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Please Baby Baby Please
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People have never been my strongest suit. The apartment is wall to wall with them. Drunk people, sober people, short people, tall people, girl people, guy people, girl people, girl people. Lots and lots of people.
Many people simply shove their way into the crowd, stampeding toward the kegs like a black rhino through the underbrush. Walk through the door, dive in and swim.
Amateurs.
I sliiiiiide my way past, barely touching a soul. The second I step into the place from the cold night outside, I disappear into the throng. Ducking, weaving, bobbing. Float like a butterfly, but keep your stinger tucked away. This isn’t that kind of party.
I don’t touch anybody if I can help it. I can feel the heavy bass pounding the floor almost as much as I can hear it. A girl to my right, back turned to me, flips her hair and it brushes against my shoulder. I jolt a bit at the contact. A group of jocks, every one of them clutching shiny red plastic cups, join in laughter at something or other. People. Lots and lots of people. Everybody wanting to unwind after a hard day of not going to classes. Faceless voices and voiceless faces surround me under a heavy cloud of indiscriminate conversation and discriminate smoke.
Despite having been out of the sub-zero weather for only a few moments, my palms are already sweating. The rest of my body may soon follow; the crowded bodies raise the temperature in the room slightly above the comfort level. So many goddamned people.
I head for the booze, at the far end of the apartment. A group of pretty blondes block my way, but I artfully dodge them and take it to the hole. My throat is tight now; it’s starting to take conscious effort for me to swallow. Already.
Shitty hippy music is pounding in my head. Who the fuck blasts hippy music anyway? And why do they turn the bass up so goddamned high? What’s the matter with these people? Everybody knows that hippy music is treble music.
At last I reach the corner of the room where the keg rests; the fruitful reward for a pilgrimage brief. Curses. A half-circle perimeter of drunks, wanna-be drunks, and way-too-drunks effortlessly shift in and out of place near the spigot, creating a beautiful symphony of alcoholic motion. Men and women shift. Pump pour drink move pump pour drink move pour drink move. I insert myself into the dance.
A few moments and brushed shoulders later, I emerge from the tap-dance, holding a shiny red plastic cup of my own. I proceed to drink foam as I distance myself from the concentration around the keg.
I don’t know anybody here I don’t know anybody here I don’t know anybody here I don’t know anybody here. Occasionally, I’ll bump into somebody I know, and we’ll exchange brief nods, followed by the observation that neither of us knows anybody here. This happens several times. One such exchange goes as such:
“Hey,” he’ll say.
“Hey,” I’ll say.
“I don’t know anybody here,” one of us will say.
The haze in the room smells distinctively piney.
By now I’ve found a neutral corner. A pocket of much sought out loneliness in a mass of overpowering socialization. I have a good 5 feet to myself. People pass me going to and coming from the bathroom as I stand by quietly and drink my foam.
A pretty brown-haired girl gives me a pleasant smile as she passes me by. I try to offer her a pleasant one of my own, but it feels wrong. It feels more like a smile that says I’m Slightly Irritated or I’m Generally Unpleasant. I had aimed for a smile that said I’m Sort Of Horny. Either way, she registers nothing and continues on.
My muscles are tense and the foam isn’t helping. I’m sweating, not like a pig, but like a pig with an adrenal disorder who’s entering the twentieth mile of its first Boston marathon. My teeth are clenched tightly.
I stand there, cognitively knowing that nobody gives a shit about the guy standing over against the wall, but feeling that I’m not part of The Crowd—literally and figuratively, I suppose. And I have this sensation that at any moment I’ll be found out. Like a foreign cell in the body, suddenly the immune system will realize that the base has been breached and commence with the expungement. And I don’t want to be snot.
I sneeze unconsciously as I fumble about trying to bring a pack of cigarettes from my coat pocket.
I smoke, and it calms me some. Foreign cells soothe me.
Out of the human-surf emerges a small cadre of people, heading to the door to my left. One of them, walking point, is fidgeting with an ornate glass bowl, hardly noticing the crowd as he cuts through them. But The Crowd is all knowing, and unconsciously part to allow him free passage. The Crowd protects fools and drunks and hippies.
As his small clan of reefer madness files into another room, a pretty slight girl hands one of her friends a bag of weed, parts ways, and walks right up to me. Her hair is in a handkerchief and she’s wearing a long green dress with matching green sashes around her waist. She has a small face and nice eyes, and her ears are so pierced it’s a wonder they found enough room for all those holes.
“Can I bum a butt?” she asks. I stare at her for a moment, not registering, just staring, a blank expression washing over my face.
Wait, I have to answer.
“Huh?” I say. Her smile widens and she tilts her head a little.
“Can I have a cigarette?” she asks, in a slightly more flirtatious tone. I look down at my own cigarette, now half ash of untended-to carcinogens.
“Oh. Shit. Yeah.” I mumble as I begin to clumsily fumble around my coat pockets for the pack of smokes. It takes me a few tries, but I finally come up with the pack, open it to her, and let her slide one out.
“Thanks,” she says sweetly, turning back and walking into the room the cadre of potheads had disappeared into, closing the door behind her.
“No problem,” I say to myself quietly, finishing my own cigarette and lighting another.
The crushing crowd had been swelling and I hadn’t noticed. My 5 feet of space is now down to maybe 3.
Fucking potheads. Buy your own fucking cigarettes. Never have any money, but they always have plenty of weed. I think it was the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers who said "Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope." The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers probably never had a job either.
I try and take another sip of beer and realize I’ve already drained it. I take the empty shiny red plastic cup from my lips and scan the room. Standing on tiptoes, I try to see above the crowd so I can judge how far it is back to the keg, but I’m not tall enough. The crowd is elbow to elbow by now, and I make a decision (without even having to think) that I’m not going to try and brave the masses for more foam.
So I just stand there. I don’t feel like a cigarette anymore and I can’t drink, so I just stand there, trying to look suave but not wanting to draw attention to myself at the same time. It’s hard to do either when you’re standing by yourself against the wall holding an empty shiny red plastic cup.
By now, I’m having to force myself to swallow. Each time it feels like I’m about to choke or vomit or do something that would surely lead to A Scene, but thankfully, each time I avoid the embarrassing.
The Crowd parts a bit and Jake, a person I see all the time and every time have to make an effort to remember his name, walks to me. Jake is a tall lanky fellow, never without his faded black hooded sweatshirt covered in patches that say “Madness” and “DK” and things of that sort. Also never without a glassy, vacuous look on his face.
“What’s up, Tim?” he says vacantly.
“Nothing much,” I say. We immediately start looking around us, as if searching out more important people we should be talking to but in reality just trying to look as if we are searching out more important people we should be talking to.
“Man, I don’t know anybody here,” he says. I start fumbling around for my cigarettes again. This damned coat has, like, 12 fucking pockets.
“I don’t either,” I say back to him. He turns to look at me, ruining our Important People charade for a moment.
“You need a beer?” For the first time, I notice he’s walking around with a 6 pack in his hand. Three bottles are left. I stop the hunt for smokes.
“Sure,” I say as he hands one to me. “Thanks.”
“No problem man.” We resume pretending to look for people cooler than us that would want to talk to us. I twist off the cap, let it drop to the floor, and suck down a healthy swig.
Some asshole turns the hippy music up even louder and The Crowd registers its enthusiasm.
“So anyway, what have you been up to?” Jake asks, raising his voice to pitch above the Rusted Root or Phish or Grateful Dead or Insert Generic Hippy Band Here.
“Nothing much,” I yell back.
“That’s cool,” he says, nodding a few times absently. We spend another few moments standing there, looking around the room. “Later man,” he finally says, plunging himself back into The Crowd with a nod.
I start fumbling for my cigarettes again, my personal space having shrunk dangerously to only about two feet. I finally find my smokes and pop one to my lips.
The din of The Crowd, combined with the blaring hippy music, is reverberating in my head. Sweat is dripping off my brow and my hand is shaking a bit. It’s getting hard to distinguish individuals now. Just one big mass of flesh and smoke and music and shiny red plastic cups and short black skirts and thigh high boots and red sweaters and…
And then I see her.
She’s wearing a turquoise top with thin spaghetti straps, her black hair not up like she usually does it, but freely flowing down her neck and shoulders. I catch sight of her just as she is laughing at a joke told by someone unseen, her hand coming up to shield her open mouth as she giggles wildly, her other hand clutching a shiny red plastic cup.
I know Mary only peripherally. One of my friends, Kevin, knows her well, and every now and again I would be with him and he would bump into her and the two would talk and I would stand to the side and not say anything at all but still try my best to look my best and Kevin and she would stand there and jaw merrily and the moisture in my mouth would mysteriously disappear and somehow migrate to my palms and occasionally I would nod at an appropriate moment or say “hi” or “nothing much” or “fine” or just “heh” but she was just far too attractive to talk to like you would a human being.
I’m aware of the sensation of blood either flushing to or flushing from my face.
Mary was saying goodbye to the unseen joke teller and was making her way to the bathroom as I watched in some sort of fearful detached fascination, like that Russian guy who spends all his time watching Polar Bears in the Arctic, standing behind a camera sometimes only a few feet from them, staring into the viewfinder with an odd combination of interest, fear, and attraction. One time he got too close to a large female and instead of standing up and flailing your arms and yelling and advancing and whatever else it is you’re supposed to do to ward off bears, he stayed crouched down staring into the viewfinder, which apparently to a bear indicates that he was prey, so the bear went after him and he ran all the way back to his shack but the bear cornered him in his kitchen and the guy had to use pepper spray to finally drive the bear out.
I wonder briefly if Mary carries pepper spray.
I bring the forgotten beer bottle to my lips and suck down a third of the contents in one swill. I don’t like to admit this, but sometimes I get this weird sensation when I’m in crowds, especially social gatherings mostly filled with strangers. I look around, and I don’t see girls. I see vaginas. Walking, talking, drinking vaginas. I don’t mean in a literal sense. I’m not crazy or anything; I don’t see a bunch of vaginas shuffling around, drinking from shiny red plastic cups and laughing at unseen jokesters telling unheard jokes. Just as a concept. I see a girl and I think “vagina.” Like they’re something other than human. I don’t think I’m alone in this. Not at all. I think I’m just one of the few who consciously recognize it. I see guys all the time and I know they’re doing the same. They stand there and they say “Yeah, the snowboarding trip ruled…” or “Man, I’m so wasted…” or “So how have you been?” or “So what’s your major?” or “hi” and all they’re really saying is “Please baby baby please.” Pleading with vaginas. It’s so pathetic. But I don’t even see it like that. I’m just aware of it.
It’s sort of messed up, and pretty hard to explain.
“Oh HI Tim!” she says, making me jump. Oh yeah, Mary. I had been staring at her but not even realizing she was walking up to me.
I start fumbling around to find my cigarettes, almost in a panic.
“Heh,” I say. Dammit. I had a good working template going and I fucked it up already. “Hi, Mary,” I finally squeeze out.
“So how are you doing? I just came here with some friends but I don’t know where they…” For no apparent reason I suddenly tune her out unconsciously. I can’t figure out which fucking pocket I put my cigarettes in. I need a fucking cigarette.
Man, she has a beautiful smile. She’s saying something about how man, she’s so wasted but to me she sounds more like Charlie Brown’s parents than anything else. I still can’t find my fucking cigarettes and I’m furiously patting myself down trying to locate them. I know that if I don’t find them in another second or two I’m going to look like some sort of crazed freak on a bad acid trip but knowing that doesn’t stop me because I NEED TO FIND MY FUCKING CIGARETTES!
“Are you okay?” she asks, suddenly shifting her tone slightly.
“Fine, just looking for a cigarette,” I say quietly, barely above the goddamned bass-heavy hippy music that is scorching my ears. I make eye contact for a moment, registering how gorgeous her big brown eyes are, before suddenly averting my gaze and going back to the cigarette search. For some strange reason all I can think about are polar bears, vaginas, and cigarettes; the corresponding neurons firing so quickly that they jumble up into a single concept and coinciding mental image. My palms are sweating so much that I have to wipe them on my jeans every now and then before going back to the search of my coat pockets.
“Hey Tim…”
I can’t find them. I’ve searched all my pockets three or four times and they’re just not there. Somebody must have picked my pocket or something; some sort of conspiracy to make me look like a maniacal asshole.
“Tim?”
“I gotta go,” I say hurriedly. “Nice talking to you.”
Mary registers a puzzled expression on her face but I barely have time to see how attractive it is as I shove past her and into the throng of writhing masses, stampeding my way towards the front door like a black rhino through the underbrush, people turning to stare at me as I barrel past them. Not in a run, but certainly in a rush. I feel dizzy. I am in a cold sweat. I just know, know, that I am about to hyperventilate or pass out on the floor or throw up or do something that would cause A Scene. I quickly walk through The Crowd, knocking more than a few shiny red plastic cups out of the hands of more than a few jocks and hippies and polar bears and woman who shout curses to my back, my head swimming the whole time. I can feel black specks buzzing into my consciousness, sure that I am going to pass out or go crazy or…..
I burst out the door of the apartment and into the cold night air. The moment the chill hits my face the panic starts to fade immediately. I stumble over to the end of the deck and lean on the railing, taking deep breaths.
I can hear the bass from inside the apartment, muted and distant and registering little more than a vibration in my boots.
I feel a hand on my shoulder.
“Hey Tim, you okay?” I look up at the voice. It’s Jake, looking at me with buzzed concern mingled with stoned fascination.
I sniff twice and stand up straight, zipping up my jacket for something to do.
“Yeah man, I’m fine. Just really fucking hot and crowded in there.”
“Yeah it was,” he said smiling, removing his hand and taking a swig of his last beer. “You need a ride home? Ben and I are leaving in a minute. Fucking don’t know anybody here.”
“Sure, cool. This place is dead anyway.” I reach into my pants pocket for a tissue, and instead discover my half-full pack of cigarettes. I hold them for a moment, still in my pocket, before taking them out and grabbing one.
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