"It
ain't a party 'til something gets broke," Joe says, re-tying the Harley
Davidson bandana around his forehead.
"You got that from Rob Lowe," I say.
"What?" he says, like the word is two syllables:
"Hoo-what?" He knots his eyebrows all up like he can't believe what
I'm saying is true.
"Rob Lowe said it in St. Elmo's Fire,
I say. "Duh."
"Hey. I been sayin' it since before that fag was
born."
I roll my eyes. "Rob Lowe is hot."
"He's a fag."
Joe thinks he's so cool, with his Harley and his
friends, who have names like Beauregard, Rat, and One-Eared Kevin, who's
actually kind of cute, but not in a Rob Lowe way. Joe is my mom's third
husband and young enough to be my big brother. He might be the fattest, poorest
husband she's had yet, but he's definitely the coolest.
"Me and yer ma'll stay outta yer way, but if anybody
starts getting outta hand, you lemme know, all right?"
I nod. This is the
first real party I've had. Joe says we can't drink his Jagermeister, but
he gave me a joint — not that I'll be sharing any of it.
I stick the joint in the chest pocket of my black
vintage blazer, run downstairs and turn on the blue party bulb. When I
come back up, Joe wants to take a picture to capture the moment. My mom
starts shouting, "Cheese!" and tries to hug me. I squirm out of her liver-spotted, jiggly arms, away from her ashtray breath.
When my two best friends from Sacred Heart arrive,
I give them each a beer. I take Fiona and Kelly downstairs so we can have
some privacy. Downstairs is where my bedroom is — actually, it's two low-ceilinged,
carpeted rooms plus my own private bathroom. It's like having my own
apartment. Joe said I have to keep all my guests downstairs so he and my
mom can have some peace. That means that his friends are going to come over, and they're all going to get high.
"Your mom's here?" says Fiona, walking down the
spiral staircase. "Man, if my mom saw me drinking a beer she'd piss her pants."
"Yeah well she'd rather us get wasted here than
out there somewhere."
"Yeah well my mom would just drink it all herself,"
Kelly says, swirling her bottle. Kelly wears pastel oxfords, velvet headbands and plaid skirts, even when we're not in school. Her life plan is to be
a virgin until her wedding day.
We all gulp down another mouthful, and then I go
to the bathroom to check that my hair's still crimped and my liquid eyeliner
hasn't cracked. The doorbell rings and it's Vinnie and Mike with a case of Miller. They're from Quigley
North. That's the boys' school Sacred Heart always
fobs us onto for plays and dances. Last year I went out with Mike for three
days, but he wasn't into fucking or even going up my shirt.
I would be in love with Vinnie, but Kelly announced
she liked him the day he showed up to play rehearsal. Vinnie's so fucking
gorgeous, with one of those totally square jaws like the male models have and this bright firey hair that you wouldn't expect. I'd fuck his brains
out if Kelly didn't have the hots for him so bad.
Some more girls from Sacred Heart arrive, straight-A
losers mostly, but they have beer too.
The next guest is Nate. He's my new boyfriend.
We've been going out for a week and a half, since we met at a Butthole Surfers
show at Cabaret Metro. At first I thought he was a real punker, with his
crew cut and combat boots, but now I suspect he's more of a regular delinquent.
Nate has no neck and is way into bodybuilding.
"Hi," I say. He looks down, shuffles his boots
and then kisses my cheek.
"I brought some friends, okay?"
"Okay," I shrug. Then I look over his shoulder
and see this humongous crowd of guys spilling over the front porch onto
the sidewalk and into the street: a sea of sweatshirts, jeans, and zits.
Nate goes downstairs while I hold the door open for his army of friends.
One of the last guys to come in has an obvious case of cerebral palsy. He's
limping and craning his head all around, with one of those weird sideways
smiles pasted on his face, his eyes going in one direction, and his mouth going
in the other. I decide to act normal about it and pretend he's not here.
When a couple guys find out that Nate's my boyfriend,
they tell me that everyone calls him "Roid Boy." They say he does steroids.
They tell me that he bulked up to twice his size in one school year. Nate
and I haven't done it yet, and when I tell them, they say it's because he's
impotent from all the hormones. His biceps are as big as my head.
My mom and Joe are safely out of the way upstairs, Fiona's already making
out with some ugly guy in a corner, there's plenty of beer and Kelly's
blasting the Beatles on the stereo. Kelly is always going on about how she
should have been born in 1948 so she could have experienced Beatlemania
first hand. She does the Twist and the Swim and the Pony. Nate is showing
the retarded kid how to smash beer cans on his forehead. I ignore this,
as planned, but I can't help asking, "Um, Nate? Do you take steroids?"
"No way!" he says, tilting his head back, setting
up another can. "Who told you that?"
I shrug.
"Because it's complete bullshit."
"Fine," I say. "I believe you."
The palsy kid is giving me the creeps, so I push
through the crowd back to Kelly. She's stopped dancing and is staring at
Vinnie like some religious freak. Her perfect blond bob is all in her face.
There are tears in her eyes. She sighs every last oxygen molecule out of
her body and says, "I love him."
I've never seen Kelly so sentimental. It's freaky.
They haven't even kissed. She wipes her eyes, straightens her cable-knit
cardigan and starts tapping her bottle with a claddagh-ringed finger. The
last thing she says before putting on another record is, "Truth serum."
Vinnie barely even looks at her, but I'm boiling with jealousy because why
should she get to have the spotlight? And how come I have to settle for
Roid Boy, who probably can't even fuck because his dick is so puny from
steroids?
I get another beer and hear this banging coming
from somewhere. When I look around, I see Roid Boy laughing his ass off
with another guy, but I can barely see across the room. He is so immature.
I'm going to dump his puffed-up ass. Then I spot Vinnie, talking about U2,
who he's obsessed with. I go over and say, "Fiona went around telling everyone
she was the Edge's sister because her family's from Ireland. But she's adopted!"
"So how would she even know?" he says, and smiles
at me. I turn to mush right there and then because his eyes are so green,
his lips are so full, and they're all pointed at me. He tells me how Boy
is U2's finest moment and how he's saving money so he can visit their hometowns,
and it's like we're fucking already. But then Kelly comes back and starts
tossing her hair all over the place, which is so gay. I look at Nate, still
howling with his friend, and I realize I'm surrounded by a herd of wall-to-wall
thugs, except for Vinnie, who's completely off limits. I think I'm going
to puke.
Upstairs, Joe's friends Beau and One-Eared Kevin
are over and they're all sitting around the dining room table doing shots
of Jagermeister. My mom's there too, smoking a Merit Ultra Light and drinking
a cup of black coffee.
"Hey whaddaya know!" Joe says, eyes shining, face
red. "It's the party girl!" Then he holds his massive mitts up in the air
and starts going, "We're not leavin' 'til we're heavin'!"
"Oh Joe, stop it," my mom says and reaches out to grope me.
"Everyone having a good time?"
"Ugh, get away from me," I say, heading into the
bathroom. I try to throw up, but there's nothing there. I pee and fart instead,
wishing everyone would leave. Sitting there on the toilet, I finally feel
drunk, and it's a relief. I can hear the music coming up through the floor
and that steady banging from before. It sounds like someone's hammering
a nail into the wall. Then I remember the joint. I light it up on my way
to the kitchen to get a Diet Coke, past the old people. When I close the
fridge, One-Eared Kevin is standing there with a folded up piece of paper.
"Share and share alike?" he says, unfolding the
square.
"Okay!" I say, thinking that this is a cool consolation
prize for a totally fucked up party. Kevin makes me a line right there on
the kitchen counter, and I pray my mom doesn't walk in. She thinks cocaine
is bad. I bend over and when I lift my head back up, One-Eared Kevin is trying
to kiss me. He's coming towards me and I want to run away, but I don't want
to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I kiss him back a little.
"Um, okay, thanks!" I say, and duck out of the kitchen.
Joe chants "Par-ty! Par-ty!" as I rush by to go back downstairs.
Kelly is making her way through the crowd, and it
looks like she's crying again.
"What happened?" I ask.
"I gotta go," she says, buttoning her pea coat.
"It's over."
"What?"
"He doesn't like me."
"What are you talking about?" The banging is getting
louder. I can barely hear her. From the bottom step, I can see Nate leaning
all his muscly weight on my bathroom door and cackling like a psycho.
"I thought he liked you," I shout, but she just
says "It's over" again, and then she's gone. I feel sorry for her. And
then again, I don't. I push my way through the hordes of pimply strangers
to pick up where I left off with Vinnie. I tell him that I saw U2 at the
Rosemont Horizon but had shitty seats, and he totally sympathizes. Everything's
going great. We brush shoulders, and I give him a sip of my beer. It's totally
romantic, even though we're crammed into a tiny room with like a thousand
drunken strangers. I just know we'll be making out before the night is through.
And that's when we hear this bellow coming from inside my bathroom a few
feet away. Everyone turns to look at Nate.
"Oh shit!" Nate says and looks at his friend and
they laugh even harder. "Okay, ready?" he says, and the other one says,
"Ready!" and then they open the door. The kid with cerebral palsy comes
bursting out of my bathroom and falls on the floor drooling and howling.
I crane my neck to see if he's crying, but he actually looks like he's having
a hell of a time, like he doesn't realize that Nate's being a total fucking
jerk.
"Oh my God, what are you doing?" I shout.
"Relax, he likes it. We do this all the time."
I look at the kid writhing around on the floor and really want to go over
to him, to help him up, but he's covered in drool and vomit. I think, this
is so not like Jake Ryan's party in Sixteen Candles. And then I run
upstairs and get Joe.
For the first time in my life, I am thankful for
one of my mom's husbands. I am so proud to have Joe in the family right
now I could kiss him — but not like one-eared Kevin kissed me.
It takes about five minutes for Joe to clear everyone out. Fiona is still
making out with the ugly guy when she leaves. On the front porch, Nate starts
hyperventilating, trying to puff himself up to capacity, maybe to beat somebody's
brains out. Joe just waits, and then threatens to shoot him. The palsied
kid wobbles down the stairs after Nate yelling, "Cheers! Cheers!" and then
no one's left except Vinnie, who's talking to my mom about U2, a fresh Budweiser
in his hand. After she yawns in his face and says goodnight, Vinnie heads
for the door, but I say, "Um, d'you wanna finish that downstairs?" and he
nods yes.
Vinnie tells me how cool my mom is. I make retching
noises and put U2 on the tape deck. It doesn't take long before we're making
out.
And you know it's time to go
through the sleet and driving snow
across the fields of mourning to a
light that's in the distance
This is so meaningful and important, but Vinnie keeps opening and closing
his mouth and it gets pretty complicated. Every time I close my mouth, he
opens his, and pretty soon my face is covered in spit, so I decide to move
it along to the next level and undo his pants.
Vinnie has the skinniest dick I've ever seen —
skinny but long. I'm convinced it's gonna poke my eye out from the inside
while we're fucking. My left eye starts aching just thinking about it, so
I shut it tight. So I'm lying on my back with my feet in the air and my
eye screwed shut, with Vinnie going in and out, and I'm trying like hell
to like it. I mean, he's so gorgeous, I can see that with my right eye,
but it's not happening.
After he jizzes all over my stomach, he falls into
a deep snoring sleep. I lie next to him and close my eyes, but I can't stop
thinking about Vinnie's dick, and Kelly and Roid Boy and One-Eared Kevin,
and the retarded boy locked in my bathroom all night. Maybe it's the coke. It's almost two a.m. when the phone rings. It's Kelly.
"I can't sleep," she says.
"Oh. That sucks. Did you try counting sheep?"
"No. I came back to the party to see you but everyone
was leaving."
I tell her about the retarded kid, but I already
know that she's really calling because she knows I just fucked Vinnie. Somehow
Kelly knows. I drag the phone into the bathroom and sit on the toilet, my
head already in my hands.
She sounds like she's getting weepy again. "You
didn't by any chance see Vincent leave?" she asks.
"Um, I think he left with Mike, but I don't know
where he went."
"Because I waited for him to come out but he never
did," she sighs.
"Well, he's not here," I say, probably too quickly.
I fake a yawn so maybe she'll get the hint and let me off the hook because
I can't go on with all these lies. I wish I could remind her that when I
was totally in love with Adam Siegel, Fiona went home with him and called
me the next day bragging about how he fingered her all night. It didn't
matter to her that I liked him. Kelly should be thanking me for not telling.
"Well, okay," she sighs. "I just got this weird
feeling. I'm kind of psychic about stuff like this. I just pictured you
guys together and . . . I'm just . . . " I
can hear her try to not cry. "I just like him so much, you know?"
"I know."
When we finally say good-bye, I look up and see
a crater in my bathroom wall the exact size of a boy's head.
n°
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Elise Miller hosts and curates East Side Oral (the reading series
your mother warned you about) at The Living Room in New York City. She's
currently at work on Celebrified, a chick-lit novel set at an elite
private school in Brooklyn Heights. Essays from her memoir,Cock-Crazy!,
have appeared on bkyn.com,
smallspiralnotebook.com
and massconfusion.com.
Her work has also been published in The Sun magazine.
When my two best friends from Sacred Heart arrive,
I give them each a beer. I take Fiona and Kelly downstairs so we can have
some privacy. Downstairs is where my bedroom is — actually, it's two low-ceilinged,
carpeted rooms plus my own private bathroom. It's like having my own
apartment. Joe said I have to keep all my guests downstairs so he and my
mom can have some peace. That means that his friends are going to come over, and they're all going to get high. 
The palsy kid is giving me the creeps, so I push
through the crowd back to Kelly. She's stopped dancing and is staring at
Vinnie like some religious freak. Her perfect blond bob is all in her face.
There are tears in her eyes. She sighs every last oxygen molecule out of
her body and says, "I love him." 
"Okay!" I say, thinking that this is a cool consolation
prize for a totally fucked up party. Kevin makes me a line right there on
the kitchen counter, and I pray my mom doesn't walk in. She thinks cocaine
is bad. I bend over and when I lift my head back up, One-Eared Kevin is trying
to kiss me. He's coming towards me and I want to run away, but I don't want
to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I kiss him back a little. 
It takes about five minutes for Joe to clear everyone out. Fiona is still
making out with the ugly guy when she leaves. On the front porch, Nate starts
hyperventilating, trying to puff himself up to capacity, maybe to beat somebody's
brains out. Joe just waits, and then threatens to shoot him. The palsied
kid wobbles down the stairs after Nate yelling, "Cheers! Cheers!" and then
no one's left except Vinnie, who's talking to my mom about U2, a fresh Budweiser
in his hand. After she yawns in his face and says goodnight, Vinnie heads
for the door, but I say, "Um, d'you wanna finish that downstairs?" and he
nods yes. 
