Day 8 Jersey City, NJ
SAM
“IS THAT THE LAST OF IT?” I ask Max as I pass him in the kitchen. He’s just emerged from the basement, carrying an armful of cables and a microphone stand.
“Just this from downstairs, and I think your bag is still in the living room,” he replies. “Once you grab that, we should be ready to get out of here.”
“Hey, Sam?” Damian is in the hallway, standing at the base of the stairs with his fists jammed in his pockets. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”
I look over at Max, a little warily, but he just nods.
“Go ahead. I’ll tell Roxie and Blake that you’ll be out in a minute.”
I walk over to join Damian, and he cocks his head towards the stairs. So I follow him up to his room, and when we get there, he bends over his desk, scribbling something on a piece of paper.
“Here, I wanted you to have my number and email address, in case —” Damian shoves his hands in his pockets, and his blue eyes are earnest. “You know, if you ever need a friend. Or more than a friend.”
I gesture towards his desk. “May I?”
“Go right ahead —”
When I put the paper into his hand, I gently close his fingers around it. “Hold on to that. You know — I don’t think I’ve ever actually given a guy my number before.”
Damian grins. “The love ‘em and leave ‘em type, huh?”
“Something like that.”
I hesitate for a beat, but then I’m standing up on my tiptoes, throwing my arms around his shoulders and squeezing him tight. He hugs me back, my ribs creaking as he picks me up off the floor. When he puts me down, he reaches out and touches my cheek. “Take care of yourself, Sam.”
“You too, man.”
Outside in the backyard, Max is waiting for me, shifting from one foot to the other, holding his own piece of folded-up notebook paper. When I approach, he shoves it into my hands.
“What’s this?” I ask.
His mouth twitches. “Just look at it before Roxie sees and makes fun of me forever.”
I unfold the paper and smooth it out. In the middle of the blue-lined page is a crude drawing of a bouquet of flowers. Scrawled underneath it are the words Sorry I was an asshole.
I look at him and raise one eyebrow.
“I wanted to pick you some dandelions but I couldn’t find any,” he shrugs.
I’m really trying not to smile but I know I’m not doing a very good job. “Dandelions bloom in early spring. So they’re out of season by now.”
“Oh.”
Max grins sheepishly, and I shove him a little, and he shoves me back, and then we’re both laughing, slinging arms around each other’s shoulders. He kisses the side of my head, and I let him, even though it squeezes my heart a little.
“I was a fucking moron,” he whispers. “Can you ever forgive me?”
I make a fist and poke it gently into his belly. “Just — don’t talk to me like that again, okay? That shit hurts.”
And just like that, everything is fine. I still don’t know why things have been so fucking weird between us the past few days, but maybe I don’t need to know. I just want to be in this moment, right here with Max, always.
max
9:37 PM
Left bottle: Full
Right bottle: Full
“We are the stupidest bunch of cunts that has ever existed in the history of fucking cunts,” Roxie declares, watching as Blake duct-tapes her hands to the top of two bottles of Colt-45.
“They’re so cold —” Sam whines, his hands already securely fastened to the necks of his own set of bottles.
“You’re gonna be glad we put these things in the freezer an hour from now when they taste like warm piss,” says Tim, one of the dudes living in the house we’re staying in tonight.
“Speaking of piss, I hope everyone went —” his girlfriend Tara adds.
“Because house rules are that you have to finish both before you can take them off,” their roommate Zach finishes. “None of this ‘finish one so you can have a free hand’ weak shit.”
Okay, so we’re playing Edward Fortyhands — two forty-ounce bottles of malt liquor taped to our hands, not to be removed until we’ve drained them completely.
And hey, I never said we were good at making decisions.
Our set tonight was pretty low-key, just an hour with our acoustic guitars and Roxie’s washboard in the living room of Blake’s Jersey City friends.
These guys are hosting us for two nights so that we can play a show at ABC No Rio tomorrow afternoon before we head out Sunday morning to start the New England leg of our tour.
So tonight was just sort of a thank you to them for being so generous — and now we’re being roped into a ritual that is sure to be as fun as it is breathtakingly dumb. But hey, we only live once.
The players are Sam, Roxie, and me, along with Tim, Tara, and Zach from the house, with Blake agreeing to keep a pair of scissors to cut us free and make sure we’re all alive at the end of the night. We’re not the only people at the party tonight, but apparently we’re the biggest idiots.
When Blake is finished taping us all up and uncapping our bottles, Zach raises his right fist.
“Here’s to — shit, I can’t think of anything good —”
“Here’s to being cunts,” Roxie suggests.
“Ooh, that works,” Tara agrees. “Here’s to having, loving, appreciating, wanting, not being remotely interested in —” she nods at Sam, and he raises one of his bottles in her direction, “— and most importantly, being the dumbest cunts that this fair city has ever seen.”
“Hear, hear —” we all chime in, and then take a deep pull of our bottles.
I make a face, because bleh, but then I look over at Sam and he grins right back at me.
This is going to be a ridiculous night, but at least we’re doing it together.
9:53 PM
Left bottle: 3/4 Full
Right bottle: 7/8 Full
“Heeeey man —” Sam begins.
“It’s so fucking cute that you’re already this wasted,” I shoot back. I have my back against the wall in the kitchen, and Sam has his bottles braced on either side of me, leaning into my space. They’re still mostly full, but maybe it’s the atmosphere or something.
“Am not —”
“You are,” I whisper, and a slow grin spreads across his face. But then he snaps to attention, gesturing at me with one of his bottles.
“Noooo, you’re distracting me when I need to ask you something.”
“Ask me what?” I straighten up and try to look like I’m the kind of guy who wouldn’t distract his poor adorable drunk friend.
Meanwhile, the fucking sleeper cell that’s been activated in my brain the past couple of days is chucking knives everywhere and shit, because how have I never noticed that Sam has dimples?
“Promise me —” He puts his mouth next to my ear, his voice dropping to a throaty whisper. “Promise me you won’t hook up tonight. I don’t want to be a sad loser all alone.”
I can’t help cracking up. “How the fuck am I going to hook up with anybody with these things on my hands?”
“I dunno,” Sam says mulishly. “If anybody could, it’s you.”
“I cannot, and I’ll prove it. Hey, Amy —” I call to the punk girl across the room. “Do you think my bottles are sexy?”
She rolls her eyes and glares at me. “Ugh, you’re such a tool of the patriarchy.”
“See?” I say to Sam. “Besides, if anybody is going to manage to get somebody to hook up with them with this bullshit going on, it’s you.”
“Why, because I’m a slut?” Sam slurs.
I lean in a little closer, and he bites his lip. “No, because you’re so pretty —”
“Stoooop —” Sam gasps, but we’re both giggling, not so much tickling as jabbing each other in the ribs with the necks of our bottles because that’s all either one of us is capable of doing.
Just then, Roxie walks by and huffs. “Fucking Christ, get a room already.”
Sam freezes, looking at me with his eyes wide, but then he cracks up again, and I do too, wrapping him up in a hug. I am so fucked.
10:18 PM
Left bottle: Half Full
Right bottle: 3/4 Full
“Alright, that covers all the dirty things you’ve all done with members of the opposite sex. The next set of questions is about the same sex.”
Man, Zach’s girlfriend Holly sure is good at reading. Maybe because she doesn’t have bottles taped to her hands.
Everyone turns to look at Sam, and he groans. “Come on, this isn’t fair.”
Yeah, okay, so it turns out that this game sucks?
It’s been about half an hour, and my bottles are — not cold.
We’re all trying, though, and somebody had the bright idea to play another drinking game to make this one go faster.
Roxie told us all to fuck off, because she’s currently sitting on Blake’s lap in the living room proving that it actually is possible to make out with bottles attached to your hands.
But the rest of us are standing — leaning?
— swaying? — around the kitchen island, and Holly has her laptop out, reading us the questions from one of those online purity tests.
“Should we skip this section?” she asks. Man, she’s nice. “Just so we’re not singling you out.”
Sam shrugs. “How about I just start chugging, and you read them all at once?”
He lifts one of his bottles to his lips and nods in Holly’s direction.
Holly laughs. “Okay, that works! Have you ever — with a member of the same sex — Kissed? — Horizontally? — Fondled or had your butt fondled by? — Fondled or had your genitals fondled by? — Given or received oral sex? — Rimmed? — he’s still going, guys — Had an orgasm? — aaaand — gone all the way?”
Sam thunks his bottle down on the counter, and we all cheer for him. He’s swaying a little, so I lean into him to steady him, not that I’m doing any better. But he grins up at me and — nnnnh, what were we talking about?
Holly is frowning at her laptop screen. “Oh, sorry, I did miss a question in that section, but this one might be for everybody — If you haven’t done any of those things with a member of the same sex, have you ever wanted to?”
We all fall silent, and fuck, is it hot in here?
Then Tara giggles and takes a pull from her drink. And a beat later, Zach does too.
“What?” he says with a shy laugh. “I’m not going to say I never have.”
Fuck, I’m an asshole. And a liar. Because my bottles are still resting on the table in front of me, my palms sweating against the glass.
But I can’t tell Sam like this, right?
10:32 PM
Left bottle: 1/4 Full