Time for your pills, Andy, Part 5
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90 fuckin miles per hour…a 1986 Chevy Nova versus a cement wall on the right side of a major expressway…the secure, strong concrete wall defeated the Nova… Badly.
Slipping…sliding…skidding…gliding…on a road paved with alcohol. On a road at 1:46 a.m. on a Sunday night. Monday morning rather.
He just went for a drive. The police report said his blood alcohol level was .113. There’s no longer a passenger side to the car. Thank god there wasn’t a passenger. He got out of the car with a few bruises and scrapes. He stumbled out of the car through the trees and to the nearby street to a gas station.
No one was badly hurt. Except for all the people he scared. Except for the friends who cried because they thought he might be dead. Except for all the people who worried as they drove to pick him up at that gas station in the middle of the night. Except for Kate, who bit her fingernails nervously waiting to see him alive.
He was fine, he said. He told everyone he was fine. The car however was totaled. Gone. Dead.
90 fuckin miles per hour…a 1986 Chevy Nova versus a cement wall on the right side of a major expressway…the secure strong concrete wall defeated the Nova… Badly.
He was so drunk. He kept making jokes with the cop. The cop said his girlfriend just dumped him. He said, that sucks, no more sex then. The cop said, yeah that sucks. He said, I just got laid a day ago, but she’s fucking gone too. She screwed around with my friend, the drunk kid said. Ouch, said the cop. DUI. See you on October 15 in court, he said.
He had failed the tests horribly. The one where you walk in a straight line. The one where you touch your finger to your nose. The breathalyzer. He fucked up royally, he said. All of his friends agreed. Kate just wept. Andy had fucked up. Everything. Didn’t he always?
How did I end up in this situation you ask. Well, that Sunday morning, I woke up in my boxers in the kiddie pool. Soaking wet. Cheap target boxers soak through quickly. Soaking cheap Target boxers in water for hours is like when you’re a little kid and you put paper in a sink filled with water and wait for it to disintegrate as you swish around the paper. I’m not certain what time it was. It was still dark out. Seems like maybe it was 4 a.m. How the hell did I end up in only my boxers? Screw it, I thought. Whatever. And then it all went downhill. No one else was outside as I staggered into my house. Holy shit. It was bad. I didn’t really care much about the house though. Or about my friends passed out on the staircase or in the bathroom. You see, it all paled in comparison to witnessing Kate fuck around with some guy on my living room couch.
He was kissing her. She wasn’t kissing him back really. But it didn’t matter. Sometimes indifference to a situation is even worse than direct participation. I wanted to kill the guy. I wanted to kill her. At that moment, all the good moments I had had with her in the past few months seemed to die as well. It was like that moment on the swings with her by the lake had never even happened. All I could see was her body half-lying on my couch as he felt her up and kissed her. All I could see was some asshole half-lying on top of her as he felt her up and kissed her.
All these thoughts occurred in one second as premonitions of me beating the shit out of this guy raced through my brain. I assure you that, at this point, I was sober. Hungover beyond comprehension, yes. But, I was sober. I grabbed him by his black Pantera t-shirt and threw him on the wooden floor. I straddled him with more force than I had straddled that stoner kid and as I went to punch him, I looked at his face. It was fuckin’ Josh. One of my friends. He has been one of my friends since I was 8. And there he had been, feeling up my girlfriend. I punched him a few times. Because of Kate’s screaming and whining about how I should stop my friends awoke in extremely hungover pissed off states of mind. They grabbed me off of Josh as I swore violently at everyone.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I screamed at Josh.
“Andy, stop it,” Kate exclaimed as tons of my friends held me back. They’re bigger than I am, but when I fight, I fight as though I’m invincible. Mind over matter is a good concept when your child is trapped under a one-ton car and you need to save him, but apparently not when jealous rage takes over and causes you to fight everyone in the room.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I screamed at Kate.
“I...I don’t know Andy,” I heard her respond emotionally as my friends dragged me through my house and into the backyard. I ended up back in that damn kiddie pool and later on that night I ended up drunk in a 1986 Chevy Nova as it battled a cement wall and lost.
Ame Rainey is too upset right now to think of a tagline.