Friday Nights Were Supposed to be Better than This, Charlie Brown
The new computer desk is supposed to arrive on Monday, to match with the rest of the baby furniture (that's how it works - baby gets two-thirds of the extra room, I get the other half).
So, in the meantime, the computer, monitor, keyboard and mouse are on a board on the floor. I type sitting cross-legged and hunched over like an elderly garment worker with scoliosis. It's a mighty strange way to spend your evening. My hair is in a pony tail poked through the little hole in the back of my blue U. of Kentucky baseball cap. My Gap shorts were white when I first put them on, whatever day that was.
When I was in my late teens, I couldn't wait until I was legal, because then every weekend was going to be a party. When I was legal, I couldn't wait until I had some money to actually spend, because then every weekend was going to be a party. Now I have the money, and I just want back the energy I had at 18.
College was fun. You know the old Peanuts cartoon, where Lucy always pulls the ball away at the last minute and Charlie Brown goes ass-over-teakettle trying to kick the football, again and again? Lucy could have really fucked the kid up bad. She could have let him kick it once, just once, and never again. The kid would be hoppin' spare change to cook Mexican tar, tying one arm off with surgical tubing, by Christmas. Or he'd have his big toe against the trigger of a shotgun, ready to blow that pumpkin head into so much pulp and shell. Trust me. I know.
She was perfect. Her name was Jennifer. I'm not saying she was gorgeous. I'm saying she was perfect. And gorgeous. I wish I had a picture. I do, but it's in my head, and it's just breasts anyway. The last weekend of college, many seniors go on a pub crawl - started at West Side Cheers or something, and wound all the way down to POTP. It was probably the best night of my life. Jen, I, and some friends ran the circuit, through dives and restaurant bars. Quite a few places threw us out as we got drunker and drunker. And all up and down Main Street were other seniors, in groups of 4 or 8 or even just 2, symbolically drinking away the end of their college lives. I had never had that "magic night" in college, the one that always stands out from all the rest, the one you remember when you're 40. I realized before I got too drunk to realize much of anything that this was that night.
By the time we reached the Rathskeller, I had my arm around Jennifer. She smelled like beer, and cigarette smoke, and some perfume that I would likely never know the name of. She pulled me over to a table, and a bunch of us got a pitcher. Our group was like a drunken multi-celled organism, picking up two people here, losing one there. She was laughing at someone else's joke, and her head was turned away from me, and I smelled her straight, honey-blond hair. I've never smelled anything better in my life.
I got up to use the men's room, and when I got back, half the group was gone, including her. She was as drunk as I was, and had simply taken off. I took a cab home and went to bed.
I never saw her again. 8,000 of us graduated the next morning and that was that, so long, farewell, good luck, don't forget to donate to the alumni fund.
I spent the next three years thinking about that night, the way your tongue will keep running itself over a chipped tooth. I still run the movie of that night sometimes .. it's been held over for a twelfth straight year in my little mind-theater.
I know how you feel, Charlie Brown. I can sincerely dig it.