Lightops

dneroniqew

Part I: A is for Alcohol

Call me first, the fool. It had only been two summers that blazed behind my high school days, graduation an quant memory, and the callous rot had already begun to settle in. It served only to make my jaded former self of that age all the more sinister. Having never entered college, a decision I'll never be vogue enough to regret, has caused me to melt back further behind the sidelines than I had ever been before. The density of the months survived left my personality to sink rock hard to wherever they belonged, I didn't even care anymore. I couldn't care less about my whereabouts even though I knew exactly where I was at all times - I could move on without caring - or maybe I couldn't and that was the point.

August could be identified the by the number of sunglasses I had gone through. My current shades were of the sixth variety that came through to me, and it was high time I lost them. Having felt that all the decision making that needed to be done was done, there was hardly any thought involved as I let my poor used dollar-store sunglasses drop onto the pavement. Before I could complain about the sudden attack of light, a familiar shaped shadow came across my path: Trollo. Really, it was Edmond Troller, but 'Trollo' was what we called him around here. He was my dear pudgy little gay boy, and I his trustworthy dyke. Together we supplied all the mediocrity this town could manage.

"And what sort of curses have I got me here?" I put my hands on my hips and pretended to be perturbed by his presence. In reality, I could have stood there all day, letting his bulk save me from the sun. "Trollo, Trollo."

Trollo had this particular way of speaking, always taking in these short, distinct breaths before every statement. It made conversation with the boy feel disconnected, and the experience that followed unusually segmented, like segments from a dream. "Did you just throw your sunglasses on the ground?" Quick inhale. "Wasn't it, like, a big deal when you lost the ones before those?"

I shook my head. The boy - he had it all wrong. "That's because I didn't lose those. They were stolen from me, taken right from under my nose. It was bullshit. Just thinking about it makes me mad."

Inhale. "Ok, so why are your sunglasses on the ground?" Inhale. "It's not to late to pick them up, you know." Inhale. "There's still time."

"No, Trollo: the very progress of time depends on replacing them." If Trollo knew how honestly I felt about that statement, he would have scoffed louder. Maybe I was underestimating the boy and he knew exactly how honestly I meant it, which would explain his sudden movement that allowed the sun to beam into my eyes again. "Goddammit, Trollo, get your fat ass back where it was."

Completely ignoring my cries of anguish, the larger boy merely rolled his eyes and waiting a moment or two before getting down to business. "I need you to pick up some alcohol for me," This time, Trollo's intake of air was accompanied by a look of concentration. "A handle of vodka, maybe - I'm almost out, it's not going to last the night. Also, Jager and rum." Inhale. "But not that weird coco-butt ass-flavored rum. Real rum. Spiced rum, but not Captain Morgan, because I'm poor." Inhale. "What's the cheap version of that? Admiral Nelson?" Inhale. "I also need some 30-racks of beer. Natty ice is ok, I guess."

Before Trollo could complete his shopping list for me, my mind was already off thinking about Trollo's party tonight. It wasn't a big deal, the boy had them every Friday. Even though he was only 19, he still felt it was part of his civic duty to hold them regularly - and he had to keep up a righteous stock of alcohol to do so. The particular stock in question was largely born by the cold, hard labors by myself and Trollo's other main over-21 friend, Chris Hosak. Hosak was a six-foot-three part-time bouncer at a bar by night, and a sub-par community college student by day. He was a good one to be around in social gatherings that involved alcohol consumption, but nearly intolerable when sober; my main complaint against him being that he was straight and always dating the hottest things. Like me, he had been forced to repeat a grade in elementary school, so while the rest of our peers were twenty or younger, we got the alcoholic purchasing power of our seniors. Suddenly aware that I had lost Trollo completely, a bizarre anxiety flushed through me. "Just write it all down, ok?"

An quick inhale later and Trollo was nodding, asking me for a pen.

---

I was unofficially in love with her nearly the moment we met. It was the sleazy type of love you felt ashamed to admit it wasn't lust. Surely, a slightly older, jaded lesbian such as myself had no business having these feelings for this younger girl, fresh out of high school, already drunk on her parent's wine and stumbling into Trollo's party, high on her brother's weed . You could see it on her face that she was ashamed of her state in front of so many strangers, closely trailing an older boy I'd seen before at Trollo's gatherings that I've talked to before but could never remember the name of - Jim or Jake or something. Without fully assessing the situation and feeling a bit of the kamikaze shots I'd inhaled earlier, I approached Jim or Jake and without looking at his fresh-faced companion, I greeted him like an old friend.

I could tell immediately that Jim or Jake and this girl had smoked some weed, not too long ago - their eyes landed on me with a near identical combination of relaxation, glee and incomprehension that no sober person could ever manage in honesty. The redness around the eyes was a pure sign of more than just alcohol. Finally allowing myself a glance at the new female presence for a second too small for even a coherent facial expression to hold, I turned back to Jim or Jake and asked him how he was, hoping he'd get the hint to introduce me to his guest. When he didn't I made him promise to play some beer pong with me later - a pledge I secretly hoped I'd never have to live up to - and reached right around him to grab the new girl's hand, shaking it a little more vigorously than she was probably expecting. Her grip was weak, half due to surprise, half due to intoxication, and her eyes smiled the smile that only came with an intense desire to stop feeling awkward and immediately be liked by everyone in the room. I wanted to put her anxiety to rest. It was too soon for me to sense anything positive, but there was something about the girl that rang 'not completely straight' and 'not completely gay' at the same time. This forced me to hope for nothing more than 'bi-curious' or at the very least some drunken making out that even straight girls could be coaxed into given the right amount of alcohol (and other drugs).

All this lead me to feel intense guilt. The guilt was almost overwhelming as my hand lingered on hers, slightly crushing it for a second too long. I heard myself call out over the growing noise of the party "Hey, I'm Sara." Already, this girl had consumed enough alcohol and smoked enough weed to require a solid three seconds to nod and repeat my name in comprehension. My guilt on this matter was purely protocol, however, and I had little problem using the 'conversation' excuse as an opportunity to pull myself close enough to the girl that I could put a hand on her back and lean in with my face only inches from hers; I don't think she noticed the intentional break in personal space as most of her efforts at this point lay in trying to act normal. Taking the bait and leaning in an inch or so herself, the girl smiled and yelled out "Nice to meet you, I'm Vanessa, Jay's sister."

The flood of names was not enough to make me forget the appropriate response in this situation: "Jay, you have a sister?"

Unashamed at never having disclosed this information to me and probably already a little suspicious of my interest, Jay nodded. "Yeah, she just graduated high school. I brought her to start, you know, training for college." The boy looked at his sister, a distinctly sick pride in his face over the corruption he was spreading. It made me feel more and less guilty at the same time: less guilty because my growing desire to spend the rest of the evening handing this girl drink after drink and blunt after blunt would probably be condoned by her deranged chaperone of a big brother; more guilty because deep down, I knew this girl was going to wake up tomorrow in a world of regret for doing things no one at this party would discourage her from doing - here, she had no friends.

"Well why don't I get you both something to drink. Here-" I grabbed some jello-shots off the counter. "I'll check in on you two later."

My escape was largely to quiet suspicion: am not a subtle lesbian. I don't think I'm mannish or unattractive, but most people generally catch on fast enough to my sexuality. It might be the way I talk, the way I move that makes it easy to sense. Or maybe its my blue hand-knit hat that always finds its way on my head, even during the summer, that covers my uninspired mid-neck length brown hair. Or maybe it's my general lack of makeup with the exception of some eyeliner and chapstick for parties. Maybe it's my ratty flip-flops I bought cheap at walmart and had managed to wear holes into them and patch them up with duct take accordingly (I was unhealthily proud of these flip flops to the point where I got in the habit of wearing shorter shorts just to bring focus to them. My legs are ok, I guess, so the shorter shorts weren't too obscene. Sometimes I look at my thighs and I see my mom's genes too much for me to stomach, but all in all I'm not too bothered in showing larger amounts of skin. I'm still saving up for a tattoo on my calf of some elaborate sort. Trollo keeps joking about how I should get a tramp stamp instead to which I recite my desire to get a clit hood piercing before any sort of other body modification, and the mental imagery he gets from that usually shuts him up for a while). Or maybe it was some usual mix of all of these facts that lead people to believe that penis was not what I yearned for. Due to this, I didn't want to intimidate little miss Vanessa too much. I figure I'll let her mingle a bit - but when I find her being anti-social, I'll go up to her and be a welcomed familiar face.

My time spent at Trollo's parties are mostly habitual. I'm a cocktail girl, not a beer girl, so I always tried to keep something like a rum and coke or screwdriver or any other basic type of one-liquor one-mixer type of drink on hand. Maybe it was the presence of Vanessa, but for whatever reason I decided to go straight for the whiskey sours. Whiskey has a way of working its way all through my body, warming it up and numbing it and making me horny all at once: even as I wandered through the heaving movement of the social crowd downstairs to the musty and beer-puddle prone basement where Trollo kept the beer pong, flip cup and other such sporting events, Vanessa was on my mind. I knew I would go back and find her, hopefully before she was too wasted to even flirt with - but some pesky pervasive nervousness persisted. Two more, three more, four more whiskey sours and the liquid courage began to mix with my fantasies and I couldn't put off finding her any more.

I found her on the back porch with her brother and some other dudes. The males were all smoking cigarettes and bullshitting and poor Vanessa was sitting down on the railing, not smoking, and looking bored and sleepy. Very clearly not paying attention, I took the moment to reflect on what it was exactly that I liked about the girl. Her face was beautiful, closer to the cute-side of than the gorgeous-side of the 'beauty' spectrum, but she wasn't unusually attractive. Her choice in clothing reflected strongly a high-school aesthetic, but despite her stylish intentions, the execution was a bit too messy to pull it off all the way: an unintentional drop of extra fabric in her jeans and an awkward tightness around her breasts made me feel she wasn't dressed in her preferred clothes. Her most striking feature, for me, were her lips. Plump and ready, frequently moistened with her tongue - probably more stemming from boredom and habit than any need to hydrate since the summer humidity was strong enough to give her hair a bit of a run through with a few deranged fly-aways around her scalp-line. As far as my attraction for her goes, there was the quite-important notion that she wouldn't be too offended or opposed to my affections if even just for the evening. Without greeting her first, I sat beside her on the railing.

"Hey, Vanessa was it?" She looked at me, her face blank. Though her eyes were a bit glazed over, they were considerably less red so I figured she was more drunk than stoned at this point. "We talked for like, two seconds earlier."

"Oh yeah," When she said it, I knew she hadn't actually recalled me face. This didn't discourage me - it wasn't as though we had developed any great connection earlier. "Sorry, I forgot your name."

"Sarah," I smiled and took a generous swig of my cocktail, swirling the drink around first so the melted ice would mingle in and even out the flavor. "I see you have no drink in your hand. That should be fixed, immediately."

The girl shook her head and prudently shook her finger. "Naw, naw. I've had way to much to drink already. I actually had a shit-ton of wine earlier tonight with my parents, because I didn't realize I'd be coming here tonight. My brother just kind of asked me five or so minutes before we left if I wanted to come. Said I should get a taste of parties before I get off - go off to college. I didn't really party in high school - no one invited me." She let out a nervous little laugh. "I feel so young."

"Yeah, well. I'm not sure if this can be counted as a college-college-party. Trollo and I don't go to college. We just know people who do."

Vanessa nodded. As the lack of further conversation weaved its way in, it felt almost wrong to kick it out. I had a strong feeling that the poor girl was past the stage of intoxication where awkward silences were awkward, and as for myself - well, I was content enough to just look at her.

Looking at her was all good, but I knew that further interaction was needed - I couldn't be satisfied forever by just standing here and watching the girl nod off. Something had to be done about her sleepiness. "You look like you're about to pass out."

"No... Well, I guess. I'm bored." I could sense a determination in Vanessa that I liked. My own intoxication at this point impaired me from truly assessing whether or not she was lying, but I was all about not caring about the truth at this moment. Whether the cutie had known it or not, she had offered me bait, and I was all too ready to take it.

I reached over and held on to her arm, tugging her a bit as a I gestured towards another direction. "Then come. We can't have you being bored all night. It's lame out here. I'll entertain you!"

She laughed. It was a slightly giddy and drunken laugh, but that's what I was hoping for in the first place. "Alright."