February 5th, 2002: I would like to make it known that last night, I met the shortest human being alive. I asked her if she's in pre-school, and she informed me that she's in second grade. She was seven years old and about 2.4 inches tall. It was gross. Her mom asked me if I thought it odd that she's such a midge'. I shook my head, and said, "No, no. Perfectly normal." It was so gross.
So I've worked in this science museum for almost three years now, providing guests with maps of the building that they'll only ignore and later complain to me when they can't find the restroom in time to save their pants from urination stains. But I really like the place and find myself actually not dreading work some days. So when the supervisor of the area for the youngest of the young asked if I wanted to pick up some extra hours working as part of her team, I jumped at the chance. But not literally. And that's a very odd thing for me, because I spent just about 20 years of my life claiming to hate kids. And I do hate a lot of them, really: the ones who cling to their parents, who never smile, who weren't born already potty-trained. But I've also talked to a lot of genuinely amiable pre-schoolers at that museum, and I wanted the experience of working with them.
My first day just happened to be amazing. Having been at the museum so long, I was well-acquainted with the area, so my training lasted for about .02 seconds. Then the supervisor told me to go play. Well, I was nervous as all get-out, naturally. I imagined little children screaming and running from me in terror when I approached them. But the first kids I found took to me immediately, and soon I was running around the mock doctor's office with them, allowing them to wrap me up in bandages and gauze. After a while, however, I noticed that their mother was watching me play with them, this really intense look on her face. I imagined her jabbing me in the knee from behind with one of the clinic's crutches while I stood in the back of the mock ambulance with her children. But then, as she and her kids were on their way out, she stopped me and said, "I saw how well you were interacting with my kids and wonder if you'd like to become their full-time nanny." Well, hot damn, my day was made. And I've decided that I can't wait to raise some kids of my own. Now all I need is a penis and some sperm. Any takers?
February 2nd, 2003:
Top 5 Things to Do in the South When You're Young and Skipping Class for the Week
+ Go see your favourite lead singer of your favourite band do a solo acoustic show.
+ Find a former make-out partner, do it like you used to, and remember why you liked it so much.
+ Start drinking your Long Island Iced Teas at 4 PM, living the life of a wannabe-alcoholic author in a foreign land.
+ Go to the beach at 3 AM and let the dark water freak the HELL out of you, seeing as how you're from the north and still see the ocean as one big black hole of death.
+ Help a new friend celebrate his 21st birthday.
I met Michael Roberts in a flurry of wondrous Jump, Little Children/New Year's activities a month ago, as you'll recall. We got along smashingly, so it was decided that for his 21st birthday, I would drive to his home in Georgia for a little celebration. And it just so happened that the greatest vocalist in the entire world, Jay Clifford, lead singer of Jump, Little Children, was doing a solo show that very night. All the more reason for me to skip a week of school and drive down South. Now, it just so happened that just as Michael and I were making plans for this phenomenal occasion, I was chatting online with a boy named Patrick, who I met last year at the OSU radio station. He likes the band Sunny Day Real Estate, so I can't help but dig him. So as we were chatting, I casually slipped into the conversation an invite to Atlanta with me. I never expected that he would take me up on the offer. I mean, honestly, what person in his right mind skips school to go to a city he's never seen to hang out with people he's never met to see a vocalist he's never heard? That's Patrick in a nutshell.
So we left at 3:30 on Tuesday afternoon, listening to Patrick's mostly-Pavement mix CD, which he claimed was the greatest mix CD ever made. He talked about his crazy ex-girlfriends, I talked about my relationships to Jump, Little Children fans, we talked about what a city Cincinnati (Patrick's home) is. We talked about English class and how much poet Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt sucks and how the Cumberland Gap got is name. Patrick started taking little naps once we got to Tennessee, and I commended his bravery, as I was weaving in and out of the mountain passes at 80 mph. About six hours into the drive, I felt that I was making incredible progress and projected our arrival time to be right around 10:30 PM. And then we drove across the Georgia state line right around 1 AM. So I was a little off. We had been desperately looking for a Sonic at which to get some grilled cheese, instead found a gas station Dairy Queen that we assumed would be open just because of its location inside the station, and decided to save our food money to buy motorcycles in a few years. So we were pretty darn hungry when we got to Augusta.
After a stop at Krystal for the worst fast food in the entire world, we were in the parking lot across from Michael’s house. He allowed us into his darkened living room, and I plopped down all twelve of my bags before giving him a hug. I’ll tell you what—if Michael’s nothing else, he’s a great hugger. He reminded me that he had just turned 21 at midnight, as if I had somehow forgotten, and chastised me for not being there to mark the occasion. We sat around and discussed things that had happened since we had last seen each other, as if we don't have 2-hour conversations every single day. Patrick commented that the two of us talk like old friends; I told that I feel as if we are.
A very short time after our arrival, a girl knocked on Michael's front door and asked if any of her mail had come to his house. But she was clearly not there for that reason alone. Michael claimed that she was looking for a party. She seemed a little white trash-y, and her intense southern accent didn't help things, but there was something very attractive about her tiny body and her absolute non-Katieness. She was all about the pot and the liquor and the acid and the being in jail and the everything that I am not. And she could talk for hours about those things with this attitude that led me to believe that she was actually totally unaware that she was even speaking at all. She invited Patrick to come over and smoke with her later that night and left in a flurry of unwashed hair and little tank top and glassy eyes.
He had decided not to indulge in a celebratory drink, but Patrick and I convinced him otherwise and unloaded a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon from my trunk. Naturally, it was Patrick’s, as I dislike all beers (except for Negro Modelo, which I like only for the novelty of its name). I refused to drink the PBR, in fact, so the three of us went to a gas station to buy some wine. The Dirty, Ugly Cashier Woman™ made us all produce our ID’s, claiming that we had all helped to select our purchase. Patrick had to pull his fake out from behind his real license, 19 years old as he is. The Dirty, Ugly Cashier Woman™ took her good time comparing our ID’s, saying that my new one looked different than his old one did. I told her that I had just turned 21 and gotten my license renewed, while Patrick’s claimed that he was 23, born in 1979. The Dirty, Ugly Cashier Woman™ eyed me suspiciously and said, “It says here that your birthday is in October.” I explained that when I said, “just turned 21”, I meant “just turned 21 three months ago.” She didn’t believe me at all. There was Patrick with an ID photo that didn’t look a damn thing like him, and she was questioning me! So I bashed her over the head with my wine, and that was enough to convince her to sell it to us, but not before she informed Michael that she was doing him a huge favour in selling him the alcohol, as it was still January 28th by her calendar. Evidently not all of us are aware that the new day begins at midnight.
We went back to Michael's house, where I downed the bottle of wine and tried to chug a can of PBR with the boys but failed miserably because it tastes SO AWFUL. Michael told my favourite stories about me being drunk on New Year's Eve, complete with a demonstration of me crawling around on the floor outside of his bedroom. (I hope you realise how very little I drink usually. It just so happens that being in other states makes me feel as if I can do anything that I want to with no consequences.) Around 5 AM, Michael took Patrick next door so that he could awaken Chelsea. The wine had made me very tired rather than my usual giggly, so I dozed off and on for the next hour while the two of them stepped in and out of the house. I woke up a few hours later with a huge neckache thanks to my horrible position on the loveseat, so I moved to the couch and stayed there until Michael left for class, Roommate T.J. the Pothead™ came home from work, and my cell phone rang three times in a row, as if my friends didn't know that I would have stayed up all night the night before. A knock on the door got me up for good; the Termite Man™, come to do his yearly inspection of the house.
I told him that I was just visiting and therefore didn't really have any authority, hinting that I wasn't about to let him into the house, the psycho. But he wasn't looking like he planned to leave without having a look around, so I allowed him in and hoped that Patrick could spring awake and into action at the slightest hint of attack. He went down to the basement, talking to me all the while about Ohio and the towns he's visited in my home state. He told me that he fought in Vietnam with some "crazy guys" from Ohio, "especially that (insert some random person's name here)", as if I was expected to recognise the guy's name and talk for hours about what crazy, old so-and-so was doing in Ohio now. He asked what we planned to do while in Augusta, and when I told him that we actually had plans in Atlanta that night, he commended us for having fun while we're young. He said that kids should have fun, that he had fun when he was a kid, that his kids had fun as kids, that one time he left them in jail overnight just to scare them and boy, were they good kids after that! Mmm-hmm.
I took a bath (not a shower, mind you) as soon as Termite Man™ left and loved seeing that I left a long-lasting mark in Michael's bathroom with the cup that I brought in from the kitchen to aid in washing my hair and the bar of pink soap that I accidentally forgot to put back into my bag last time I visited him. The soap had noticeably decreased in size, and it made me smile to imagine Michael's super-manly roommates cleansing themselves with a girly pink bar of Dove. When I was finished, Patrick and I took a walk around Michael's neighbourhood, at which time Patrick decided that he desperately wants to have an affair with a wealthy southern woman so that he can know what's going on inside of those yellow and blue mansions with their wraparound balconies. We went back to Michael's to find him dressed and assembling his new Minidisc recorder for the night's show. I gave him his birthday present right before we left, the most beautiful black cowboy shirt with red roses on the shoulders and back yoke, pearl buttons, and red piping. I found it in a thrift store and knew that it would belong to Michael before I even knew that I was going to see him on his birthday. It resembles a shirt that Jay Clifford practically lives in, and well, it looked almost as good on Michael as it does on Jay. Sadly, Michael refused to wear it to the show, not wanting to frighten Jay. But never fear—he wore it three days in a row later in the week.
I was in a horrible mood on the way to the show. I was fully aware of my attitude and actually felt really terrible for acting like I was, but I just couldn't help it. It was all due to my headache from the previous night's wine combined with the sometimes-light-sometimes-heavy, annoyingly relentless rain and with southern drivers who somehow always manage to travel at Sunday afternoon speeds. The drive was endless and the music was too loud and my cell phone kept ringing and we were working with only pseudo-directions from Dave that were, for the most part, "When you see this highway, stop and ask for help at a gas station." Worried that the liquor stores would close before we had our chance to stock up for post-concert festivities, we stopped at Gene's Beer, Wine, and Weed for some Smirnoff, Khalua, and generic Bailey's-like stuff called Carolins. As per the name, some random guy offered pot to Patrick inside and then asked me to smell it so that I could verify that it was indeed "good shit". Makes sense that the snooty-looking white kids would be the ones in need of the weed, doesn't it?
Patrick longingly fondled our liquor once we got to Eddie's and told me that he would follow us in shortly. Michael had already greeted Dave, who was waiting for us on the sidewalk with cigarette in hand, and had gone into the venue. That left me alone with Dave with not a whole lot to say. I think I was sort of an ass to the old man when I first saw him. I can never judge the way I come across, you know. He told me that he liked my hair and I gave him a relatively sincere hug, but I was very conscious of the fact that any friendliness on my part was going to be mistaken for flirting and therefore sort of walked away from him to find Michael. But we were forced back together when Michael went to check us in, so I used Dave as my coat rack and tried to decide if I was treating him as I would any other friend or if I was trying to cut him down by forcing him to be my servant-boy. But he was busy talking about all of the people he recognised there, how cool it was to walk into the joint and be able to say hello to 25 Jump fans right off the bat. I rolled my eyes and told him that I hope I never get that involved in the Opiate world (meaning that I don't want to make members of the Jump, Little Children mailing list my entire life). He made some comment about having friends not be a bad thing, and I shot back, "Those people are not your friends." It was very nasty and I immediately felt horrid for saying it but made no move to apologise.
Michael had saved three seats in the very last row, all of the way on the right-hand of the stage, against a wall where he could plug his Minidisc in. Since Eddie's is so small and the rows of seats were long and horizontal, we were in an absolutely perfect spot—close enough to the stage that Jay and I could exchange meaningful glances, far enough from the stage that Michael and I could make comments to each other throughout the show without making Jay self-conscious, and about a foot from the bartender. We didn't have any time to mingle, though, because as soon as Michael got his Minidisc ready for action, Chuck Carrier started in on the opening set. I stood with Dave for a moment until Michael patted the seat next to him, and with Patrick in the row ahead of us, Dave pulled a bar stool next to my chair and rested his leg against my side. Whether or not he was doing it on purpose, I can't honestly say, but I'll tell you that he was to make the story a little juicier.
Chuck was all right, quite frankly. I really enjoyed his voice, though he sounds a whole lot like every other singer-songwriter out there. I didn't particularly dislike his songs, though he's not really doing anything mondo-exciting with his lyrics. He's very solid. Solid is a good word for him, yes. I would probably not buy his album but would be inclined to see him again if he ever stopped by Columbus. Certainly he has talent, even if he does look like he should be playing football and joining a fraternity rather than writing songs. And he told a ridiculous-yet-entertaining story about a doctor who had to open up a vein and pump his own blood into Chuck when Chuck was a baby dying in a hospital. Dave and Michael were less impressed than I, however. Michael thought that he looked like a sheep and kept making barnyard sounds in between songs, while Dave said things like, "This really is a nice song. But really, once is enough." Yeah, so maybe all of his songs sounded strikingly similar; he did a great cover of U2's With Or Without You to make up for it. As a sidenote, I should mention that a few weeks ago, I went to my very cult-like church for the first time since delving into atheism back in June, and the worship band hooked the chorus of that very same U2 song onto the end of one of their praise ditties. Except that they fudged the words and sang, "I can't live . . . without you." So super lame.
In between sets, Michael, Patrick, and I discussed Chuck while Dave franticly searched for Charity, an Opiate whom he invited to hang out with us at the show. I really shouldn't use the word frantic, because Dave was trying to play it off as if he wasn't unbelievably excited about having this very adorable girl at his side. He came back from his duck hunt and announced to me, "Charity's here," as if I was the one scheming ways to get into her pants. I learned later that she had invited him to sit with her, and in a moment of shining male stupidity, he shrugged her off. I enjoy that Dave relayed this story to Michael—along with, of course, his thoughts on Charity's hotness—but didn't mention it to me. Makes me wonder what else men are talking about behind my back. Dave introduced me to his friend CiCi/Casey, who once licked his face while drunk at a Jump show and will never live to see the end of the ribbing about that. I hate being introduced to people like that, people who I've seen post to the mailing list once or twice but don't know at all other than that. It's those times that I find myself uninterested in even making small talk, which is one of my favourite things in the entire world to do otherwise. But CiCi had no reason to be impressed with meeting me, and besides, I didn't want to cut into Dave's time to ask ever-important questions like, "So, uh, Casey—you got a boyfriend?" and "Well—you wanna give me a blowjob anyway?"
Dave's fanclub had gone about their business by the time Jay entered the room, so Dave was waiting for a drink at the bar when Jay brought his guitar case and such back to our little corner. Michael and I were in the midst of a conversation—about anal sex, no doubt—so he sort of paused and nodded his head as Jay approached. I turned to see what the nod was about and found myself staring dumbfounded at THE Jay Clifford. I didn't smile or really even acknowledge him in any way other than with my gawking. Dangit, I'm a loser. And, of course, Jay had to stop and hang out with Dave for a second at the bar, making me feel even more like I should just put myself out of my own misery. So while Jay made trips back and forth between the stage and our corner as he continued to set up, I made sure that I was standing near Michael and Dave, engaged in some sort of act of talking to them or touching them in an "Oh, YOU!" laughing manner so that Jay would know that I am a real breathing, thinking human being who is accepted by her peers. My peers, of course, being a boy who never showers and a 30 year-old man who hits on little girls.
Jay started his set with my favourite Jump, Little Children song. And that pretty much sums up the rest of the show for me. (But if you'd like a little more in-depth discussion, there’s always the whatnot on my concert reviews page.) Jay was absolutely magnificent, but I really couldn’t concentrate on him, because there was a certain older man whom I once had an intense attraction to standing behind me, making orgasm sounds at every trill of Jay’s voice. The first time he put both of his hands on my shoulders just like he used to, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t know if I should be truthful to myself and enjoy that he’s still that comfortable with me or if I should deny that I ever knew him like I did and pretend like I was disgusted. When Dave went to the bathroom, I told Michael, “He’s touching me,” as if I didn’t want him to, but man, did I like that he was. What was even worse than the touching was the whispering, though. Dave kept leaning over my shoulder and pressing his mouth against the hair right behind my left ear, making it so moist with his warm breath that I kept imagining dew forming on my curls. You don’t know how badly I wanted him to kiss my neck. But I’m glad that he didn’t; I probably would have forced him into the bathroom with me right then.
Since our dinner plans had been canned, we were all ridiculously hungry during Jay’s set. Dave asked me if I wanted some chicken fingers, and I loved the “I’m such an idiot” look on his face when I reminded him that I’m a vegetarian. Ahh, how we forget. So he bought me some onion rings, some of the best I’ve ever had. Especially since he kept reaching over my right shoulder to retrieve them from my lap. Vagina, breast. Breast, vagina. Whisper, whisper, touch, retrieve. When the show was over, Jay came back to our corner with his gear, and I caught his eye as he was passing. He paused, touched my arm, and said, “Hey!” Like, with genuine “I know you and know that you’re too far away from home, but I still don’t think that you’re a psycho, because we both know that I’m never going to do a show anywhere near your home state; plus, you’re clearly hoping to make out with Michael and Dave before the end of the night” in his voice. I merely smiled, nodded my head, and said, “Yeah,” to show my awed appreciation of the show. He smiled back and “yeah”ed in response. Man, it’s so great being the coolest person I know.
We hung around for far too long after the show—Michael and Dave competing with each other for Charity’s attention, me inviting all of the cool kids to come hang out at the hotel, Patrick talking to Jay about his influences and then sitting detached and unconcerned at the bar. I took a picture of Michael rifling through Jay’s binder o’ music, an object that you know exists but never think you’ll be left alone with in a dark corner. After much deliberation about food possibilities, it was decided that pizza would be ordered from the hotel room. 
Ten minutes later, there was a load of us lounging on the set of beds in our hotel room, looking at our liquor and wondering how sink water and Khalua taste together. It seemed that a trip to Kroger was in order. Just as I was getting off of the phone with Papa John’s, Michael was finalising plans to ride with Dave to the store while the rest of us stayed behind. I quickly put an end to that, naturally, and informed him that he would be waiting for the pizza while I went with Dave. I knew that I had just exposed myself to everyone in announcing that, but I wasn’t about to miss what might have been my only chance to seduce him. (That’s a joke, son.) Dave commented that it was "pretty forward" of me. I responded, "You know me."
He had to ruin my extreme car entrapment plans, though, by expressing his distaste toward Patrick, saying that my boy was clearly going to hit on Charity. I hadn’t noticed Patrick taking any interest in her at all, but unlike Dave, I wasn’t exactly concerned with who was tickling her fancy. (Though it was a nice fancy, I’ll admit.) So we talked about random shallow things until we found ourselves in the dairy aisle of Kroger. Dave asked if I wanted to make out. I told him that I’d been planning on it.
And I meant it.
So that’s what we talked about while we picked out grape-cranberry drink (not juice, mind you) and a deck of cards. It seemed all-too-normal being there with Dave, trying to pay and knowing that he wouldn’t let me, him saying that the heavy rain was proof of God’s non-existence. When we parked at the hotel, we lingered in the car to see what would happen, both knowing that nothing really would. Dave was all nervous, I was all ready to go, and all that we shared was a tiny kiss. Not even open-mouthed.
He told me that we should go in, I looked at him in disbelief, he looked at me like he didn’t understand, I opened my car door, he told me to kiss him, I looked at my rain-soaked knees, he leaned over the armrest separating us, and I touched my lips to his once before grabbing the groceries and letting myself back into the motel room. The pizza came, Dave yelled at me for trying to pay, and we all drank. 
There was the traditional drinking game of which I wasn’t a part, and it was more amusing than ever because of the players: Michael, who claims an inability to get drunk; Charity, who looks as if she’d always be too busy baking cookies to drink; Dave, who’s too old to remember how to play; Patrick, who drinks so much on an everyday basis that he laid in bed looking bored; and Tessa, who just kept asking for more. Dave is fun when he drinks, because he starts to say things that he doesn’t mean for the sake of making fun of me. For instance, I was sitting on the heater behind his chair, and he asked me why I was touching him. I got up to move, and in this pouty voice, he pleaded, “Don’t leave.” Yep, I loved that. I feel like I had quite a bit of vodka, but I wasn’t the least bit drunk. Not the least bit. And that’s probably why I was the only one who objected to walking through the graveyard behind the motel. But Dave promised me some sort of sexual favour—I don’t remember what—if I would go along with it. So I followed Charity, Tessa, and Michael, while Patrick hopped a fence to get ahead of us and Dave lagged behind with a cigarette. Charity linked arms with me for support, as surprise! her heeled boots weren’t doing so well in the wet ground. But she left me and began wandering off, so I joined a chain of Michael, Tessa, and Dave. I made jokes about taking advantage of Michael while he was inebriated, and he said that he was going to lie down and wait to see who he woke up next to. And that’s all I’ll say about that.
Back in the hotel, I began making advances toward Dave with my eyes. ‘Cause, you know, I hadn’t thrown myself at him enough already. But it was something to do to pass the time, you know. So when he went out to the breezeway to smoke, I followed him. He asked what we were going to do, as if it was impossible to believe that I would kiss him outside of a motel room, as if the first time we kissed wasn't on the patio of a cafe in Buckhead with 25 people looking on. We kissed, almost clumsily. He was always too tall for me. I pulled him to the middle of the breezeway, where there was a break in the line of rooms to house a staircase. We stood in that space for a moment, deciding what was to be done, and then finally kissed again. But just as we did, Michael and Tessa came bursting out of the room to tell us something that was amusing to them in their state of drunkenness but less-than-funny to me in my state of wanting to make out. I was sort of embarrassed, thinking that Michael had seen us in our half-embrace, but if he did, he's denying it.
We all went back into the room to load up on pizza and liquor. Michael will tell you while he's drunk that there's no amount of alcohol that can get him tipsy. He'll claim for hours that it sucks having his metabolism, and he'll claim this while stumbling around and talking nonsense. Tessa, on the other hand, told us continuously for 10 minutes how drunk she was. "Man, I am so drunk! I'm drunk! Look how drunk I am! I get so crazy when I'm drunk!" she would say as she flopped backward onto the bed and fell onto the floor. In an attempt to prove his manliness to Dave, Michael grabbed a double shot of Bacardi 151 and drank it down, saying, "It won't matter. I just can't get drunk." Two minutes later, he threw up three times outside. Bacardi, Khalua, generic Bailey's, and milk—all over the parking lot below the breezeway. He had done it in three different plops, moving from spot to spot, saying, "I'm not drunk. I don't feel bad. I'm really not drunk." Yeah, okay.
While I was out there with Dave, I figured that we might as well make out some more. So we did. We went to the staircase again and attempted the door to the janitor's closet. Finding it locked, I pushed him against the wall, my hands on his waist, his hands on my shoulders. We kissed again. And again. And yes, again. But Dave was all worried, as usual. Worried that he was using me and that I wanted something more from him. Worried that it all felt a little too familiar.
So, naturally, we moved to his car to make out some more.
But nothing new and exciting happened, because we mostly sat and talked. About other girls, no less. He told me about a girl in his office and a girl he sees at Jump shows, one of which wants to date him and the other who keeps offering him her body with no strings. I hoped that he wasn’t putting me into the same category as those girls, especially the latter. But he no doubt was, because there I was, telling him that I just wanted to kiss him. And I did. Not because I still want something with him, though. It was all in good fun for me. Trying to remember why I liked him this summer and such. But Dave was making a huge deal out of it, saying that he couldn’t get involved with anyone right now, that he was concerned about my wanting something more from him. He told me that it was a great compliment to me that he was even kissing me, because he’s so anti-relationship at this point. He said that the problem was that I was kissing him not because I wanted to kiss just anyone but because I like him; he told me that he likes me, too. But he told me again and again that he couldn’t offer me anything emotionally. And the greatest thing was that I didn’t tell him that I’m sort of "seeing" someone right now. Maybe I’m wrong, but I was under the distinct impression that Dave was almost rubbing his other women in my face. It felt really good to have no reason to try to make him jealous in return.
Dave had to get home before 5:30 in order to be there when his kids woke up for school, so after 20 minutes of him telling me to go, me lowering the armrest to separate us, him sighing like he couldn’t make up his mind, me starting to exit his car, him telling me not to go, me raising the armrest again, and us making out some more, I finally made up my mind to leave. Or he made it up for me, rather, saying that if we weren’t going to get a motel room of our own, we might as well stop there. So I thanked him for getting the one we already had, thanked him for entertaining me for the night, and went upstairs to bed.
For reasons that I would absolutely love to mention but cannot, the next morning was horribly uncomfortable for everyone except me. Michael had to leave for work immediately when we arrived back at his house, so Patrick and I decided to go see a movie in his absence. That plan was quickly abandoned, however, when Patrick fell asleep while I was taking a bath. 
So I read for a while and wrote for a while and woke Patrick up by loudly playing Michael’s recording of the previous night’s show on the stereo in the dining room for a while. Michael made sure to showcase his half-naked, just-bathed self to me so that I couldn’t write about how often he doesn’t shower. He claims that I keep him too busy when I come to visit; I just think that he’s gross.
After Patrick smoked some weed with Chelsea and her friend Heidi, we drove to Teresa’s, the absolute best Mexican joint in the entire world. Patrick claimed that he had eaten so much salsa that it was beginning to taste “like ass”. That was especially funny to us, because on the night of our arrival in Augusta, Patrick informed Michael and me that a drunk girl had told him the weekend before that “ass” tastes like Cherry Coke. So, salsa = ass = Cherry Coke. Pretty neat. The ass theme continued as someone pointed out that a dropped bit of salsa on a napkin looked like an anus. Michael folded the napkin over to hide the anus, and Patrick called it an “anal cloak”. Everything's more funny when it's coming from someone who's high.
When our food was finished, Michael began making farting noises with his hands and juicy sex noises with his cheek. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, but we just couldn’t stop laughing about that. Especially when Michael went across the room and sat in a booth behind a couple on a date, still making the noises. We must have sat there for more than an hour, entertaining ourselves and angering the little Mexicans with our loitering.
We went back to Michael’s house, unsure of how to spend the rest of our evening. We were going to drink, of course, but there was the question of what we were going to do while drinking. Heidi came over to do shots of 151 with Patrick while Michael played his guitar and I sat thinking about Dave’s lips. Patrick wanted Heidi to go bum some weed off of someone, but we went to Blockbuster instead to rent Super Troopers. The Lowly Minimum-Wage Cashier Chick™ was rude to us, so Michael honked his horn incessantly, imitating a car alarm, just to annoy her. A trip to Kroger was also in order to grab a bottle of wine and parade around in ridiculous sunglasses. (And by ridiculous, I of course mean ridiculously hot.
The movie was awful. Just awful. Awfully funny at times but awful overall. And the wine tasted like ass. (And therefore Cherry Coke, I suppose.) As soon as it was over, Heidi left for bed, Patrick went to another room to call his girlfriend, and Michael fell over and went to sleep on the couch. I kept nudging him to keep him awake, but it was no use, and I was left "amusing" myself with re-runs of Home Improvement. Michael was more affectionate that night than I’ve ever seen him, rubbing my leg and resting his arm on mine during the movie. He did this great little thing where he sort of pinched at my jeans, this thing that all guys seem to know that I like just by looking at me. My head on his shoulder, my knees pulled up to my chest, his arm around me, nipping at my pants. If I was ever in love with the idea of him, it was then. And then, after falling asleep beside him on the couch, I woke up with Michael's hand in mine. Totally without pretension, joined quietly on my lap. I don’t know how it happened or who instigated it, but it was so sweet that it hurt. And it meant absolutely nothing.
I woke up at 1:47 PM as Michael was leaving for work. We were to go to visit his ex-girlfriend in Aiken, South Carolina, that night, so he told me that he’d call me from work with details of the plan. Patrick and I discussed all of the wild trouble that I’d made Patrick a part of up until that point, and then he sucked up his feelings of disgust for dirty bathwater and went to cleanse himself for the first time since we’d left Ohio.
At 4:30, we hopped in my car and headed to Checkers for lunch but ended up at an O’Charley’s when we got lost. Patrick ordered a Long Island Iced Tea to accompany his Chicken O’Fingers (such a stupid name that I had to type it) and talked me into getting a strawberry margarita. Yeah, it was 5 PM, and we were drinking. We justified it by saying that it’s impossible to become The Great American Novelist™ if one doesn’t have a problem with alcohol. (Next on our list? Heroin.) Patrick felt like his drink didn’t actually have any liquor in it, so he became paranoid that the waitress recognised his fake I.D. and was playing with him until the cops came. Nonetheless, he told her that he wasn’t satisfied that he was on his way toward drunkenness and claimed that he wouldn’t argue if she dumped a little more tequila in it. I invited her to come to Charleston with us that night when she obliged him.
But when Michael called, he had other plans for us, plans to go to his college’s homecoming dance. Patrick and I were less-than-thrilled about the idea, so we made Michael come home to discuss. Charleston was once again decided upon, so I called Kim-from-Charleston-Whose-House-We-Crashed-at-While-I-Was-Visiting-Charleston-with-Michael-in-December to see if she wanted to hang out with us while we were in town. She was going to include us in her plans for the night, so we hopped in my car a little after 8 PM and took off for South Carolina.
We took all of these little back roads in order to get there, so I was very annoyed with all of the getting-stuck-behind-people-who-actually-drove-the-speed-limit. Wanting to go faster and being denied was making me very irritable, as was the fact that I wanted to get to Chas before 10 PM and knew that I wasn’t going to make it. But once we hit Summerville, my whole self changed. The Spanish moss, the low-hanging trees covering the road, and this certain shade of darkness that only the area around Charleston has—it really makes me feel like I’m home. Which is funny, since I’ve only been there thrice. But I swear that I was born to live in a pink mansion with a white balcony in downtown Chas. It seemed very quiet when we first started walking toward Wentworth Street, but soon there were College of Charleston sluts on all sides. We stopped to orientate ourselves at one point, and these three skanky girls walked by. As they passed, Patrick slyly followed each of them in turn with his eyes “just to amuse Michael”, he claimed. I exclaimed, “That was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!”, and one of the girls mocked me, adding some nasty fake laughter to the end. Now, I obviously didn’t care two licks about those girls, but I loved that they assumed that I had a reason to mock them. I win!
On the corner of King and Wentworth was the jazz club Mezzanine, which was already crowded with people. The doorman smiled at me, the bartender smiled at me, Michael and Patrick left me to get drunk and pick up women. I stood with Kim’s roommate, Loni, and her friend, until Kim arrived just in time to yell embarrassing things at their friend Benji, the drummer of the band that was playing. The band’s vocalist was this large black woman who knew how to work what she had. I would venture to call her "intoxicating". She had this incredible voice that had my eardrums fearing for their safety, and she shook her wide hips in their tight jeans like nothin’ else. She even called me out, asking from the stage if I was okay. I nodded yes, so she asked if I was going to “shake it”. I nodded no, and she smiled. She encouraged the bad dancers and mimicked the girls who were fondling each other as they writhed in front of the stage. Loni and Kim complained about the sluts, but that singer put me in such a good mood that even hoochies didn’t bother me—until they blocked my view of her, that is. I tried to teach Michael to dance and took the opportunity to molest his lovely skinny waist. Patrick befriended a Chas native named James and Michael got his leg fondled by a girl’s foot, and I had the greatest jazz experience of my life.
We were hungry. But more than that, we wanted to see the ocean. Kim gave us directions, saying that it would be a 5-minute drive from her house. But 5 minutes turned into 15—past the Lil’ Cricket, right at “the oil-change place”, left at the sign pointing toward Folly Beach, down a huge stretch of foggy straightness. We could see the water leaping out from behind the stilted houses, but we couldn’t get to it and had to keep driving and driving until we ran smack-dab into a dead end, a gated grassy patch, and a huge DANGER sign warning us of the strong current and wild waves. I was frightened by it to the point that I didn’t want to leave my car. I imagined us being swallowed up by that great black immensity. I thought it the worst way to die but also one of most romantic. I hoped that people would spread rumours of wild orgies on the sand before our mass suicide.
It was a scene out of a movie—three friends, headlights trained on a foreboding warning, sinking their feet into death as they marched toward Godknowswhat in the Charleston sand. We had to make our way down a path through overgrown brush. Bushes that were surely going to reveal some sort of lurking maniac if they didn’t take the initiative to choke us themselves. I was last in the line of the three soldiers, and I was the most scared. I inserted myself into the countless horror flicks where the caboose gets picked off, but the murderer wraps his hand around her mouth so that the friends in front of her can’t hear her screams. And dang it if my Chuck Taylor’s weren’t good shoes for walking in sand, dragging me a little farther behind than seemed safe. I curse you, Overactive Imagination.
And as if that wasn’t frightening enough, once we made it through the Bushes o’ Doom™, we found ourselves on a little bluff overlooking an expanse of unidentified substance leading to the water. I knew that it was merely sand, of course, but it was unlike any sand that I’d ever seen—caramel at first, then white, then the colour of dirt with a long line of black stumps rising up every two feet. And it was dark. Almost completely blind, in fact, except for some distant orange glow from some distant orange streetlight. But Patrick wanted to get closer. Michael told him to go ahead while we watched, but suddenly we were all three scrambling down the bluff and taking our first wary steps in the sand, working our way past the stumpy remains of a now-defunct pier onto the white strip and then to the dark strip, where invisible shell pieces crunched beneath our feet. You should have seen us, putting one foot cautiously in front of the other, as if each change in sand colour signaled certain death.
The water was amazing. A seeming black nothingness, its somethingness made known only by its crashing and its white crests. That’s really all that we could make out—a white line off in the distance. It went on for eternity, I’m convinced. Patrick and Michael forged ahead to the water’s edge, but I hung back, watching behind us, sure that someone was going to emerge from the beach house profiled against the orange dimness. But no one did, so I crept up to join the group, scaring myself with thoughts of deadly currents. Michael found it funny that Patrick and I jumped back as soon as the water so much as hinted that it wanted to fondle our feet. But seriously, folks—Black Hole of Death.
And then the most interesting and awful thing happened. The man I’m currently “involved” with called my cell phone, as he had three times before in the previous ten minutes. He kept allowing it to ring once before hanging up, and Patrick was getting annoyed. So while I huddled against Michael for warmth, Patrick answered my phone and told Eric to quit harassing me. It was nasty, Patrick telling him to leave me alone, Eric telling him to give me the phone, Patrick saying that Eric wasn’t in control, Eric calling him a “dick”. All very upsetting, yet Patrick’s wit amused me. When Eric hung up and then called back a minute later, Michael took the phone and was super-polite, as Michael always is. Patrick called him a sell-out when Michael called Eric “sir”. But Eric was unimpressed and asked again for me. When I was handed the phone, the conversation was as follows:
Me: Hello?
Eric: Katie?
Me: Yes?
Eric: Can you hear me?
Me: Yes.
Eric: Can you hear me very clearly?
Me: Yes!
Eric: I never. Want to see you. Again.
He said goodnight and hung up. Like I said, it was nastiness all around. We went back to our business of water-watching until Michael’s hints that it was way too f-ing cold for his thin southern skin set in. We turned away from the water and shuffled back toward the car, my arm in Michael’s, hoping that whatever was lurking in the Bushes o’ Doom™ would be frightened off by the threat of 105 pounds of 100% MAN. But it turns out that Satan was right beside me, because just as we reached the heart of the horridness, Michael reached around with his free arm and grabbed me. I screamed, he called me melodramatic, I told him that I hated him, we drove back to Kim and Loni’s. I had forgotten to watch the street names as we followed the road signs to Folly Beach, so credit is due Michael for finding the way back to West Ashley and helping us to avoid the societal sadness that is sleeping in one’s car.
When we got back to Loni and Kim’s, we were plum tuckered out, as they say, but Patrick had the tiniest bit of energy left to exert on the bathroom wall. Not with urination but with poetry written on the paper that covers all four walls. He showed me and then sent Michael in to pick it out of all of the random quotes and “Top 5” lists and phone numbers. While he was doing so, I brought my "toiletries" in to begin my nightly bedtime teethbrushing/contact removing/face washing ritual and shut the door behind me to signal that I was entrapping him in order to make my move. When I was done washing, Michael went for the door, but I stopped him by taking his arm and reclosing the door. I explained that it would be better for both of us if he understood that we were going to make out. I told him that I was going to push him up against the wall. And I did. I told him that I was going to put my arms around him. And I did. I told him that I was going to turn and walk away. And I did.
I opened the door and Michael chastised me, but it just wasn't the right time. And it continued to not be the right time, even though I kept making jokes about getting ready to hop on top of him to see what sort of tongue tricks he could do. He confessed that he wants to know what different girls think of his kissing style, and I told him that I'm just the sort of girl to tell him what's up. But the truth is that my intentions in kissing Michael were totally unpure, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. If I ever kissed him, it would be solely to exert power. I find him very attractive, but I’m not attracted to him. Does that make sense? I feel toward him as I would a brother, which totally ruins all chances of him giving me multiple orgasms with his lips. Isn't that the way.
So we went to sleep with plans to wake up at 7 AM to the sound of the alarm on my watch. But we didn't wake up until 9:30, because the alarm on my watch was set to its silent mode. Why an alarm would have a silent mode, I don't know. Despite the fact that Patrick was in a real hurry to get home and was visibly irritated by my alarm's failing, it took us a good 45 minutes to pack up our gear and get on the road. But not before Michael posed by a car that had the "You Can't Lick Our Cocks" bumper sticker that he told me about when I visited him back in December.
The trip home was relaxing. Patrick slept on the back seat, Michael listened to his recording of the Jay Show™, and I had the luxury of not having to constantly keep my speedometer at 80. We made fun of South Carolina hicks who stood at the edge of the road and watched cars pass, picked apart Jay lyrics, and touched each other's knees. We arrived home sometime around 1 PM and began preparing to leave—Michael for Columbia for a birthday weekend with his friends, Patrick and me for Ohio. There were hugs and pictures and Michael buying me a tank of gas for the trip home, and when I awoke, I was on the highway. We looked awful we smelled awful we were going on 5 hours of sleep. But we were going, and the going was good. The trip was filled mostly with talk of how alike Patrick and I are. We discussed Jack Keroac's novel On the Road and how crazy it seems that Keroac was friends with Allen Ginsberg and all. I mean, with friends like that, how could he have NOT been a great author? I wondered if someday, two people might be sitting around discussing my life and say, "She drove to Georgia with THE Patrick Walsh. I mean, with friends like that, how could she have NOT been a great author?" Undoubtedly.
OR :: We discussed Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road and how he was so obviously destined to be a great writer, having Allen Ginsberg as a college chum and all. I asked Patrick if he thought that someday, two people might be driving home from one of the best weeks of their lives and say to each other, "Well, it's no wonder that Katie Ett became The Great American Novelist™, having Patrick Walsh as a college chum and all." Undoubtedly. ::
I don't know which ending I like better. I'm sticking with both.