It’s been a rainy August. It’s been so rainy that I’m lucky to get in three days a week at work. We’re back-logged as hell and Mark has been cranky. Problems at home I think. He hasn’t elaborated. I’ve been hanging out at Timmy’s house for the past week. Martin has become obsessed with leaving town.
“Just to get away,” he stresses. “I’m serious,” he rants daily, “This is going nowhere. I’ll find a way.”
I know him well enough to know that he will too. Once he makes up his mind to do something he goes to just about any length to get it done. In the meantime though, he’s driving me insane. Timmy’s close to cracking too. The other day Timmy nearly lost it because Martin kept playing shitty music in the stereo.
Eventually Martin comes through though. Our friend Mike has a girlfriend whose parents own a summer house on the coast, in Gulfport. Life in Alyssa’s house, for the past week is pretty much a blur.
She’s originally from Gulfport so she knows a lot of people. Every day has been one catastrophe after another.
Mike and Alyssa get in a huge fight on our second day here. She kicks him out but then tells us we can stay. We tell her that if he goes, so do we. Timmy, Martin and I have all the drugs though. After contemplating it a bit she tells Mike he could stay also but that if she brings any guys home he better not get pissed. He agrees to her condition, muttering under his breath, “Two can play at that game.”
That very night Mike brings home this junky girl that he picked up in a bar. She’s actually pretty cute in a sad sort of way. The girl, Cassidy, came in with a bunch of us so Alyssa didn’t let it bother her game of quarters.
I joined the game. Martin did too. The other people playing were friends of Alyssa. At some point though, Alyssa finds out that Mike is upstairs with Cassidy and she, Alyssa, charges upstairs with a huge-ass butcher knife. Luckily, this big, burly surfer guy (Like there are waves in Mississippi really large enough to surf) gets the knife out of her hand.
Alyssa manages to fuck Mike up pretty good before we finally pull her off. Clumps of his hair are in her hands. His lip is busted and his face is all scratched up. Alyssa’s still squirming and kicking. Mike, still naked, comes forward to cold-cock her but someone, Martin I think, grabs him and says, “Dude, its not worth it.” Cassidy, also still naked, is in hysterics. Alyssa is hissing death threats at her. Finally, Alyssa’s friends take her from me and out the room.
Mike hands Cassidy a sheet to cover herself with and she wanders, still crying, into the master bathroom. Mike, the surfer guy, Timmy, Martin and I stare at each other for a long while when Mike finally bursts into laughter.
“Dude,” says the surfer guy, “That girl is fucking nuts. Fucking Fatal Attraction and shit.”
By the third day kegs start arriving. Mike and Alyssa make up. Cassidy just sort of hangs around. In the early hours of the morning, when everyone is passed out, Cassidy and myself are usually the only ones up. We’ve struck up an odd sort of friendship. On our fifth day here, some girl that had been to the house, went swimming and got caught in the undertow. They tried to save her but by the time the paramedics and ambulance got there it was too late.
I’m sitting in the kitchen. It’s six in the morning. I’m at the kitchen table with Cassidy watching the Weather Channel. I’ve been here a week as of today. We were going to leave two days ago but instead, decided to stay and wait for the hurricane, that is still somewhere out in the Gulf of Mexico.
Cassidy is shooting heroin. I’m smoking a cigarette, shirtless with sunglasses on, and drinking straight bourbon. I’m trying to ignore her, but like a kid in a scary movie I keep peeping over to check out her progress. I get a quick glimpse of the syringe filling with blood.
The woman on the Weather Channel says that the hurricane is due tohit land here some time tomorrow. The winds, as of now, are only at twenty miles per hour but are expected to be as high as seventy-five miles per hour during the hurricane.
I put out the cigarette and light another. When I hear Cassidy lay her works on the table I look over at her. Her face is the epitome of complete and total relief. I’m swept over by a quick and powerful surge of emotion. I want to cry, wreck the place and hold her all in one instant. It passes.
“Can I ask you something?” I say to her.
“Sure. I like you,” she tells me.
“Where do you get it?”
“Can’t tell that,” she says lighting one of my cigarettes.
“Let me re-phrase that,” I say. “It’s not really what I meant. When do you get it? I haven’t seen you leave since you got here.”
She blows a smoke ring and smiles slyly. “I get out,” she says. “Hey, I have some Valium in my bag if you need it,” she says, noticing that my hands are shaking.
“I’ll be cool,” I say, trying to sound convincing more for my own benefit than hers.
“I wasn’t always like this,” she says.
“Me either,” I say.
I get up and walk into the living room. I’m staring out the sliding glass door. It’s about to storm, so its still dark outside. I hear something behind me and through the reflection on the sliding glass door I see that its Cassidy. I expect her to put her arms around me but instead she just stands by my side.
“Are you mad at me?” she asks.
“Mad at you? I don’t even know you.,” I tell her.
“You sort of do. You know I shoot heroin. You know I used to be a model.”
“I know you like Keebler cookies,” I add, laughing lightly.
“See, you know me a little.”
“How did it happen?” I ask cautiously.
“Started as a model. I did a few nude shots. A movie. Money coming out the ass. Parties. Next thing you know I was a prostitute in Miami with a heroin habit to boot.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Does that bother you?”
“No. Not bother..Just..I don’t know. Its not just you. Two years ago we’d party, have fun, go home and sleep it off. Two years ago the only person I’d ever known that had died was like a great aunt that I didn’t even know. It’s serious now. It has been since people started dying. You seem so intelligent. I’ve met a few junkies before. Somehow,
you aren’t like them. You’re different.”
“I’m worse actually because I could do something about this….But I don’t”. Her voice trails off.
At this point that I start freaking out and crying hard. She rubs my shoulders, trying to calm me, but her fingers feel cold. Cadaverous. And somehow this only makes me cry harder.
“Sshh,” she’s telling me. “Deep breaths, don’t be afraid to just let it all out.”
She removes my sunglasses and wipes a tear from my cheek. Regaining my composure, I wipe my eyes and laugh nervously.
We get on the sofa and watch television. I think she falls asleep in my arms. But I can never quite be sure. I can never be sure….
When I wake up, I’m not on the sofa anymore. I’m in a bed. The digital clock reads six p.m.. I turn on a lamp and look for some clothes. Someone, it sounds like Martin, is in the bathroom throwing up. Timmy wanders, staggers actually, in and smiles.
“It is alive,” he says.
“What’s up” I ask.
“I’m drunk as fuck,” he says, sitting on the bed and lighting a joint.
“Where is the hurricane?” I ask.
“Stalled out. Won’t be here till tomorrow.”
“Where are my clothes?”
“Don’t look at me. I have this bathing suit, my wallet and my keys. Everything else is fucking lost. Even my shoes,” he adds glumly.
I rummage through a dresser and find a dorky pair of plaid shorts. They look like golf pants are something.
“Suave,” says Timmy.
“Shit, I’ve been wasted for a solid week. I think I’m beyond the niceties of fashion at this point.”
Martin wanders out of the bathroom and says, “Hey, cool shorts man.”
“Fuck off,” I say, laughing.
“Seriously dude. Those are cool shorts,” he says. He looks at Timmy and says, “Hey Bogart why don’t you pass that fucking joint.”
“Why don’t you suck my fucking dick?” laughs Timmy passing the joint to me just to annoy Martin.
“Asswipe,” says Martin.
“You sure are pretty chipper,” I tell Martin, “for someone who just got finished puking his guts up.”
“Hey baby, you know what they say, out with the old in with the new,” he says.
“When I puke I’m down for the count. Unless its just beer foam,” adds Timmy.
Music is blaring from downstairs. Something steadily thumping too besides the bass.
“Is someone fucking hammering?” I ask.
“Yeah. Donald is boarding up the sliding glass door,” says Martin.
“When did Donald get here?” I ask.
“Earlier today.”
“Who else is here?’ asks Timmy.
“The whole crew,” says Martin. “Melanie, Maggie, Billy, Veronica. I forget who all else came. A bunch of people are on their way too.”
“Have either of you seen Cassidy?” I ask.
“I think I saw her early this morning. She was crashed out on the sofa with some guy. Not sure who, I was half asleep myself,” explains Timmy.
“That was me dude,” I say.
“You fucking dog,” says Martin, high-fiving me.
“It wasn’t like that,” I say.
“Yeah, right,” says Timmy.
The living room is packed. There are black light bulbs in every lamp socket. Someone has even hooked up a strobe light. Candles are lit as well. There are people everywhere. I finally find Cassidy in the kitchen, sharing a chair with a very drunken Alyssa, of all people. To look at them you would never guess that Alyssa had practically tried to kill her a week ago.
Because there are so many people around the kitchen table I can’t really get over to talk to Cassidy. She smiles and waves to me and I wave back. She’s changed clothes. She’s wearing this paisley sun-dress. She looks tan. Healthy. Her sunstreaked brownish hair hangs down in her face when she bends to take a shot in Quarters.
Donald walks up to me and says, “Aww dude, cool fucking shorts.”
“I’m starting a trend,” I tell him and he starts laughing.
“They are cool though. In a Bob Hope sorta way. Here, wear this”, he says, draping a rosary around my neck.
I grab his forehead and yell, “Can you see da light. You are healed. Now walk.”
We’re both laughing our asses off when I notice his finger is bandaged up.
“What happened there?” I ask.
“I was sawing that plywood for the door man. Almost took the fucker off with that piece of shit power saw. It hit bone,” he says grinning sheepishly.
“Did you get stitches?”
“Fuck no. I was too fucking wasted to go to a hospital. I got some Percodan from Chucky,” he says.
“You’re more of a man than I am,” I tell him.
We both go into the living room, which has basically become a dance-floor. I see Timmy, looking wasted, sitting by the fireplace by himself and I go sit by him.
“What’s up bro?” I ask
“Fucked up man,” he says.
“Me too. Getting there at least”
“You drop yet?” he asks me.
“Its kinda hard to drop when you have nothing to drop,” I say.
“Here,” he says, taking a tab and a hit of acid from a cigarette celophane and handing them to me.
I gratefully pop them both into my mouth. We just sit there for a long time drinking beers. He’s dragged a little Igloo ice chest into the room and its between his feet. After about an hour passes we’re still sitting there drunk, loaded, making fun of people. Timmy gets up to go to the bathroom. Alyssa, Melanie and a few other people are dancing in front of me. Veronica is on the sofa, practically fucking the surfer guy.
Martin is dancing with, or near really, Melanie. He’s got a beer in each hand. His shirt, this Hawaiian looking thing that he obviously must have found in the same drawer I found these shorts in, is unbuttoned and his belly is jiggling.
He spots me and motions for me to come out. I do, sort of dancing but mostly just acting like I am. The song Security fades and is replaced by Radio Clash and Martin goes ape-shit, doing some strange dance that looks like something you’d see on a National Geographic special on native tribes of New Guinea.
I’m still dancing. The acid and Ecstasy have combined to create some very weird sensations. My feet feel like rubber but I’m moving pretty good, really dancing now. It feels like an electrical surge is slowly and methodically coursing through various parts of my body, dick included. I feel good. Actually I’m beyond feeling. It’s like I’m caught in the very center of a pleasure zone; like my outer body doesn’t even exist anymore; like I’m shrunken, swimming in gray matter. The music and I are one; joined.
There are a few people dancing still and I can tell by looking at them that they too are lost in their own pleasures. I want to hug all of them. I want to fuck all of them and laugh with them and live with them and just stay like this forever. Someone must have hit the repeat button on the CD player because Front 242’s ‘Gripped by Fear’ keeps playing over and over. It’s a slower song, well for Front 242, but I’m totally into the rhythm.
Cassidy appears from nowhere and starts dancing with me. I can tell by the look on her face that she’s taken Ecstasy as well. I’m clumsy at first because I was so caught up in my own little world but it doesn’t take us long to merge into a unified swaying pair. She places my hands on her hips and when she touches my hands this time she feels very warm, very alive. I immediately get an erection but just try to ignore it. The song keeps repeating and repeating and we keep on dancing for what seems like hours.
Eventually we stop though. She’s laughing. Smiling at me. She tells me she’s tired and I pretty much am too. I can’t help but to kiss her…..
Because all the windows are boarded up, it turns noon without me even noticing it. A few people have left. Some have either crashed or found a room to fuck in. Other than that, the party is in full swing; quieter but still kicking.
Everyone in the living room is sprawled out all over the place. Laying down, or reclined in chairs, all eyes and ears glued to the Weather Channel. The hurricane is due to hit at about four today. It isn’t going to be as strong as they had originally thought it would be. Apparently it lost some of its power when it stalled yesterday.
I drop two hits of acid. Not to really get fucked up, just to stay awake. I sprawl out on the floor next to Cassidy, who has changed into a one-piece bathing suit and my GBH t-shirt.
“Fuck,” mutters Martin indignantly. “Put Jeopardy on. We know where the fucking hurricane is.”
