I accept the seventh drink someone hands me because, at this point, I realize that I just want to live in a movie, and tonight’s as good a night as any for one of my more memorable scenes. Everything already looks so perfect. Colors seem darker, and blur together when I move my head. All the lights are spherical, adorned with fuzzy halos like a holiday scene in a worn out VHS tape from the 80s. Everybody is laughing. Everything is ambiguously endearing.
When I wake up tomorrow, I will remember all of this. But my ownership of these memories will leave with the alcohol in my bloodstream. In the morning, each slurred and euphoric scene will be detached; will belong to someone else’s life. Not mine. It will be like looking through the sloppily filmed home videos of a stranger. No, I don’t know who that scrawny, shirtless guy wearing the army green fishing hat is. You’re right, he is trying to recite the pledge of allegiance and standing way too close to that girl. How embarrassing. Voila. A movie. This is what I’m aiming for.
Across the room, I watch a guy a little younger than me, I’d guess about fifteen, light up a cigarette with one of his friends. It’s clearly his first time. He chokes immediately, and amidst the sputtering and watering eyes tries to play it off like none of it had to do with the smoke. He just choked on his spit. Don’t worry, he can handle it.
I used to find lung cancer to be quite the novel concept. There’s just something about the notion that a person’s stupid habits will someday eat them slowly from the inside. I mean, if I was God I couldn’t have come up with a better design, but I’m not, so all I can do is wonder why the real God didn’t. It was an awfully harsh punishment for my grandfather’s single vice.
Mom thinks I’m still in shock, and that’s why I couldn’t cry or anything at the viewing or the funeral. Apparently shock and relief are easy to mix up. I don’t see how I could be shocked that the man died; it’s a day we’ve all known was coming for months. Like Christmas, only shitty. The real shock was seeing what he turned into before he passed.
Drink eight tastes like a snickerdoodle that’s trying to break into my car. I don’t know what is in it exactly, but Leanne made it for me, so I have to drink it. I’m going for those brownie points. Tonight is the big night, that awkward stage of a friendship where said relationship’s potential for upward mobility is decided. I’m going to ask Leanne on a date. I’m going to do it right, too.
Unfortunately, planning is no longer an option. The planning mechanism in my brain has been confounded by the simpler things. Walking feels like perusing over an expert level USA Today crossword, and proves to be as difficult a task to complete correctly. Every motor function is now a brilliant feat. People keep telling me that comprehensilation is not a word. I feel brave.
Why the hell a microphone is lying idly around at a house party without a DJ would be beyond me even in my soberest state, but God must be on my side. It’s one of those cordless numbers, so all I have to do is flick a switch to turn it on. I switch it on, and before I can say a word my face is flooded with indescribable warmth and luminescence. This is it! I was supposed to do this. I am exactly where I’m meant to be and Leanne is going to say yes and this is the moment that turns everything around, that makes it all worth it.
I’m not sure where the PA is, so I speak robustly into the mic. Not everyone turns to me, of course, but a great deal of people do. Leanne does. I confess it all. Everything. I tell them about granddad and the uncle who isn’t dealing with it very well. I tell them about how I might actually still be in shock, and that I ordered all the seasons of the Dick Van Dyke Show on DVD. I tell Leanne how I feel about her, exactly as I’d imagined.
Everything I say is lost against the wall of their confused laughter. I feel blinded now, instead of warm. Why are they laughing? Nervously, I look down and fiddle with the microphone. Around the edges, towards the top, where you speak into it, something is written. I’m too drunk to see it clearly, but it comes into focus when I bring it close to my face. It says “MAG-LITE.”
The realization reaches me in stages. I can’t hear the throng’s laughter anymore. Suddenly, it’s as if I’m in the room alone, and all I can hear is my grandfather breathing that last night sprawled across his bed. Oxygen and wires to other things I didn’t understand, everywhere. Rhythmic, and heaving, like an animal. His head tipped back, mouth agape, two rows of black teeth on display. A corpse that just kept re-inflating itself.
Everyone gets quiet when I smash the big green bottle of that licorice tasting stuff. Leanne actually gasps. I don’t know what to do, so I start telling jokes. I like my women like I like my movies: silent, I say. The room gets quieter than before. I may have forgotten to mention that Leanne is a feminist protestor, and all of her like-minded friends are here. I…I can’t come up with new jokes, so fuck it, we’ll just keep this’n, I slur. I scan the crowd. I like my women like I like my hot fries: taste good stale after I ignore them on the floor for a weekend, I tell them, I like my women like I like my neighbor: He’s ok. I mean, he’s a solid dude. I grip that flashlight as tight as I can and pace like a televangelist, all hunched over as I spit, I like my women like I like a good drink: refreshing, but after three or four they’re all the same. I have warped my relationship with the crowd to the point that terms like “onlookers” or “mob” feel more appropriate. I cadence my presentation by yorking all over my shoes.
I wake up on an unfamiliar bathroom floor knowing full well that I’ve ruined everything. Judging by how sloshed I still am, it can’t have been long since I passed out. I rise up to my knees, preparing to vomit into the toilet, but change my mind. I put the lid down and let it go all over the soft fabric lid cover. I turn over the trash can and throw up all over the bottom of it. He was just lying there that night, motionless while we all stood around him saying our goodbyes. My mom patted his head and my uncle kept rubbing his feet, the only normal part of him left. The rest had shriveled into a boney sack. My grandfather would have fit in black and white pictures from the Holocaust. I stand up so that I can heave again, this time into the curtains. He looked like a wrecked kite, crumpled and feeble. His eyes were glazed. There was no grandpa in there anymore. Every now and again he would nod and gurgle. I open the shower curtain and wretch into the tub. Everything is backwards anyway. I didn’t get to see him actually die. I had to leave, had to get outside, make sure it was all still out there. My uncle told me he’d go with me. He rubbed my grandfather’s foot one last time, smiling, and said, sweetly, I’m going to walk him out now. I love you. No partying while I’m gone.
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