In which, under the influence of enough caffeine to kill most mere mortals, I reminisce about a party, a song and sex in a phone booth in the rain outside a drug store at a few minutes before the witching hour... or not...
So, where the fuck was I? I'm not sure, long has it been since I pondered and wandered here. I'll start with today. I went to a funeral this morning. It was sad for so many, on so many levels. I try to come away from such things with a better outlook on my own life, but not today... just couldn't do it. I took the long way home afterward, listened to some special music while driving, stopped and did some grocery shopping, but all for naught. Maybe be better tomorrow... tonight, I'll dwell on other things.
When I was seventeen, I went to a party at a girl's house, her parents were away for a while, so, of course, she threw a party. Her parents were rich. Very rich. Their kitchen was bigger than the house I grew up in. They had a Florida room, as it was called, that was actually a conservatory, where palms and ferns and tropical flowers grew all year round. They had a bathroom with a sunken tub the size of a small swimming pool. They had a daughter with one of those rich girls haircuts, all straight and longer one side than the other, with a hint of baby fat, a little more than a hint of freckles and a set of braces that probably cost more than my father made in a year, who flitted around the house full of moochers and drunks and freeloaders, being the perfect hostess until it got out of hand and she had to throw everyone out around one in the morning. I stayed to help clean up. We wiped up spilled drinks, puke, cigarette ashes and other stuff I can't imagine what from the hardwood floors. We washed dishes and glasses and bagged up all the liquor bottles and beer cans and stashed them behind the bushes in her back yard until she could get rid of them. She made us grilled cheese sandwiches and coffee as the sun was coming up and after we ate, she took me by the hand and walked me to the front door and bade me good-bye and thanks for helping me clean up and why don't you call me sometime we can go out and do something, you're really different from most guys I know but I don't have your phone number, let me get a pen I'll be right back and she was and wrote her number on my arm and she gave me a long kiss and smiled as she closed the door and I walked home and thought about her for a long time. So I called her and we went out and went out again and many times after that until she decided to throw me over for some bank robber type with a hot rod and she became a drunk and I became something else and someone else.
I'm sitting on the floor of a living room, my back against an expense leather sofa, the room is lit by candles, there's a half finished Martini in a sweaty Martini glass sitting on a mirror topped coffee table in front of me, there are stairs on the other side of the room that lead up to her bed room and she's sitting on them, her head in her hands, crying, not because she's upset but because she's pissed as all get out and she's telling me it's over and it's all my fault, but it's not my fault and I'm trying to focus through the water that's glazing my eyes and I really want to finish my Martini and get the hell out of there, but then she'll win and maybe she'll just get up and go upstairs and there will be door slamming and I'll finish my drink and leave, but not until the album that's playing is finished, the last cut on the first side is my favorite, it's called Starship Trooper and then I'll blow out the candles, leave the empty Martini glass on the table so she'll have to clean it up in the morning, but she just sits there and I just sit there and the album is over and I eat the last of the gin marinated olives, get up and walk through the house to the back door and go out into the cool summer night and walk around the front and get on my motorcycle and kick it to life and light a cigarette, put on my helmet and slowly roll off into the night.
That's it.
On Thanksgiving night, 1971, I had sex in a phone booth in front of a drug store in the pouring rain just before midnight with a girl with black hair, green eyes and a crescent moon shaped scar about the size of a dime on her left cheek, we were both madding drunk, she more than me and when it was over we went across the street and sat in a bus shelter and smoked cigarettes and she played her harmonica and I asked her why she wore green nail polish on one hand and orange on the other and she laughed at me and told me I thought too fucking much about shit that doesn't matter and can I walk her home because if she didn't get home soon her sister would probably be out driving around looking for her and did we finish that joint we had earlier if not she could really use some right now and that was the first time she ever fucked a guy in a phone booth and damn, it's a cold, wet night. really.
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