Day 8 Jersey City, NJ #2
Right bottle: 5/8 Full
“Hey Sammy, I gotta — gotta go talk to Roxie.”
“Huh?” Sam lifts his head from my shoulder to blink at me. We’re sitting on the floor in Zach’s bedroom, both of us kind of out of it, letting the conversation flow around us. “Okay, let’s go.”
He sits up straight, trying to get his legs under him.
“No, uh — I mean, I gotta go talk to Roxie.” I lean in closely and stage whisper. “It’s a secret.”
Sam’s eyes get real big, and he sticks out his bottom lip in a pout, letting it tremble.
“Nooooo, don’t —” I can’t stop giggling, trying to use the tops of my bottles to lift the corners of Sam’s mouth into a smile. “You’re gonna make me cry if you make that face —”
He’s laughing too, trying to make me stop, and it’s fucking precious. “Okay — okay, you goddamn weirdo, jeez —”
I manage to push myself up to my knees and face the room.
“Um, everybody? This is my Sammy and I have to leave him alone for a little while. Can you take care of him for me? He’s really cool and he can play the whole bass riff from ‘Maxwell Murder.’” I look back at Sam, and he’s shaking his head, grinning as he lifts his bottles at me. “Except, you know — not right now.”
Once I know that Sam is going to be okay, I stumble out into the hallway and hug the wall for support as I make my way back into the living room. I find Roxie slumped on a loveseat by herself, both of her bottles more than half empty, so I flop down beside her.
“Did Blake abandon you or something?”
“No, he’s over there, being smart —” Roxie waves a bottle vaguely. “I’m just vibing. It’s all good.”
“Good, because I wanna ask you — why is Blake hot?”
“The fuck kind of question is that?” Roxie swivels her head to look at me, her brow furrowed. “I dunno, because he has a hot mom? His dad certainly didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Nononono, I did it wrong. Lemme try again.” I do my best to concentrate. “I mean, what is hot about Blake? Like, why do you think he’s hot? In a sex way.”
For a second I think she’s gonna slug me with her fortyhand and I brace myself. But then she softens, looking thoughtful as she stares across the room. “His butt.”
“What?” I’m about ready to fall off the couch.
“Yeah, I mean — skinny boy butts, they’re all —” She lifts her bottles and tilts them in her hands as she tries to gesture. “Fuck these fucking bottles, imagine me like — testing two very small melons at the grocery store — god, boy butts are the best —”
“Is that the whole reason? His butt?”
“Duh, no.” Roxie scowls at me. “He’s got a very nice face, and he’s smart, and he doesn’t care that I act like an asshole all the time.
And also, all you scrawny boys — just look at him from the back —” She draws an inverted triangle in the air with her bottles.
“Wide shoulders to grab, slutty little waist, butt. I could stare all fucking day.”
We both watch Blake, for a minute, and then Roxie pokes me with her bottle neck. “Hands, too. If I find myself picturing some dude’s hands or staring at them like I’m a cat in heat, I know we’re gonna fuck.”
I think of Sam’s hands, nimble and slender, just a little smaller than mine. The dark polish on his nails is always chipped because he picks at it so much, but somehow that just makes him more appealing.
I’m starting to sweat a little, and Roxie’s look is a bit too shrewd. But I soldier on.
“And, uh — I mean, is it always — like, every dude who looks like that? Or like, do you have to get to know them? And like — only dudes?”
Roxie glares at me. “Can you speak fucking English? I’m swimming up to my tits in shitty malt liquor over here.”
I take a deep, shuddering breath, and the next words barely get out of me. “Do you, um — I mean, has it always been guys for you? Not — girls?”
“Are you asking me if I’ve ever wanted to fuck girls?” she snaps.
I nod, keeping my eyes fixed on my lap.
“Everyone wants to fuck girls, numbnuts,” Roxie groans. “Girls are pretty and smart and soft and you’re all a bunch of stinky morons. You’re lucky any of us want to fuck you.”
“Oh.” I am waaaaay too fucking drunk to unpack any of that shit.
I glance over at Roxie, and she’s looking me up and down, her eyes narrowed. “Why the fuck are you asking me this shit if you’re wondering? Why aren’t you interrogating our homosexual friend Samuel?”
I bite my lip and look away, and she breathes in sharply.
“Oh, you poor bastard. You figured it out.”
“I haven’t figured anything out,” I slur indignantly. “I mean, I’ve never — tour is making me crazy or some shit because it’s been all these fucking years and not once — I mean, I’ve never even had a celebrity crush who’s a guy —”
“You haven’t, huh?” Roxie sighs. “Okay, answer this for me — if Billie Joe Armstrong walked in here and asked you to suck his cock, would you?”
“I mean, yeah?” I shrug. “He can do whatever he wants to me.”
“BLAAAAAKE!” Roxie yells. “Hey, Blake!”
Blake looks up placidly. “Yeah, babe?”
“Would you suck Billie Joe Armstrong’s cock?”
Everybody is looking at us, and I’m pretty sure I need to go outside and die.
“Nope,” Blake shrugs, and goes back to his conversation.
Roxie looks at me pointedly, then reaches her hand out and rests her bottle on my leg. “Face it, dude — you’ve been rounding yourself up to straight all these years. Everybody knows it but you.”
“Everybody?” I whisper.
“Well, there’s one person who doesn’t know,” Roxie replies. “But he’s just as fucking hopeless as you are.”
With one parting tap of her bottle, she gets up and crosses the room to drape herself all over Blake.
And I’m sitting here, wondering when the room is gonna stop spinning.
11:04 PM
Left bottle: Empty
Right bottle: 3/8 Full
Whyyyyy did I tape these fucking bottles to my hands?
Fire escape friend. Fire escape cold under my ass on warm night. Brick wall — noooo, too scratchy. Why not pillow? Why not pillow, Brick Wall?
I hear a noise, and there’s my Sammy climbing out the living room window. He almost eats it, and I hold up my hands — like I’m gonna be able to stop him if he falls. Wish he’d fall on me.
Sam slumps down beside me. He tries to cover his face with his hands, but instead he just sort of mashes his bottles against his face.
“Hey, whassa matter?” I ask. If anybody said anything mean to him, I will — I will kick them.
He gives me a look of pure tragedy, and then he pitches forward, burying his face in my shoulder. “I have to pee so bad.”
“Me too,” I whisper back. “But we have to — we have to finish —”
“But they’re waaaarm,” Sam whines. “They taste like bull semen.”
“Do you — regularly drink bull semen?”
He pulls back to look at me — and then he starts to laugh, and I start to laugh, and we better fucking stop this shit or I might actually piss myself.
“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do —” I hiccup. “How much you got left?”
He holds up one bottle that looks to be a little less than half full.
I hold up my own. “Hey, twinsies! Okay, I’m gonna count to three, and then we are gonna chug these motherfuckers, and then we are gonna find Blake and he’s going to get us out of this mess so that we can piss. Ready?”
Sam nods, and we count together. “One, two — THREE!”
God, it fucking sucks. Sam’s not wrong about the bull semen, and we’re both spluttering as we choke the rest of it down. But finally —
“EMPTY!” Sam holds up his bottle in victory. “Come on, let’s go —”
We stumble over the window frame, and somehow we both land on our feet. And there’s Blaaake, and he has the scissors, thank fuck —
“Roxie, you already finished?” Sam asks while Blake is slicing through the tape on my hands.
Roxie glares at him from her corner of the couch, arms folded across her chest. “No, asshole. Some of us stop doing things when they’re not fun anymore.”
Blake finishes with me and moves on to Sam. “Alright, you’re both free — go go go —”
We careen down the hall, and shit, that doorframe came out of nowhere, what the fuck —
Rubbing my shoulder, I lean down and lift the toilet seat —
Oh, wait. I should — “Sammy, you go ahead —”
“No, dude, you got there first —”
This is the dumbest fucking standoff ever. “Together?” I ask.
“What?” He looks at me like I just turned purple and sprouted horns.
“Come on, it’s me, I’m not gonna look.” I move a little to the side to make room for him and keep my eyes firmly fixed on the tile wall. After a moment, he sighs and squares up next to me.
“This is so fucking embarrassing,” he mutters under his breath, but a second later he groans, and I know exactly how he feels, because fuuuuuuck —
We’re washing our hands, and he’s still blushing as pink as his hair, which is cute as fuck.
But as I’m drying my hands on the seat of my shorts, he sorta falls into me, hiding his face against my shoulder as he hugs my waist. I wrap my arms around his shoulders, and we just sway there, and I dunno — maybe it’s a good thing Roxie told me some shit because my heart is racing and my palms are sweaty and at least I know for sure what it is now.
Finally, he rolls his head to the side just enough to look up at me.
“Thanks,” he whispers.
“For what?”
“Everything.”
And I could kiss him. His lips are only inches from mine, and I could close the gap, sliding my hand around his throat and leaning down, pressing my lips against his.
I could kiss him, and right now I’m feeling like he would kiss me back, that maybe it wouldn’t matter that I’m not his type.
But I’m fucking wasted, and I know he’s fucking wasted, and if I’m gonna do it, if I’m gonna change everything, he deserves something more romantic than this.
So I kiss his forehead instead, and if I linger a little too long, well — I’m drunk.
And if his eyes look a little starry when I pull away — he’s drunk too.
It’s enough to stumble back to the living room, to collapse on a free couch with him tucked up against me, to drift with his head on my shoulder while the party winds down.
I’ve waited this long. I can wait a little while longer.