I Just Want My Pants Back (16 page)

Rabbi Stan gave a quick clap when she was through. “Yes, very good!”

Then it was my turn. Perfect, right after the valedictorian. I tap-danced my way through, with a lot of hemming and hawing. I was a little kid giving a book report on a book he hadn’t read. At one point I apologized for not being completely prepared, as “work had been just overwhelming last week.” Nothing like lying in temple. I stumbled and bumbled through. It was painful.

Class wound down, and everyone began to pack up. Jennifer sidled up beside me.

“Hey. Your stuff sounded really good,” I said, touching her on her shoulder.

“Thanks! Yours is, um, coming along,” she said, biting her lip.

“I know, I know,” I frowned. “I’m going to crank on it this weekend. Or hey, maybe I’ll just steal your idea. Except my friends are getting married this summer, so that won’t work, shoot.” I gestured down the hall. “Hey, are we still going to the party? I could use a drink after that flop.”

“Absolutely,” she said. “Let’s get our stuff and head on over.” She pulled her hair behind her head with both hands, and I struggled to keep eye contact as her shirt pulled taut. Her stomach was so flat it reminded me of Kansas.

As we left, I walked over to the rabbi and thanked him. He gave me a stern, disapproving look. Comically stern, but still. “Don’t worry, I’m going to get it there, I promise,” I told him.

“I know you will, Jason. Because you must. But just in case, take this.” He handed me his business card, onto which he had written his cell-phone number. So even rabbis had cards. With raised ink and rounded corners too. I slipped it into my wallet.

“Call me if you need more help, or if you have questions about the ceremony, or anything at all. Do not hesitate,” he said, locking eyes with me. “I mean that.” He shook my hand. “Just be sincere. The rest will follow.” He pulled his hand back and finally broke into a smile. “Now, I won’t see you after your ceremony, so this is pre-emptive: Mazel tov!” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Take care, Jason.”

“Thanks, Rabbi.”

 * * * * * 

I
sucked down a big gulp of beer and looked around the room. Jennifer was off in the bathroom somewhere. I checked out the party space, a cafeteria at Columbia that had been transformed via balloons, streamers, two kegs, and several stray bottles of liquor. It was pretty crowded, and a few people were dancing in the middle of the room to something off what I thought was Eminem’s first album. I didn’t really know that much about hip-hop, somewhere around Tupac and Biggie I gave up on ever figuring it all out. Maybe it was that I didn’t look good in baggy pants, who knows? The rhymes never seemed to touch me the way rock or country or folk did.

It had been like ten minutes and Jennifer was still nowhere in sight. I was starting to feel a little bored, and also a little dissed. I jammed my hands in my pockets and felt around. Ah, there it was, left front pocket, nuzzled up next to an ageless wonder of a Chapstick: a squished but functional joint. If I had learned anything in Cub Scouts, it was to always be prepared.

I slipped out to a bodega on the corner and bought a lighter. I chose the one featuring a photo of an Hispanic woman in a bikini eating a hot dog. It exuded class, and I was most certainly a gentleman. Quickly, I lit the joint and kept walking. It was never good to stand on a corner or in an alleyway with a joint, that was suspicious. No, you had to keep moving like you were just smoking a regular cigarette, a regular man about town simply enjoying his nicotine fix. I walked around the corner, sucking in furiously, moving as inconspicuously as I could toward an altered state.

On the way to the party, I had gotten to know Jennifer a bit more. She was from New Jersey originally and had gone to Wisconsin undergrad. She tried to go to shul regularly. She liked my glasses, and so obviously had good taste. When I had asked if there would be any drugs at this party, referring to the fact that it was a med student affair, she had looked more than a little taken aback. “You know, penicillin and stuff?” I said, making the joke clear, and putting the smile back on her face. I doubted she had a bong, let’s leave it at that.

I licked my finger, extinguished the joint, pocketed it, and headed back to the party. Fuck, I thought, I should’ve bought mints at the deli. I wondered if I had smoked not enough, too much, or just right. Time would soon tell. I rooted for the Baby Bear outcome.

I looked around the room at the drunken physicians-to-be. They were like anyone else, I supposed, laughing and flirting. And yet someday I’d count on one of them to keep me alive. Odd. It wasn’t like they were born to heal. Somewhere around sophomore year these folks were thinking, “I don’t know, maybe I should go pre-med, but organic chemistry is supposed to be such a bitch.” But they made the decision and powered through. To think that a job where you held someone’s life in your hands came down to something as trite as a discussion over a cheeseburger at “The Rat” about what major to choose.

And then, over the sound of Wham! blasting through the cafeteria speakers, I heard the voice of Mick Jagger in my head. “Oh here it comes…here it co-omes!” And just like that, the High, as if behind me on a hike, suddenly sprinted, caught up, clapped its arm around my shoulder, and shouted, “Howdy, old friend!” For some reason in the movie that my mind was currently screening, the High was played by a fresh-faced Randy Quaid in a cowboy hat and with a stick of straw in his teeth. I greeted him in return.

“I’m feeling really high,” I said.

“Well, shucks. You smoked a lot mighty fast.” Quaid wiped some sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his brown suede coat.

Suddenly I was starving. I shook Quaid out of my head and made my way over to a table that had some plastic bowls on it. Chex Mix. I dug in, hoping the med students had washed their hands. Crunching away, I wandered around and scanned for Jennifer.

I finally spied her way off in the corner talking to a tall, skinny guy with a Long Island look. Baseball hat, goatee, very light blue jeans, Timberlands. It seemed like they were having a bit of an argument; Jennifer was doing a lot of gesticulating. If I didn’t know better I would have thought she was signing. Or throwing gang signs.

I was feeling pretty stoned, my eyes were having trouble focusing. It was crowded in there, I didn’t know anyone, and I was on the verge of going to the ugly anxious place, so I heel-toed it back over to the booze table and quickly fixed myself a vodka soda. I took a sip, hoping it would take the edge off, then looked back to see that Jennifer was still flapping her arms at the guy. I kept looking at them jabbering away. I wasn’t sure how to handle it. I finally decided to casually swing past them on my way to the little doctor’s room and see what happened.

I slowly walked over by them and hovered for a second. Jennifer didn’t even look at me, she just kept talking. I moved past them and went straight into the bathroom, feeling a little like a jackass, like an unwanted pursuer. My face was flushed. I was suddenly the teenage dork at the high school dance. The bathroom smelled like bad urinal mint. I sucked down a big mouthful of vodka and put the drink on the counter. I didn’t really have to pee even, but I went over to the urinal and squeezed out a few drops, lest I be a guy in a bathroom with a drink, not peeing.

Washing my hands, I finally started to feel the vodka, and it felt good, calming. It took me down a notch. It was the voice of reason. Suddenly my posture was improving. I wasn’t a jackass, no, not yet anyway. Yes, I definitely preferred vodka to regular potatoes, that was for certain. I smiled at myself in the mirror. I was okay by me. Then I winked. It was a pretty queer move.

Feeling stronger, I walked tall back out toward Jennifer and Long Island, determined only to use my peripheral vision as I passed. I figured if she didn’t stop me, I was just going to keep walking straight to the train and head back downtown. Fuck it, the whole thing. I had my sea legs now. As I stepped past, though, Jennifer reached out and grabbed my hand.

“Hey, there you are. Let’s go dance,” she said, looking at Long Island, then tugging me toward the area where people were dancing. She kept pulling me right through it and back over to the alcohol. She filled up a red plastic cup with keg beer.

“So, um,” I said, “what’s the drama?”

“What are you talking about?” She took a long sip of beer.

“Oh, c’mon.” I gestured back there, and grinned. “You’ve been gone for like a half hour. You can tell me.”

She took the cup from her mouth. “Okay, okay, I went on like one date with that guy, and he was hassling me because I showed up to this party with you.” She took another sip. “It’s no big deal, really.”

“Only one date, huh? He seems a little bent out of shape for that.” I stretched out my arms. “Hey, I’m just a friend of yours from class, right?”

She blushed. “Right. I mean that’s what I told him. Whatever.” She took another big swallow from her cup. Lipstick showed from the rim, a slightly darker shade of red than the cup.

“Cheers,” I said. “To Rabbi Stan.”

“Cheers,” she said. She took a sip and smiled at me, her blue eyes shining. She was really quite pretty.

It was then that I made my decision. I was going to get completely shitfaced. And I was going to get Jennifer completely shitfaced. “Can you handle two of us, Quaid?” I shouted, internally. No answer. “Quaaaaaid!” I yelled.

A pregnant moment of silence.

“Is a bullfrog waterproof?” Quaid boomed, somewhere off-screen.

I wasn’t sure. But I turned to Jennifer and pointed to the vodka bottle on the table. “How about a shot of this?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, waving her hand.

“All the cool kids are doing it,” I said.

“I was never really a cool kid.”

“Here’s your chance at the big time, then.”

“I can’t pass that up, I guess.”

“L’chaim,” I said.

We both grimaced as the room-temperature vodka went from the bottoms of two plastic cups to the backs of our throats. The second shot wasn’t any easier.

And then we were both dancing. I was not a good dancer, it wasn’t one of my strengths, but I could do it in a pinch. Luckily the dancing took place during a block of the Jackson 5, and even a man as white as I, whose lineage seemed to go back to a land called Caucasia, could find the beat in that. Jennifer told me between songs that she hadn’t gotten drunk in months; med school was just too overwhelming. The girl needed to blow off some steam. I did what I could to help. I got us both another beer. Every sip made the world a better place. For her. For me. For America.

I noticed that Long Island guy sort of lurking about. I was getting drunker and he must’ve been as well. Alcohol plus cuckolding begets violence. So I put my arm around Jennifer and suggested we go someplace else. And bang, we were on the street, in a cab, flying downtown with everything blurry and wonderful.

I don’t know how I did it exactly. But soon we were on my front stoop sharing an oilcan of Fosters. We had gone into the deli, and while Jennifer was in the back looking at the beer choices, Bobby threw me a high-five. “All right, Boss, all right for you!” he whispered. Normally I don’t allow the high-five, but this seemed like the reason it was invented. Jennifer emerged from the back with two oilcans, and I bought them without discussion. We sat down on the stoop, and she leaned in close to me, smelling like beer and something sweet. She kissed me softly on the lips.

“Hi, you,” she whispered. Thus began what one could call “a make-out session.” She was a really good kisser. And I liked to think I was holding my own.

Every so often I tried to softly convince Jennifer to come upstairs, but she was holding out pretty good. I started thinking maybe I should play it cool, maybe I should save that for our next date. Wasn’t that how relationships normally began, slowly building up to sex over a few dates, instead of starting with a one-night stand? I mean Tina had probably been sandwiched between Brett and a hairless Tahitian boy on their first date, but they were the exception that proved the rule. It was kind of too late for such wise thoughts, though; Jennifer was going to come upstairs. I already had an ace up my sleeve, an ace I knew would be played shortly. And then it happened.

“I need to use a bathroom,” she said, pulling back from a kiss.

“No problem,” I said, standing up awkwardly due to Petey’s half-salute. I pulled my ace out, the keys that led to the bathroom in my apartment, jingled them at her, and opened the door. Always fucking bet on the bladder. It cannot be denied.

We climbed the stairs. I glanced at Patty’s door as I hunched to put the key in mine. I straightened up for a minute. How the fuck didn’t I know what was going on with her? I felt a wave of nerves.

I turned the key and we entered my place. As Jennifer excused herself to the bathroom, I hustled. I went to throw on the first CD my fingers touched, but it ended up being
The Velvet Underground and Nico
and that was just not going to work unless we planned to tie off and shoot up first. So I shoved it aside and put in the second album my fingers touched, The Flaming Lips’
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
, and then I uncapped two Stellas that had been resting in the crisper in my fridge. I saw some dirty clothes on the couch and tossed them into the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink. I looked the room over. It was acceptable, I supposed. I sat down on the couch and glanced at the clock. Three.

Jennifer reemerged. She walked over to the couch, sat on my lap, and started kissing me. The taste of mouthwash was strong. Damn it, I had to get name-brand mouthwash, this was getting ridiculous. We began making out again, like teenagers.

Once we started there was no stopping. I slowly made my way up her back, and went to unhook her bra. I tried with one hand but was unsuccessful. Damn my pathetic fingers, damn them! I brought in the left and with two hands the job was soon accomplished. She backed away from me for a moment, then pulled the bra out of the bottom of her shirt. We started kissing again and then, yes, I touched them! One I named Mt. Sinai. The other I promised to name later, after I had researched the name of another famous Jewish mountain or large hill. They were all I had hoped for. I would gladly fight to defend them for my people. I kissed them as if they were the Holy Land.