<\/p>\n
My old college buddy James.
\nDefinition:\u00a0 Lush.<\/p>\n
The call came at 9pm.
\nIt was fairly early for a James evening, so I registered surprise when I
\nheard his voice.\u00a0 By registering surprise
\nI, of course, mean that only you and I know that I was taken off guard.\u00a0 Long ago, as a survival technique, I had
\nlearned not to show surprise in a way that James could detect.<\/p>\n
Behind him, creeping through his cell phone, a familiar “Nach?”<\/p>\n I didn’t reply.<\/p>\n “Fucking Nach, Nach?” “James, what are you doing?”<\/p>\n “You have got<\/em> to “I – ”<\/p>\n “Please, god, please, just write this down.”\u00a0 He rambled off a set of directions that The Acura gave me trouble. I power-geared out to where James was.\u00a0 (Power-geared.\u00a0 That’s something my grandfather says whenever James was at an old mansion in Chevy Chase, Maryland.\u00a0 Sitting peacefully on a 40 acre, wooded lot, Flashback:\u00a0 May, I locked up and leapt out, hitting speed dial 10 and getting “Round back,” he said, hanging up.<\/p>\n I circled the house and saw three dozen wedding freaks Stepping up to the bar, I leaned close to whisper something “Nach!”<\/p>\n “James, what the – ”<\/p>\n “I’m tending bar for Ridgewells.”\u00a0 He leaned close to my head and whispered, “You’re “Tending bar?”<\/p>\n “Yep.\u00a0 Thought you’d I took a sip and the world dipped.\u00a0 I took another sip and a black haired girl “Hi.”\u00a0 I said.<\/p>\n “You shouldn’t drink these,” she warned me, her hand fluttering “He’s Nacho Sasha,” James said.\u00a0 “He’s mellowed in the new decade but, really, “Funny name.” she whispered, her eyes glazed and zombie like “What the fuck are you tending bar for?” I asked James.<\/p>\n “I need the extra cash,”<\/p>\n “James, you make 150 grand a year!”<\/p>\n “I have a mortgage man! “Johnny Walker Green?”<\/p>\n “It’s between black and blue.”<\/p>\n “Black and blue,” the New “Who are you?” I asked her.<\/p>\n “I’m from New York “No, who<\/em> are you?”<\/p>\n “I’m from – ”<\/p>\n “Forget it,” James said. “What?”<\/p>\n “Seriously.\u00a0 Now it’s “What!\u00a0 The James cleared his throat, “I don’t know.\u00a0 This is what some spic told me.”<\/p>\n “Well, I’ve never had the Green.”<\/p>\n James poured two glasses, looked at wobbling New York, shrugged, then I stepped aside with New “Are you…” She had trouble, slurring the words, dribbling “No, I’m crashing the fucking wedding.”<\/p>\n “Like in the movie?”<\/p>\n “I’m boycotting the movie because I belong to a religious “Do you want to see my tits?”<\/p>\n “Yes.”<\/p>\n We ran up a grand staircase, giggling like school kids, and “What?\u00a0 A five minute “You killed her.”<\/p>\n He grinned.\u00a0 “The An elderly woman hit the table, asking for a Diet Coke.<\/p>\n “Good evening,” I said, “your bartender’s shitfaced!”<\/p>\n She gasped and scurried off.<\/p>\n James grabbed my arm and shook me powerfully, “That’s why I We drank Whatevers and discussed ways we could cause Gibsons.\u00a0 Cary Grant I pulled him away and we stumbled away from the house and into James spun, pulled out a handgun, screamed and fired into “Shut up, Eight Ball, Victor Charles will get you.\u00a0 Those goddamned slope bastards breathe with Times like this, I think James has too much time on his I chose the opposite direction, crawling through woods and From moon and stars to sun and summer heat.\u00a0 The car felt like it had been bricked up, but I glared at him, numb and a little out of my mind.<\/p>\n “Dude,” his voice scratched, dark and painful, “Thanks for
\nsoundtrack played.\u00a0 The screams of women,
\nthe burbles of their dates, Brown-Eyed
\nGirl<\/em>.\u00a0 James was at a wedding.\u00a0 I’ve worked weddings, both as manager and
\ncaterer, for 15 years. I know them, I can taste them, I can feel them in my frail,
\nvodka-addled bones.\u00a0 I didn’t say
\nanything.\u00a0 I had to piss and as soon as I
\nknew it was James, I put everything he was about to say out of my mind and
\nbecame consumed by the age-old question:
\nCould I piss while I was talking to him?<\/p>\n
\nJames screeched, then he cursed under his breath.\u00a0 I heard ice clinking, his cellphone
\nscrunching between head and shoulder, a shaker blasting away.\u00a0 Ice and vodka.\u00a0 The pour.
\nA martini.\u00a0 I hesitated.\u00a0 James was making a martini for….someone else?
\nMystery deepened so, instead of playing
\nmy usual silent game, I brought myself back to earth.<\/p>\n
\nget here,” he hissed into the phone.<\/p>\n
\nbarely clutched at my mind.\u00a0 Fortunately,
\nI knew the final destination.\u00a0 James hung
\nup, I blinked twice, then I grabbed my keys and ran.\u00a0 Something was different about\u00a0 the night.<\/p>\n
\nThat wasn’t very different.\u00a0 I had
\nto hit the wheel a few times before it started, then I watched the temperature
\ngauge slam to the right side, back to the left, then normalize.\u00a0 That was different.\u00a0 It would have been funny if, you know, I had
\nbeen a passenger.<\/p>\n
\nhe uses the Acura.\u00a0 “I power-geared to
\nGiant and got power-bars!”\u00a0 This was
\nchief amongst my thoughts when I realized that I didn’t have a third gear
\nanymore.)<\/p>\n
\nthe house was frequently rented out to wedding parties and other similar
\nevents.\u00a0 Saturday night at 9pm, the house was full of lights and
\nrocking like the foundation had got its freak on.\u00a0 A Spanish song that had been played a million
\ntimes at the Cadiz feria in May of 2001 poured out of windows and doors and,
\nseemingly, from the rocks and trees themselves.
\nI had spent many hours on the dirt floor of various sherry drunk huts at
\nthe Cadiz feria, my Spanish friends dragging me from tent to tent, stuffing me
\nfull of sherry and 7-Up and, when the Feria closed each night at about 500
\no’clock AM, dragging me in a cloud of Spanish-language lunatics to scotch bars
\nin the bad part of Cadiz.<\/p>\n
\n2001.\u00a0 I sat in the car for a few
\nminutes, living every moment of my feria hangover.\u00a0 My stomach is still somewhere in a back alley
\nclose to the sea.<\/p>\n
\nJames.<\/p>\n
\ndancing on the lawn, feria-crazed, and James in a penguin power suit mixing
\nexotic drinks.\u00a0 A magic man whipping lime
\nand vodka and whole grapefruits and badgers and weasels and various unmarked
\nbottles into tiny, blue glasses that appeared to have no stems.<\/p>\n
\nharsh and disapproving, but he saw me first.<\/p>\n
\na wedding crasher!\u00a0 Like in that movie
\nneither of us will watch.”<\/p>\n
\nappreciate a few free – ”\u00a0 He poured a
\nviscous, green fluid into a martini glass made of crystal and air, then handed
\nit to me.\u00a0 “Whatevers…”<\/p>\n
\nfrom New York City
\nappeared at my elbow.<\/p>\n
\nup and down my arm.<\/p>\n
\nhe can drink these.”<\/p>\n
\nas James filled her glass what a Whatever.
\nShe looked down and mumbled, “Funny…name.”<\/p>\n
\nHave mercy for the little man!”
\nHe refilled my glass.\u00a0 It seems I
\nhad finished my drink at some point.\u00a0 I
\nnoticed a bottle on the bar.<\/p>\n
\nYork girl said wistfully.<\/p>\n
\nCity.”<\/p>\n
\n“So Johnny Walker Green was illegal in the US.”<\/p>\n
\nlegal.\u00a0 It’s right below Blue label and –
\n”<\/p>\n
\nsubstandard label was illegal?\u00a0 You could
\nbuy the best but you couldn’t buy the second best?”<\/p>\n
\npoured her a glass.\u00a0 We three held them
\nup, inspected, then James clinked our glasses.
\n“For science!”\u00a0 We knocked back
\nthe Green.\u00a0 James said: Woof.\u00a0 I said:
\nGrrr. \u00a0New York said: Bark.<\/p>\n
\nYork when customers came up, violently demanding
\nWhatevers.\u00a0 James mixed them up and, from
\nbehind, I noticed that he was pouring what appeared to be windshield washer
\nfluid into the glasses.\u00a0 I went to stop
\nhim, but New York
\ngrabbed my arm.<\/p>\n
\nspit.\u00a0 She blinked, shook her head,
\nsucked in a breath, cleared her mind.
\n“Are you here with…?”<\/p>\n
\ncult.”<\/p>\n
\nslammed our way into a bathroom.\u00a0 She
\nworked very hard to close and lock the door, as her hands seemed to have
\nfloated away.\u00a0 She was better with my
\nbelt buckle.\u00a0 I had no problem with the
\nzipper down her back.\u00a0 Her tits were
\nfantastic, and as I moved to grasp them in my hands she passed out in my
\narms.\u00a0 After a brief rape or abandon
\nmoment, I decided on the latter and removed her clothes, leaned her back on the
\ntoilet, then took off, leaving the door open.
\nI returned to James’ side.<\/p>\n
\nfuck?”<\/p>\n
\npower of the Whatever!”<\/p>\n
\ninvited you, babe!\u00a0 You hurt the sick,
\nyoung and elderly.\u00a0 You’re like a
\nhyena.\u00a0 Hyena Sasha!”\u00a0 For a moment, I was worried he’d vault the
\nbar and attack someone.\u00a0 He restrained
\nhimself.\u00a0 Whatevers.\u00a0 Definition:
\nUnknown.\u00a0 Science:\u00a0 Hypothesis, experimentation, debate.<\/p>\n
\nproblems.\u00a0 It was pretty clear that James
\nwasn’t going to make it ten feet from the bar and, in fact, I had been called
\nto drive him home.\u00a0 That moment was fast
\nupon me as James slumped to his knees, scattering glasses, and poured a fistful
\nof pearl onions into his palm.\u00a0 “I love
\nthese fucking little things,” he growled, filling his mouth.<\/p>\n
\ndrank those in North by Northwest<\/em>.\u00a0 I had a sudden, lurching desire to order one
\nso I could be cool and fuck little boys like Cary, but James was sucking the last of the
\npearl onions off of the filthy bar.<\/p>\n
\nthe night just as the girl from New
\nYork City screamed and a ripple of silence moved
\nthrough the wedding.<\/p>\n
\nthe air.\u00a0 The silence became chaos and my
\nscream matched the pitch, intensity and desperation of New York.
\nI flailed against James and we both lost our balance, falling over a low
\nretaining wall and dropping about ten feet into a shallow creek.\u00a0 For me, chaos lapsed into panic as I took
\nstock of every bone in my body.\u00a0 James
\nwas up on his feet, though, spreading mud across his face.<\/p>\n
\nthe night, they are in the trees, I can feel their rice breath slipping down
\nthe back of my neck.”\u00a0 He stood up, aimed
\nthe gun, released a volley of shots, then bolted into darkness.<\/p>\n
\nhands.<\/p>\n
\ngetting to the Acura just as a convoy of police cars arrived.\u00a0 I sank down into the backseat and pulled a
\nblanket over me.\u00a0 Roll on dawn, roll on.<\/p>\n
\nI kept the blanket over me until a light tapping whisked across the
\nexterior.\u00a0 Cautiously peeking out from under
\nmy nest, I saw the top of James’ head and one bloodshot eye peering in my
\nwindow. \u00a0Sucking in stale air, I clambered
\ninto the driver’s seat, popped the locks and tried to look everywhere at once
\nas he climbed in, moaning and hungover.<\/p>\n
\ncoming when I called.\u00a0 God knows what I
\nwould have done otherwise.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[353,179],"class_list":["post-2519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008","tag-james"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2519"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2715,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2519\/revisions\/2715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}