<- June 23
Come home after work, fall asleep on couch watching Yankees game. Heather and Maria both call. When I try both back after waking up, about an hour later, now Heather doesn’t answer but Maria does. Says she and Elizabeth and Jen and some others are heading out to Dave & Buster’s and thought I might like to come along.
Over there, we sit around watching TV, waiting for some phone call from Elizabeth’s landlord. Elizabeth is already at Dave & Buster’s, it’s Maria that is waiting on him to call for some reason. In the middle of this saga, Tommy, Ryan, and Clay show up. Not for the first (nor last time), the other two are ripping on Clay for looking exactly like comedian Tom Green, goatee and all. Then I learn maybe a little more about our behind the scenes intrigue here.
“Maria’s seeing the landlord!” Ryan tells me. I think he’s only joking, but it’s hard to say for sure. Certainly it seems like Maria might be angling on that prospect.
“Schneider…,” I mutter and chuckle in response.
“I forgot about Three’s Company. I used to love that shit, Jack Ritter…,” Ryan says, and sings that theme song for the next 5 minutes, even though this wasn’t even the right show.
As far as our current TV offerings, we’re just kind of absently staring at America’s Most Wanted while waiting for this situation to resolve. Then Tommy stomps out the door without a word said and leaves, everyone else remarks how he’s been acting like a dick all day. Finally, that landlord calls, and we step outside – Maria, Jen, and I, that is. Ryan and Clay have no intentions of joining us. While Maria walks over to Elizabeth’s apartment, Jen and I hang out in the car and make small talk, me in the back seat and she riding shotgun. We see Tommy pull back in, having apparently just made a beer run or something, and lumber back into the house.
“He’s such a jerk,” she says, watching him.
“Aw he’s good people,” I reply.
“He is,” she agrees, “but he needs to start acting right. He’s not even fun to be around anymore.”
Maria returns to her car and climbs behind the wheel, as Tommy and Ryan mysteriously both emerge now, and take off the same time we do. Clay says he has a bad back, which is why he’s sticking around their apartment by himself tonight. As we’re leaving the complex, Maria’s bellyaching about Jason and that whole crew. I tell her, to borrow a phrase from Radick, that she needs to stop hanging out with all these “teenyboppers.”
“She does!” Jen agrees, “Jacob’s the only one that’s okay.”
Coincidentally, right as we’re pulling up at the stop light at Dierker/Bethel, Jacob calls Maria. Right before answering, she observes, “there’s Jamie in front of us!” and it is, he’s clearly behind the wheel of the car directly ahead. While Maria talks to Jacob, I lean out the window and flag Jamie down.
“What are you doing, man?” I ask.
“Goin’ home to get high!” he hollers back, halfway out the vehicle himself.
Right then, Tommy and Ryan pull up behind us. Ryan shouts out his own window at me, “get the fuck back in the car!”
When the light finally changes, we turn left and follow Jamie, while Tommy and Ryan turn right to hit Polo’s. Jen makes a comment about getting started late and that she’ll have to drink fast to catch up. Meanwhile, Maria tells Jacob, “we’re going to Dave & Buster’s.”
“Well, that’s one of the places we’re going,” Jen corrects.
“Yeah, that’s not our final destination,” I agree.
“What is your final destination, Pockets?” Jen jokes. I think she considers me somewhat ridiculous, which is kind of funny when considering all these other people that we hang out with.
Jamie drives like a maniac as we try to keep up, all the way through his obstacle course of a complex parking lot. In front of his apartment, we lay out our plans to him and he mulls them over.
“Okay,” he says, “just give me 5 minutes. I have to smoke a bowl and check my messages.” When we laugh, Jamie grins and explains, “gotta have priorities.”
Inside his place, we sit watching South Park with measured patience while he hunts around endlessly for said bowl. “Let me go ask my mom where it is,” he eventually says, giving up after an exhaustive search of the premises and even dipping back out to his car for a look. “I hate when I do that.” It’s true that he still lives with his mom, although this is not without its advantages – she still looks pretty young and, if being honest, is actually kind of hot.
The phone keeps ringing, it’s mostly Jacob, who’s not just bugging Maria but now Jamie as well for a ride somewhere, even though both continually tell him to piss off. After Jamie finally locates his bowl, we take off, bound for Hilliard. Along the way we pass this limo, where you can actually see a porno playing on the TV inside.
I’ve never visited a Dave & Buster’s before, but have been inside this building. Located on Fishinger Road, near 270, I came here four years ago when it was an Incredible Universe store. This was a trip down from Mansfield with Dan and Mike from the Damon’s restaurant we worked at up there, for some stupid reptile show they wanted to check out. Then we stopped in here afterwards and goofed around for a moment. So now it’s this gigantic bar/arcade/restaurant, kind of like a Chuck E. Cheese geared a little more toward adults, with slightly better food.
After paying $3 apiece for entry, this concierge chick lets us in, we sit at the bar. This place is warmly lit, with baseball games on the mounted TVs, kids everywhere, tons of hotties. Jamie and I agree that the time has now arrived to “pick up some ass.”
Elizabeth is here with some other girl, this goofy Mike dude, and some other guy. We really don’t hang out with them much. Everyone orders beer except for Jen, she has this violent blue drink called an Electric Lemonade. Our bartender sucks, he’s this “cool” guy with slicked back hair, dyed blonde. Maria orders cheese sticks, Jamie just an order of fries, me this half pound cheeseburger and fries.
After that, we play the games in varying configurations – this horse race thing where you bowl like skee ball to advance your horse, a canoe game which tips you around like you’re actually there, ditto snow skiiing, ditto jet skiing (this one is much more difficult), finally a lame Star Wars offering before we all kind of run out of money on our video card thingies at the same time.
Spying this rack of candy dispensers, Jamie and I make a break for it. He seems inordinately excited about the Boston baked beans, is shouting and trying to talk me into trying some. Here I was hoping to just eat my M & Ms in peace.
“Ever had Boston baked beans?” he asks, suddenly serious, gives me a handful of his.
I have, yes, but agree to humor him anyway. After popping these into my mouth, I grimace and tell him, “these are stale.”
“I don’t know if they’re stale, or if they always taste that way,” is his explanation.
Elizabeth and crew have already left for Polo’s themselves, and we plan on joining them. Heading back to the car, Jamie and I lament the plan to “pick up some ass,” which we hadn’t really acted on in the slightest. Then again it’s easy to get distracted in an atmosphere like that, is in fact the entire reason for its existence. Nonetheless, this leads into our discussion in the backseat, girls in general, then him bellyaching about his own woman, complaining that she cheats on him. This in turn leads to Jen’s stop the press/hold the phone type comment, questioning whether Jamie doesn’t do the same thing.
“Not consistently,” he says, totally serious.
This is the funniest comment I have heard in quite some time, and we’re all cracking up over it. “Oh, as if that’s any better!” Jen marvels, then asks him why they stay together if he hates her so much. Jamie doesn’t have an answer for this. I can’t stop laughing, though, even while pondering some of the other oddities. One of the “not consistent” hookups, I happen to know, was Jill, a night where she says they were both wasted and smoked a bunch of weed on top of it, back at his apartment. You get into some strange dynamics in your travels, crossing paths with various individuals again and again over the years. Ordinarily it would bug me a great deal if one of my buddies slept with a serious ex-girlfriend of mine. But in this instance, I truly don’t care for some weird reason. I think most of it is that at that time, I’d yet to return to Bethel Road, hadn’t really hung out with this guy for a year or so. It’s not like we were really close ever. Yet he also has a strangely disarming personality, where it’s hard to get mad at him, even though he occasionally displays a little bit of a temper himself.
The other aspect is thinking about that episode at Friday’s just yesterday, this very chick-esque form of righteousness where they can basically do whatever they want, but you’re an ass somehow for behaving in like fashion. Somehow I am out of line for testing the waters with Heather again, in Jill’s mind, or whomever else I might happen to have hooked up with in the past handful of months. And this is retroactively applied as justifications to everything she ever did, even before any of my actions ever transpired. For example, even after she has slept with at least one known current coworker, now dating another, if I dared seeing anyone from our store, it would turn into whole teary eyed sob story with everybody where this would be held up as alleged proof of…something. I’m not sure what. But yes, definitely retroactively applied as an explanation. “See? This is what I’m talking about!” And therefore they had no choice but to beat you to the punch, over things you hadn’t even done yet. Although then again, I guess this rationale is not much different than the one Jamie is applying, right now. So that tactic might equally apply to both sexes.
We’re cruising north up Riverside with all four windows down, getting pounded by this breeze blowing in off the Scioto, and yet I’m laughing my head off all over again to glance sideways at Jamie. He has his tee shirt pulled up over his head, and I can see the little orange flame of his lighter, as he attempts to light his bowl. But why he wouldn’t just roll his own window up, if not ask us to also do the same for a second, I really can’t say.
“You’re gonna set yourself on fire!” I crow, but he just shakes his head, underneath this makeshift tent, which moves back and forth with him.
Eventually, he does manage to succeed on this front, and puffs away on his weed with the tee shirt returned to its standard position. After this, by now having turned onto Henderson, Jamie looks over at me with this strange maniacal glint in his eye, a huge grin upon his face, as he continually repeats, “fuck…bar…fuck…bar…fuck…bar…” Then eventually asking me, “get it?”
“What is this, some kind of word association game?” I question.
“Yeah! Fuck…bar….fuck…bar…”
I’m stumped, though, can’t even fathom what word it is he expects me to utter in conjunction with this. Instead, I challenge him with, “okay, how about Boston…beans…Boston…beans…”
“Baked!” he immediately says, pleased with own cleverness.
“Yeah! That’s you! Baked!” I tell him.
At Polo’s, Tommy and Ryan are playing some golf game. We grab beers, join Elizabeth & Mike out on the patio. It seems she is dating this guy now, though he is quite a bit older – I would say maybe 35. He seems pretty cool, though, and says some funny stuff every now and then, like when somebody asks him where he works. “The Island Of Misfit Toys,” is all he says, at first, before eventually being pressed for an explanation, and nodding over at the Goodyear Tire, basically across the street from here. Unfortunately, he is also one of these guys who likes to talk about cars nonstop, and everyone quickly grows tired of this. Elizabeth buys our entire table a round, then is asking me a bunch of questions, like for example why everyone calls me Pockets.
“It’s ’cause I’m so good at pool,” I deadpan. Everyone else roars with laughter.
“Yeah right!” Jen says, “tell her the real reason!”
They are regarding me as though more hilarious and interesting than usual tonight. It can shift on a dime from night to night, or even during the same night. If certain people come and go, or you change scenery. If you drink too much, or possibly not enough. The others have gotten on this kick referring to me as a “vampire” and now Elizabeth wants to know what this is all about.
“We used to all be on No Doz just to keep up with Pockets,” Maria explains.
You can’t exactly take credit for something like this, but I do seem to have more energy than most people, and it mostly works to your advantage if that is the case. I think what fuels it to some extent is that I have a ton of interests and hobbies, and can barely seem to cram them into any given day. Or not even come close to cramming them in, I should say. I also find all this randomness completely fascinating, and that’s part of what keeps me going. To just roll with the punches and see what happens on any given day. Though you have to stay focused and direct your own life to some extent, I also think that if you’re trying to call the shots with every situation that you encounter, this paradoxically makes things less interesting and a lot more predictable.
But also, it should be said, at the risk of being obvious, I believe not drinking myself silly and avoiding the drugs is another competitive advantage – even when people are convinced the drugs are working for them, they’re really not. You often run into these situations where somebody is pounding shots and smoking a bunch of weed and snorting who knows what, then they’re wondering with complete seriousness why they’re passing out on the couch and you’re still going strong. Genuinely stumped, like they can’t figure this out, and you’re some kind of freak.
Anyway, I get up to go buy the next round, but Elizabeth says they’re leaving. “Come on, let me reciprocate,” I tell her.
“No, I’ve got to go home and study. I’m not like you, I can’t stay up all night,” she says with a sly grin.
“You can take the weekend off! Christ!” I moan, but they split. This does mean I’m only buying four drinks instead of six, however, so there’s the silver lining. Although the actual physical clouds here open up and begin dumping rain on us, when I return with the beers. Most of us find this rather pleasant, though, and continue sitting out here, including the scattered parties at other tables.
“HEY, WHO’S GOT THE HERB!?” Jamie shouts from where he’s sitting, loud enough so that everyone outside can hear him.
“Shhhhh!” Maria says.
“You got herb?” some guy at a nearby table asks, wishfully thinking that was maybe a boastful pronouncement rather than a question.
“No. Do you?” Jamie replies.
Then Tommy and Ryan finally join us at the table, the first we’ve really hung out with them all night. Ryan starts pissing out the side of his chair, and someone asks him why he’s doing this.
“Because I can,” he replies.
Around 1:30, we decide to split. Jen alone wants to stay, but is outvoted, and we take off in our two separate cars, in the same configurations as before. After dropping Jamie off, we arrive back at the apartment, where Clay has been hanging out by himself watching TV all night. Currently there’s some stupid old Harrison Ford movie playing. One scene finds him at a bar with this European broad and they start dancing to this sappy elevator music sounding tune.
“Sing it, Clay,” Ryan instructs, then says, “Tommy, you got the next verse.” After this, he points to Clay and asks me if I’ve met Tom Green. I nod, say I saw him eating a gerbil recently, but it shit in his mouth. Ryan and Tommy laugh at this, though Clay is not amused. Yet if the comparisons to the crass comedian bother him so much, then I wonder why he wouldn’t just shave off his goatee, or alter his appearance in some other fashion.
Ryan goes into hysterics relating his favorite Tom Green episode, about some visit to a marshmallow factory. Maria has already gone to bed, it’s about 3am and Tommy has just put away his own bowl when Jamie inexplicably comes barging through the front door, asking if we’ve got any weed or beer. We just shrug and shake our heads. He leaves again, explaining that he has to be into work in three hours anyway. This prompts an admission from me, that I’m due over there at 8am myself. As he has before, Ryan remarks that he finds these stunts completely insane – although to my mind, he is far more maniacal than me.
“Pockets don’t give a fuck, he does this shit all the time,” Tommy tells him, “I pulled an allnighter coupla weeks ago, mmm, never again. I felt like shit the whole day.”
Ryan gets on his high horse now and rhapsodizes about having allegedly outgrown that nonsense, with nose even somewhat held aloft, as he declares, “I’m not 18 anymore. And I don’t wanna be.”
Tommy goes to his room in the basement to sleep, Ryan heads up to his bedroom. Clay’s been stretched out this whole time on the one couch, with his ailing back, and Jen’s on the other one. I stretch out on the floor, with the easy chair cushion as my pillow. Fall asleep at 4:30, and Maria wakes me about three hours later, so I can head into work.
