A late post of PURE UNADULTERATED FICTION, YO! Enjoy!
The first time we met, I was drunk. (This was hardly unexpected; it was early in my junior year, it was a Friday night, and I lived with 2 roommates in an apartment directly over a bar.) The bar was called the “Wild and Wicked” at the time, and she was there with a friend, Mimi, who happened to be in the same Ethics class as my roomie Walter. He wandered over to say hi, and to see if he’d missed anything by not going to class for the last 3 weeks. I followed him.
As we got close, Walter’s “Hey girl, whassup?” caused the girls to turn around on their bar stools. Just as they did so, I slipped awkwardly on a puddle of frozen margarita and fell face first into the breasts of Mimi’s friend, who in turn spilled her drink into my hair. I got to my wobbly feet and began the lengthy process of profusely apologizing when I felt a pair of large hands grab my shoulders and drag me towards the front entrance.
“Hey, wha? Wha’re you doing? Cut it out, jerk!”
“Out you go, a-hole. Have a nice night.”
With that, he threw me out the door, and I belly flopped painfully on a pile of rough ice. “You retard! I live upstairs! Let me back in and I’ll just go to bed!” Sadly, bouncers aren’t paid to rethink 86ing someone, so I was stuck. I could have waited for Walter to come outside and rescue me, but Walter doesn’t stop paying attention to ladies until they either slap him or leave his apartment in the dead of night.
I went across the street to the Dunkin Donuts, bought a cup of coffee, and fell asleep. Around 3am I woke up, horribly hungover, and realized that 1) there’s a back entrance to my apartment, up the fire escape, and 2) somebody had lifted my wallet while I was asleep.
* * * * *
The second time we met, I was sober, but very hung over. It was the first semester of senior year, and Walter and I had managed to sign up to be in the same Statistics class. (I had already tried to pass it once, and failed; Walter, twice. We were certain that if we took the class together, and really worked hard together, we could pass together.) We wandered into the lecture hall with a massive cup of coffee apiece, and a box of mini-donuts, and sat in the back row to avoid being reprimanded for eating in class.
While we nursed our coffees and tried not to move around too rapidly, two girls dropped their bookbags on the seats in front of us. The redhead turned around to look at us, and I realized it was Mimi and her friend from the bar last winter. Mimi looked at Walter and said, in what seemed to us to be an extremely loud tone, “Hey Walt, third time’s the charm, huh?”
“Ow,” he replied. “Not so loud. You’ll bruise my eardrums.”
Mimi laughed. I sat silently, hoping her friend didn’t recognize me. Fat chance.
“Hey,” she said. “You’re that idiot that flung himself into my boobs a few months ago, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m the brilliant finance major who flung himself into your boobs a few months ago, although my friends call me Harry.” I thought this was a remarkably witty retort for someone who, not 15 minutes ago, had thrown up in a bush outside the building.
“You smell like puke.” Touche.
The teacher walked in just then and demanded that we all have a seat. Associate Professor Agnes Prescott was the most feared instructor in the entire mathematics department. Her grading standards were like some medieval torture; 70% to pass? We hadn’t been held to a standard that high since middle school. Half the profs at the college would give you a C just for showing up to the final and filling out most of the dots. Nevertheless, her Statistics 207 class was filled, 4 sections a semester, every single semester, because you couldn’t get a business, science, math, or engineering degree without it.
After 90 minutes of frantically scribbling symbols in a notebook, Professor Prescott reminded us that in her class, attendance was mandatory, and would be enforced via daily quizzes, and that we should get the hell out and start studying if we expected to get anything approaching a passing grade in the next one. Walter and I stood up, and then I got rather horribly dizzy and sat back down.
“Is he gonna be okay?” asked Mimi, watching me shake cobwebs from my brain.
“He needs a Bloody Mary,” replied Walter. “Any one else wanna meet us over at O’Brien’s?”
Mimi shook her head. “I have Western Civ for the next 2 hours.” She sighed. “Debbie doesn’t have anything to do, though.”
Debbie. I hadn’t heard anyone say her name before, and I was slightly disappointed. Frankly, the girl was exactly my type. Very slender and tall, with large breasts, and dark hair, almost black. Her name, however, was on a lengthy list of names that I’m picky about. Stacy, Casey, Joan, Brenda, all of them just turned me off a little bit. This is not something I reveal, of course, to any Stacys, Caseys, Joans, Brendas, or Debbies I happen to meet. I resolved that, should I have the opportunity, I would always refer to her as Deborah. Very biblical and strong, Deborah is.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Are you deaf?” Debbie had been talking to me for probably 30 seconds while I was thinking about how I disliked the diminution of her name.
“Sorry, sorry, I was thinking about the Stat quiz we need to study for. What did you say?”
“I said I could use a quick hair-of-the-dog before I have to go to Technical Writing. Are you coming?”
“Most definitely. I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could carry me?” I smiled roguishly. Turn on the charm, Harry, that’s it . . .
“You’re clearly retarded. Let’s go.”
We wandered over to O’Brien’s, which is the bar that replaced the “Wild and Wicked” after that unfortunate rohypnol incident involving every single bartender ever employed there. O’Brien’s is actually owned by 2 Italian brothers, but as one of them put it, “This is a frickin’ college town. No rich white kid is gonna come to a wop bar night after night.” So they went with an Irish bar, albeit an Irish bar with a surprising variety of pasta on the menu.
Being only about 11am, the place was just opening for the early lunch crowd, and was nearly empty save a bartender and a couple servers wandering around. We sat down at the bar, and Walter was kind enough to seat himself directly between us, thereby ensuring that no physical contact of any kind would occur between Deborah and myself. I would have to have a chat with him about this later.
“Hey Jim, gimme three Bloody Marys, extra horseradish,” Walter yelled down the bar.
“The name’s Bobby, you ass,” the bartender hollered back. O’Brien’s prided itself on having the unfriendliest staff in the entire county. Business was booming.
The bartender plopped three tall glasses of red liquid in front of us. “$14.50,” he said.
“Wait a second,” I said, “14.50 doesn’t divide by 3. What’re you pulling?”
“I dunno, jerk, I just push ‘3’ then ‘Bloody Mary’ on the damn screen, and it says $14.50.”
We each slapped a fiver on the bar. “Keep the 50 cents and buy yourself a real job,” smiled Deborah. The bartender stared hard at her for a moment, but she wouldn’t break her gaze, so he stared me down instead. (I have the balls of a newt.) The drinks were tasty, like they usually were, and Bobby knew damn well we’d leave an extra couple bucks for him before we left. Anger was just part of the ambience.
“So Mimi tells me you idiots have gone through Stat before. What should I expect?”
“To fail,” Walter and I replied at the same time, and then all three of us laughed. “But seriously,” I continued, “the prof is a cast-iron bitch. Quizzes end up being something like 40% of your grade. The secret is having a late session.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because as mean as Prescott is, she isn’t very smart about some things. The quiz will only have one or two questions on it, and if you know what they are, you just bone up beforehand on that material. She teaches two sections on Monday and Wednesday; by Tuesday and Thursday, the questions are well known. Being seniors, we get first dibs on the Tuesday/Thursday classes.”
Debbie was impressed. “You’re smarter than you look. How’d you figure all this out?”
Walter fielded this one. “The first time you take the class, you learn all about it from the seniors and juniors that are trying to pass for the second time.”
“Or third,” I interrupted, and Walt jabbed me in the arm with his straw.
“The only problem,” he said, “is if she gets wise to us and starts changing the questions from day to day, and so we signed up for the late T&T class, in hopes that maybe we might be able to sneak into the 8am, find out the questions, and then run out for a quick hour’s study before the 9:30 section.” Walter was very pleased with himself, despite the fact that I was the genius that came up with it.
“You guys have got it all figured out, huh?” Deborah sipped her drink thoughfully.
“Hey, after 2 or 3 tries, you tend to learn,” I said. “Not the material of course, just how to get around having to know anything.” I smiled brightly.
“I think you have puke on your chin,” she said, but she smiled coquettishly. We finished our drinks and stood to leave, throwing a dollar each on the bar for Jim or Bobby or whatever. As we walked out the front door, I said,
“So hey, Deborah, any interest in going out for some drinks this weekend?”
Deborah laughed, clearly at my expense. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Friday night, Mimi and I are throwing a party at our place. Nothing huge, just a keg and an iPod full of dance mixes. We’ll be getting started around 9. If you come, and can keep that massive head of yours – ” she rapped on my forehead with her fist – “out of my cleavage, I might let you clean up somebody’s vomit before I kick you out.”
“I can’t think of a more enticing offer. See you tomorrow, then?”
“You are a dork. Bye, Walt,” and she trotted off towards her class.
“Sweet girl,” Walter commented.
“Shut up,” I replied.
* * * * *
The third time we met, Debbie was so drunk she was clearly not capable of standing upright. We got to the party around 1am (Walter told me I should let her anticipation build up, and she’d be happier to see me when we finally showed up), having hit a couple bars before-hand, so we were nicely tuned up ourselves. Deborah, on the other hand, was leaning on everything: walls, doors, the keg, the counter, other party-goers.
“Hey look,” she yelled as we walked in, “it’s those two assholes who were supposed to show up hours ago.” Then she threw a bottle cap at me, which missed me completely and went down some girl’s shirt. Luckily, her dance partner was more than willing to put his hand down there and retrieve it. Walter and I watched him try to find it among her bosom and large beer gut, finally giving up when the girl grabbed his groin and led him off by it in the direction of the bathroom.
“What can I say,” Debbie hollered, “I throw some seriously classy parties.”
“Where’s Mimi?” Walter asked.
“What?”
“I said, WHERE’S MIMI?”
“Don’t yell at me you turd!” Debbie screamed, as she fell sideways over a small sofa, spilling her full cup of beer all over a girl in a white tshirt, who immediately shrieked and ran in the direction of the bathroom. Walter helped Debbie to her feet as best he could, and finally set her down on a dry part of the couch.
“Looks like you’ve kinda ruined this little sofa,” I told her.
“It’s a chaise lounge, you dumbass.”
I looked more carefully at it. “Technically, Deborah, a chaise lounge is more like a chair with an extension for the legs. This is a love seat.”
“Oh, shussup,” she retorted, stood up sullenly, and made for a glass door leading to a small balcony. “I wanna cigarette.” Walter and I exchanged a look, during which I tried to signal as clearly as possible, Stay here you idiot, but which Walter appeared to decipher as Let’s both go out there with her and we’ll have a nice big chat! I seriously reconsidered my relationship with Walt, as I did at least 30 times a day.
Both of us went out on the balcony and kept a careful eye on Debbie in case she decided to pull the same move on the railing that she did on her “chaise lounge.” Something about the dumpster beneath us didn’t look quite as cushiony.
“So,” I began, “what have you been drinkin’?”
“Whaddaya think, you nyerd? Beer! Beer an’ vodka! Oh, and Mimi had some pot, we did a liddle o dat.”
“Where is she, anyway?” Walt asked.
“Oh, she’s back in the be’room, toking up with some art major. Probably screwing in my bed. She always does that, jus’ to mess with me.” Debbie lurched towards the railing, and I grabbed her waist as she leaned over and threw up noisily.
“Holy crap!” yelled Walter. Debbie moaned loudly.
“Okay, okay, got any more?” I asked. She shook her head, and then leaned over again and let loose with what appeared to be Salisbury steak.
“That’s freakin’ nasty, dude,” said Walter.
“I know, retard. Go inside and grab some paper towels, lemme see if I can clean this up and get her to bed.”
“Dude, you’re not – “
“No, asshole, you know I wouldn’t, all jokes and rumors to the contrary.” Walter got some Bounty, and I wiped off her face and tried to sponge some of the goo out of her hair. We carried her inside, squeezed by some commotion near the bathroom (the girl with the beer-soaked white t-shirt wanted to go inside and hide from everyone who could quite clearly see that she wasn’t wearing a brassiere, and the couple inside wanted to continue their shower-related activities) and found what appeared to be the door to the bedroom Deborah and Mimi shared.
We knocked, and then knocked louder, but got no response, so we opened the door. Mimi was passed out in a twin bed with some short bald guy, so we dumped Deborah in the other one, and closed the door behind us.
“Sweet girl,” Walter said. I just gave him a look.
We wandered back out into the party, and a mildly-inebriated girl wandered over. “Are you guys Harry and Walt?”
“That’s us,” I replied.
“Cool. Thanks for taking care of Debbie; she’d been asking about you, wondering why you hadn’t shown up yet. I’m glad you finally did, if only to keep her from going over the railing out there.”
“Just doing our jobs,” Walter said with a grin. “What was your name again?”
“Joan,” she replied. “Do you guys need beers?”
“Hell yes,” Walter said.
* * * * *
The fourth time Debbie and I met, the following morning, we were both very hungover. Walter and I stayed until the keg was tapped out, around 4 am, and then we stumbled back to our apartment as well as we could. I actually made it to a couch, but Walter barely made it into the apartment, collapsing on the floor in the small entryway we jokingly called a foyer. Around 9, I woke up and dragged myself down the hall to my bedroom, where I slept fitfully until around noon, when the phone rang. I let almost all incoming calls go to voicemail (I just don’t like talking on the phone), but for some reason I answered this one.
“Uh…hello?”
“Hey, uh, Harry? This is Debbie.”
I sat up in bed so rapidly my spine popped in three places. “Debbie! Hi!”
“You’re probably wondering how I, um, got your number . . .”
“I would imagine you got it from Mimi, who got it from Walt.”
“Oh. Uh, right.”
“How are you feeling?” I asked, sincerely.
“Honestly? Like crap. Thanks for taking care of me last night. Joan said I nearly went over the railing outside.”
“Yeah, you probably would have survived the landing in the dumpster, but we weren’t going to climb in there after you. I figured it was just simpler to catch you before you went over.”
She laughed. “True, true. Anyway, thanks. I’m sorry I wasn’t more, um, fun.”
“What are you talking about? You promised me if I came, I might get to clean up someone’s vomit. I got everything I expected to get, and I helped finish off your keg. It was a great deal.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ve got a better deal. How about you meet me at O’Brien’s in an hour, and I’ll let you buy me some lunch and a bloody mary or two?”
“What say we make it 2 hours, miss the lunch rush, and give me another hour to try and get rid of this pounding headache?”
Deborah laughed again. I liked it. “Deal,” she said. “And . . . thanks again.”
“My pleasure. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Bye!” I rolled over and tried to catch two or three more winks. I’d need to be well rested.
