My First Million (Part Two)

You can read part one here!

We walked up the stairs to the front door and walked on in. The Duke, almost on cue, was ripping gravity bong hits in the foyer as we entered. The Duke was a big guy in all senses of the word with long, scraggly blond hair, and a former frat brother who still wore his letters proudly, much to the chagrin of his former brothers. As we saw him when we entered the doorway was the quintessential view of Duke: hunched over a large spaghetti pot, huffing weed smoke out of a three-liter soda bottle. He took the hit, expelled an enormous cloud out of his mouth, and spotted us.

“Boys! Welcome to the party,” Duke shouted, dispensing dude-hugs to us. “Get in here, do a shot with me.”
It was hard to say no to The Duke, so we followed him through the throngs of underage Bulldogs and their friends to the kitchen, where he opened his legendary liquor cabinet, and asked, “So what’s your poison, gentlemen?”
“Is that a bottle of fucking Blue Label in there,” I asked.
“It most certainly is.”
“I’ll take that, then,” I said, reaching for it. Kevin seconded my choice, and The Duke, indiscriminate powerhouse that he was, happily filled three two ounce shot glasses, and handed them around to us. The Duke was an enthusiast of excess.
“Down the hatch,” Duke commanded. I hated lame college clichés like that, but abided anyway. The whiskey burned on the way down, and the shot was way too big. I’d be feeling it later, no doubt. “Alright, boys, I gotta move on to some other d-bags, but there’s beer pong in the dining room, wine pong on the second floor, and if you wanna drop some acid, there’s some cats doing it up in the attic. Shit’ll freak you out, man,” our host informed us before parting ways.
“So what now,” I asked Kevin.
“I don’t know, I think I’m going to see what’s up with beer pong. You want me to mark us down?”
“Nah, I think I’m going to go steal a bottle of wine from upstairs and suck on that for a while.”
“Wanna go do a bump first?”
“Yeah, let’s do that.”
The only available bathroom was on the third floor, so we walked in and shared it with a tripping couple who were making out in the bathtub. Tripping or not, I was a little jealous that this unwashed dickbag could find a mate who wasn’t just an ex-wife looking to make herself feel young again, although the circumstances were probably strikingly similar. Kevin kindly closed the shower curtain to give them (and us) some privacy. While Kevin searched under the sink for a handheld mirror, I took out my driver’s license and my baggie. Kevin found a mirror, and we cut out two lines each, blew them, and left the amorous couple to their business.
Kevin and I parted ways at the second floor landing, and I snatched a bottle of red wine from the wine pong room. I was by no means a wine connoisseur, but drinking wine in such a way seemed frivolous and wasteful. My train of thought told me that I was liberating this bottle of wine from people who were just going to chug it out of red plastic cups. Honorable. I left the room, and began walking down the stairs to the ground floor, when I heard a voice from behind me yelling, “Hey, you can’t just take that!”
I turned around. She would have been cute if she hadn’t had so much to drink already. It was a real shame. The kinds of girls who start shit at parties are never good company. “Sorry, sweetheart, but I doubt you’ll miss this one.”
“Don’t fucking sweetheart me,” she said, and laid a hand on the wine bottle.
“Tricky situation, Marcus,” I thought to myself. She had the higher ground, and by putting a hand on the bottle, she’s already implied that she’s ready to use force to get it back. If I had pulled back, I’d have been putting myself in any number of undesirable situations. She could have an angry and overprotective boyfriend, or worse yet, a knight in shining armor could spot us wrestling over this bottle and try to make himself a hero. Getting into any sort of physical altercation with a girl at such a public occasion is always asking for trouble. Reluctantly, I loosened my grip on the bottle of Yellowtail, and acquiesced control of the situation.
“Townie asshole,” she muttered as she walked away with my wine. I wished I had stayed home.
Slightly fazed, I walked back down and met Kevin by the beer pong table, where I filled up a red cup with whatever watered-down piss was in the keg. Kevin was talking to two moderately attractive girls, who would have been knockouts by the end of the night. The one on the right, to whom Kevin was directing most of his attention, had long straight blonde hair that swayed when she nodded her head, which she was doing quite a lot, and was wearing a shirt that was just a little too short for a girl of her build. Not to say she was fat, of course, just that the shirt probably didn’t fit her the way it used to. The one on the left was a brunette, shorter than her counterpart, and noticeably less interested. She was slightly more attractive from where I was standing, but Kevin always had a thing for blondes.
“Ladies, this is my buddy Marcus. Marky, this is Katie and Cathy,” Kevin said, motioning towards me. I fucking hated that Marky shit, and he knew it.
“Katie and Cathy? Seriously?” I asked without thinking.
“Dude!”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it, but how often is there an occurrence like that, you know?” I said. “Nice to meet you both.”
“So do you go to UGA too,” Katie (the blonde) asked me.
“Uh, yeah. Well, I used to. I graduated in 2005.”
“Well, what do you do,” asked Katie.
“I, uh, work at the UPS facility over on the other side of town. Graveyard shift.”
“Oh, so you’re a townie now,” Cathy asked. Kind of a bitch; I liked that.
“According to the angry wine pong queen upstairs, I suppose so.”
“I don’t get it,” announced Katie.
“It’s nothing, just a joke. Some chick up there called me a—“
“Oh,” Katie interrupted, obviously not paying attention. “We’re going to go get some drinks, do you guys want some?”
“Yeah, I’ll take one. You need a drink, bud,” Kevin asked, to which I shook my head no. “Yeah, just one,” he said, handing her his cup as they walked off. “So what do you think, man?”
“They seem nice.”
“Come on, Marcus, I’m trying to do you a favor here.”
“And I appreciate that, I’m just not really that into either of them. I’ll leave it up to you to take a stab at the trifecta though,” I told him, looking off at the living room where a group of designated drivers were quietly watching Old School and ignoring their surroundings. I imagined that Katie was having the same conversation with Cathy, which was comforting.
“Goddamnit, you are so fucking frustrating sometimes, dude. I’m just trying to get you out of this rut you’re in.”
“I’m not in a fucking rut,” I yelled a little bit too loud.
“Alright, alright, fine. Have some more to drink, man, it’ll level you out. You’re high-strung as fuck. Your face looks like death.”
“Yeah…yeah,” I replied, unable to think of any other response, as I walked over to the keg, passing Katie and Cathy on my way.
After getting to the keg, I downed a couple of beers, and then moved on to The Duke’s liquor cabinet, where I pulled out the bottle of Blue Label, and began sipping liberally from it. I took the bottle with me and meandered through the crowds to the bathroom. There was a line, so I went to the second floor bathroom, and was headed off at the pass by the wine girl and whatever boy toy she had on her arm.
“Yo, I gotta use the bathroom,” I told her.
“Well, I was here first. Use the one downstairs,” she said, pulling the male closer to her.
“Oh come on, the line is huge!”
“I don’t give a fuck,” she snorted as she closed the door. “We’ll be a while, so I wouldn’t wait here if I were you. Unless you’re trying to get some sick perverted thrill.”
“Bitch,” I stated as I headed back down the stairs. I wasn’t even going to attempt the third floor bathroom. It was much too late to be interacting with the trippers upstairs. They were easily frightened, and they could have weapons. I exited the house through the back door, and found a nice secluded spot near the back of the fenced in yard in which to relieve myself.

to be cont.