We Ended Up at a Party at Scott's

Saturday, May 19, 1995
Mike
Freshman, Undeclared
Fort Mill, SC


We end up at a party at a house on Saluda, someone that Scott Sharkey’s brother, Kurt, knows. As soon as we walk through the door, Scott spots his brother instantly: short, stocky, slow, Southern, looks nothing like Scott. Scott runs over to talk to him, and Shane and Sean bolt off in the opposite direction, towards the keg, leaving me alone, drunk, eyes half open, red Dixie cup of vodka still in hand from the Alpha Chi mixer at Mad Hatter’s, and I stand in the doorway, looking, and the living room is packed with girls and boys and I’m living right through this and

The crowd has energy and there’s something about this that has energy and I smile and I try my best to take it all in, as I try to understand each and every person in this room—they all—they’re all from somewhere. The girl dancing by herself, by the fridge, three months ago, s

I just need to be alone.

I’m lying on top of the sheets on someone’s bed in someone’s room on the second floor of Curt Sharkey’s friend’s house, and I can see the red neon “Adluh Flour” factory sign in the sky just across Saluda, the “A” flickering on and off, and the all the lights are off. I am the only one in the room, on the bed, gold-framed Ray-Ban Aviators on, straight vodka in hand, when a brown-haired girl in jean shorts and a blue Chi Omega shirt sways in and sits down on the bed beside me, our heads resting against the headboard, directly under the same Resevoir Dogs poster Cruz has in his room and Garnett has in his. She was wearing a blue Chi Omega t-shirt and she was, I guess, gorgeous in a Midwestern sort of way. I didn’t know her and I didn’t want to and I didn’t look at her again, because I was drunk and her arrival had spoiled the intimacy of the moment, the sanctity and brooding I was going for and maybe hope she noticed but really I just wanted to be alone and I clinched my jaw and stared out the window at the flickering “A” and since the lights were off I wasn’t even sure she knew I was in the room on the bed next to her until she started to speak. She talked of date nights, of hand-holding, of nights spent curled up and shivering in the corner of the bed until he rolled over, possibly awake but probably asleep, and put his arm around her and her heart would slow and her skin would warm and she would fall back to sleep safely in his arms. She said this is what she needed. She talked of smiles that would make her shiver and touches that would make her arm erupt in goosebumps, and she asked me if I thought he loved her?

Did he ever really love me?

I turn to her, I sort of roll my head along the headboard and look at her, swallow, squint under my Ray-Bans, and her eyes are filled with tears, with hope, with need, with pleading, and I stare at her. I tilt my head  to one side, slant my eyebrows. She stares back at me and when she is sure I have nothing to say she erupts into tears and I don’t know why but I put my arms around her and cradle her,  as she buries her face into my shoulder, sobbs into my shoulder, and I run one hand softly up and down her back, and when I'm sure she is asleep I finish the rest of my drink—half a glass—in one unmercifull gulp, and after silently standing up and pulling the sheets over her shoulders, I pry her drink from her fingers and finished it as well

I crush the cup in my hand and let it fall to the floor.

As I walk out of the room, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and it freezes me, draws me in. I  clinch my jaw at myself, squint, as I think about what she said. I think about smiles that would make someone shiver and touches that would make someone smile, and  then I look down at her, sleeping, needy, shrivled and pathetic in the bed beneath me, and I clinch my jaw tighter and turn away from her, disgusted, wishing I had not finished her drink but poured the rest of it over her face, into her eyes, told her I saw her boyfriend fucking Wendy Rogers in the Wings on Wheels bathroom last Sunday after the Bathesda House Bash party I didn't even want to go to.

But I couldn’t look away from her. Silent, sleeping softly, chest slowly rising and falling. I rip my gaze away from her, leave, slam the door behind her, hoping I had frightened her, woken her, and as I decend the staircase I realize that I have no idea, no concept, no point of reference for of any of the bullshit she was talking about, and now my eyes well up with tears as I wonder where in my life I had gone wrong, but after only three steps down the stairs a girl by the stereo glances up at me and immediately does a double-take and smiles and I smile back and as I smiled I realized that I, on the contrary, I had done everything right. Absolutely right.