. Missing bulb unaddressed, I can hear their voices as I approach, but visages remain hidden from the street between the outage and poor security lighting, behind our giant tree that eats up most of the grass deficient postage stamp yard. With a two liter soft drink bottle, I fall in beside them. A pie is on the way, I’m told, from Ohio State Pizza, which has emerged after all these months as my and Alan’s clear cut favorite. Damon doesn’t much care, because nine times out of ten he’s only interested in the crust. We consider him crazy, but many a night Alan and I will come home, or awaken, to find an entire pizza crammed into our fridge, with the exception that its entire outlying crust is gone. Damon always instructs us to eat the rest if confronted with this, that he never will. And so by process of elimination, and discarding my lone Gumby’s experience, which, aside from an easily recalled phone number (29GUMBY) and their virtual around the clock delivery policy, has little to recommend itself, Ohio State Pizza receives this couch cushion change jangling so loudly in our pockets. At the northeastern cusp of campus housing, the corner of Hudson and Indianola, Ohio State Pizza functions in an unassuming bandbox about as big as a can of tomato paste. Family owned, family managed, enabling the modest perks and quirks that set it apart. The driver always shows up wearing no shirt, no shoes, jeans slung low enough around the waist to broadcast a good three inches of his tighty whitey underwear. So out of step, our first few times ordering from these cats we assume it’s the same dude showing up, but then we notice that all the drivers have adopted this curious dress code, leading us to rename the establishment Redneck Pizza in their honor. On exactly one occasion we swing through for pick up, but after watching the admittedly mind boggling swift crew dance around one another on autopilot as they throw every food safety precaution aside without a thought, it occurs to us that the inner workings of some machines are best left to the imagination. And anyway, though these wheels are certainly mighty tasty, the main thrust of our infatuation had been from day one that they deliver beer and cigarettes, too, and that no matter how many young girls cavort around inside your apartment as you call, in the background as you accept and pay they never, under any circumstances, ask for ID. Behind us, Sherrie’s apartment sits vacant, cleared out by her in a likely drug fueled last minute frenzy, and with no tenants on the horizon lined up to take her place. We soak up the idyllic spring evening, letting night wash over us, becoming lost in the clink of beer bottles two buildings over, the sound of a pool rack breaking. Traffic purrs more than it zips, and during a between song interlude on our boombox, James Hetfield suggests that everyone in the audience begin worshiping Satan. Changes his mind and says he’s only kidding, laughs, switches gears once more to a maybe. Two girls and a guy stumble out of Ruby’s, one of the girls visibly half crocked and laughing loud enough to drown out the collective din of everything else around us. Eyesight failing, but I’d know that wicked snicker anywhere and as this trio passes our porch I hesitate only a split second before calling out her name. The three of them stop stone cold in their tracks, squinting up at this bear cave recess. If curiosity beckons they have no choice but to come creeping up the walkway, and they do. “Hey guys!” Keisha squeals, nearly splits her side roaring as they reach the porch. Hanratty looks especially peeved about this pit stop, no surprise there. Identifying himself as Greg, the third figure shakes hands but wears apprehension plainly on his sleeve. Open unposed questions and darting eyes about the four of us, a wary scrutiny, whatever our histories and motives might bring. Not that these reservations prevent him and Hanratty both from accepting our peace offer of a cold pizza slice, scarfing it up with relish if no easement of their hatred. “Come on,” I propose, nudging Keisha, “let me give you the grand tour.” Across the relatively new linoleum of Ponch’s foyer and up the stairs, she follows. Useful phrases evade me. Content, as the ragged pant she projects behind me amounts to an audible grin, to let our pounding heels quite literally have the floor, at least until the inevitable happens and these four walls speak for themselves. Rounding the corner, Keisha takes one glance at our kitchen shrine and immediately loses any semblance of composure. “Oh my God!” she wails and falls over into a small pile of trash bags mounded here, chortling maniacally as I reach down, hoist her to a standing position again. Through these tattered passages, Keisha performs an abrupt turnaround. Suddenly sober in every sense except the alcoholic one, she discovers no other points of stomach shredding hilarity. Leaning heavily upon the cracked chuckle now instead, she bookends my realtor dry appraisals with stock exclamations of “oh wow!” and I’m disappointed that such a grand entrance isn’t extended, maintained. Or is it that the shock value I’ve perceived just doesn’t exist, that past the panty laden kitchen and garbage bag barricade, nothing else could ever induce a similar reaction, these smaller personality flourishes will never appear, to anyone not living here, as anything else but dull. Is it she, or we, not quite as far out there as I thought. For instance: these black plastic sacks of mine, filled with clothes rather than trash, the predominant figures in this silent bedroom cocktail party, are attended by the lesser lights of note scraps and cassettes, assembling always in kaleidoscopic variations though never herding elsewhere. Alan’s living room where, above the sealed off fireplace, the mirror hangs still with a faint trace of his shaving creme name. Written by Nicole two months ago, the only sign that anything wild ever went down in his otherwise immaculate palace. We surmount this second stairwell, where instruments lay listless, collecting dust. Equipment untouched for weeks beyond idle abstract thought, the ruination of our plans visible in the layers of accumulated grime. Over unused musical gear a sheet of sadness will hang, makes this theoretical jam cupboard most sorrowful of all. Down in the mouth and dark, though oceans more inviting than Damon’s room at the end. Liable to burst into flames any moment, its unavoidable stickiness plenty cozy in the winter but reason alone to justify his pending summer sabbatical. Pushed by this heat once more to the porch, Hanratty’s antsy glower awaits. A good five minutes past exceptionally unamused, venom leaks from each corner of her tightly drawn mouth. Hatred flickering across her dim, lifeless pupils, she appears ready to strike while Damon, beaming an unqualified thumbs up, easily overrules such hostility. Outweighs and shoves aside whatever trifling attention we pay Jenn’s tantrum. “If you two took any longer,” he jokes, “I would’ve started to wonder.” “You guys coming to my party Thursday?” Keisha asks the rest of the gang. Damon and Alan belt out assurances but Paul sits wearing his typical expression, an unreadable montage of aggravation and boredom. Forever the first in line rustling up troops to go out and meet girls, yet the moment anyone does he’s irritated and wants to leave. I sympathize with his lovesick coma, we all do, that no place and no person seems quite worthy of his time in comparison to what he’s lost, a surreal state of insatiable restlessness spliced with paradoxical disinterest. Still, he must move on. Until the clouds lift, however, or in farfetched belief that this laissez faire approach will accomplish the lifting itself, Paul wishes mostly to fade into the background, I sense, for some miracle to visit his inoperative mass. Whereas, no born social butterfly myself, I look forward to the challenge, he downright loathes it, he avoids parties like Keisha’s at all costs. That we managed to lure him into one last week is still a sore point, and his exacting demands insure it won’t happen again. “She’s gonna have a real problem when she gets older,” Paul announces, as Keisha staggers out of earshot, up the sidewalk, with Greg and Hanratty. “Then again it might just be a once a week thing,” I reply. “I suppose.” “Hey, I told that Jenn chick you had a thing for Keisha,” Damon says. “Jesus,” I mutter. “Was that a bad idea?” “No,” I admit, “it probably doesn’t matter one way or the other.” similar shapes 1

Right around the time that Mill Run, Akash, and this man they call H Train return with the stolen keg, I realize an inadvertent clique is forming around me at last. Mill Run refers to me as Smooth Criminal, while H sways in favor of, for he’s the initial originating source, this whole J Dog thing. In light of their heist I feel the handle Chris has given me doesn’t really apply, and no offense meant to Doug and his Pockets, but that nickname, much like his entire Arlington scene, is a fluke anomaly, isolated, will never integrate fully with the rest. J Dog, however, J Dog...... it’s as though given this proper alias, I’ve officially arrived, and these masterminds coalesce to commemorate. Early this afternoon Damon and I drive to the campus grocery store for supplies. His sister Melissa has announced her fall enrollment to OSU, and is coming down later, with some friends who sit still on the bubble, in hopes of convincing them as well. Rumors, and old yearbook photos, suggest these girls will more than satisfy our vagabond libidos, thus we too plan on persuading them with all our might, thus we load up on alcohol. We purchase a bottle of amaretto, some sweet and sour mix. A bottle of rum, some daiquiri mix. Though swearing by these fruity concoctions a scant five months ago, Damon and I both have outgrown them to the point we truly prefer beer. The heartburn these cocktails present exceeds what any reasonable human should endure, particularly for someone such as he who suffers from a chronic case regardless. Teenage girls as a rule love these drinks, though, and from our vantage point they carry an additional advantage in that we can load them progressively stronger as the hours march forward and their young tongues loosen to the taste. “This sucks I can’t go to Keisha’s party with you guys,” Damon stews, beating his familiar path back and forth along the linoleum, “Paul literally would not let me off the phone until I guaranteed we would go to Maxwell’s instead. But I figure with my sister and her friends coming down they’d wanna explore campus anyway, so it works out alright.” After dark, the recently anointed graduates arrive. Melissa brings Dana, a sweet virginal blonde, not yet blossomed to optimal form but clearly well on her way. Sole proprietor of one tight little frame and the meekest blue eyes, and while none of us seriously expect any shot at sniffing her panties anytime soon, it’s a difficult thought to think away. Erin, less pretty in the conventional sense but of a sexier mien. Like the waitress in some highway diner, she sports black eyeliner and scarlet lipstick, dangling gold hoop earrings and the smile of a country sweetheart. A likely future candidate for town slut, in other words, though at this point in her pubescent career she declares just one guy on the bedroom resume. Finally Melissa, the ringleader of this adorable little trio. I’ve met Melissa only a handful of times and know nothing about her except that she used to date my younger brother some years earlier. On a technical level with her curly banana yellow hair and sweet smile, her large breasts and short, Amanda-esque body, she’s doable, but then I recall she’s my best friend’s sister and it’s impossible for me to consider her objectively. Paul beaches on the rocky shores behind our house, and we break off on foot into preordained factions. Damon, Paul and the girls moving west along Woodruff to High, a sightseeing tour for those less acclimated to these surroundings. Alan and I, meanwhile, salivating over the prospects of Keisha’s latest OCT extravaganza, shuffling north in search of it. “If that girl with the go-go boots shows up, I’ll be sure and tell you about it,” Paul shouts, taunting me as our small squadrons drift further and further apart. “Yeah, well, when Alan and I hook up at the party, I’ll be sure and tell you about it,” I fire back. With our pathetic recent track records neither of us have any business pretending we hold the first clue. But when his chief selling point of Maxwell’s is still some chick we’ve been looking at for the past four months, it’s time to give that tired notion a rest. The first two occasions my path ever crosses go-go boots girl, I force myself into forward mode and still it nets me nothing. Which means little else in our stingy arsenal is likely to, certainly not sitting in some dark corner talking about how hot she is. Damon’s stance of showing these girls what campus has to offer is noble and sensible, but I can’t understand Paul. “I mean, that’s how you get hooked up!” I tell Alan as we meander along Lane, “you get to talking to some girl at a party, and then maybe it goes somewhere. It sure as hell doesn’t happen by staring at some chick at a bar.” “I know, man,” Alan agrees. Proof, however slight, is not long in forthcoming. We pass a modest engagement on the floor directly below Keisha’s, where a keg and a few well dressed people stand along the wooden balcony, the rest sipping beers, receding with relative tameness to a coffee table far beyond their open screen door. Tasteful and pale when held against the blowout upstairs, making its presence felt aurally before we even crossed the parking lot. Ahead to the third story, we push through the dense congregation pooling outside her own apartment, breeze indoors. As she had a week ago, Keisha squeals and dashes across the room to greet me, calling out my name. I figure she receives most every male visitor with an identical ritual, but don’t mind. “I’m so glad you made it,” Keisha says, clasping both of my hands in hers, crotch mashed against mine to an exhilarating degree. Her lips are against my neck but not to kiss; instead, she talks, and a shiver shoots through me, euphoric, difficult to conceal, for her words are almost felt in my nerves as much as they are heard. And again though I am certain she’s repeated this neat trick too with every other visitor before me, this knowledge doesn’t lessen my appreciation any. Doesn’t undermine my overwhelming desire that her apartment clear out and these rattling nerves subside long enough that I may plant one on her, or respond in any manner at all more productive, more appropriate than this weak simper. Absent last week, third roommate Pam plays hostess with pages stolen directly from the Keisha handbook. She too the picture of annihilation, another figure who just barely escaped the burning bridges of our old hometown. Skin naturally aglow with the luxury of a year round dark complexion, her smile flashes an offsetting complementary brightness and half the hearts in this room break merely glimpsing the elegant cascade of her impossibly rich mocha locks, falling upon those evening bloused shoulders. Say one thing about Pam and Keisha, no matter how harsh the heat or trivial the occasion they both will dress like royalty. Girls like these, guys are known to chop their balls off for. Turn over their bank accounts, spend half a year’s salary brooding over the right engagement ring. Radiant with an incandescent beauty you feel even time will never stamp out, girls without a trace of attitude, trashed, bouncing from station to station, they throw their heads back and roar at every lame joke, each sexually loaded comment. Girls who know everyone in town and sprinkle trace minerals of encouragement throughout, enough to keep these men lost forever scanning the horizon in hopes they might divine their angle yet. Among attendees, I recognize most faces from the last shindig. Notably absent are Becky, whom I’ve attempted calling twice to no avail, her dimwitted friend Lauren who’s probably flown back to Chicago by now. Fresh from their shifts at our restaurant, minor interests along the lines of Colleen and Gina Wade have circled this date on the calendar, and an easily completed connect-the-dots game maps out the balance of girls, some goddesses, some otherwise, who conspire to hold our attentions, ever so. Julio’s on hand again, overseeing his drinking game empire from across the living room, indicative of how little has changed. Outta Control Thursdays she calls these but it seems the only thing ever out of control around here is Keisha’s consumption, without which these occasions are well attended but also well behaved. I identify to some small extent with Paul’s relentless harping on the disadvantaged girl to guy ratio at these gatherings, sausage parties where fifteen frothing frat boys paw over one princess. But it’s not as if the numbers game plays out any better at whatever campus haunt we care to name, and besides, half the battle is getting ourselves known in these circles. Simply gaining access to someone else’s living room, someone else’s kitchen, automatically outshines the impersonal total eclipse of even our favorite club. Keg tapped, panic seizes the crowd. God bless John Heron, otherwise known as H, who quickly assesses the situation, takes charge. A born optimist, for though holding down a plum nighttime gig behind our bar, he occasionally volunteers to sling drinks across the odd dayshift, will pick up tables here and there for cash. He holds a brief conference outside, a peek through the wooden slats at his feet, and when it comes to pulling off the unthinkable, with a giggle but not a batted eyelash, finds two willing lackeys. Chris, Akash, and John hoist the empty metal barrel from its icewater bucket, and, enlisting a fourth party to hold the door open for them, slink outside just like the thieves they are. The bash downstairs having apparently wound down and moved entirely inside, but even so, how they swing this switcheroo none of us will ever know. A matter of odds defying timing certainly, which isn’t worth debating, or questioning, as we queue in line for a draft. Our fuel reserves measure collective cheer, and everything burns on high again, thanks to John, we’ve gone from full to empty and found our way back. Caught up in this inflated spirit, her affections blindside, as she assails out of nowhere yanks my arm free of its socket drags me into the hallway. Throws her body with violence against mine. This unexpected turn of events transforms my dick into a piece of galvanized steel but even as our pelvises smash together to the stereo’s latest insistent cut, I can’t exist in the moment. My mind races ahead to what comes next, compromising my enjoyment of it. “Come here,” she says, and leads me by the hand again, this time into her bedroom. As with Dawn a week earlier, I am struck by the contrast between Keisha’s highflying lifestyle and the soft edges of her sanctuary, the bedroom. Keisha’s personality offers a level of inscrutability I’m unaccustomed to, yet I never could have fathomed this pastoral scene. Breezing through this life in her distinct off the cuff manner she never offers any explanation for her actions nor prefaces them with any words of warning. And so while scuffling to understand how I can find myself standing here just a minute or two removed from her living room, I flounder equally in grasping the neatness of her private quarters. Pink as the predominant color scheme lends harmony to the downy blankets and propped up teddy bears, softened by the solitary night stand lamp, but why I’m thinking of these things instead of kissing her is a question for the ages. Actually I am contemplating kissing her, while our lower halves gnash together, while she murmurs something about calling me this weekend, yet as she throws her arms around me in another all encompassing embrace, I refrain from doing so. Call it life as a coward. Or a boxer - much like a heavyweight match where the combatants, weary after eight or ten rounds, hug and stagger as one around the ring, our closeness precludes action. If our faces hover a few inches apart, a foot, interlocking mouths become automatic, I wouldn’t even have to think about it. But squeezed this tightly against her, chin resting upon her shoulder blade, I’d almost have to forcibly contort myself to make this happen. And still she mumbles nonsense. Interrupted, for the door hangs wide open in its frame, some other guys call her name and enter. She instantly snaps to life again. Swivels at the waist, bending backwards, laughs uproariously and teeters here a moment before we break apart. By now it’s actually past one a.m. and she’s streaking through the house, announcing another Jailhouse field trip. Wasted out of her mind, how much of this will she remember tomorrow? Alan suggests following her there is surely a waste of time. Additionally, some idiot in the living room who has no claims on Pam to begin with makes a ridiculous scene, hissing that she stop flirting with so many guys, blocking, huffily defensive, any who try to approach her. With half a hot keg simmering on low, these maniacs fling themselves in totality west along Norwich, but we splinter away from that pack, we intercept our original party again with perfect random synchronicity. Outside our apartment, the girls stand, their cheeks flushed from exertion, having spent themselves on the dance floor but more than ready now to start drinking. Damon and Paul were both too spooked to purchase anything for them at the club, a malaise for which our countertop stash is the only handy remedy. We mount the stairs while Damon fumbles for keys, except Paul, who announces he’s calling it quits. “I’m not into partying with teenyboppers,” he retorts, climbing into his car, peeling off into the night. Inside our modest abode a deck of cards is procured and drinks are poured, as Damon and I take stabs at playing the perfect gentlemen hosts in drinking amaretto sours right along with the girls. Heartburn pills are flying everywhere to counter the acidic quality of this cocktail, I even ingest a couple myself before stacking the deck of cards. Wondering how this tart substance could have ever seduced me as it once did, I set up the empty glass and our game begins in earnest. We have the girls pegged as lightweights, and once again suffer the kind of whiplash that comes from shaking our heads continually in disbelief. Yet however impressively sound, Dana, Erin, and Melissa, they’re not quite indestructible. Heartburn pills arc into Damon’s mouth like a fountain, and the same holds true of those three, as if their ability to continue breathing depends upon it. Long after I’ve given up on the fruity mixed drinks myself and switched to this nasty rock bottom beer Alan felt the need to acquire, the pattern persists. Finally, when we’re beginning to believe their intake borders on the unholy, Dana bolts from the table and flees to the bathroom toilet, expunging herself of these potent alien substances. With a sigh of relief we repair to Alan’s bedroom for more leisurely pursuits, eager that this battle of wills is over and the threat to our staying power resolved. And what a poetic moment this is, to give these girls a big city education fit for your average coming of age flick. With only the dim hallway light and that of a burgeoning sun wisping in these two windows, we show them everything permissible abiding such limited parameters, a faction we cannot anger or offend. Beer Tree disappoints by not leading where only I know that it can, but this will work. Scaling younger, meeting them on their terms of this old exploratory Truth or Dare ritual, and they feel safe. Which is how Alan and Dana are made to french kiss, after a hearty mouthwashing ritual on her part. Which is how I plant a rather pedestrian smack on Melissa’s lips, ever mindful of her protective older brother. Which is how Erin’s shapely rump pumps up and down on Damon’s lap in reverse cowgirl position, an unspeakably erotic dance. Which is how Dana contributes white cotton panties with red and purple flowers to our collection, smelling as sweet and fresh with promise as her maiden mound undoubtedly does underneath. Erin takes her shirt off and gyrates on the coffee table before us. Within reach, this soft, cotton bra, navy blue beneath a plaid design, invites textile examination if not for more pressing demands on our attention. Jeans unbuttoned all the way, her gold charm butterfly flutters away on its necklace a split second behind whichever direction she bends, breasts dangling. She pokes her granite solid rear in our faces, taunting us, while Alan pulls a camera seemingly out of his own ass, snaps a photo. Erin smiles readily and pauses for another, spellbound by the spotlight. The second nearest star, meanwhile, pierces the eastern skyline at last, unable to resist a peek. Out Alan’s window and onto the rooftop, I confront it, clad only in my boxers. “Whew!” I holler down to these guys partying on their front porch next door, “what’s up!” “Owww!” they whistle back. “Now I’ve had both McGatheys,” Melissa says, an observation I reward by sending her and Erin out where I’ve just been, both wearing virtually nothing, to wave at our neighbors themselves. Dana does her best to replicate the sexual energy in Erin’s lapdance, this time on my jock rather than Damon’s. “I’ve never had a blowjob,” Damon tells Erin as she slips back inside the window, flops down on the loveseat between me and him. “Really?” she says, stunned by his admission. “Yeah. Have you ever given one?” “Mmm hmm.” “Oh yeah? How do you do it?” he asks, staving off a potentially damning laugh, “I’d really like to know.” Erin sticks one index finger in the air and counts off the steps to orgasm like a schoolteacher covering multiplication tables. “Well, first you lick it,” she demonstrates, running her tongue up and down this surrogate shaft, and the crotch of my jeans rises much faster than this blinding daybreak, “then you kind of swirl your tongue around,” she expounds, accompanied again by a potent live action illustration, “then you move your mouth up and down on it,” she concludes, performing this final masterstroke with such a deft touch I almost expect the finger to begin shooting spunk into her mouth. “Wow. Why don’t we go upstairs and you could show me for real how you do it?” Damon suggests. But she isn’t that drunk, apparently, or maybe not that naive. Any chick who can perform that act with such dexterity obviously knows her way around the block, age irrelevant. “I’m a virgin,” I throw into the mix. “Yeah,” Damon concurs, “he is.” “So am I,” Alan tells her. “Really?” Dana says, the innocent yin to Erin’s corrupt yang, “that’s amazing.” “Whatever,” Melissa scoffs, “I’ve heard enough about you guys to know better.” The sun intrudes with sufficient force to fill Alan’s room, and we retreat to what shadows prevail. I’m making out with Erin in the hallway and my mouth descends lower, to neckline, to the pale goosebumped valley of her cleavage. My lips and tongue work from one breast to the other, while Alan chaperones Dana into the bathroom with him, congruent goals in mind. Damon waits a few mute minutes in the living room before dousing the last cigarette and heading upstairs to bed. Bored and left alone, Melissa breaks our amorous conjunctions apart. The only way this would have worked, to satisfy both of the left out siblings, not to mention their awkwardness at groping opposite sexes in front of one another, would have been for me to disappear with Melissa. Regarding his blowjob overtures with Erin, his willing participation all night, I can’t believe Damon’s all that serious about Shannon. He had to have hoped for a piece of this game somewhere. But I wonder how far does his brotherly protection extend, would he rather I didn’t make that move on his sister even if it means his not hooking up. Questions I’ll surely have plenty time to resolve, for these encounters are bound to repeat. The girls drive home to Mansfield, the open ended possibilities of another brilliant morning bearing down upon them, some never to return again.

His absence, and the removal of everything he suspects might come in handy this summer, combine with the demonic heat to turn this upstairs into a virtual attic, the musty unused eaves of a grandparent’s house left untouched since the 1970s. Finals wrapping up by the day, bodies evaporate, and campus crumbles brick by brick, to reveal the ghost town it soon will be, until the next great gold rush in September. As if recognizing preoccupation in the faces of its residents, city lawmakers find a loophole to green light the failed arena issue, but nobody much notices. Nobody but the four thousand souls celebrating with a street party downtown, near where construction will soon begin. Blocks away from the now completely demolished Ohio State Pen, its last few magnificent Victorian buttresses auctioned off, a site destined to become the arena parking lot. Or something. Proponents are still a bit fuzzy on particulars, including just what this giant toolshed is earmarked for in the first place. This parade of bodies slows to a trickle, but never stops. Just the name of the business, in a fly by night occupation featuring more shady characters than your average roll call at the long dormant prison. Most fill in gaps left by vacationing clubhouse servers, gone home for the break’s duration. Mike and Kip split for Colorado, while Hillary, the deceptively adorable morning supervisor I never quite saw enough of, quits outright, and our skeletal waif of a hostess Colleen is promoted to take her place. Drew and that prep cook are off to that place whose name we shall never speak again. John H says he walked from Keisha’s party Thursday clear down here to where his truck was parked, and crashed curled up in its cab. A distance of two miles or more, I guess, and admire his determination. Through the cook window Gary hands me a scratched up CD, Miles Davis’s final studio effort, says it didn’t really grab him but that I may like it. Assures me that despite appearances it will play. “Why they got you here every day?” he asks, “you ever think about that?” “Not really,” I shrug, “it’s cool with me.” “I think maybe you should, though,” he says, giving me a pointed, heads up look, eyebrows raised, “ask around.” By turns both odd and hilarious, what Gary insinuates has already occurred to me, though I dismiss it then as tremendously farfetched. Let’s schedule this creep so heavily his back buckles, and the first shift he misses we fire him. The problem with such paranoid theorizing is I don’t see Votino playing games in this manner, he’d just tell Stokes to can me. Furthermore, Weinle writes the schedules, and, suspending disbelief for a moment to assume corporate bigwigs do have some extermination agenda, I’m not convinced he’d even follow through. Assaulted on twelve different fronts daily with issues ranging from trivial to paramount, none of these management types have much memory beyond what happened last week; supposing a suggestion is made, they’ve already forgotten it by the time Dave gets a chance to pencil the proposal in, the idea of some overarching strategy to steadily weed me out is preposterous. Nor would this circumventive scheme work particularly well. Since the first of May I’ve opened this dining room seven days a week, with still just the one shift off Memorial Day. Second job and all, I’m too desperate for cash to complain about this insane workload, and though they theoretically may contend occasionally inconsistent results, at least I show up. Besides, who are we kidding. Every afternoon another class lets out and our serving roster steadily withers down to the point that they can’t find anyone else to tackle this dining room anyway. “Similar shapes!” Stokes vents with his customary dry sarcasm, “it’s really not that hard!” While not the party responsible, he speaks to me like a small child. Dropping my dishes off near this stacked to the ceiling sink, a station ten times filthier than even my Summit Street kitchen ever dared, I’m just the first person who happened upon this disaster, and he feels like lashing out. But no matter how forceful his barbs, they never really sting, they’re usually more comical than anything. Our mentally handicapped, half deaf, half blind, mostly mute dishtanker Roy, who’s fifty one years old and has been here for the past fourteen, didn’t show up, as he’s wont to do occasionally. Roy also freaks at least once a week, usually because this Hobart machine has broken down again, storms out of the building when his workload becomes like it is now. Today Stokes is the drafted reinforcement into this combat zone, and all that’s missing is a helmet as he battles these plates and dishes heaped in totally formless piles. “See?’ he says, maintains the condescending singsong tone, offers a visual demonstration, “if you stack the similar shapes together, it makes so much more room for everyone else!”

“So if we were to come up to your restaurant some night you’re working,” Alan asks, “what’s a good thing to order? We’ve still never eaten there.” “Salmon burger,” she tells him, without hesitation, “that’s what I’d get.” Leading me to believe he stewed over our predicament all day long at work, Alan bursts up the stairs this late afternoon with another brilliant suggestion. What if we dial Keisha’s number early, before she has a chance to obliterate all cognitive ability, to surround herself with the fifty inevitable assholes. Invite her over here for a drink, alone. The problem with those parties, after all, is that she appears on the surface a relatively easy lay, except you’ll squander the entire affair looking to pull her away from the pack, and no opportunity will ever present itself. Those same fifty assholes midwife identical stillborn schemes, and no one gets anywhere, yet by the same token no one ever leaves. Granted, it could be that, knowing full well the bacchanalian extremes to which she’s inclined, Keisha intentionally insulates herself for this very reason, but I don’t think so. At any rate, I agree with Alan, that we need to give this a shot. At seven, this untimely deluge hits, however, knocking out our electricity. Gloomy under optimal circumstances, this house is inhospitable in the dark, even if we were to somehow make Alan’s ornamental fireplace functional again. One ostensible alternative exists, to ring Keisha anyway and suggest we meet somewhere neutral, yet this only seems another open invitation for her to assemble the usual entourage. Whereas none of them are sufficiently crazy to tag along here. Nothing left to do, we grab our twenty four pack and seats at the top front porch step, watch this darkness fall in half-time measures with the rain. Trapped, too, going batty indoors, Stephanie slips between us. Pops open a cold one, this neglected beauty, Keisha’s near equal in appearance if not spirit. So long forsaken right under our noses in the name of more glamourous pursuits. The confounding dresser drawer ritual she and I shared for nearly a month also ended with an abrupt slam, and, definitive answers nowhere in sight, I’ve tried to direct my thoughts into more productive avenues. Now, the window may permanently close. She’s already deposited a velvety red couch here on the porch, unwanted, clearing the way for more desirable items. Says she will vacate this charming abode at month’s end in favor of Stephen’s across town apartment. “I can’t believe there are actually parents who raise their kids in this neighborhood!” Stephanie protests, “it’s bad enough living here as an adult. I’d never do that to a kid.” We nod our heads in solemn concurrence. Proper respect shown her outburst, in hopes she might grant a parting shot of one wild bedroom frolic, the best way to say goodbye. Otherwise, our exchanges adopt the light informality of people comfortable around one another, and how could these not. Well versed in the vista’s sweep beneath her clothes, she’s stripped of intimidation right along with it. And, while certainly eager to peer ever deeper, to unearth what lies inside, we have undersold ourselves with commendable restraint throughout. Content to let her parcel off one meager sliver at a time, we betrayed no great hurry to discover the true Stephanie. Only so that here at the finish line, patience jilts with the greatest, final betrayal of all, tendering no reward unless we break character. Now that we’ve long since burst through her hauteur ruse, she no longer trifles with that stance. Still, this unassailable wall, a seam she refuses to sew. All we’ve known amounts to very little, though we can at last volley a conversation around well into the night, pretenses suspended, clumsy pauses erased. And to think I’ve overlooked till this moment how uncannily our personalities resonate, she and I. What few phrases are sent forth only done so after careful consideration, meters meshing in give and take so sharp it’s as though we’ve commissioned a tailor. A subtle bombshell, she has the dry sense of humor to match. “Everybody’s got one great, weird thing they do really, really well,” she notes, filling in a couple small blanks about her family, her hometown Marion, “my brother, his is bowling. Seriously, he could easily be a professional bowler.” “What’s yours?” I question. “I’m still trying to figure that out,” she says, smirking around a drag of her ever present cigarette. Laughter comes not as easily to Stephanie when made at Stella’s expense, however. She trots her micro lapdog out here for a quick potty break in the downpour, and Alan jokes about giving Stella some beer. Their pelts matted down and dripping rain, Stephanie trails the leash past us into shelter again with her dropped jaw dragging somewhere in between. Appalled, she’s all the more so when I suggest it’s no big deal, we’ve given Stella many a taste before. Doesn’t quite buy into our subsequent retractions, our insistence we never actually have. Near eleven, the electricity barons giveth light. Stephanie collects empties and disappears with Stella inside, as we examine available options. If Keisha’s awake then she’s either trashed or out at the club or entertaining someone in her oh so inviting bed, whatever the case the girl’s not sitting around waiting on her phone to ring. As if making up for hours spent without, Stephanie burns every bulb at her disposal. This we ascertain from our trailing front porch discussions, our eventual eyes to the keyholes. Pressed here for once with no perversion in mind, but to gather the source of such uncommon commotion. Toenails clicking across hardwood and linoleum, charting a seesaw course Damon would be proud of, albeit at a fantastical clip he never attains even in his hockey skates, Stella dashes through the house like a demon possessed, sprinting circles around a shouting, dismayed Stephanie, this mutt a fuel efficient tank of patiently hoarded energy. Exasperated bewilderment, we recognize it upon our downstairs neighbor’s features as she stands unwavering in the center of her bedroom, that and a sneaking suspicion, we’re positive, that somehow Stella must have had some help.

His personality shifts so subtly, he may not even register these glacial gradations himself. Compulsively anatomizing that corpse, their deceased relationship so short for this earth, variations surface less through conscious effort than roundabout manifestations of his all consuming need. To win Jennifer back, start anew. But coming from a guy more predictable than a preprogrammed VCR, when he shows up sporting a piece of headgear for the first time any can recall, we’re bound to notice. A ballcap imprinted with cartoon canine Scooby Doo and his motley gang, of all things, not yet properly broken in. “It cost twenty bucks,” he explains, flopping into a weathered lawn chair, which, judging from its buckled frame, may last scarcely longer than she, “but it looked kind of cool and I figured, why not.” Yet for all about him that has changed, much of it we could dial in ourselves from memory. Spotting a mile away the ritual introductory phone call, to usher in his latest trek. Assuring we’re not going to drag him off to any parties hosted by outrageously hot women, or force him to socialize with supple, svelte, gullible teenage girls. He ridicules our having Dawn and Stephanie over for drinks, says, “what? Those girls are dogs,” suggests we hit Maxwell’s instead. Yeah, he’s got the blues bigtime. We understand, though, the three of us, especially that, despite his obsessive rampages, this headfirst swoon is also a brand new experience for him. Driving by her house daily, calling now and then, anything to keep his foot wedged in the door in case this guy she’s seeing screws up. We understand, but there’s no amount of advice we can give him that ever fully heals. The dating game is nothing if not grossly unfair. Appearances are everything and when these girls spot this void countenance that idles dispassionate in the corner, isn’t pulling in six figures and doesn’t drive this year’s hottest sports car, they don’t give him a second glance. Agitated but nonetheless more relaxed than he generally is in public, Paul’s smoking approximately a thousand cigarettes an hour, never leaving the chair as he downs one Heineken after another. Sweating whether he shouldn’t have spent more money, found better activities to fill their shared hours. “I mean, I treated her like a queen, you know, opening doors for her and stuff, but it’s just fucked up,” he shakes his head, “I’d always ask her what she wanted to do, you know, and call up ahead of time, but I mean, she always said she didn’t care. So, you know, we might go out to dinner or something and then wind up at one of Frank’s jam nights or whatever.” “Look dude,” Damon’s telling him, “it’s not like any of us ever actually date anyone either. Christ, I’ve got a girlfriend but even we never really go anywhere. Look at these two,” he waves to indicate Alan and me, “all they ever do, really, is get girls’ numbers and take them out drinking.” Paul nods his head, and I’m flattered just at the mention of my name alongside Alan’s in this regard. And who knows, maybe things are looking up. Damon swears that even as Dawn’s lusting after Alan, sidekick Stephanie covets me, convinced though I am that he’s wrong. Still, despite the unfortunate STD predicament he’s warned me against there’s always Tara, who’s told him and Shannon to tell me she’ll make a conjugal visit whenever I say the word. By the way, Damon delights in an aside, Linville’s Tara fixation has led him to writing a song about her. “What does he call it, I Got Genital Warts?” Alan jokes. Misery notwithstanding Radick has driven down, and isn’t pushing too hard for his favorite nightclub - hope burns, however dimly, another example of his continued evolution. He has one last final up at the branch tomorrow morning, too, but will risk a full blown bender tonight. The same applies to Damon, a solitary test to take this impending a.m., although he can count an advantage in walking a semi-rested fifteen minutes to his, rather than steering one eyed an hour home, as Paul assuredly will, sometime between midnight and sunrise. Alan rubs away the cobwebs from his standard early evening nap, Damon and I traipse up to the gas station, as an added precaution, for twenty four more beers. Twelve already reside in the fridge but I’ve some crooked notions where this night should lead. Convert the faithless, my friends no less than these ladies, show them the depth of this stationary object’s power. The empty glass coiled with timebomb potential on the graffiti stricken table, awaiting our game. The girls arrive toting that cheap bottle of vodka and laughs all around to remember our last night together. Spying Dawn’s forever fragrant panties upon the kitchen wall, these reactions trigger anew. “Oh my God! I didn’t believe you!” Stephanie titters. We stack the deck Julio style to give ourselves the most favorable cards, though presented only a handwritten sheet of paper to guide them down these unfamiliar aqueducts, having never heard of nor played this Beer Tree, cheating openly before Dawn and Stephanie likely wouldn’t raise any flags. With each card drawn, Dawn bandies a face splitting grin about the room that says, “are you guys for real?” yet eager just the same, as if this sounds incredibly fun and she can’t believe the rules are permitting - nay, insisting upon - her compliance. Whereas Stephanie’s typical reaction is more a timid giggle. Perfectly willing to acquiesce, though she continually laments not having any “smoky smoky,” to decompress further, though she soaks up the beer with baptism fervor. And as she sequentially strips down pleads again and again that we not tell her older brother about any of this, having somehow seized the notion that we’re tight with the kid, even as we collectively barely knew him to begin with and haven’t seen or spoken to or for that matter thought about the dude since high school. Coming up for air with a chuckle and a sigh, each of us in various states of undress, Stephanie’s black satin panties, dotted with red and tan flowers, officially usher our collection into the double digit age. We’ll save the ribbon cutting ceremony for a later date, however, for aside from an occasional darting leer whenever relaxed guard and diverted focus absolve us from appearing total perverts - thick, pink lips shaved clean, a triangular auburn patch above - scant tangible rewards redeem my inflated fantasies. Ideas unfulfilled fast running out of steam to power them, as Stephanie cracks open the final can of beer and the cheap vodka, joining other notable potables in the liquor bottle shooting gallery lining our stovetop, is a last line of defense in theory alone. Early hour, or other unnamed inhibitions, dissuade us from the spare ounces floating along the bottom third of each. And speaking of defense, in light of all that subsequently strays awry, the prosecution will note my disclaimer, given before there’s any conclusive proof we have cause at all to warn them. Stephanie, first to attack the vodka, utilizes her rule card to assault me with equal force. “You realize that whatever you give to us, we’re gonna give back to you twice as bad?” I caution. “That’s fine,” she giggles, “take off all your clothes.” Convinced that a night is going nowhere it’s always one subtle flick of the wrist, imperceptible, that moves mountains, changes fortunes. Never quite certain in retrospect what transpired or how, only that invariably our greatest experiences materialize out of thin air, spontaneous. Throw four mad scientists in a lab with an array of untested elements, and while results vary, favorable yields occasionally emerge. Somehow you combine this small amount of alcohol with a pair of halfway disrobed females and the undercurrents swimming underneath the skin work out as a potent formula, but this is not immediately apparent. Damon confident that Stephanie’s making eyes at me as I’m assured she’s making eyes at him and then there’s Alan, standing as the rest of us sit, wondering how far we can push Dawn before it blows his chances of banging her. Paul suddenly warming to these girls himself, and drinking verboten cheap beer throughout with the rest of us. Factors in this chalkboard equation to build our hydrogen bomb, these chemicals, lethal, we’re unaware we possess much less know how to use. “Okay,” I declare as the next rule card springs into my hand, “for every black card drawn, I get to pick one person each for you two,” pointing to Dawn and Stephanie, “to kiss.” Dawn loses her panties on top of the jeans she’s already shed and sits with just an overlong denim shirt extending low enough to cover her snatch. As though her own has hung in the breeze so long she’s grown indifferent, Stephanie, upon removing her blouse and bra, shields lovingly sculpted breasts with one arm, plays and drinks with the other. Often, bothers not even with this modest bit of coverage and heaven bless Alison, bless Gina, a night that will eternally mean more to me than this, but it’s such a relief to put that specter behind me, erase all suggestion of a fluke. Who knows what tepid pursuits color our evenings had Linville never taught us this felonious enterprise. Sensing a Beer Tree of epic proportions, Damon runs to get his camera, I snare mine, and though this turn of events, without precedent, has left us naked head to toe, it’s a small price to pay. Stephanie strokes me and Damon off in tandem underneath the table. Made momentarily self-conscious by this intrusive lighting, she relocates to the bathroom with him, with Paul instead of me, performs the same ambidextrous miracle here. Those two have systematically removed every black card from the deck and run around flashing them whenever the situation demands, our drinking game in shambles, like free admission passes to a theme park or some pricey downtown club. Alan sneaks in with Damon’s camera, snaps off the kind of picture that truly is worth a thousand words, in fact worth the sum of all the words we’ve spoken in our lives up till now. Paul hops in the shower with both girls, and the most priceless snapshot of all depicts him emerging from its constrictive, filthy stall, an arm around each like the town pimp strutting city sidewalks with his favorite pair of ladies. Diversion enough while Alan swoops down for a document of Dawn’s neatly trimmed muff, thus completing our files. Alan has Dawn on his bed, where, for a moment, Damon and Paul recreate their customary position from our nights out on the town. They pull the loveseat out alongside Alan’s bed and sit upon it laughing, critiquing the action. Any notion of even trifling with the black playing cards has disappeared and so have I, sweeping into my bedroom with Stephanie. Refusing illumination we stand in the middle making out, magically dodging these booby trapped piles of junk scattered around our feet. If smarter or more experienced at this the four of us would have paired off in groups of two with each of the chicks, but our apprehensions that whatever we’re doing is less interesting than what’s going on in the next room conspire to foul up every potentiality, as we charge from set to set like a pack of wild buffalo, flattening every blade of grass in the way. Not that this has anything to do with why Stephanie won’t lay down upon my mattress. “I’m not that easy,” she laughs. Who among us would term this easy? Damn difficult isolating a moment such as this, guaranteed not to repeat. Sure enough the door swings open and Dawn barges in flipping on the lights, a welcome sight, but this favorable configuration is doomed the instant it aligns. Dawn bites into my neck, kisses and sucks at it while Stephanie and I explore each other’s mouths. On cue, here’s the reemerging gang, for the ever shifting spotlight moves away once more. “I’ve got a black card!” Damon announces. “I’ve got one, too!” Paul chuckles, and with these passes they’ve bought another round. Initially, the plan is for Alan and I to walk the girls home, since we’re the ones that have laid all this groundwork luring them into our twisted world. But it’s not as if any sane man would sit here hamstrung observing our departure, so Damon and Paul throw on their clothes and join us. Somewhere past four in the morning now and campus never the safest place for two girls to traipse along alone at this hour, which vindicates our company; but in doubling the escorts, I’ve a premonition of disaster. Convinced that, all subjectivity aside, whatever it is I might have at stake, their accompaniment can bear nothing but rotten fruit - this vision will stick with us long after everything’s blown up in our faces. Once arrived, Stephanie says goodnight and disappears into her own apartment. Around the corner of the catwalk to Dawn’s, she doesn’t invite us in, which is only a formality. Damon’s full blooded pussy hound rears its head as it hasn’t since his single days, trampling all other interests aside for personal gain. Were we to mention Shannon now, her name would assuredly resound with no more familiarity than an obscure South American dialect spoken by thirty people. With a savage grin, Damon tilts his head toward Dawn’s living room, and we follow him inside. The five of us spill onto her living room furniture. Sobering up, Dawn makes her lack of interest in having us around readily evident but she gives no one the boot, either, so we linger. Hungry and with no Gumby’s delivery man forthcoming, I grab a pack of chocolate pudding from their refrigerator, sucking the sugary glob from its container, heedless, with all the practice accumulated dealing these months with The Fork, of silverware. When no one’s looking I slink down the hallway to Deetra’s bedroom. Cracking open her door and gingerly snapping it shut again, I tiptoe across the room, finding her deep asleep beneath the blanket bunker. Bending over, I kiss her on the cheek, whisper her name. Aside from her eyes creaking open she doesn’t move, allows only a slow, slight groan to escape, recognizes me somehow with only a peripheral glance. “What?” “Move over,” I whisper, chuckling at the absurdity of the situation even while extracting its charm, “let me in.” “Jason...... ,” she groans afresh, mildly irritated but nothing much more, “get out of here...... ” Worth a shot, anyway, given her behavior the week before and reputation as a slut. More pleasing to the eyes than anyone else we’ve encountered recently, too, which is why when Alan doubles over and falls off the couch to see me exiting Deetra’s room, I take it as a compliment, I’m glad someone’s noticed. “We were wondering what happened to you!” he howls, clutching his stomach. Meanwhile Damon’s intent on sucking as much lifeblood from this evening as the dying corpse will allow. Dawn announces with a weary sigh she’s heading to bed, and he follows. The rest of us fall in line, unsure whether to back our leader’s questionable tactical measure but again unwilling to abdicate a stake in it unilaterally, afraid we might miss something. She sprawls face down upon her bed, saying nothing, door closed against the hallway’s intrusive, prying light. “Why don’t you let us jerk off on you?” Damon suggests. And still no word, which is maybe just as bad as voicing her consent. Uninterested in the latest turn of events I lie flat on my back along the length of her treadmill in the corner, staring up at the ceiling. Sex is one thing but I haven’t logged all these miles and dug these trenches, planted these seeds just to throw it all away in such a ridiculous manner. But it apparently doesn’t bother the other two, they flank Damon and wait for fate’s hand to deal them a winner. “Come on, let us jerk off on you,” Damon reiterates. “Okay,” Dawn mumbles, her head still buried in the blankets. Damon fumbles unlatching his pants, and Paul does the same. Alan, who has the most to lose, the one likely nailing Dawn should none of this effect, hesitates scarcely longer before whipping his own unit out. Instructed now by Damon to remove her denim shirt, Dawn complies, flings it aside without changing her position much upon the downy bed. Obeys a similar request to yank her pants down somewhere around her ankles. Of the three, Damon stands nearest, spills something onto her back. “Get out! Get out!” she wails, the only surprise being it’s taken Dawn this long to lose her cool. They button themselves up again, yet the status quo otherwise holds steady. “Did that turn you on?” Damon asks. “No.” “Are you wet?” “I don’t know,” she replies, her voice thick and slow, as if choking back tears. “Do you mind if I feel down there to see if you are?” “I don’t care,” she mumbles. An index finger pushing aside the thin panty barrier, he examines the inside of her thigh, surfaces with his expert diagnosis. “You are wet!” Damon marvels, holding his finger aloft, “see, I knew that turned you on!” “Alright, that’s it!” through clenched teeth Dawn declares, springs to her feet with force. Hoisting her pants up and throwing the shirt around her shoulders again, she flings the bedroom door open. A look of steel resolve clouds her features as she physically removes us from the bedroom. Satisfied not with stopping here, she continues pushing, through the living room and out into morning’s first bluish purple light. Damon stalls a moment inside, attempting to dissuade Dawn from harboring any grudges. All for naught, as she slams the door behind him. Awake still inside her own apartment, window open, Stephanie lounges over beers with a couple other guys. Thankfully spared these grotesque late stage developments, she laughs and calls out to us, as do the other gentlemen. Squinting through the screen into her own darkened quarters, we can’t discern these faces slouching across sofas in the relative gloom, though it seems they both at least know Paul. “Fungus!” they cheer, referencing his forgotten nickname of yore, and we continue onward. During the short march home, I sift through the carnage. Have we crossed the line, and if so, where is that line drawn, exactly. Barring a miracle Stephanie’s probably not partying with us again, either, but pitting what we’ve done to her that she can giggle and yell hello to us opposed to Dawn forcibly removing us from her house seems like shades of the same color to me. And the sad fact of all this is that if the melee at our house or the circle jerk at Dawn’s never happens, we’ve got nothing to talk about. If Alan fucks Dawn or I fuck Stephanie or Damon fucks Stephanie or any combination thereof it rates barely a mention, an afterthought, whereas our transgressions of the past few hours can fuel campfire confessionals as long as we all shall live. Sex is the primary motivating force in our lives, but the act itself we rarely speak of. The targets themselves and the work we put into making them notches on our bedpost are the points of interest, but the actual carving of the notch itself, once the deed comes to pass, while splendid, sublime, is not often something you discuss with your friends or share with the rest of the world. Alan, fortunate to now have Wednesdays and Thursdays off effective this very week, secedes from the union, barracading himself behind a closed bedroom door. My alarm clock’s set to blare in about three hours but I mill around the kitchen trying to swallow away this rotten taste in my mouth, or, failing that, to come to grips with it. Realizing sleep is lost for him and Paul if they hope to make their finals, Damon turns our boombox to Howard Stern and whips out some refrigerated cookie dough, he’s making breakfast. “Fuck dude, I forgot my hat,” Paul suddenly realizes, “we have to go back.” “Whew, I don’t know,” Damon laughs, “I think we should write that one off!” “No dude, I’m serious,” he insists, “I paid twenty bucks for that hat, we have to go back.” Wrapped up in a sheet, overcome by sudden chill despite this broad daylight stealing through the windows, refracted off the brick barely an arm’s length away next door, I watch them leave. Damon knows better than to argue with inflexible Paul logic, trying moment or otherwise. Paul would stand firm and debate until they both missed their finals, once determined to reclaim his brim, he would mortar himself right here until someone went with him, and so they best just get this over with. At Dawn’s house a very confused Deetra answers the door, dashing last minute makeup on en route to her own farewell exam. She’s never laid eyes on either of these characters before but complies with Paul’s request, locates and administers the cartoon character ballcap. Paul hustles home in just under an hour, sprints through a quick shower and behind his desk at the branch. Declaring himself half drunk still he nonetheless passes, and summer opens up before him like the willing female he’s struggled forever to find. Late afternoon, dreading his obligatory Shannon visit, Damon tracks Alan and me down at the Studio 35 bar halfway through some Clint Eastwood-Gene Hackman political potboiler. Amazed by the durability of Dawn’s perfume, clinging to his hands like plastic wrap from that short, unwise probe, Damon returns from class, scrubs his hands a reputed fifteen times trying to rid himself of her scent. He chain smokes a few cigarettes and knocks off a couple beers with us, gone before the movie’s over. Drives considerably out of his way for one last scour at his parents’ place, but nothing short of a gasoline fire can erase these improprieties and he can only hope Shannon doesn’t ask too many questions. We begin cracking away at nine a.m. on this house cleaning project, the first of its magnitude since moving in six months ago. Damon’s brilliant idea with the dumpster saved our ass before and will again today. What we discovered then was that returning the stuffed trash receptacle to its proper alleyway home will take at least three men, but fortunately, two can always swing bringing it out to this back wall empty. Even so, pitching all the trash down two stories into that gaping green receptacle doesn’t help us any with the piles of dust, or dishes we choose to keep, or the funk on our toilet, our sink, our shower, pretty much the entire bathroom. Won’t assist sweeping or mopping floors, serious tasks all requiring the dedication of a drone bee and the patience of Job. Necessitates also plenty of beer, and some workplace shenanigans to clear away our schedules. I talk Brandy into working this morning for me, except she doesn’t show up, yet by the time Stokes calls wondering where I am it’s already too late. Locked in with a single mindedness Paul would endorse, no one can sway me from this task. Alan pulls a similar switcheroo at his own place of employment, although his stand-in is dependable enough to actually come through. But whatever it takes, to coordinate this blowout, celebrating the scattered ashes of a half year like no other. Stokes didn’t sound too concerned, and anyway I’ve still had just these two days off in as many months - truly, my only regret is that I didn’t think to invite Brandy here. During breaks we dial up even the most remote longshot invitee, reasoning that if only a third of these people arrive we’ll easily have a houseful on our hands. Four hours later the two of us are able to high five one another and kick back in admiration of our handiwork, with both kitchen counters and the linoleum floor glistening, the bathroom as well, and every spare piece of trash, every dish, every phone book, condiment, stray item of clothing accounted for and stowed, wherever that means. Local hard rock syndicate cranked on the radio and Alan’s attempting to light our charcoal grill, but having no success. Invites me to give it a whirl, though this isn’t exactly my field per se, either, and I politely decline. “Dude, if my dad was here, he’d have it lit, like, on one try,” I note. “Oh yeah, mine too,” Alan nods gravely, “my dad is the grilling master!” “I don’t know how he does it. I try to watch and do the same things, but if it was up to me, we’d be out here all day trying to get the thing lit.” “We might be anyway,” Alan grins, as a breeze knocks out his puny flame. Sadly, Alan alone among anyone I know hung around Boy Scouts long enough to pick up his Eagle badge, but it isn’t doing him much good now unless he chucks it into this pile for kindling. Near nightfall, I run to snare Doug from the evil clutches of quasi-suburbia. Piling out of Paul’s car, parked curbside in one of the rare, premium spots before our house, the whole unruly mob from up north arrive only seconds ahead of us. From the navy blue sedan Damon and an apparently clueless Shannon issue, her younger brother Aaron as chartered by Paul. No Erik, no surprise. A fine musician but a whiner nonpareil, Erik bellyaches weekly that folks shuttle continually between our two distant counties and no one ever swings past to bring him along. Yet, detecting a distinct pattern in the scores of occasions we have thrown him a holler, in essence that he never came down anyway, mostly because he abhors venturing outside Galion corporation limits, our efforts inevitably dry up. So now he’s back to grousing again, the whole sorry saga recycles. Aaron spins whoppers with a consistency matching his fifteen years. A shade high strung, the excessively talkative youth Doug’s always railing against. Sure, he could use a chill pill something fierce, but if nothing else Aaron provides a shot of much needed vitality to our sometimes stolid affairs. In no respect would I ever guess he and Shannon related, for his mouth runs without pause, whereas coaxing three words out of her is often no less difficult than a trip to the dentist’s office. He’s perfectly tolerable, even amusing, in small doses, however, for instance his fantastical tale about jumping a train as it chugs along full speed, falling off shortly thereafter with only minor scrapes to show for his troubles. And while both sport lengthy tresses tumbling halfway down their backs, similarities end here. Shannon’s mane is jet black and ruler straight, contrasting sharply against Aaron’s curly brown locks, and their faces bear no resemblance whatsoever. His the typical look of a brown eyed, goofy, barely shaving but quite pimply teen to her smooth, pure alabaster complexion, that Native American ghost. “Place looks nice,” Paul says. “Yeah, it took us three hours to clean,” I estimate, making allowances for time spent on the phone and otherwise dicking around. “You should keep it this way,” he advises, though we both know this will never happen. Gathered together in the one free moment we’ll assuredly have, with the others outside and a troop of old Mansfield cronies, to our ears, crashing the party this very second, Damon mutters apologies to Alan and I in the kitchen. This many people around, the principal hosts are always pulled in a thousand different directions entertaining every faction, and he’s moved by a desperate urgency to come clean while time permits, before this occasion careens out of control. Even if, as I attest, we never entertained the notion that somehow those girls belonged to us, that they weren’t fair game. “I feel bad about the other night,” he says, directs a hand at each of us, “that whole thing was my fault. If I hadn’t fucked things up, you’d have wound up banging Dawn, and you’d have wound up banging Stephanie.” “You think so?” I question. “Oh yeah,” he nods emphatically, “I know so. But see, Paul keeps telling me not to worry about it, you guys don’t care.” “Eh, whatever, we took one for the team,” I shrug, “at least we got a good story out of it.” “Whew,” Alan whistles, cackling wildly, “there was definitely no I in team that night!” By way of Massillon, a city two hours northeast of here, Greg McHenry works as a cook at the Woodruff and High BW3. The other five guys, they all went our high school. Dovetailing neatly into the common narrative, lines of contact broke down for years between these parties, too, until the amazing insight came to relocate here, only to gradually bump into the same old gang one by one and learn it wasn’t such an incredible inkling after all. Spotted in passing at grocery stores and pool halls throughout these months, we’ve obtained phone numbers, left till today in a sad state of disuse. Assembling and arriving as one, they mount our stairwell relative strangers - Dan Bandman, Jeremy, Travis, Shane, Ben Kick, with Greg bringing up the rear. Half now dabble at OSU, a familiar affliction. Bouncing around more than any other three individuals here, chosen at random and combined, since graduation, Dan currently resides little more than a block away, basically on the backside of ours, near 4th and 21st. The first among us way back when to so much as pick up a guitar, Bandman’s thrown together an outfit down here, has a demo with him of some tracks they’ve cut, sans vocalist. Dan, feeling adequately confident in these songs to not sweat the crunch time panic for a singer and a name, has booked a show up the street three weeks from now, and I concur. Listening to the cassette describe it as strong power pop with hooks, which he scoffs at while reluctantly agreeing, and it’s not difficult to imagine this an easy sell with the self-appointed campus intelligentsia, or to stand here and dream up lyrics on the spot. Jeremy and Travis share a place on Patterson, north of campus, and I get the impression the others shuffle from couch to couch around town. Ben, on his last good graces with polite society will soon, I sense, find himself homeless, sits along one small square of the kitchen floor nodding on and off, a hopeless junkie propped loosely upright by the cabinets beneath our sink. Shane, the amusing but essentially harmless party animal, resembling, with his curly black hair and retro attire, tall stringbean frame, some famous oldest sibling from a family oriented 1970s sitcom. Finally this strange mutant creature Greg, with his crazy tangle of hair and too large forehead, impossible bubble lips, his feral, luminescent green eyes. Origins with these fellows unknown to me, though he’s been in the mix for years, referred to only as “Greghead” by them and considered a comical maelstrom by virtually everyone. I can’t stand the kid, his incorrigible conceit. A cockiness without base, the way he descends upon any situation, such as this, acts as if he owns or at the absolute minimum lives within it, and that those of us who in fact do aren’t worthy of his time. “I always thought he looked like a Fat Albert character,” Damon jokes. “Yeah, well, he says some funny shit and everything, but keep an eye on him,” Paul cautions, “seriously, man, I’ve been to parties before where he’s stolen all kinds of things.” “Hey Ben, how did your mom’s panties get up on their wall?” Travis cracks, pointing at the giant pink jet harness left by Nicole’s friend Lisa. “I don’t know.....,” Ben mutters, squinting up at the wall, his brow sharply withdrawn in what we may very well take as genuine befuddlement. Damon escorts Jeremy upstairs, for a viewing of the legendary pornographic picture pile stacked by Alan’s drums. Considering the x chromosome deficiency at present, these lewd materials command heightened interest, but some of the especially disturbing images Damon printed off for comedy value disturb our guest more than anticipated. Jeremy weaves back into the kitchen clutching his stomach, although not without sending Travis upstairs for a peek. Of course, the biggest hit of all isn’t secreted away on the third floor, it’s taped to our bathroom mirror. A day after Alexis ripped it to shreds all those months ago, Damon and I taped the picture together again in meticulous piece by piece fashion, reaffixed the naked, wheelchair bound girl to her rightful post. “Alan, what’s wrong with you, man?” Jeremy taunts, “fucking a quad chick.” Thick now with this score of sweltering bodies, we filter one by one outside. Even Kick surfaces from his drug induced fog and joins us. Predictably, Doug we encounter shooting the breeze with Shannon, while Aaron is left overseeing a grill someone finally managed to set permanently alight. Presented a wider audience, however, Doug can’t resist expanding his elocutionary sorcery to envelope everyone that it might. “Hey, I’m having a beer clinic at my house Saturday night,” Doug announces, “if any of you guys wanna show up.” Much as McHenry repulses me, Travis takes a strong dislike to Doug the instant they are introduced. Objectivity lost to us, we’re never quite sure how much frictional blame to lay at our own feet, and how much at the individual we detest, but as a neutral third party watching those two I fault Doug nothing unless excessive good cheer somehow constitutes a crossed line. Perhaps considering my chipper hillbilly colleague no more than a mindless drunken waste, which he emphatically isn’t, Travis is arguing with him, of all things, about the location of Steubenville in relation to Columbus. Which, taking into account that Doug actually hails from Steubenville, I would tend to believe he knows more about. Jeremy and Travis endlessly implore Paul to join them at Ruby’s for a game of pool. Maniacally adamant about it, they harp upon how long it’s been since Radick played with them, even as I, much closer to him than they are, can only recall Paul shooting stick maybe three times ever, so laughably horrendous is he. Although perhaps this pinpoints their level of interest, pure satire. At any rate, eventually sold, the three of them dip inside the saloon’s temperate, clattering belly. “Hey, Paul Elder lives across the street from here,” Ben suddenly realizes, pointing at the apartment complex directly facing our house. His haze at long last lifts, he and Shane share seats on the porch’s precarious wooden edge, their feet at rest upon the wide, somewhat sounder cement steps. “Hmm,” Shane says, disinterested. “Yeah, I guess he’s a drug dealer these days,” Ben notes. “Wait a minute, where’d you say he lived?” Shane returns. As a pair they wait out the trickle of oncoming cars and skulk over, gone for the night. Stephanie arrives home from work, joins us, in the uniform identical to what I wear each morning, with a cigarette and a beer. Aloft on the porch’s precipitously unstable railing, painted a chipped, fading white, Doug plies our neighbor with his conversational skills. Dan, Alan, and I hold bottles and a light, meandering discussion of our own in the front yard, while Greg, who stalks unsupervised despite all advice to the contrary, materializes at the foot of the stairs, inquires Ben and Shane’s whereabouts and rids us of his bothersome presence by drifting off to recover them. Damon and Shannon mysteriously disappear indoors, Aaron has yet to shrug off bitch duty on the grill. Since Sherrie left not a single potential suitor has looked at the place, and curiosity eats us alive. Wondering whether her biblical list of complaints against landlord Ault holds any water, and how her former living conditions compare to ours. Not that it matters much since Ault’s head is on the chopping block above a dull, rusty blade of countless investigations, but still, these things are nice to know. The three of us circle around to her back patio, and Alan’s fidgeting with a credit card, trying to slide it through the crack of the door and pop her lock. “Look out,” Dan laughs. We step aside and he rears back, smashes the door wide open with the sole of his swinging boot. Wood splinters near the lock, but not much, and we’re inside. By reflex someone flicks the kitchen light switch. Another Ault oversight thus revealed, for the power here has never been shut off, and his pockets will now bleed dry as we illuminate the house from every possible source. “This could be our party den!” Alan enthuses. “Fuck yeah, man!” I agree, salivating at the possibilities, “we’ve got a fridge there, we can hook up a radio, set a grill on that back patio...... ” Though he may represent a target worthy of invasion, we hold nothing personal against this laird so voluminously maligned. Days ago Damon, Alan, and I signed off on a six months lease extension, which carries us precisely a year from this month’s end. A wagon circling gesture by Ault, to solidify his holdings, establish where he stands, he proposes this if we agree to a modest ten dollar increase in our rent. Since Damon has another year left at OSU anyway, since Alan and I plan on going nowhere, since mouths routinely snap open to capacity when others are told how much we pay here, staying put is the only option we consider. The hassle of another winter move, to likely fork over twice as much as we currently do for a marginal upgrade in amenities, this we can’t abide. Not to mention he’s always been good to us. The most hilarious aspect of this scenario, however, is that relatively speaking, Sherrie’s apartment is in passable shape. Certainly not by any reasonable standards, but in this isolated universe of life under glass with Ault, she had the fattest end of the stick. Cutting this grand old home up into four separate residences has generated bizarre configurations of space, hers no exception. The same sequence as Stephanie’s pad across the way, living room to bedroom to kitchen, though beyond Stephanie’s kitchen exists a second bedroom instead of the back patio here. Funky neon peach and radioactive green paint jobs on the walls which are assuredly Sherrie’s handiwork anyway, but the same sweet hardwood floors and the sturdy construction signifying a house built decades ago. Well, long live the frenzied hippie chick. She cleaned nothing on her way out, but eases our entrance by removing every last scrap in her possession. Drawn to this empty living room, we carve animated circles eyeballing our future annex when the most ungodly crash sounds out, erupting from the general vicinity of our communal porch. Through Sherrie’s front door we come barreling, confusing everyone caught in between - between us and our criminal trespasses on one side, Doug and Aaron picking themselves up off the ground on the other. Doug is sitting still on the porch rail reciting his spell to an enraptured Stephanie. Aaron, finished for the moment flipping these burgers, steaks, and hot dogs, takes two forceful strides, beer in hand, and hops upon this makeshift bench himself. At which point it rips clear free of its mooring, sends both tumbling backwards to the ground below. Doug, shaken and scraped up but otherwise unscathed, stands regarding Aaron with murder in his eyes, while Aaron survives Doug’s wrath only because he’s caught the beer bottle in between his palm and the sidewalk and his fifteen year old hand is now cut all to hell. Shannon and Damon somehow dash the length of our stairs, arrive on the scene before we do. “As soon as I heard that noise, I knew it had to be him,” Shannon says with a rueful smile sandwiched amid the longest phrase she’s strung together all night, “we were standing in the kitchen when it happened and I turned to Damon and told him, oop, that’s Aaron.” “He’s lucky he’s so young,” Doug seethes as Shannon’s inside with her brother cleaning and wrapping his cuts, “if that was you or Alan I’d have beat your asses.” A slow, fat rain begins falling with infinitely more grace than this wicked plunge. Disperses our parties much as it does the puddles of oil lying atop every street, sending them downhill to the nearest hospitable refuge. Travis and Jeremy leave, while Damon and Shannon float on up to his third floor bedroom, Doug demands I drive him home. Returning, either Stephanie’s buzzing or in a great mood or tired of looking at the downpour, and she invites the rest of us into her own apartment, a first. For Stephanie this band of five males spans the gamut from thoroughly familiar to absolutely anonymous, but whoever and in whatever number I’m astounded by her open embrace. Beneath our feet this thin, patterned rug obscures most of the living room’s hardwood floor, and an easy chair, another couch do their best to fill the furnishing deficit. Holding down one edge of the elaborate tapestry is an upright piano, scuffed and out of tune but gorgeous to behold, an item to envy, if not for this surfeit of Stephen photos propped upon its surface. Stephen looks at least thirty, possibly older, and behaves as crustily as someone half that age again. But she must prefer the more mature type to a young fool like me and so in lieu of banging her all I have is to hammer these keys, covered with a light coat of dust. “So that’s you I always hear up there, playing?” she says, flopping beside me on the bench as I run through a couple pieces. “Yeah,” I nod, though exceptions speckle the recent past. Well beyond midnight once, the three of us crank my keyboard up as loud as it will go, and leave it blaring on autopilot, on the stairwell, all night. To her credit, though, she never complains. “You’re very good,” she says, adds, “me, I only know one song.” “The Saints Go Marching In,” I grin. “Oh, so you’ve heard me!” she smiles, blushing slightly. “Yeah,” I chuckle, “I’ve heard you. Many, many times.” “Hey, can I use your bathroom?” Paul says. “Yeah, sure,” she tells him, “it’s back just past my bedroom.” Paul isn’t about to explain he already knows its precise location, he simply shuffles off in the direction she’s outlined. Aaron keeps her distracted, anyway, with his machine gun question fire and amusingly clumsy attempts at seduction, assisting our cause in oblivion. Stephanie regards the rest of us with a patient, knowing smirk as she humors the boy, patronizing, perhaps, taking pity on his bandaged hand. “So is that you I hear, too, trying to learn how to play the guitar?” she teases, her returning attention bolstered by an underlying smartass beam. “Yeah,” I scratch my head, tiny repertoire easily exhausted, “I haven’t been playing long but I’ve already improved a little.” “You have improved,” she agrees. “Nice place you got,” Dan tells her, seated on the couch, enjoying a cigarette, “cozy.” “Yeah, I’m gonna miss it,” she allows, “and I’m not looking forward to moving this piano. We had a hell of a time getting it in here.” “How did you get it in here?” Alan wonders. “Well, actually we had to take that closed off door to my bedroom off its hinges and bring it in through there,” she explains. In other words the spot in the wall where our four peepholes are punched, the spot we’ve just sent Paul back scouting under the bogus pretext of taking a leak. “Well?” I ask after we’ve left her apartment, rehashing the events much later in our kitchen. “They’re noticeable,” Paul says, “but I’m not sure if it’s just because I already knew they were there, or if you were just walking by if you’d see them then, too.” “Damn,” I shake my head, deflated that even with six months fitting pieces we still cannot define the parameters of this puzzle. “You know, I never really talked to Stephanie much before tonight, but she’s not just hot,” Paul says, derailing my train of thought, “she’s not just hot, she’s actually really cool to talk to, too, you know?” “Yeah,” I nod, distracted, processing still the latest information spate, “I know.”

Flooding my vehicle with their red and blue brilliance, the lights atop his cruiser snap to life behind us, signify my doom. Any idiot could see this coming. I always knew, yet, forever compelled to press my luck to its breaking point, kept pounding this pavement regardless. Legally stripped of the privilege, made to choose between a tight leash near home bumming rides and walking, or tempting fate at any every turn, chasing down the action at whichever distant well it springs, yes, this is not exactly a tough dilemma to hash out. And even now, facing potential arrest, I would have entertained no other scenario given countless opportunities to. “Fuck!” Doug curses, adds, out the side of his mouth as the officer advances, “I got weed in my front pocket. I need to get out of this car.” One small advantage we hold resides in our location. Nabbed on Bethel just as I’m turning left into the cul-de-sac before Doug’s apartment, this illustrious docudrama draws a gaggle of curious beer clinic attendees to his front door, the living room picture window. In his most mellifluous schoolboy voice, Doug explains he lives here and presents with impressive, unprecedented honeyed politeness a request to retreat indoors. Shining a high powered beam in Doug’s face, the officer unblinkingly yields, and were these circumstances any less dire I might be tempted to laugh. Maria waddles out here to sweet talk the cop, which I believe a horrible idea. Hands on the wheel I stare straight ahead in mute disbelief, that on top of these initial complications, I’ve also landed a rookie patrolman, fresh out of the academy and on fire to save the world. Suspended license, no insurance, and tags more than three months expired on top of this by the rulebook playing greenhorn? Yeah, I’m falling hard. Doug too is so convinced of my impending trip downtown, he runs around the party at this moment collecting bail money. “Alright, I’ve got sixty!” he shouts, waving his handful of cash above the crowd, “come on, whattaya you guys got!?” Mike Nelson’s out here now throwing up another smokescreen, suggesting he park my car in one of the visitor’s slots behind their apartment, and again the officer caves. Bombarded on every flank, this baby faced enforcer seems overwhelmed. His, a legitimate bewilderment to match that which I’m feigning, which surely assists my cause, and incredibly, between Maria’s smooth overtures and my award winning acting performance, he writes me a fistful of tickets and leaves. Every cent of the impromptu slush fund Doug collected reverts to rightful ownership, and thanks to Mike I’m spared the hassle and expense of a tow truck’s blunt intrusion. “Hey Pockets, you know a guy named Mark May?” Mike asks, as I collapse at the table with my first nerve rectifying beer, “he just applied at my store the other day.” “Yeah!” I grin, delighted that continuity and closure for once provide answers, “awesome worker. Awesome worker.” Mike nods, as if expecting this response. “I already gave him the job. He said he’d been at Damon’s something like ten years and I couldn’t believe it when he told me how little he made there. I felt sorry for the guy.” Like a river’s attributes attendees stem from the dual hostesses, these Yanik sisters, flowing through Doug and Mike and the congregation each attracts from work, to those the four of them collectively know at the Ohio-West Virginia border, and finally, defying all other classification, weirdo Junior ascending at last from his basement commonwealth. Heading up the sizeable Steubenville gang, Lisa and Maria’s younger brother Tommy is all of twenty years old, a septic tank turned upright on two legs, absorbing the keg draft product as though virgin fruit punch. Doug’s notorious drugging sidekick Hoody, who divides a colossal pill stash in half and insists the both of them swallow its bulk this instant. Some guy named Kim, an Angela, a Laura, and who knows how many others. All five roommates accounted for, a singular achievement in itself. Mike’s girlfriend Amber wanders around in tight black leather pants, her curly tassels teased and falling in a similar inky shade upon her tanned shoulder. Whether synthetic or otherwise, this heavenly dark complexion suggests balmy latitudes, accentuated facially by thick raccoon mascara, a liberal dose of freckles dropped everywhere. A smoking body, in particular the shapely behind she’s all too aware of; she blinks away continually a crippling vapidity, but this apparent vacuum doesn’t preclude cunning, for Amber always finds a reason, however slight, as we males jokingly mumble in a joke blown like pollen around the room, to bend habitually over in front of folks and show this attribute off. Disseminating from this watershed, anyone else who is destined to play a major role this summer and beyond, they trace their origins here. Those two well dressed females, names disclosed as Jen and Erin, whom Doug and I enlightened last time around as to Circle of Death’s finer points, they’ve brought two equally attractive, flashily attired friends, Kristen and Jill, doubling our outs. Redhead Jen McBride and the largest breasts in town, as well as a third Jen, a tall, big boned variety, hair a long straight brown, dubbed Smiley because she seldom does. Some spaced out guy with a stringy black semi-mullet named Charlie who speaks in cosmic whisper, his girlfriend Ellen, and this rail thin even softer talking black dude Charles wandering in from two apartments behind. Scott Lucas’s roommate Roy, who bangs Lisa on the side, the Cleveland Indians hat glued around the clock to his head a visual totem to all the money he wagers each week betting on various sports. Mild mannered to the point of inscrutability, at least until the whiskey kicks in, and a carpet cleaner by day Roy’s also the guy everyone turns to for similar services under the table. A musclebound cackling madman, Miles, head shaved bald, who works in our produce department, and the latest bespectacled, chipped front tooth seafood clerk Clif, given rides home by me every night since he started last month, both also of the African American persuasion. Closing the book with a bang, Alan and Paul breeze in through the sliding glass back door. “I couldn’t remember where this place was,”Alan admits, “we drove up and down Bethel five or six times but then I saw this front door open and thought it might be here.” Doug’s occasional playmate Rachel, whom he hangs on now despite having slept with Jen McBride just last night. When Doug and Rachel had sex more often, they barely spoke to one another at parties, yet now that their relations prove infrequent, they do. And again, far from atypical, their interaction comes naturally to both, wordlessly, the organic progression of events for anyone thus experienced. Just when I think I’m starting to figure out the social complexities of life here in the city, ignorance in these matters sends me back to the starting line. “She squirts like a firehose,” Doug chuckles, delineating for Alan and me his experience with McBride, “seriously, I fucked her up there in Lisa’s bed, and the sheets were soaked. She didn’t wanna suck my dick at first, though, but I conned her into it.” “Oh really?” Alan perks up, eager for insight to potentially improve his own game, “how’d you manage that?” “Erah, I pinned her arms down and stuck it in her mouth.” Paul yawns, approaching boredom already. Cannot practice patience even as he opts out of the usual weekend circuit, watching Get-A-Way and drinking till daylight over at Erik’s apartment with Damon, to inspect, after all these months, what we’ve strung together down here. Say this about him, though, he’s never one to mope around the house no matter how miserable he is. He might give in and go home fifteen minutes later, but makes this token minimum effort, the only true means of getting over anyone. If only he would relax and tap into what this occasion has to offer. A varietal plethora at our disposal, surely one fits Paul’s restricted specifications - in fact, with her popsicle stick frame and unblemished teenaged gaze, Kristen, across the patio, I’m surprised she hasn’t already become the vanishing point of Paul’s singular focus. If not bodily, because he’s never so forthright, then latched onto as this night’s great distant fantasy, remarking upon without pause in some dark corner. Amazingly, Alan drifts over and whispers the same thing I’m thinking in my ear: not only that Kristen’s right up Paul’s alley, but that she resembles a cat. Something about the darting eyes and little paw hands, ears tucked back against her lead lend the feline look, a tiger ready to pounce any moment. “Hey Paul!” Alan grins, points a finger in her direction. “Yeh,” Paul replies, puffing a cigarette with the appearance, either real or contrived, of a person none too impressed. But in reality she’s not the least bit wild jungle cat, more like a tamed house pussy who’ll whip your ass into never going out at all. Kristen designated drives the other three, and in their directions our obeisant attentions steer. Doug, Alan, and I lasso this trio into joining forces with us for a little endeavor titled Circle of Death, and while the girls believe this game the silliest thing they’ve ever laid hands or eyes upon, they humor us by playing along. Meanwhile, Kristen and Paul stand in opposite corners of the kitchen looking bored, but the two of them will not speak. A parenthetic baseball stadium crowd crushes us at both ends, from the living room, the patio, two kegs upon the latter and a stereo belting out classic rock numbers within the former, this shallow high speed card game we wade ankle deep between, yet they appear on the brink of hanging themselves. I can only imagine what kind of relationship the two of them will have if they ever do merge. Mouths watering with anticipation of burgers and brats about ready to dive headfirst from the grill onto our plates, we drink twice as fast, drenching our palettes in joyous spirit just as much as the free flowing alcohol. The ladies develop some semblance of a happy go lucky buzz. We convince a visibly uptight Kristen to toss back one mixed drink, but our hopes of further loosening her grip never materialize. The solitary cocktail stunts her resolve not the least, and she extends the steadfast branch hoisting Jill free of this quicksand, away. Buried to their necks and loving it, however, leveled by our breakneck diversion, the other half wave a merry goodbye from chairs at this bulletproof glass table they haven’t bothered to leave. “I wanna do a shot,” Rachel says, slipping into the kitchen, “is there anything around here?” Deck of cards flung about and forgotten, our attentions swallowed whole by enveloping mayhem, Doug yanks down a similarly abandoned bottle of Cuervo 1800 from above the refrigerator. Dusts it off before opening, for they are nothing if not compulsive beer drinkers at this address, wholly blase toward any other libation. I’m surprised they have this spirit on hand at all, surely left here by someone else. Attempting to recall and sing the ancient pop song about Jose Cuervo and what a swell friend he’s been, Rachel, Doug, and I throw down two ounce slugs in tandem, as word begins circulating about an impending trip to the bar. All the bottom shelf garbage I’ve thrown in my homemade margaritas for months, and I never knew what good tequila tasted like till now, smooth, but potent, eliminating the death knell shiver that typically accompanies a shot. “Who did that one?” I question. Doug repeats the chorus in a marginally earnest croon, but admits he doesn’t know, either. “Wow, I’m pretty fucked up,” Rachel states. Specifying work and a long drive back to Mansfield, respectively, Alan and Paul make an anonymous exit. Midnight and, concerned the draft reserves might not hold through morning, the rest of us start marching, up Bethel and across a deserted bank parking lot to the nearby neighborhood watering hole, DiMarco’s. A divided, four lane concourse of revving engines and weekend mad revelers, strip mall facades on both sides lit up indexing, variously, every known shade of the rainbow, this stretch still sizzles, for me, with a life only unexplored turf can sustain. Not only this stretch but the wealth of Upper Arlington beyond where, having conquered campus in our peculiar slipshod way, which is to say incompletely, but the best we’re ever likely to, may very well stand my next great project. Cataloging this terrain, or any fraction of the buffer separating their world and ours, or another series of blocks entirely. We cavort in myriad clusters like zoo animals gone AWOL, and I’m suddenly reminded of those January nights scouting out High Street for the very first time. The feeling that anything can happen and you’re on the edge of some tremendous discovery, a sensation you can never explain, nor one you’re ever capable of faking, replicating, drawing on command. DiMarco’s is a simple dive bar with a pair of real dartboards along the back wall, one pool table near the front picture window and not much else. Booths around the rim, and wobbly mismatched tables in the middle, square and shoved together in blocks of two or three. Jukebox topheavy with 1980s hair metal the clientele has never stopped listening to, one large screen television between the pool table and the entrance and a window behind the bar connecting it to a half assed takeout pizza joint next door. This place might not have much of that elusive element, class, but enough that nobody’s cracking someone else over the head with a pool cue. Everyone here’s a friend, including the squat blonde middle aged barmaid Jan, quick to smile, her comparably pudgy right hand man Zerby, wiry black curls distributed sparsely across his prematurely balding pate, large black eyeglasses lending him the appearance of an owl. They are always here, I’m told. A schedule as religious as the fifty percent slashes they apply each trip to the bar, just because we know Doug and the Yanik sisters. Jan discounts with a severity warranting my purchase, a round of drinks for every girl in our group. A classy move, and Jen and Erin seem particularly pleased, which is really the whole thrust of this exercise anyway. Laura ropes me in as her partner for a game of pool, squaring off against Tommy and Charles. For someone her age - early thirties I’m guessing - Laura has a killer body, except the dishwater blonde hair hacked off pell-mell and haggard face suggest someone who’s spent too many days of too many years passed out drunk somewhere, partying herself into an untimely funeral. More speculation as to how she’s selected me, although I am possibly the last sober option available. Tommy, enormous, white, and talking louder than anyone I’ve ever met, teamed with soft spoken, black, pencil skinny Charles, they make quite the comedy troupe. But both can handle their pool sticks with aplomb and while we somehow eke out a victory, it’s only because Laura’s on fire and I’m having one of my better nights. We now dismantle Doug and Hoody who, commendable though their efforts, are pretty much a lost cause. Two thirty and for tonight anyway, regular status earns no favors, we’re kicked out right along with the rest of the patrons. Filing back into the apartment we sort out bodies, but it doesn’t take long to realize we’re coming up a few short. Tommy’s missing, and there’s no trace of Doug or Hoody, or for that matter my coworker Miles. Passed out corpses already in every corner of the house, Clif walking home, Mike and Amber retreating to her place meaning that, along with Junior, Kim, and Charles, I’m one of only four males still standing, as opposed to these eight or ten chicks. A divine ratio anyway we slice it, but these beatific, nattily attired angels Jen and Erin abandon their post as babes supreme in calling it a night. What we’re left holding feels like secondhand goods from a downtown pawn shop, and I hope the other guys soon return, if only for entertainment. Half an hour passes and here they stumble, panting to relate some wild tale about a narrowly avoided brouhaha right outside the bar. “Hoody and me were standing there,” Doug explains, “and these four guys in a car pull up, start calling us motherfucker, this and that. So we told em, get out of the car, right, and they did. So they’re still talking shit, okay, and then Tommy and Miles came out of the bar,” he stops to laugh, “so they get back in the car and take off, they suddenly don’t wanna fight anymore.” Now, as we number almost twenty sitting around the back patio, those same tough guys are reduced to driving around the apartment complex, shooting menacing glances and derogatory remarks out the window at us with every pass. Three trips through, end to end, and we see no more of them. Charles meanders to his flat two mailboxes down. Miles leaves, Kim and Angela crash in Junior’s basement bed, and Maria retires to her own room upstairs. Smiley departs, and Hoody, collapsing under the weight of all those pills he’s ingested, tumbles hardcore upon Mike’s couch, face against the cushiony backside. Fortunately for the rest of us Doug has sobered up quite nicely after the DiMarco’s exit encounter, as we hungrily demand he fire up the grill once more. Jen McBride believes there are a couple nagging blanks in her life story since we spoke at the last party, and leaps headlong into filling these in while we’re waiting for the food to cook. When the burden of paying attention to her breathless rants becomes too much, my attention strays. Obtains purchase upon the colorful details permanently branded on my brain from Doug’s recital earlier, upon the bulge beneath her tanktop, the pink lipstick she wears oddly bright and glitter peppered, yet concurrently almost translucent, like a sheet of skin laid atop the existing one. Thirty minutes and I feel suitably studied in every aspect of her being to pass a final exam with flying colors, though now that the food’s ready I’m spared this onerous task. Except Doug in his obliteration drops the entire plate of hamburgers and hot dogs behind the grill, they’re covered with bugs and dirt and no one feels like eating these, he’s forced to start over. Jen isn’t of a mind to wait around another half hour on the next batch, and polls the crowd for an available set of wheels to run her home. Without hesitation I volunteer. The bulk of her most recent rant concerns an apartment she’s just moved into, at the nearby Governor’s Square complex, spelling out for me every detail on down virtually to what the sockets look like, and I spot my angle immediately. Ask her to give me the grand tour, make myself cozy from there. Complications proliferate, for me, should she accept this lift, the absolute least of which is Tommy’s sudden insistence that there’s no room here and he needs to crash over on Jen’s couch or living room floor himself. “Tommy!” Lisa shrieks, “what are you talking about?! There’s plenty of room here!” “Lisa!” Tommy barks back, “shut the fuck up! Where?” Jen interjects with a chuckle and says, “it’s okay, he can stay,” though this disclaimer doesn’t dissuade the siblings from jawing with considerable violence for the next few moments. They get off on the friction, I think. “You’re coming back, though, aren’t you, Pockets?” Lisa says, smiling over at me. In truth I haven’t thought much about the matter at all but shrug and tell her sure, why not. Shoot across Bethel down a one block side street to Godown, and left around one bend in the road along it. During this two minute ride to her respectable but by no means impressive facility, Jen says little, her passenger’s side airbag of conversation apparently deflated for the night. Tommy oscillates between sleep and consciousness in this beleaguered hatchback’s tiny backseat, and even to rouse him as we approach, the mood is so somber I no longer feel comfortable asking for a walk through. If I have to guess no one’s getting laid tonight in any configuration here, she’s going to pass out in her bed alone and Tommy on a couch. But I’m no expert and drop them off to sort it all out, shouting their thanks as these headlights recede, perform their arcing turnaround pirouette and plow forward. “Pockets, I was starting to think you were blowing us off!” Lisa grins as I return to this charmed back patio. She hops upon my lap and adds, “I’ll bet I’m crushing you...... ” Shocked and squashed, I eke out a weak, “no,” with what little breath I have, as she weighs upwards of a hundred and seventy, “not at all.” Timing impeccable, I’ve got another cold plastic cupful just as Doug, with evangelic concentration, pulls this final batch of treats. He always gets heavy lidded half eyes whenever trashed, but these drooping shields exceed any state I’ve seen him in before, and I’m astounded he’s still standing, much less able to steadily stack delicacies like building blocks on a plate as our saliva drenched fangs threaten to rip these meats from his hands before he has a chance. After clawing his way out of the pills trance he’s drank himself back into a fog, and every time I look at his face I just start roaring with laughter. Yet he’s not an idle robot, responding to a simple series of commands, he’s capable of taking charge and rustling his last four understudies inside again for one more Circle of Death. Five hours on the clock and five chairs occupied around this glass table, Doug, Lisa, Laura, Junior and me. A beer clinic indeed of the highest order, and to have survived this long qualifies us for a Purple Heart. Doug’s barely able to keep his head up but follows these rules to the letter, he can hold his end of the bargain no matter which obstacles we throw in his way. Such spirit! Sits upright, eyes closed, but whenever it’s his turn to drink one of us elbows him and he nods, grim as the angel of death, absorbing whatever penalty he’s due before the stuporific scythe sweeps him under again. He endures all the way to six and sacks out, on his couch nobody dreamed of occupying. I wonder if women play this same game, realigning wishes to match available options. Split ends forgotten, acne scars overlooked at this late hour, Laura’s jeans and tee shirt are each a couple sizes too small. She becomes the present mark. Not much is left to imagination, granted, but rewards surely await the intrepid explorer, one who’s paid his toll outlasting every taxpaying citizen in the state, seemingly, in the breadth of an endless night. Now day, I observe, as the sun has risen completely in the bay window to my right, the sliding glass doors over Laura’s shoulder, and she falls the same way they have. Finishes off this round, tiptoes around the victims in search of her own grave site. We shuffle and deal one final circle, but this conclusive showdown sputters before it lifts free of the ground. Underneath the table Lisa reaches out and fondles me and with a half inch of clear glass, at most, separating these two planes, Junior can’t avoid witnessing this latest sequence of events. “Ooh, I bet he likes that,” Junior mutters with a grin, his chaotic Elvis hair mussed and scattered in an even more preposterous poof than usual. Rising from the table he sacks out with a blanket along what is evidently the only scrap of land left, in the middle of the living room floor. As is always the case in any sphere where triumph unwittingly sideswipes me, I have no idea how or why. I think too much anyway and maybe the point of this long uphill battle is to stop sweating every detail, just let things happen. A pent up flood of history pours from her flapping gums, as though suppressed by the long hours shooing Jen and whoever else away from the house whip’s podium. She loves her cats, her best friends in the world are Doug and Mike, she hopes to buy a house. I begin to understand the age of the universe, what four point five billion years encapsulate, though fortunately this last keg never did run dry. To my eternal amazement the clock reads just past seven, somehow, but I smile and nod and say nothing and this works, damn me, I finally see the light. “Have you ever thought about kissing me?” she asks. “Not really,” I admit, “a couple of girls that were here earlier, I thought about kissing them, but not you.” “Uh!” she grimaces, “I swear! I’ve met some rude people in my life, but you take the cake!” They love this stuff, though, these girls - the first lesson even an ignoramus takes from running around with Frank. She straddles me on my chair and we start making out. My mouth moves lower, across her artificially tanned neck, fingers deftly unzipping her green sweater. A plain white bra initially separates her enormous breasts and my caressing kisses, though this isn’t a problem for long as this tongue insistently maps the terrain. A stack to rival Jen’s, don’t know how I could have missed it before. “What time do you have to work?” she asks. “Ten thirty,” I tell her, and here it is going on eight. “We should go up to my room and watch a movie, I’ll help keep you awake,” she offers with a sly smile. Creeping past the slumbering army we breeze upstairs to her bedroom, only to encounter Laura spread eagle, face down, upon the waterbed. Lisa rounds up spare blankets and builds a nest on the floor between it and the television, while I root through her movie collection and select The Lost Boys for our morning matinee. “I knew you’d pick that,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Really? Why?” I laugh. “Because it’s freaky,” she explains. This concrete stiff surface is not the ideal playpen for such feats of physicality, but I don’t exactly care. These minor flaws and my attitude apply to Lisa as well. Too much time passed, I’m not going to pick apart a situation again and let it slip away because it doesn’t match up to the perfect little fantasies in my mind. So what if Lisa is the worst lay of all time, inanimate and unimaginative while also freakishly Jen McBride wet, wheezing “oh god....oh god....oh god....” in an endless hushed rasp I can only hope is her response to having a houseful of people. All those things Doug has said about my being too picky ring true, I finally grasp his import. Bang these lesser prizes and bide your time till the beauties come along, it’s the only policy that makes any sense. Afford no one any more thought or attention than anyone else, just roll on from day to day and see what develops. At nine a.m. Lisa falls asleep and unable to doze myself, I head home. It’s time to throw on that uniform again, time to get ready for work.

“Dude, she sounded pissed!” Alan exclaims. He hangs up the receiver with a stunned astonishment his body should reject as it would a foreign organ, so abnormal is it upon his face. Realistically, we could not have expected any less. Dawn slams her end of the phone in his ear after no more than twenty words exchanged, three quarters of them by him. Our cold contacts from Brian’s stolen phone list in January seldom netted frostier replies than hers, titmouse meek until that terminating click. Equally icy is Alan’s irregular luck of late, admitting he hasn’t been laid in a record setting number of weeks and willing to roll this dice on this crapshoot, one I wholeheartedly encourage. Aside from one random Dawn spotting on campus within weeks of that last insane encounter she’s never seen or heard from again, but stories reach us. Her sidekick Stephanie we’ll bump into once every year or two forevermore, and she always starts cracking up to see us, as if along for the ride on an inside joke, but Dawn’s a different story. Mutual acquaintances crisscrossing our path ask us what we did to this poor girl that she starts bawling whenever anyone mentions our names, Paul’s own sister even comes to us with this very question. But it’s not a query answered with any degree of comfort and we change the subject, mumble something vague. Figuring we’ve done enough damage to her, and ourselves, and should leave it alone. If Dawn doesn’t feel like speaking, one final form of fiber optic entertainment does remain. With Damon away, what I’ve come to think of as “phone fun” suffers a three month slump, is not quite the same without him. For fear of contaminating the process, I don’t mention to the others how much satisfaction this brings me, yet with the latest phone bill I’ve another chance to marvel at this around the clock machinery. May the first, Damon calls his parents’ house four separate occasions between eight nineteen and eight forty seven, p.m. At eight forty eight, he dials Paul’s house, then turns around immediately and rings Shannon at nine thirty five. A relatively short transmission transpires, short compared with the thirty three minute effort at nine twenty eight p.m. on the fifth, or the one hundred and eleven minute phone call May seventh, at two fifty one in the morning. Which isn’t to suggest Damon is responsible for every noteworthy zinger, certainly not the pair of curious dispatches made to a Bloomington, Indiana number, each of them conducted at an even later hour, both lasting one minute, which suggests the offending party reached an answering machine. Only marginally more hilarious than Damon’s forty two minute call to Shannon, on the ninth, at three minutes past three a.m., another at month’s end to Shannon for one hundred ninety five minutes at two twelve a.m., a succinct six minutes with Erik at two twenty seven a.m., a one minute call home at twelve fifty nine a.m. Lastly, four calls nobody remembers/owns up to, the recipient a Mansfield number, all within a two hour period one evening lasting one, two, seven, and twenty six minutes respectively, and a sixty eight minute effort at eleven thirty four p.m. on May 20th, to a Galion number that also draws a blank with each of us. Aaron’s hand healed quickly enough, but our porch railing will never rebound from the fissures winding through its splintered length. Striking out with Dawn, we join Stephanie out here yet again, and attempt to reattach the busted piece of wood to its immobile cement posts, unsuccessfully. We’d have an easier time locating and installing a window for our bathroom, this baby’s never serving any useful purpose again. Increasingly, we spend our nights out here with her. School on hiatus, Keisha’s fiestas have ground to a halt, mirroring everything else. Damon and Paul are partying every night with Erik, we scarcely see them. Even our old haunt Maxwell’s, always a freaky place to begin with, has somehow transformed itself into a gay bar now that the college kids are out of town. We drift up there one night, Alan and I, but unearth little to hold our interest outside carnival attractions such as a seven foot tall bald guy wearing a frilly pink dress, and our go-go boot girl making out with some other chick. The new ritual, yet also the last of these rituals, as Stephanie’s moving out tomorrow morning. The three of us and some alcohol, sometimes her ugly mutt Stella, maybe pizza. No invites needed, we gravitate together here in the middle ground of this derelict porch, its grey paint peeling and the rotten patches, the critically weak floorboards, widening daily. Stephanie’s comfort zone around us grows larger with each encounter, too, especially after two or three drinks. “I know quite a bit about martial arts,” she says. “Oh really?” Alan replies, never one to miss an open invitation, “why don’t you show me some moves you know?” “Okay!” Stephanie grins greedily, rising from the red couch, “let’s spar! I’ll bet I can flip you over my back.” “Let’s see you,” Alan challenges. Facing away from him, she reaches over her shoulder with both hands and grabs one of his arms. Nothing happens. She pulls harder and Alan intentionally leans forward, shoving his crotch right into her ass. She doesn’t budge beyond her choreographed exertions, doesn’t seem to mind. Miming laughter Alan looks over at me, nods his head and winks. “Hmm,” she says, “you’re tough.” Always, the delivery man’s interruption. The contemporary shirtless lowriding jeans specimen from Ohio State Pizza slams on the brakes curbside and hurdles across the lawn, appeasing our laziness with another extra large oven offering. Sliced in the old fashioned spoke style few companies fool with anymore, another bonus. Having already narrowed down our preferred establishments to two, some insider Gumby’s information Jeremy passed along the other night, gleaned from a mutual friend of ours named Steve who works there, officially knocks them from contention as well. Roaches the size of pepperoni, he says. “Let me guess,” Stephanie sighs, collapsing into the red couch again. Alan reclaims his ginger perch upon the lawn chair beside mine, Mandy’s crumbling gifts from March abused and on their literal last legs. “Alan, you’re the nice guy. Damon’s the slut, and you,” she turns to me, “you’re the cute guy who gets all the chicks without even trying.” So much for woman’s intuition, she has us all mixed up. Despite Damon’s hot streak in the winter time, Alan’s still slept with more chicks than Damon and I combined, making him the resident slut. Whereas Damon’s the nice guy in some respects, having spent nearly his entire dating career involved in lengthy, monogamous relationships. And when it comes to me her guesswork’s so out of whack it’s unchartable. But if she wants to think I’m the cute one who gets all the girls I’m not dissuading her, I need any little edge I can get my hands on. “Would you be interested in a friend of mine?” she asks. “Yeah, sure,” I shrug. “Alright,” she appraises my appearance, “but you might have to wear something else besides Pink Floyd tee shirts all the time.” “Fair enough,” I say, though suspecting this friend is actually Stephanie. Complementing the beer, we’ve broken into the cheap vodka left behind by our playmates of old. In its clear harsh liquid you can almost see the drowning specter of unfulfilled promise, the bottle itself a memento honoring every mistake made, every bad situation built by taking gold and converting it to crepe paper. No better means exist, however, for toasting the ghosts of what’s been lost than celebrating alongside that which is still alive and in advancing this bottle between us, we bury the past. Even if by moving away we may never see Stephanie again, sitting here on the front porch now she’s still the physical embodiment of one girl left in town we’ve not alienated and that in itself is a miracle. Thus she is both someone we’re sending away yet also our great hope for the future, like a figure heading west in an old cowboy film. After a few swigs of distilled spirit, Stephanie rambles on as never before, as though she too has just recognized the weighted window of chance slowly siphoning shut. From our end, the trouble with nights like these is that both Alan and I feel we have a clear shot at nailing her, and as a result neither will ever leave. Where I’m sitting the signs look obvious, her allegiances clear cut, but maybe Alan’s picking up something else entirely. Anyway, flirting is just that, and until someone scores everything’s fair game. In the past, my problem has always been giving up too soon, allowing one of the other guys to have the girl uncontested when it seemed they stood the best chance. But they don’t operate that way and I’m learning fast not to, either. They never throw in the towel until someone else nails the girl and sometimes not even then, they’ll pull every last stop in the book out trying to sway her to their favor. Stephanie seems to me, more so than any other girl I’ve met in my sixth months here, the kind of girl I could get along with for years, but unless we’re actually fucking right in front of Alan, he’s not going anywhere. Never my strong suit, the only tactic I have left is to just start talking, see what happens and if anything sticks. I mention the second novel, the rudimentary beginnings of which are inked in a notebook upstairs. “Dude, that is a great story idea,” Stephanie says, between drags on her cigarette. We put away dinner and kill the vodka bottle, yet the question that’s bugging me is also bugging Alan, it’s the question that’s been on the tip of our tongues for months. Watching a trashy daytime talk show by chance one morning there’s actually a segment on there highlighting a chick victimized in much the same way we’ve invaded Stephanie, with holes drilled in the walls, and the talk show host is telling his television audience that sadly enough, in most states this isn’t even a crime. He doesn’t mention Ohio by name, but hey, he’s looking me in the eye, he must be speaking directly to me. Maybe I should adopt Alan’s formula, of watching Sunset Beach every afternoon, mindless entertainment he devours just because it’s the soap with the hottest babes. In all seriousness, though, it’s not about legality, it’s whether she knows and what it means to her. If we show her or tell her and she wigs out, if she’s scarred by it in any way, then I’d prefer she never know. But the flipside is eternally wondering whether we had some kinky neighbor once who got off on stripping and we were too big of pussies to ever ask her about it, which is the kind of thing that haunts you forever. Alan’s bold suggestion is that the three of us, rather than continue shuffling back and forth on beer runs, head up to our kitchen for easier access. Upon locking Stella inside her own apartment, Stephanie’s game. Only once before has she stepped inside our house, and with Alan in the lead - so he can open the door and enable a smooth passage through - and myself in the rear - so I can close the door behind us, to block out the light - we move in this direction, holding our breath till we’re just about red in the face. Inside the foyer she doesn’t even get one foot on the stairs before glancing to the left, stopping in her tracks. Fuck, I think, we’re busted. “Hey,” she says, curious, as if spotting some rare breed of butterfly, “you guys can see right into my bedroom.” But her reaction is so muted, I have to believe what I’ve always believed, that she’s known about these holes for quite some time. Eyes up against the door she grins, moving from hole to hole, as Alan and I trade amused yet terrified glances behind her back. “What?” “Huh?” “Yeah, these holes lead right into my bedroom,” she confirms, cooing, “you boys haven’t been looking at me, have you?” “Oh no.” “Huh uh. Didn’t even know those were there.” Call me crazy but if I’m a chick stumbling upon these holes for the first time, I’m flipping my lid. Three guys I barely know watching me undress, night after night? In consideration of the clockwork slammed dresser drawers and occasions such as Alan’s gong crash loud knocking of the grill lid to the foyer floor, I just don’t buy it, I’ve never bought it. Alan and Damon will posit a counterpoint from here on out, that if my theory is she learned our secret a long time ago and is the kind of girl who wouldn’t hit the ceiling, who might even dig the attention, then it’s equally plausible she’s finding out about the holes for the first time now, and doesn’t hit the ceiling, and might even dig the attention. Paul, atypically, can never make up his mind on the issue, a parabola bisecting our personalities right down to the core. Proof positive that even when we have the answers, none of us ever truly know anything.

None of us ever truly know anything. Seems the most logical summation of these past six tumultuous months. By some inconceivable fluke, after enduring the most ridiculous cold spell this city has even seen, worse than Alan’s bedroom in the winter, somehow I’ve rallied, and all told have accumulated more success here than either roommate. How is this possible? And how is that we consistently learn so little? Fantastic diversions, but Amanda’s of no benefit to me now just as Lisa’s of no benefit to me now. Still never found someone to call my own here, someone worthwhile, and make it stick. Damon and Alan would agree, excerpting their own examples. July kicks off with another weekend motivational seminar, bringing my parents to Cincinnati. The car’s giving me troubles of late but I’m confident in its ability to make the hundred mile trek down there and then retrace its steps back, fines and expired tags and absent license conveniently overlooked again. A much needed oil change, five in the afternoon and I’m on the highway, interstate 71 chugging southwest. Two hundred thirteen thousand miles is a drop in the pond, baby, this fucker will ride forever. I make it as far as the outerbelt and the Escort’s sputtering again. Reflex sends me onto an exit ramp in the split second before it passes me by, whipping left onto some rollicking country road. A prayer I can reach town or at least some civilized outpost before this beast bites the dust entirely. Defying the laws of the universe, bunnyhops carry me all the way back to High Street, but no further. Two strangers in a pickup truck connect against my back bumper, and a friendly nudge sends me into some rundown tire store parking lot, closed for business. Still, I’m not yet out of the woods. Stuck on this seedy south side of town with a blistering sun baking my brain to the tune of eighty degrees Fahrenheit, I’m scrambling for clarity. My options are to either sit here in the ghetto possibly until dark comes waiting on a taxi cab or a bus, or to get moving on foot. Looking at the situation in this light, it doesn’t take much for me to lock the doors and start hiking. And so it would seem that I am back to square one. The summer’s a third of the way over and we’ve put six months behind us, but I’m not any better off, none of us are. Or maybe just a tad - about nine thousand dollars in debt at present, slightly better than before, and while my car’s busted down now, before we moved here I was living in that car. Despite any piddling prosperity we’ve cultivated elsewhere, my roommates and I remain a joke. The largest college in the country, fifty thousand students strong, and we can’t seem to nail a single student between us. The panties pile up on the wall and we bang chicks from every part of the state except the one we live in, the campus itself. Campus remains the impenetrable enigma, still a mystery after six months of studying it nonstop. A hundred chances come and gone, and we’ve blown them all. Three bachelors, one hundred virgins, zero success. Three bachelors.....one hundred virgins....zero success.