I Just Want My Pants Back (20 page)

“Where the fuck are you, Jason?”

“Hi, Stacey,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I had a job today, it came up at the last minute and it was just horrible, and I completely forgot about dinner. You won’t believe what I had to do.”

“That’s bullshit. How could you forget? We confirmed it this morning. You couldn’t call me?! Eric swapped rounds with one of his friends so he could have the night off and join us. We’re sitting at a table for three.”

The street was empty. I sat down on the curb and put my fingers to the bridge of my nose. “I’m really, really sorry, Stacey. I didn’t mean to forget. I really did have a job today, and it…I’ll tell you about it later but it was shitty and I forgot. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care, Jason. What’s with you lately? I mean, how can I trust you to do the wedding when you can’t even remember dinner?”

I stood up. “Because dinner is just dinner, it’s not a wedding, people eat it every night. C’mon, I mean, sheesh, I’m sorry. I mean maybe I’m a little drunk right now and I fucked up, but I’ll remember your wedding.”

“Whoa-whoa-whoa. You’re drunk? Are you at a bar right now? Jesus, Jason…”

“Slow down. I got drunk after the shitty—”

“It’s just the way you’ve been lately, Jason. You do everything half-assed, and the wedding—I’m sure you mock it with Tina and all—but it is obviously very important to Eric and me. You can’t marry us in front of our families half-assed. And you know, the last time we saw you…I don’t mean to be rude, but you need to hear this. You looked like crap, like you don’t give a crap, you’re just soooo bohemian or something. And that’s not exactly how we thought you were going to take this responsibility. Maybe it was a bad idea.”

Now I was pacing back and forth in front of the bar. “I am taking it seriously, okay? I just got laid off…”

“Six weeks ago.”

“Hey, I’m unemployed, I’m allowed to look like shit and be in a shitty mood. I went to those classes, I’m not blowing off anything—how many times have we talked about it, how many dinners, how many phone calls? You don’t trust me? That is so insulting, Stacey, I don’t even know what to say. What am I going to do, show up wearing a swastika?!” I was yelling, and I was shaking.

“That’s just how I feel right now, Jason,” she said quietly, doing the calm thing now that I was mad. Oh, how I hated that! “I don’t know what to say. You just seem a little out of it, or in a bad place or something, I don’t know. You don’t seem to want to talk about it, and maybe it’s not the best time to do something like this, something for people other than yourself. I’m going to talk to Eric and we’ll figure out what we’re going to do.”

“Oh, give me a break. What am I, some drugged-out high school kid on an after-school special? Don’t sound so sorry for me, ugh!” I was squeezing the phone with all my might. Completely flummoxed, I blurted out, “You know, my fucking GPA was higher than yours.”

Her voice was quaking a little. “I’m sorry you had a shitty day,” she said. “Bye.” She hung up.

“Fuck!” I yelled to the empty street. I snapped my phone shut and then reopened it. Then I shut it again and thought better of it and opened it again. Then I dialed Eric’s cell-phone number as fast as I could.

“Oh, hi there, Jason,” he said.

“Are you standing right there with Stacey?” I asked, heart pounding.

“No, no. She just ran into the bathroom crying.” He put on a mock-happy tone. “Soooo, how are you?”

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Eric, she just was nagging me and I had a really shitty day—a really shitty couple months too, and I’m drunk.” I took a breath, and kept pacing. “Tell her I’m sorry. I’ll call her tomorrow and apologize.”

“I will. And you will.”

“Are you pissed at me too?” I asked.

“Yeah, I mean, my fiancée’s crying and you blew me off for dinner,” he said. I thought I could hear him take a sip of something, I was imagining wine. Wine they bought to calm themselves because they were mad at me. “I’m not exactly thrilled with you right now, you could say.”

I stopped pacing and stared down the street. A homeless guy was directing someone in an Audi wagon as they parallel-parked. “C’mon, Er. It was only dinner. Give me a chance. I will not screw up your wedding. I’m not a loser.” The wagon hit the minivan behind it, setting off the car alarm. The homeless guy cackled. I put my finger in my ear.

“Well, you’re acting a little bit like a loser right now, dude.” He paused. “But you are doing the wedding. It’s way too late to find a real rabbi now, those guys get booked like six months to a year in advance.” He took another sip of whatever it was. “Just, do me a favor. Call Stacey tomorrow and apologize.”

“Done. I will.”

“And, just slow down a bit. Okay? Stacey’s worried about you, and, well, so am I.”

I told him I would. I didn’t think I had been speeding off anywhere, though; frankly, it felt like I was going in reverse. But I played nice and said good-bye. Then I walked right back into the bar.

16

Yes, leaving would’ve been the right thing to do. The mature thing. The thought burped up after I did the shot Derek handed me. But I didn’t feel like it, how about that? My hair was crunchy from sweating all day. I was chafing at the crotch. I didn’t want to go home and think. I didn’t want to lie on my couch again and be sad, brush my teeth and feel sad, and get in bed and jerk off sad. Christ, it was all so dull and pathetic and tiresome. So I got another drink after the shot and I bullshat with Beth. I gladly accepted a hit of Ecstasy from that pickle chick. She had a shitload in an Altoids tin. I swallowed it knowing full well it was an eight-hour ticket to God knows where.

I looked around at the laughing faces. Everyone was having fun, I must’ve been having fun. For like a half-hour I felt good, like I could lift five hundred pounds right up over my head. It was all gonna work out. It always did.

Then just like that, I felt the nausea. I hurried to the bathroom and locked the door. My tongue felt swollen. I was leaning over the toilet, retching, puking up pure liquid. I wondered how much money in alcohol I was spitting into the shitter. I coughed a final time, then balled up some toilet paper and wiped my mouth. I felt a little better. I washed my face with cold water and looked in the mirror. Jesus, my pupils! They took up my whole eyeballs—I couldn’t even remember what color my irises were as I looked at the black saucers that had replaced them. I was like a fucking Japanese
anime
character. Oh boy, I thought. Oh boy, oh boy.

I went back out to the bar. The E was really starting to kick in. Who were these people? Everyone’s sneakers were sparkling like they had special Christmas lights in them. Some shitty Chieftains song was playing and the fiddle in it was like a paper cut on my eye. I squeezed past a guy so close I could smell his breath, I could see his nostril hairs growing, they were getting longer and longer and they looked sharp like bayonets and I felt relieved when I finally got past him and found my way back to the table and sat my ass down. I gripped the sides of the chair with both hands.

Beth turned to me. “Where did you go?” she asked. Her face was like a puddle someone had thrown a pebble in, rippling gently.

“So tell me,” I said, back to her, “what is it about death you Goths love so much?”

“What?” she said. “We don’t love death.”

“Yeah you do! You loooooove death. You want to marry it. Rock-’n’-roll is supposed to be about sex and drugs, but you Goths can’t wait to die and be buried and rot. It’s all misery and spiderwebs and blackness. Explain it to me.” I crossed my legs. “I want to learn the ways of your kind.”

“What? You’re wasted!”

I took a sip of a drink, it might have been my drink, it was wet like I recalled my drink being. “And yet, I am speaking the true word. Verily, I might add.”

“Give me a break, we like drugs and sex just as much as classic-rock people like you,” she said, poking me in the chest.

I grabbed her finger, hard. “How dare you?! How dare you call me classic rock! Do I look like Sammy Hagar?”

She laughed, “No. Tom Petty.”

I held her finger still. It was warm, I could feel the blood in it, circulating, doing its thing. I pulled her in and tried to kiss her.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said, pushing me back.

“C’mon, I have like every Cure album,” I said, sliding away from her, giving up, taking another sip of whatever it was in front of me. I hummed into the glass, “The Lovecats…da da da da da da da da da da da…”

“Hey, Cakeboy, you want this shot of SoCo? I bought it for you,” said Derek, clapping me on the back.

“I fucking hate SoCo,” I said, and downed it. It tasted like cough syrup and dirt.

I don’t know how much later it was, but all of a sudden that same Derek was manhandling me out of the bar and tossing me toward the gutter like I was a wet sack of trash. I was airborne and then I landed right on my coccyx, right on the corner of the curb. I let out a yelp and I saw stars and they were twinkling and then I wished I saw little birds like in cartoons and I might have just for a sec. I had walked up to that pickle chick and kissed her right on the mouth. Her tongue was cold and hard and wet, like a snail shell. Then Derek ripped me off her and here I was, Raggedy Andy.

I rolled over and looked up and Derek was standing almost on top of me. His ratty Converse were by my hair, the hem of his pants hung inches above my nose. The hem on one leg was flecked with white. White paint. Fuck a fucking farmer!

“My goddamn Dickies!” I yelled. I grabbed the cuff and inspected it. Paint splotches all around, they were definitely mine! Crackling through my head came fractured images of how they arrived here, how they got on the legs of the dude who just trashed me. I saw Jane fucking Derek, doing all kinds of filthy things to him and his big black dick. Yes, goddamnit—it was black, black as a chess piece. And big, the stereotype was true and everyone fucking knew it. I shared a high school gym locker with my friend Nate, he was black and I’d see his junk dangling, an elephant trunk searching for peanuts, making my Jew cock, my Lil’ Petey, my next-door-neighbor-that’ll-give-you-a-ride-to-the-airport-in-his-unexceptional-but-reliable-Camry average-sized dick look like an itty-bitty jalapeño pepper. I saw it all, first Jane worshipping Derek’s monolith, and then her swaddling it gently in my Dickies.

I squinted up at Derek. “Where’d you get ’em?”

“What?” He looked down at me. He was smirking, the fucker.

“These pants.” I yanked on the cuff. “These fucking pants. Where? They’re mine.”

“Yeah, okay. Fuck you.” He put his foot on my chest and let a goober drop from his mouth. It splattered right on my neck.

“You fucking horrible piece of shit!” I let go of the Dickies and desperately wiped at the loogie with my hand. It was a snotty one, it felt like warm jelly, it was fucking miserable. Derek turned away and started back into the bar.

“Those are my fucking pants!” I yelled after him. “You cunting fuck!” I tried to get up, and an excruciating pain immediately shot through my coccyx. I lay back down to ease it and slapped my hand on the curb. “You have to be fucking kidding me!”

I heard people laughing and then the bar door closed and it was all muted. I rested my head on the concrete, my ass bone was just aching. I hoped I didn’t break it. Not my sweet ass, not my pride and joy.

I don’t know how long I lay there, resting, afraid I might need some kind of truss. Some assholes walked past and said something I was pretty sure wasn’t complimentary. All I could see was their shoes, and they had that sparkle too. I decided that gray was a really good color for cement, it suited it. Cement sounded gray. Fucking Jane, fucking slut, fucking whore, fucking thief, fucking chicken fucker. Shit, maybe Derek didn’t even get the pants from her, maybe she’d had a lesbian affair and that girl stole them from her and then Derek slept with the new girl and got the pants. Or maybe Derek and Jane were married and she cheated on him with me, maybe I cuckolded him, maybe I fucking won, it could’ve been. The pants permutations were astronomical. Neon mathematical equations flashed across the concrete.

I turned my head the other way, toward the street. In front of my face were a bunch of butts scattered in the gutter. I stretched out and scraped up a few of the bigger ones. I put one that had lipstick on the filter in my mouth and imagined who had been sucking on it, what she looked like, how it tasted on her lips. Then after a little while, I slowly stood up. It hurt but I could do it. I patted my pockets until I found my lighter. I had a long walk home. I was going to finally learn to smoke.

 * * * * * 

T
he stairs at 99 Perry were extra-steep, and tonight they seemed steeper than ever. My coccyx flared on every one of them. I vowed to call the landlord the next day and lobby for an elevator, an escalator, a ski lift, a rope tow, or a Sherpa-like person to provide piggyback rides. I held on to the railing with one hand and held a bag with two black-and-white cookies and a Gatorade in the other, courtesy of Bobby. The red neon Bud sign he had installed in the window was the most beautiful thing I ever saw, I kept telling him. I really, really wanted to lick it. I knew it would be delicious if only he’d let me try. He gave me the cookies for free, the first time he had ever given me something for free. I was pretty sure I kissed him on the cheek afterward, the handsome devil. He kept telling me to keep my voice down.

I knocked on Patty’s door, the shave-and-a-haircut. She opened up after the second rendition.

“Want a black-and-white cookie?” I said, reaching into the bag and fanning out the two cookies in front of her face.

“I don’t think so,” she said, standing in a flannel nightgown, frowning. “It’s a little late for dessert.”

“It’s never too late for cookies, Patty! Santa has milk and cookies in the middle of the night,” I said, leaning against the doorjamb.

“Shh,” she said. “Come in here, it’s the middle of the night.” I shuffled inside and she closed the door. She looked me over. “What are you on? You stink of booze, and something,” she said.

“Cake,” I said, mouth already full with a bite of cookie. We went and sat in her main room. Between bites of cookie and swallows of Gatorade, I explained my sweaty working day.

Patty rubbed her eyes. Her voice was raspy. “You’re lucky that was so awful because you woke me up, and I was feeling a little bit of anger toward you for that. If someone doesn’t answer after one knock, don’t keep knocking for ten minutes.”

“I knocked twice,” I protested.

“Nuh-uh,” she said. “Trust me.” She stretched her arms behind her head, yawning. “You look like a homeless person. What’s up with your hair?”

“I was a piece of cake all day. It’s a demanding job!” I eyed the second cookie. “You want to share?” I said, holding it up.

“All yours,” she yawned. “And stop yelling.”

I ripped it open. “Sucker,” I said. I took two big bites, one of white, one of black, for maximum flavorfulness. “It’s good to get a taste of the yin and the yang at the same time,” I said, crumbs falling from my mouth.

Patty eyed me, arms crossed. “So what’s up?”

“What do you mean?” I responded, before taking a slug of Gatorade.

“I mean, you didn’t pop in to chitchat, did you?” She gestured to the clock behind me. It was after four. She adjusted herself, leaning heavily on a throw pillow. She looked tired. Her face seemed to sway and the skin was sagging off the bone. But everything was moving around on me, really.

“Kinda,” I said. “I thought you’d be up and we could hang. Or maybe go get a drink at that Gus’s place?” I pulled out some moist, balled-up bills from my pocket and smoothed one. “My treat!”

“Jesus, Jason,” she said, “you sure you don’t want to talk about something? I mean, please tell me you want to. Because it’s late and as you are well aware, I do tend to get a bit tired these days for obvious reasons.” She pushed some hair off her face and tucked it behind her ear. “And although I like to think I’m a pretty laid-back person, I think you know that no one is quite this laid-back. So spill it, or let me get back to bed.”

I sat there for a second. “Seriously? I don’t think I can be serious right now.” I looked both ways, and stage-whispered, “I’m on drugs.”

“Okay, hit the road then, Jack. I’m exhausted.”

“Wait.” I wiped the crumbs off my shirt. I swallowed and tried to pull it together. “No, um, I don’t know. I’m having a tough time, I guess. The job thing, some other stuff. You know it all, Patty. It’s been hitting me hard lately. My friends think I’m a bit of a fuck-up. But whatever, everything is fine, I think.”

Patty leaned over and broke a piece off the cookie. White. She considered it, and then put it on the coffee table. “Well, Jason, I haven’t known you all that long, but maybe you should listen to your friends. Maybe you’ve become something of a fuck-up.”

I smiled at her but then realized she wasn’t joking. Or done.

She continued. “I mean, I, for one, did not choose a life that was defined by what I did for a living, so I would never lecture you on that. But this is the cold hard facts of life, neighbor. You spend the bulk of your day doing something for money. Welcome to America. So start looking for what it’s going to be. Who cares what it is? Find something that makes you happy, it’s not a vision quest. And by that I mean, look harder than you are.” She propped herself up on her elbow. Her skin looked translucent, like a jellyfish. I could see the muscles working in her jaw as she spoke. And I could see the sound waves emanating from her mouth, spreading in ever-larger concentric circles until they washed over me.

“And let me ask you this, I’m just going to say it. Why don’t you ever date a girl? It’s none of my business, but I don’t think you have ever told me about one girl you’ve dated, like, a few times. Think about that. It’s not normal. I’m not someone who’s for normality necessarily, mind you, but still. It’s something you might think about next time you’re doing some self-examining—which should be soon, Jason.”

“You’re really harshing my mellow, Patty,” I said, blinking, trying to grin.

She yawned, and scratched her pale cheek. “Humor is an excellent defense mechanism, neighbor. I know, I use it all the time. Especially these days.” She picked up the broken piece of cookie she had left on the table and popped it into her mouth. “Ugh, it’s stale.” She swallowed and cleared her throat. “Look, we never got real deep about this, and shoot, I can’t even tell if you’re really hearing me right now anyway, but when you’re in my ‘situation,’ you tend to look back across your life, and you get a good sense of where you got it right and where it could’ve gone righter. Maybe that’s why I’m so worked up. I think the world of you, Jason. You know that. You could be a star. You could also end up a cynical New York asshole—you know, you see them on the train, a really intelligent, really bitter nothing who’s forgotten how to smile.” She shrugged. “I’m just saying. Maybe your friends have a point. I don’t know, maybe they don’t.” She dropped her head down to her chest. “Maybe we’re all full of shit.” She stopped, and put both hands to the side of her head and rubbed her temples. “I’m exhausted. I have to get back in bed. Could you help me, please?”