“What are you gonna wear?”
Not what I had in mind. I left Buffalo to get away from the annual fencing team costume party. Little did I know that Albany’s radio station had the same tradition.
I had thought I had the scheme set out. The past two years I was horribly embarrassed at the whack state of my costumes for the party. I figured I’d save myself the trouble this time around. The problem was I couldn’t just not go. I had to be on my deathbed or out of town. As I was not prepared to die, I figured it might be the right time to go visit Glenda.
As the bus rolled into Albany, the monochrome sucked my will to live. The sky, buildings, and ground were all the same shade of gray. I grabbed a payphone and called Glenda’s dorm. My day brightened when she answered.
Right now you’re thinking “I know where this is going.” You couldn’t be more wrong. Glenda, while indescribably hot, was one of those close friends that give you the incest willies when she sits too close. I had actually just gone to chill with her for a weekend.
She was all too happy to hang with an old high school friend for a weekend, but she had a party to go to. She was on the hunt and her quarry was attending. I was more than invited, actually encouraged to attend, but it required a costume: the very thing I GreyDogged it for 6 hours to avoid wearing this weekend. Fuck.
“Listen, just head over while I call these guys and see if they’ll let you in without a costume.”
“Cool.” I headed across campus to Goth Glenda’s Gray Dorm. What I thought to be another of her adorable Suessisms turned out to be depressingly succinct. That shit was gray like everything else. I rang the bell and was quickly buzzed in. She greeted me at the door as only she could. She was wearing a blindingly white men’s dress shirt four sizes too big with the cuffs loosely rolled up to her elbows. Her chin length black hair was teased fractally into sharp spikes about her head and heavy white pancake makeup obscured her warm, dark olive complexion. Her eyes were blacked and she had a rather convincing latex bullet wound in the middle of her forehead.
“What do you think? I’m Dead Robert Smith!”
Glenda apprised me of her life since she arrived in Albany. She showed me her screech list; a week-by-week list of current fascinations that make her screech and dance about. I noticed I was on it, but I have no story about that.
She introduced me to her best in-house entertainment: her roommate. Glenda took immense pleasure in knowing that her roommates name was Lim Lum. She posted clippings from Lum (a manga) on the door. Lim had a gooseneck lamp on her desk so lacking in stability that the lamp end never rose further than an inch off desktop. Glenda referred to it as Lim Lum’s Limp Lamp. She said this with a delirious cackle frequently throughout the weekend. I should’ve married her.
The main issue was that I could not attend the party without a costume. We contemplated dressing in drag, but I outweighed her by 70 pounds and had feet about 5 sizes too big for any of her 47 available pairs of shoes. We tried anyway thinking the image of my fencers thighs splitting the seam of one of her skirts might be funny, but it was just sad. Ah well, the party was not for me. I now had to make other plans for the partyable portion of Friday night, and Lim Lum was a teetotaler. Fortunately the campus directory yielded the names of several former classmates. Yes the flawlessly headed Lan was still together with Kevin, engaged now in fact. No shit? Darryl Kelly? Too bad he was working.
“Oh my God, Erik! How are you?” Tracey. “You’re in Albany? Bullshit! What are you doing tonight? That sucks! You came all this way and you have nothing to do? Well, my roommates and I are going bar hopping, wanna come along?” Bars in Albany turned out to be cool, but I’m getting way too far ahead of myself. First I had to trudge back out into the October blizzard of television static that was Our Empire State’s capital. Out I went pulling my collar up against the 40-degree frigidity that was funky-assed Albany.
Indian Quad was unsurprisingly the same uniform gray as the rest of the municipality. I slid into the lobby with the usual silent menace of the Urban Commando deploying onto the scene. Seconds after hitting the buzzer Tracey chirped out the up two flights turn left second door on the right necessary to find her suite. Up the steps, around the corner and three knocks later my weekend got interesting.
The door was answered by 115 pounds of bronze. Bare feet with freshly manicured eggplant colored toenails. Ankles tapered gently out to well sculpted runner’s calves. Calves sloped in gently towards knees which shortly thereafter swelled back out to sleek thighs. Thighs continued up forever, oh God still going, still going. My eyes traveled up her legs for an amount of time that made me finally understand the phrase “legs for days.” Just before I needed a visit to the men’s room, her legs ended with the waist-hem of an oversized, very soft and fuzzy looking orange roll neck sweater. Waves of thick hair the color of old pennies sloshed down onto the shoulders of the virgin wool. Gleaming out from that was a gentle emerald-eyed face irradiated with a genuinely pleased-to-meet-you smile. With the window of the four-person suite’s common room behind her, I shit you not, the clouds broke and tongues of early evening fire licked off her silhouette. This wasn’t Tracey.
“Erik? Hi. I’m Rachel.” One mystery solved. “Tracey’s getting dressed, she’ll be right out.” Mystery number two. “Have a seat, make yourself comfortable.” As she waved her arm toward the State University issue couch by the window my attention was drawn to her arm. The soft wool hung off her like silk offering a very vivid profile. The impossibly elongated teardrop of her forearm, the firmness of her upper arm. As my attention drifted farther along her anatomical topography I was reminded of a fact I was told several months earlier by an English lit professor: the original wineglass was given it’s size and shape by some renaissance monarchs ideal of the perfect breast.
The door on my right opened as I tried to unlock my knees and stagger to the couch. “Erik!” Tracey leapt out of her doorway and wrapped her arms around my neck. I was nearly strangled to death, but it was understandable. It was good to see her too. Soon enough everyone except Tracey’s sick suitemate was dressed and ready to go. The cab was called, the night began.
Tracey paid my cover for the first bar; after all I was the escort and emergency sketchy guy failsafe valve for the three of them. Upon entering I sensed the familiar scent of impending mass drunkenness. It turned out to be “Penny ‘Till You Pee” night. This meant that whatever you ordered could be paid for by whatever change you dropped on the bar, provided it was at least one cent per drink. This price was in effect until someone went to the bathroom. In anticipation of this hallowed night a local fraternity had sent two loyal silverback gorillas to guard the restrooms.
We settled in next to the pinball machine and Rachel asked me to go to the bar with her to help her carry back the first round. She ordered three beers and three sex on the beach, paying for the round with a dime. When the bartender returned with the passel of booze Rachel grabbed her fruity drink and started to trot back to the pinball machine. “Hey, aren’t you gonna help me with these?”
“Why?” she replied quizzically over her shoulder. “They’re yours.”
I slammed back two of the undersized watery college bar beers, grabbed the rest of my sentence, and headed back to our station. For the next hour or so conversations flitted back and forth. My shoulder averted it’s fair share of unwanted affection as each girl would wrap her arms around my arm and cuddle her head down into it until the masher faded back into the meat market din. Just as my increasingly drunken awareness convinced me that Rachel was developing an interest in me Tracey dragged me to the side. Synchronicity can be a bitch.
“Listen, can you do me a favor?”
