SubscribeAcross the sidewalk streams of melted snow made little waterways in the concrete, sliding under my shoes and splashing upon my ankles. Everything seemed to sparkle, and birds chirped, clear and musical, from high atop the nearby pines. I saw Beer Lake in the distance, getting larger as I moved closer to My dorm in Vandenberg. Sheets of translucent ice floated atop the water and the melted portions consisted of a murky brown.
I took the two flights of steps to my new dorm room on the south corner of East Vandenberg Hall. The door was open, and a cool wind blew from the balcony door. My roommate and her friend, upon seeing me they burst out laughing.
"So you recovered from last night?" T. Asked me with a smile.
"No....What?" I was confused. Was she there when I had entered high and drunk the night before? I could not remember, but I assumed she had been from the look on her face.
"Oh, yeah." I laughed. "That was pretty..... interesting."
"You was fucked up." T. Laughed, "You was sayin' you could move things with your thoughts an' some shit."
"Did I....?" I faintly remembered the feeling now, of having to touch them. "Well I guess I recovered. Now I have to get ready. I'm going to Canada."
"In the day?" T. asked. "You know no one be goin' up there for no day trip girl."
"No, it's for a friends birthday." I replied. "we're gonna prolly spend the night---"
"So you gonna get fucked up again?"
"No, I mean...maybe...I think..." I felt like an alchoholic. "I have to get ready."
I tore though my heaps of clothes, all clean, but wrinkled and knotted together. Nothing in my life would ever be straight, neat or organized. I had come to that conclusion some time before. Even my hair seemed to rebel against the idea of being tamed. I looked into the mirror and confirmed my obesity, my ugliness, my frizzy hair...and I reached for my cell phone to call my friend, C. to tell her I no longer felt like going.
The world only likes beautiful people, and I, at the moment was feeling far from accpetable for the public to view. But then I realized that laying in my dorm and feeling ugly was worse than sitting in public and being ugly. So I continued to dig to the center of my moutnain of cloths in an attempt to locate something that, once donned, would make me presentable.
Aftre some debate on whether or not to wear a skirt, I finall decided to throw on some old jeans a black sweater. I would change, I told myself, at the hotel. I never did.
Now I would like to pause for, I see, upon re-reading what I have just written, that I have been writing, for the most part, about myself. While I suppose one always has the most to say about oneself, those whose company I found myself in were quite an entertaining bunch. A company eleven, including a reverand, someone who will be refered to as The Big Tomato, a small canadian, Someone who actually had a date on valentines day, a chaperone who will be refered to as R. , A Grosse Pointer in denial, among a few others who I may or may not introduce later. All of the above mentioned were compacted into one small hotel room with plenty of alcohol..I think. I didn't start drinking until dinner, when I ordered my first legal drink.
But before dinner I found myself engaged in rather a conversation with The Big Tomato, who sat by the hotel window, leaned back in a chair, peering out from beneath his cowboy hat, beer in one hand, gesturing explainatively with the other amidst a conversation with the Reverand.
Aside from the chatter of people boucing off the walls, aside from the little blonde birthday girl, with green underpants over her jeans...(N. was quite a sight, adorable, hilarious...those words come to mind) music played from a small radio that that was perched upon the bed by the winodw.
But after some time, I slowly became aware of a song that played in the background:
"I don't want another pretty face,
I don't want just anyone to hold
I don't want our love to go to waste,
I want you and your beautifl soul."
The lyrics annoyed me, prtially because it was a love song ,and I have become to some dregree I believe, allergic to love songs, and partially because the person singing sounded like he/she was ten...give or take a year or two.
"I want you and your beautiful soul," I retpeated mostly to myself because I didn't think anyone was listiening. I warily eyed at the radio like it was a venemous creature.
"Am I to assume he wants an ugly chick?" The Big Tomato said sarcastically and I looked up, and indeed he was talking to me...or at least I though so, so I replied.
"Am I even to assume it's a boy?"
The Big Tomato chuckled, slightly amused. He lifted his hat about an inch so he could see me.
"Yes." Was his confident, almost serious reply.
"Well then are WE to assume that he has encountered numerous pretty faces and, now he has, quite literally, exausted his liking of a pretty face?" I was neither drunk nor high, but for some reason this mock analysis of a terrible song had me entirerly amused.
"Good question..." TBT rubbed his chin thoughtfully, or at least I imagined he did. The world may never know what exactly happned. I can only give you my count of events, right?
"It leads back to my original question: Is he equating a pretty faces with ugly souls?"
"And a waste of love?" I tacked onto his question.
The radio got fuzzy for a second and R. tuned into the last part of our conversation.
"What?" He said looking confused. "What's a waste of love?"
"That song." TBT nodded towards the radio and took a gulp of his beer. "We are obviously to assume he's wasted his share of (L) on pretty faces."
And at this point R. shrugged and reached for another beer.
At the same point I shurgged and looked out of the glass down to the street below. People scampered down the street, colorful lighted signed directed the bingeing turists to alcohol and if that was not enough, to MORE alcohol. Here was a town developed and upkept solely on the power of alcohol.
The streets seemed alive with people going to bars, and people trying to get you to go to bars...it seemed like it was about an equal amount. By the end of the night at had at least four tags on my wrist telling me to go to this bar, that bar or the other club...all in neon glow in the dark colors...
As we filed out of the hotel room, R. began grabbing our arms and writing on them: 415 Ramada.
"If we split up, and you get too drunk or lost, just show someone this on you wrist." He spoke loudly, to the whole group. "They'll know where it is." His hands shook as he wrote, not because he was nervous. He had always been that way, he said. And as soon as I was out of his direct sight, I licked my wrist and smudged off all markings of the pen feeling like I did some years before when my big sister put a tag on my wrist with my address on it and I tore it off behind her back. I knew exactly where I was and where needed to go back to. Nonetheless, I found R.'s genuine concern for the younger flock to be admirable, genuine.
Just down the street, one of the bar-pushers led us to a restaurant named, conveniently, The Big Tomato. A coincidence?...hmmmmm I'd say.
It is at this restaurant that I ordered my first legal drink in my 20 year old life.
The dinner was nothing special. C. and I shared some pasta, and I looked over to my right and saw the that The Big Tomato himself and his sidekick, who were sitting across from each other, both had ordered the same meal, the only difference was the choice in meat. Need I tell you who ordered fist? I looked down and saw that they were both wearig cowboy boots. Need I imply who got theirs first? hmmmmmm...I'd say.
So then we went to the Casino, Casino Winsor, the magnet for drunk people under 21...and, I suppose in R's case, for chaperones over 21. He took my coat upon entered the Casino, very politely. He reminded me of the big brother character in Hans Brinker who was decsribed by the author as gallant. I can think of no other word.
The sound of chips rattling, coins falling...a whole world came to life around me, tickling chatterish sounds scrabled about the place, under my shoes and between my fingers, and danced on my eardrums. Bets were placed, bets lost, few won. I ordered my second...maybe third... legal drink. At this point, I realized: I has spent $20 (Canadian) on alcohol and was not nearly drunk. I wondered, inwordly, how alcoholics could afford anythihng BUT liquor...things like...rent, clothes...hmmm. I didn't wonder for too long because a sickeningly cheesy cover band began to play. I felt like I was in a Ford commercial.
After the Casino, I was under the impression that we were to follow The Big Tomato to this club called Bentley's. So I just followed the Cowboy Hat. Like I said; I wasn't drunk...I don't think.
And the Bar-pushers slaped more neon paper bracelets on my wrists and some even tryied to drag me into various bars. I wanted to say, "this is a free country, I can go where I please...but I was not quite so sure....And for some reason everyone seemed to clear out of the way of the Big Tomato, perhaps it was because of his hat, his boots....his walk....or perhaps it had something to do with the trench-coated Reverand with staticky hair who lurked in his shadow.
I was speaking to TBT about some thing or the other when I notcied I was no longer being followed by the group of girls...or the chaperone.
"Where did they go?" I asked TBT.
"I dunno. But I'm going to Bently's." He never even slightly hesitated.
"Go find them." The Reverand waved his hand as if he was waving off a pestering fly.
"They went that way." He pointed a sharpened finger in the opposite direction that TBT was leading. "You don't wanna come with us. Go find them."
"But where?"
"I think they went into a club." The Reverand picked up his pace to rejoin his sidekick. "The reactor or soemthing."
"Okkkkk..."I turned to go, and walked towards the flashing yellow sign that read: REACTOR.
Inside, the smeel of spilled beer, mixed with various perfumes and colognes stabbed bluntly ay my nose. Loud music pounded painfully at my ears, sharp lights seared into my eyes. It reminded me of the clubs in Pontiac that I had attened religiously a year before. I was not nearly drunk enough. I stood next to where R. was sitting, engulfed in a pile of girls coats, calmly drinking a beer.
He reached out to take my coat like it was second naute, and after doing so he looked at me funny.
"Why dont you go dance?" he askedgesturing towards the filthy dance floor.
I looked and saw that all the other girls were.
"I don't feel like it." I said, taking a seat. Scareface was playing on a big sceen above the bar. I looked at that for a while. Lights flashed music played, and I drifted off into a daydream.
I imagined that ..........
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