My First Million (Part One)

The tiled floor of the bathroom was exceptionally cold on my bare feet. With it having been evening in December, I should have expected as much, especially since the heat had been off for days. Unsure of whether I was shivering from the cold or from the previous hours of sobriety, I stumbled into the bathtub with my feet hanging over the side, and my head resting uncomfortably against the soap dish. The hot water was refreshing, and I immediately felt cleaner when I saw the dried blood from around my nose washing down my chest. I had put in ten hours on the graveyard shift at the UPS loading dock where I worked, and when I came home that morning, I finished off a bottle of wine and cut out a few lines before falling asleep, or more accurately; passing out. About halfway through the night (or day, rather), I woke up to a bloody nose, which had become increasingly common in the preceding weeks. After a half-assed attempt at washing myself, I shut off the water and dragged myself out of the tub, and back onto the freezing tiles

Dressing myself had become nothing more than routine. I never had anything to get dressed up for. No one was dying or getting married, I didn’t have any job interviews, and the closest thing I’d had to a date was when I made out with some random divorcee in the ladies’ room at a bar a few weeks ago. I probably could have taken her home, but when I asked if I could blow a line of coke off her tits, I probably crossed the line. Usually, older women like her are more willing to let a much younger man attempt such a degrading display. It’s a lot like when my little brother would let my friends and me put him in mortal danger just so that he could hang out with us (although, my little brother probably wasn’t trying to make his ex-husband jealous). Either way, she wound up giving me a sort of awkward “maybe later,” which pretty much meant “fuck no,” and I left one drink later, turned off by the fact that she wasn’t quite prepared to embrace single life like she thought she was. Her constant talk about her kids was wearing thin anyway. Part of me hoped that her revelation might have led her back into the arms of her husband. The other part of me assumed that he wanted nothing to do with her.
Anyway.
I threw on an extremely faded, black A.F.I. t-shirt that was old enough that it actually read “East Bay Hardcore” on the back, and a pair of unfashionably worn down blue jeans. Before putting on my shoes, I did a bump, brushed my teeth, took a shit, and quickly cleaned up the dishes I had left out that morning. If nothing else, the coke was good for the cleanliness of my apartment. I looked down at my watch; it was about ten o’clock in the evening. I had my first night off work in over a month, and my place wasn’t going to get any warmer, so I called Kevin. Kevin was a dude I had met while we were both students at UGA, and we quickly bonded over a shared love of punk rock and substance abuse. I had graduated two years prior with my degree in film, and Kevin was in his fourth year, working towards super-senior status. Since I was living in a one bedroom apartment in Athens, and most all of my graduated class had either moved back to their respective hometowns or moved on to more exciting locales like Atlanta or Savannah, Kevin was my only liaison to the outside world.
“Big party at The Duke’s place tonight, you should come,” Kevin told me. The Duke was an affectionate nickname for a mutual friend who lived off campus, and had the unfortunate birth name of David Duke. We called him “The Duke” because of his highly eccentric nature, and his predilection towards hallucinogens similar to that of Hunter Thompson’s Raoul Duke, and also because calling him by his Christian name was always kind of terrifying. For as much as we had in common, Kevin was a social butterfly, and I, myself, couldn’t stand most people, so things like this were always points of contention.
“Eh…I don’t think I’m really feeling up to it, man. You go ahead, I think I’m just going to go to the 40 Watt and flirt with the bartendress. I think the Slippery People are playing anyway.”
“No, fuck you dude. You’ve seen the Slippery People like six times now, and you know that bartender has a boyfriend. I haven’t seen you in like two months, now get over here.”
He was right. The appeal of a Talking Heads cover band really lost effect after the third or fourth time, and I was pretty sure that the bartendress severely disliked me. I just didn’t want to go to some absurd party that would eventually get shut down by the cops and end with me running out a back door back to my apartment. I was too old for it.
“I don’t know, man, I just really don’t feel like going. There’s never anyone I like hanging out with there, and I don’t feel like watching The Duke trip balls or huff a bunch of shit all night. I gotta clean the apartment anyway, and that’s gonna take a while, so why don’t I meet you there if I finish early enough?” Foolproof.
“Well, I’ll come help you then, and we can both get there earlier. I was gonna stop by Whitey’s place anyway and pick up an 8-ball, and that’s right on the way. Want me to get you one, too,” he asked. I was screwed. There was no way out of this.
“Uh…Yeah, grab me one, and I’ll pay you when you get here,” I said, reluctantly.
“Sick dude, I’ll be there in like fifteen minutes.”
“Peace,” I said, and hung up the phone.
“Fuck,” I said out loud, looking around at my spotless apartment. Afraid of letting my friend know that I had lied to him, I started dirtying up my three small rooms as best I could. After a few minutes, my drawers were mostly emptied, and the sink was full of clean dishes. I stood and looked at the damage I had caused for a second, before immediately realizing that there was no sense in trying to pass off such an obvious lie on someone who knows me that well. I put all the clothes back into the drawers, the dishes back in the cupboards, grabbed my keys and a hoodie, covered my disheveled brown hair with a knit cap, and walked out the front door just as Kevin was approaching it. With a dour look on my face, I slapped a few twenties in his hand and walked right past him.
“Cleaned up the whole place already, huh,” he snidely commented.
“Fuck you, let’s go. I’m driving.”
“I mean, if you’re not done yet, I can wait. I don’t want to rush you or nothing.” I continued to walk ahead to my car three stories down, as Kevin followed. “Place wasn’t even a little dirty, was it?”
“No.”
“And don’t tell me: I’m even willing to bet that you considered dirtying the place up before I got here, if you didn’t actually do it in the first place.”
“Fuck off,” I said, as we reached the street, and I unlocked the doors to my gray 1984 Nissan Stanza.
“Wait, wait, wait. Did you actually do that? Because I was kidding.”
“I may or may not have participated in the activities you have just described,” I replied as I slid into the driver’s seat.
“You’re a strange egg, sir,” Kevin told me as he got in opposite me, and tossed the baggie of coke in my lap, his red hair and beard and his white face illuminated by the Athens streetlights. “Did you have dinner yet?”
“Nah, but I’m not really hungry. You want to stop for something?”
“Oh, I already ate, I was just asking,” Kevin said, looking ahead at the road. His southern hospitality was always a little amusing to me. Kevin had lived around Athens his whole life, and it’s always interesting to encounter for a person who grew up in a point much further north. I put on some unobjectionable Al Green song, and started off toward The Duke’s. Almost immediately, Kevin reached for my iPod, and I smacked his hand away.
“Oh come on, man. We’re going to a party! We’re gonna get fucked up! We’re going to have fun. Let’s listen to something fun.”
“What’s not fun about Al Green?”
“Oh no, there’s plenty of fun about Al Green, but that’s if we’re talking ‘Take Me to the River’ or maybe even ‘Let’s Stay Together,’ but your choice in Al Green songs is just sad.”
Utterly confounded, I responded, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Alright, you could have picked any of the what, forty or fifty Al Green songs on here? And you chose to go with ‘Tired of Being Alone’? Consider what that says about your mental state going into this event.”
“I give up, what does it say?”
“That you’re fuckin’ tired of bein’ alone,” he laughed, letting his southern accent slip through. “You gotta find yourself a girl, boy.”
“Not with this shit again, man. I’m fine, dude. I don’t need a girl. My life is fine. I’ve got a clean apartment, a job that pays pretty decently, and I’m happy.”
“If you say so, chief. So how is your life going?”
“I woke up last night, and my nose was bleeding. I think I’m dying,” I told him.
“You see, that’s what I’m talking about, you neurotic sonofabitch. You gotta get your life in order, stop worrying so much, stop avoiding coming out with me, stop hitting on the old ladies at the bar, get yourself an age-appropriate lady friend. And you’re not dying; you’re just doing too much coke.”
“And I’m glad you’re doing nothing to encourage my habit.”
“Hey, you’re as aware as I am that you and I have never been good for each other’s health.”
“Touche,” I responded as “Tired of Being Alone” ended. “Alright, you can change the song now, I don’t care.”
“See what I mean. You’re a self-fulfilling prophecy, man,” he said, and scrolled through my iPod for a minute or two before setting on Dillinger Four’s Midwestern Songs of the Americas record. “This is what we should be listening to. It’s upbeat, high-energy, sing-along-y.”
I lit a cigarette and continued to drive, while Kevin sang along with the record as the words of Paddy Costello left my rattling speaker system and evaporated into the night sky. Suddenly, Kevin snapped me out of my haze, grabbed my shirt collar, and shouted along with the song into my ear, “Let’s tie a yellow ribbon around the necks of the motherfuckers living for the giving in!”
“What the fuck, man? You’re gonna fucking kill us tonight,” I said, unable to conceal my laughter as we pulled onto The Duke’s street and parked the car. The Duke lived in a very old-world neighborhood on the outskirts of Athens, which was a drastic change from the college town innards of the city. His house was large and Victorian looking, with three ready-to-live-in floors that were all fully furnished. No one really knew how The Duke managed to live there on his own. There was a revolving cast of roommates, sure, but supposedly none of them ever paid rent. Theories circulated: that his parents owned the house, and just let him live there, that he had won some huge settlement with the school after having been hit by a car while walking from the football field to the student center, that he was selling way more drugs than we thought he was, but The Duke never confirmed nor denied anything. He was enigmatic like that.

to be cont.