Nobody bought beer in bottles back then. It was always cans. Cheaper, right? Hell, kids could get a twenty-four pack of Milwaukee’s Beast for less than the price of six Heinekens. Yeah, those were the days when pizza boxes blocked back-porch doorways. Fierce nights of rice and ramen dinners, Macaroni and Cheese. Hot dogs.

Someone had some money and spent it at this party, however. There were bottles everywhere, remember? Brown and green, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder on that beat-up coffee table, ringing when someone walked by. So many bottles, spit-filled and swallowing cigarettes like those geese that turn into foie gras. Some bottles were still struggling; half-alive, forgotten and miserable. They’d be in garbage-can mass graves tomorrow. But most of them were already dead, thank god.

Meredith was leaning back into that old couch as far as she could, her sleeves buried into pillows that stunk like spaghetti and cat litter. She was drunk to the point of scowls and sudden laughter, and no one was watching her as she flicked at the label on her Bud. Her fingernail caught it, finally, and she worked under the paper until it stuck out ugly. Meredith pulled it off, and tossed it onto a pile of label orphans on the coffee table. Meredith was sighing, I think.

Her head rolled over like a tired dog when Anthony entered the living room. Anthony sat across from her, his shoulder towards the window. Goosebumps from the Chicago breeze.

“Is she still here?” slurred Meredith.

“Yeah, she’s in the kitchen.”

“I think I fucked up,” said Meredith.

“No, you didn’t.”

Anthony got up, and shut the window. Too cold already, that September. He continued, “Why? Why do you even say that?”

“She could tell. Or I told her, I don’t remember.”

“What did you tell her?” Anthony watched a roach crawl across the carpet. Didn’t say anything to Meredith ’bout it, cause she would have seriously freaked out.

“I told her I had a crush on her.”

“Is that it?”

“I told her that I’ve had it for four years almost.”

Anthony breathed out his nose, and scratched a place on his hand that didn’t itch. A couple came bounding into the living room; the beer bottles on the table cried out against each other; Finish Us, they screamed. But the couple just asked where the bathroom was, and laughed their way back down the hall.

Anthony nodded to himself, measuring his questions against Mere’s blood-alcohol level. His lips made a sticky sound before he asked, “What did she say?”

Meredith shook her head. “She invited me over for Christmas.”

“Then … how did you fuck up?”

“I don’t know. I just did.”

Remember Christmas? Remember Christmas? Remember eating a late dinner in a suburb abandoned by everyone-who-had-families, watching a movie and talking till three am? Meredith looked up into my eyes and said, “We can’t do this.”

I said, “Don’t worry.” Man, I could make Meredith blush.

Our lips were purple from cheap Merlot and our kisses exploded out onto each other like lava buckshot. Fire that would become love that would become hate that would become love which would weaken with disbelief which would beget jealousy that would fade into love again and be recalled four thousand miles away on shag couches in the basement of some bar. Smash together, cry out, scream and strip each other to the bone, before she tells you, “The only thing I ask is that you don’t kiss me.”

Years before we became reluctant antagonists, that’s all we did on Christmas Eve: Kiss.

Another party where I felt like the youngest person in the room.

I sat on the lip of a hotel bed, my heels sunk deep into the carpet to keep the room from spinning. It wasn’t alcohol; it was enochiophobia. Still, the rest of the room was so drunk, so close, so thick, that my blood alcohol level was rising in the liquored humidity.

There was some awards show on the television, and people were still pouring into the room to watch. They all took turns shouting, “Hey! Are you sure you don’t want anything!?”

“No, I’m alright,” I said.

Tired of being the one who always left first, I ground my teeth and swallowed until my tongue was raw. I wasn’t moving until it was over.

When the walls began to blister, the door opened and another three people squeezed in. Two guys with Big Johnson T-Shirts, clutching beer cans so hard that their necks were swelling. Between them was a girl with a floor-length spring skirt. It was white and semi-sheer. Somehow, she brought a breeze with her; when she stopped, the skirt still swayed.

Callie sat down real close, but the bed didn’t pull towards her. She smelled like mangos and sun-tan lotion.

“Hi,” she said. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

“Umm … I’m in a show? On campus?” How was this girl talking to me?

“Oh! That’s it! You’re a comedian, that’s where I know you from.” She split the room with a smile. “Tell me a joke,” she smirked.

“Uhh…”

“I’m kidding. That’s the worst thing to say to a comedian, right?”

A friend coughed on himself, and elbowed me. “Oh my god,” he whispered, and then stumbled over to her other side. Immediately, he had her laughing — a sound like bells.

He drank, I didn’t. He smiled, I couldn’t.

But she shared her laughs with me.

After the show ended, everyone crowded into taxis. Callie asked, “Are you going?” so I had to. At the club, she danced with him … and then with him again.

I wasn’t a good dancer.

The DJ spun huge music, and my shoes got glued to the ground. Sticking out of the wall was half of a Hummer, clustered between fake palm trees. A second floor was crowded with pool tables; a caged bridge connected the bathrooms to the dance floor. It was the kind of place where American college students go to die.

Finally, the place stopped pounding, and we all walked into the mud on the street. I found Callie in the crowd, (”Walk me home?” “Sure.”) and the three of us made our way back to her hotel together.

Callie invited us to the beach, where it was cold. She sat in-between he and I on a lawn chair, as the sky turned purple and gradually pink. We talked and shook, waiting for her to decide.

Finally, as the sun came up over the ocean, she put her arms around me, and rested her head on my shoulder. My friend left without resentment.

***

Six days later, after watching her run out on the rocks to a lighthouse, after swapping books and tucking her into her bed, after photographs in front of a fountain, Callie asked me:

“I wonder what my boyfriend will think of all this.”

It was spring, and Marion was riding in a pick-up truck. Her hair was black then, before she decided to bruise it with blue. Marion’s face was small and sunny, like a smooth orange. She broke off and smiled.

“I think I get why you have a crush on Heather,” Marion said to my best friend. He’d been pining after me, with little (but certain) luck. “Yeah, you could say I have a crush on her now, too.”

I guess you could say that.

Marion made choices. As far as I could tell, Marion decided to be attracted to me. Marion told Alex because she was sure he would relay the information in due time. That was how things went, back when we were all young and just out of high-school.

I asked Alex, “Who is she, again?”

He told me about Marion. She had the lunchbox and the socks, remember? She wore glasses that were as little almonds on her cheeks.

I can recall every girl except Marion. The misery of our break-up blurred the details of how it all began, in the way smoke conceals the facts of an accident. All the pain is now long, long gone … but it took much of the truth away, too. I think I met her for lunch. Maybe I just met her for pancakes. Maybe that’s the same thing, and I should just write it that way.

Marion was always right, even if she was wrong. Marion smelled like thread and pencils. Marion still had a room made up for her at her parent’s house, filled with books and toys.

Marion was the first girl I slept with, and it was while Mars Attacks was on cable. Surrounded by pine paneling, and frightened, we fumbled around until we didn’t. This was while Anna was still writing letters — a summer of almost only mistakes. Marion and I were cruel to each other, quickly.

Marion is the reason I’m afraid of the number two.

(I’m not, really.)

Her arms felt cold and hollow as they lit on my shoulders. Perfume and the ache of tobacco. The suggestion of her chest. The creek of the floor beneath her. She pressed her fingers into mine, locking them onto a chord on the guitar.

“That’s a C,” she said. “And this … is a G.”

I was sitting indian-style on the floor of a college apartment, at the end of an uncomfortable party. As the event thinned out, I’d grabbed a guitar to keep myself company. She saw her chance to get close and took it. Anna was really direct that way; the kind of girl who would stare at you from across the room until your skin started to burn. She must have killed a lot of ants as a kid, with those magnifying glass eyes of hers.
“Thanks,” I choked out. “Umm …”

“And here’s … an A.” Pause. “I don’t really play the guitar, actually.”

“Well, you play more than me,” I said with confidence. I was wearing a leather jacket, trying to figure out who I was. Anna had an idea. Continuing: “I mean, this is the first time I’ve ever even held one.”

“You’ve got natural aptitude,” she said, and pressed her smile into the back of my head. Her hands were still on mine, and my heart was jackhammering its way out of my chest.

“Thanks.”

I struggled to get rid of the guitar. Anna made it difficult. Finally, she pulled away and offered to help me up.

For such a small girl, she had a lot of strength. Though I was a head taller than her, Anna had me standing in a second, and then she had me standing too close. Her tiny hand gripped mine like the reaper. She wasn’t going to let go. She walked outside with my hand, and then down the street with it, too. Luckily, I stayed attached to it.

I asked her out to coffee, and we jump-cut to the table of an overcrowded Evanston cafe. She wore too much lipstick. We started dating. I came out to my parents a month later, and then six years after that, went back in.

“What do you do?” she asked.

“Umm … I guess I play video games. I just got the new Mario for N64. Do you play?”

“No, but I’d love to learn.”

We walked back to my dorm-room. It was a single with a walk-in-closet and a bathroom, which was happily unfair. In front of my bed, I had a GXTV on a milk-crate, with a stereo and a Playstation rounding out my mini-entertainment system. I had lined my ceiling with ivy and christmas lights, because it was really important to me.

Anna popped onto the bed, and studied the controller that I unwound and handed to her. Like most, she ignored the analog stick, and so the second time I played Mario64 was with my hands atop hers. She drove Mario like a drunk animal, crashing him into trees and grinding him along the ground on his belly.

“I’m not very good at this,” she groaned.

“It’s unfamiliar for everyone. Don’t worry about it!”

“I’m never going to get it.”

To be honest, I didn’t understand how anyone could be so bad at Mario. Press the control-stick in the direction you want to move seemed pretty straight-forward. Anna complained, “He’s not doing what I want him to do,” but I couldn’t figure out what she wanted him to do, either. Finally, she tossed the controller aside and kissed me.

Oh.

She was trying not to learn.