1.

DRUNKEN DEBAUCHERY

I walk down by the pier sometimes. When the weather is cold and chilly, I put on my old blue jacket and I wander round the edge of the dock, wishing to be somewhere else. I'm not sure exactly where I want to be, really. Just somewhere different, maybe out of time altogether, maybe just out of Creighton.

I have been feeling especially down and out this summer. More than usual, which is saying something really. At the funeral it hit me, that I am doing nothing with my life. Just wandering round the town, hoping to not run into old friends and eating fast food. No job. No obligations. I am free to roam, and somehow the prospect bothers me. It has given me this pesky feeling of emptiness, and of having nothing to contribute to the world. That's what college will do to you. It will make you think that you always need to be in-action. Doing something. Saving the world. Recycling. Eating organic.

Perhaps I am too cerebral. People tell me that. My mother says, "The problem with you Gianna is that you over-analyze everything. Stop thinking and do something!" She spends a great deal of the time wishing I were more practical like her. As she sees it, I lack motivation. I can't help it though; it's in my nature to dream. I can be so absent minded sometimes. Like locking my keys in the car, or forgetting my ATM card checking out at the grocery store.

Today the pier is windy and woesome. When I walk here I feel the sea breeze, I breathe it in and it connects me to the old ones. Sometimes I like to imagine what the city looked like before the concrete and metal. I think of what the settlements must have been like when there was flora and fauna still in abundance. I imagine the natural earth and the natural people who dwelled upon it. In my mind I try to picture how the city has been built from the ground up, the supports and the beams and laborers, the glass plating and painters. I think of them, and mind grows wearier still. When I am gone, will I be remembered? Will my memory be lost buried beneath sex and food and parties and new friends? Will I be recalled only on the anniversary of my death, or perhaps less than even that? Does it matter? Should I wish that they would remember me always? Is it selfish to?

I think that it may be selfish to wish that when you are dead others will notice, but then again all of us are selfish. We like to pretend that we are more charitable and less conceited than all that. But in truth, we are not. Everyone wants to be remembered, especially those people that take their own life.

I still don't know why she did it. I don't know why she thought it was the only answer. I wish I could have told her that there were better things to come. I wish I'd been there. And now it's over and the worst thing I can do is forget her. Or maybe, it's the best thing.

When I get home I stand in the shower and I feel the water rinsing the dirt and grit from between my stubby toes. As usual there is a lot to wash away. I only wear thong sandals lately, and on muddy days, sand and dirt crawls and spatters up the back of my calves as I walk. It's a good thing I wear skirts, otherwise I would always have dirty pants.

The phone rings. I try to ignore it and hope that my brother will pick it up, because I don't want to talk to anyone. On the last ring I run from the shower naked and just miss the call by seconds. My brother lets it ring to the last because he is afraid to speak to foreign telemarketers. He is nearly sixteen and can't do a thing for himself. He can't even clean the bathroom sink, or so he tells me. His ignorance may just be a trick to manipulate me into doing the cleaning for him. It always works, and I end up scrubbing the toilet while he stands over me pretending to be involved. The missed phone call irritates me, and I yell at him to get it next time and to stop being such a freak of nature.

I go back to the shower and finish rinsing out my hair. My new conditioner makes my hair chunk together like it's frozen. I don't know how to stop it, so I let it go as a minor irritation. The product costs nearly half of last month's salary, and my mother always taught me not to waist anything, bad hair or not.

My dad comes home and finds me watching classic music videos on the television. He looks at me disapprovingly, and asks if I'm okay. I tell him that I am fine, but when he thinks I'm not looking he goes into the bathroom and checks the waste bin for band-aids anyway. I have learned by now to cover my tracks, and there are no bloody tissues for him to find. Not this time.

He still doesn't believe me, and calls my brother in from the driveway where he is playing basketball. He suggests to us that we should go do something fun to get my mind off of it for a while. My brother looks resentfully at me and rolls his eyes dramatically. He dribbles the basketball with one hand forcefully onto the linoleum where it makes a single dull thud and then rolls away. He turns to my dad and asks why he has to be punished. "Gianna's the crazy one. Not me."

"Everything's fine," I tell my dad, "just perfect." He gives me a last look and decides arguing is worthless. He turns and goes off to load the new dishwasher that he won't let anyone else get near. I tried to help him once with the dishes when I first got back, but he claimed that it was far to complicated to figure out how to fit everything in and he's the only one that really knows how. He is too proud to admit that he invested unwisely in a very expensive piece of crap, which is both hard to load and fries the silverware.

After awhile I get tired of picking my scabs and watching MTV, and decide to saunter into town and rent a movie. I am surprised that my Dad lets me go alone, considering, but maybe he is just so tired of my moping that he feels it's worth the risk. When I get to grocery store, I park my car and try to look as inconspicuous as possible. I hate running into people I know, even old friends. It's such a small town that the odds are good I'll run into a long-lost classmate. I never know if I should approach them, wave, nod, ignore. The whole situation is so awkward. Especially with people you haven't seen in years.

Of course, I cut across the fruit displays and there in front of me I see James Carrington, Kyle Moore and Dylan Everyington. The very worst people I could have run into. At first glance I don't notice how high they are, but when they approach me, it is painfully obvious. James Carrington stands in front, "Hey its Gianna."

He laughs absurdly and turns to Dylan, then back to me. His voice is nasal and his eyes are red. He smiles and says my name again with a sing-song voice, drunkenly over-pronouncing, "Gee-yanna… Row-shee-ee! What'a ya know? Good ole Fred Myers…"

I have known James since sophomore year of high school. We worked together at the Catholic charity thrift shop Abbott's Attic for school credit, but we never speak anymore. Once upon a time, before he became a meth-head loser, we were friends. Good friends. We were all friends, James and me, and Megan. I wonder how long James has been hanging out with Dylan and Kyle. They were really only acquaintances in high school.

Megan. I feel a pang in my chest and I wonder if he knows about her. About what's happened. I wonder if he would even care now, with his drugs and his booze. I want to cry, scream at him to cut it out and stop ruining his life. Can't he see that I can't bear to lose anyone else? I decide against inciting a violent rage and I stare complacently into space.

"Hey all, " I say to them sheepishly, unsure how to handle the situation. I nervously finger my car-keys, hoping that they will all walk away and forget me.

Dylan is staring me up and down. "Fuck man… you're like totally hot now," he blurts out. They all laugh at his drug-induced outburst, and I go red. There is an uneasy silence and I announce that I have to go rent a movie, and must leave them. I turn and start to walk away, thinking that I am rude, but home free. I reach the new release DVD section and realize that they have followed me, obviously not getting the hint. I cringe and pretend that I don't see them, but Dylan gets up in my face, his long eyes lashes and blue irises dramatically contrasting to the drug induced redness. He smiles and against all reason my heart skips a beat.

Throughout high school I had had a long lasting and obsessive crush on Dylan. When he cast his eyes on mine that moment, so intimately as only happens when people are wasted drunk, I felt a connection to the past and to all the feelings that had lain since graduation, sleeping in my gut.

I knew then that he was a drug-dealer, as I knew now that he was a townie loser, and although his morals directly conflicted with mine, I couldn't help but feel a pulsing attraction. Unfortunately for me, during high school Dylan experienced that same obsessive passion for my fair-weather friend Katrina, and I was only ever exposed to him through her. She was much more outgoing and charming than I, she had a boyfriend, but fickle as she was, she kept the adoring Dylan around for sport. He would call me and talk about her for hours. I had endured the torture just to hear his voice speaking my name.

Gianna Rochee. He says my name again and this time his voice is quieter, more subdued, and it jerks me out of my thoughts and back to the grocery store.

"What are you doing tonight Gi?"

Inside my stomach is squirming with excitement, but outwardly I force myself to ignore him and try to seem as cool and composed as possible. I scan the rack for the least girly movie I can find. I don't want Dylan thinking that I'm some kind of loser chick who watches musicals and hallmark signature romances. I see a kung-fu movie with Jet-Li and I pick it up and hand it to him emphatically, "Just me and a half naked samurai."

He mumbles, "Oh yeah… movie… that's right." He seems a little less wasted than the others, more coherent. I decide to give him a chance, for old time's sake. I ask him what he and James and Kyle are doing. He replies that they are going to the DeerHead Saloon and then after a pause, invites me to go with them.

I look at Dylan and then to James and Kyle. They are so high and so out of it. Do they even realize what they were asking? Who they were inviting? I would have given anything to have been invited out in high school. The prospect of hanging out alone with the popular guys would have thrilled me to hysterics. But I never was. I wasn't an outsider really, just not the kind of girl you invite to your wild, exclusive, drug party. I was the good girl, nice enough, but homely and overweight. Weird. Different.

The old me would have said no to a night of love-less sex and drunken debauchery. But I am not the old me anymore. Three years have passed and I am a different girl now. I am more experienced and less naïve. I am cynical and bitter and sometimes I wonder if I will ever feel happy again.

I look Dylan up and down. I wonder if he is a good lover, but then quickly decide that it doesn't really matter as long as he is alive and I am drunk.

"Okay," I say, feeling nostalgic. "I'll go."