Time for your pills, Andy, Part 2
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I’ve been here for 2 months now. I’ve been stuck here in this white-walled room, free of sharp objects, with a window that merely gives me a glassed view of the crowded main entrance and busy Dempster Street. It’s like I’m an orangutan in the zoo merely watching the world around me through thick glass. You become stoic when you’re stuck in a place for 2 months. If I’m “good,” they’ll let me go outside for a while. Or, so they say. I’ve tried escaping. I’ve tried letting the dinner knife pierce into my wrist and letting the blood drain out of me. I’ve tried being a dick and I’ve tried being charming. And if I knew who the hell I was anymore, I would just stop trying and be myself. But based on this place, these pills, these people, the parents who put me here, and my friends who hate me, apparently being myself didn’t work before.
How ironic that I was born here and I’ve wanted die here many times.
I suppose I should tell you how I got here before I pass out from that pill. I could blame my parents for going out of town. Or, Kate for driving me insane. Or, my friends for fucking up my suburban house. But I’ve learned that blame is—
Well, to tell you what blame is, you need to know the story I guess.
They decided to go on vacation. They wanted to have a vacation without me getting high in the parking lot or the tour guide getting pissed at them for having a sarcastic son who couldn’t care less about what happened on this spot in 1943. So they went on vacation and I don’t even remember where they went. All that matters is that they left me alone for a week. How fucking stupid that they left me alone for a whole week.
I was scheduled to work all week at my crappy minimum wage teenage job. I work at a skate rental counter at a local skating rink and deal with suburban housewife hockey moms all day. However, each night, I decided, would be a party. I didn’t think it possible to have a week without my parents and an empty house and not have a weeklong party. I’m 17 years old and I’m an alcoholic basically. So, of course I threw a party each night. I can’t even describe how elated my friends were. For a week we wouldn’t need to go into the forest preserves to smoke up or drink in someone’s garage only to have their 12-year-old sister discover us when she was getting out her Schwinn. They each called their hook-ups. We ended up with 2 ounces of weed, 3 kegs, a few bottles of Jack, one of which was all mine and I'm not even sure how much other booze we had.
Yeah, I knew this would be bad.
But I did it all anyway. I invited all the fuck-ups and let them invite anyone they wanted. I let the house itself become a living organism. It was to be my week. No arguing with my parents, no smashing the pillow against my head as my half-asleep body could overhear them screwing downstairs, no more holding all the pain inside. I could drown it all in Jack. Looking back, I realize that when I drowned all the pain, I drowned myself along with it.
I can recall the first party vividly. After that night all the memories are seen through a Vaseline lens. Of the few memories I still have, that is. It was Saturday and my dad and stepmom had packed up the suburban mini-van and gone of to wherever with my siblings that morning. After working an 8-hour shift at the skate rental counter, I was ready for Jack. And Jack welcomed me with open proverbial arms. My day had been spent handing out skates to children with no coordination and being yelled at about the quality of the old, brown rental skates by parents living vicariously through their children. While it’s not the worst job, it’s certainly the kind that makes you take an extra bong hit the night before or makes you have that final beer when you know you’ve had way too many. It’s kinda like Clerks. You know you shouldn’t take it seriously, but you can’t help get angry at the immense stupidity of it all. So on that August night, I arrived at my house to find ten of my friends inside setting shit up.
Ame Rainey wishes she had some Jack right now.