Welcome Home (1620 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: anecdotes
Rating: 1.97 on 50 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Coyote (View user info) at 2005-04-28 10:08:00 EDT
The night sweltered. It was impossible even to move from the couch to the kitchen for a snack without breaking into a sweat. You know the kind of sweat I'm talking about: less individual drops on your brow than a second skin of glistening saline ooze that can't evaporate in the humidity, and serves only to glue your clothes to your body.
The concrete slab floor of my stepfather's barn still held some of the residual chill of winter, seeping up through its surface like the remnants of a forgotten ice age. The rough material-painted a deep, cooling, sky blue by my mother-was leaving a ghastly array of dimples across my face, chest, arms and thighs, an irregular patchwork that varied in color from pale pink on the palms of my hands to deep, necrotic purple on my chest and face. It was still better than standing up and exposing both sides of my body to the soupy broth that was being passed off as air.
The phone call came, at last, at about twenty past nine.
"What's going on, dude?"
"Nothin'. It's fuckin' hot. What are you doin'?"
"Uh, we're having a big party. Girls, drugs, porno. Same old, same old."
"Really?"
Pause. "Dave Peters has a 12-pack of Bud. And we have some pretzels. Dylan and Andy Fallon are around. We were gonna do some gaming. Star Wars or Shadowrun. Are you in?" My turn to pause. Jon's would be smoky, and I hated that. The whole fuckin' house would smell like his mother's dogs, and I hated them too. There was every chance that I'd come home in a few hours pissed off, smelling like smoke, and sporting a fresh dogbite on my leg. Still, at that moment, even bad beer and bodily injury seemed marginally less unpleasant than lying on a bare concrete floor in my underwear waiting for the night to cool down enough for me to masturbate without drowning in my own greasy sweat.
"I'll be right there. Lemme put some pants on."
"Good plan. You know, even though we like you and all."
Leaving the barn was like stepping into a sauna.
I rolled down all the windows on the 1980 VW Rabbit and balanced the discman on my crotch to keep it from skipping during "Jesus Built My Hotrod".
At Jon's place, about ten guys were milling around in the living room and kitchen, smoking, drinking warm Budweiser, channel surfing, rolling up Shadowrun characters, molesting Jon's sister's fish. I walked in and gave him a skeptical look.
"Dogs are locked in mom's room," he assured me.
"There's like ten guys here, we're not gonna do any gaming. It'll take four hours just to decide what we're playing."
"Yeah, I know. It was just gonna be three or four, but people kept showing up. Dave really wants to go out. Dylan wants to see a movie, no one else has the cash for it, Art wants to do some RPGs. What are you up for?"
I shrugged. "I dunno. Whatever. Anything's better than sitting around in Brookhaven listening to the mosquitos buzz."
Cleon Foster walked in from the backyard, wreathed in a halo of pot smoke. He was drinking cold MGD instead of the tepid crap Dave was offereing. I hadn't seen Cleon since I'd gone back to school after winter break, and we spent some time catching up before he announced he was hungry. Cleon was a big guy, whose personality made him seem even bigger, and the heat wasn't slowing him down at all. He got the ten of us piled into three cars and we followed Andy Fallon's black Mitsubishi to Burger King.
There it transpired that although our barbarian horde of stoners and geeks might have been broke, hopeless with women, and generally pathetic, we were far from lowest on the totem pole of Long Island tackiness. The BK parking lot held a shiny black stretch limousine, and the restaurant itself was playing host to three couples, still dressed in their prom night finery. One of the guys was trying to blot an enormous ketchup stain off his powder blue tuxedo jacket while his date rolled her eyes and picked invisible dirt from beneath her bright pink lacquered nails.
Cleon ordered enough for a small army, and the rest of us just got cokes. We stood around the ice dispenser and kept refilling, feeling vaguely uncomfortable about the hostile looks we were getting. I kind of figured that if you take your prom date to Burger King, you have to expect roving crowds of bored, dateless freaks home from college to come smirk at you and leer at your big-haired, gum-chewing floozies, but the guy with the ketchup stain didn't seem to see it that way. He threw a handful of french fries at us on the way out and said, "Fuckin' faggots."
A witty response probably would have gone down pretty well at that point, but the manager was already hustling us out the door disapprovingly and none of us had the wit to come out with something clever on the theme of renting a tuxedo just to go grab a Whopper.
None of us said anything, and the unresolved tension probably contributed to our decision to follow their limo when they left. It was a perfect hide-and-seek night anyway, and it was always more fun to follow people who weren't in on the game. It was still hot, but now there was a cool thrill in the air as we discreetly trailed the limo eastwards on Sunrise.
Predictably, they headed south on Floyd. This was great, because it meant they were almost certainly going to end up at the beach, where we probably would have ended up going anyway just because you could park for free after 6 pm and there was always a breeze there. We weren't interested in a confrontation-- that wasn't the game-- so we stopped at 7-Eleven and gave them a good head start. To show up right behind them would lack finesse and almost certainly blow our cover.
We gave them about fifteen minutes and followed on.
Coming over the Smith Point bridge, we spotted their limo parked off to the right, by the ranger station and lookout, instead of in the main parking lot. That meant we'd be a lot more conspicuous if we tried to approach them unaware, but our opinion of their intelligence wasn't all too high. We pulled off the road about a hundred yards shy of the ranger station and milled around. The limo driver was sitting on a guardrail about fifty feet from the vehicle, reading a magazine. If this group was following the precedent established at my own prom, one of the couples had locked the other two out of the limo and were fucking with the air-conditioning running full blast. That meant there were four other people probably wandering drunkenly around on the beach getting their nice clothes sandy and salty.
Now we faced a dilemma. Following people is only fun if they're on the move. It's just a convenient excuse to drive around and shoot the shit and send the last earthly remains of dead dinosaurs into the atmosphere where they belong. Once people stop moving it becomes a lot more like sitting around your parents' house, except without couches and TVs and fans.
About half of us wanted to go back to Jon's place and do some gaming after all; Cleon and Dylan and I wanted to go up and shine our flashlights into the limousine and use the lines we'd been practicing since leaving Burger King ("Only sluts put out for onion rings! At least take her to Pizza slut; I mean Hut! Hey, don't worry dude, at least she can say she had ONE Whopper on her prom night!"-- it's amazing the kind of stuff you can come up with given forty-five minutes to work on it); Andy Fallon wanted to go hit golf balls into the surf.
Saner heads were busily talking us out of the idea of sneaking over to the limo and putting our asses on the windows, when Jon noticed someone moving on the second floor of the ranger station. The station had a wraparound balcony on its upper level that gave spectacular views of the ocean to the South, Fire Island stretching away to the horizon East and West, and the "mainland" across the bay to the North (okay, the view in that direction was dominated by the landfill, but three out of four ain't bad). Sure enough, someone was visible, from the waist up, above the balcony railing.
All conversation ceased, instantly, as we realized what was happening there. Even from a hundred yards away, the body language, the posture, the determined rocking motion were unmistakable. We grinned at each other like kids getting a glimpse of tits on a not-well-scrambled-enough Cable channel. No one knew what to say.
Cleon broke the silence first: "Give. Me. The golf clubs."
This was possibly the best idea a man had come up with since, oh, fire.
Fallon resisted. He was having misgivings about reckless endangerment charges, but covered it by getting protective of his clubs. "You don't play, you'll never hit him."
"Okay, you do it then."
"I don't wanna kill him!"
"Oh boo hoo, it's just a golf ball. If it kills anyone it's evolution's fault for not making people's skulls thicker." We should have made Cleon promise to use his superpowers of logic only for good and not evil, but there was no time. Andy and the other holdouts were teetering on the brink; one more good shove would push them over the edge. Luckily, I had the answer.
"They're not supposed to be up there. The station's locked at night. No reasonable person taking normal precautions for the safety of those around him could have expected a stray shot hit towards the ocean to come within miles of a human being. If anyone's guilty, it's them, for trespassing. Besides, it might not be consensual-you could be breaking up a sexual assault in progress."
There was little further argument: it's hard to make the case that people who take their prom dates to Burger King should be allowed to receive oral sex without suffering repercussions of some kind.
Fallon pulled out a three wood and the bucket of practice balls, and teed up in the packed sand at the side of the road. The club rose, glittered under the murky yellow sodium light, and came down with a thwack.
A couple seconds or so later, there was a distinct answering thunk. The figure on the balcony stopped absolutely still and looked in every direction. There's no way he could have escaped seeing us leaning up against our cars, but he clearly wasn't processing the information. He stared at the limo for a long, long moment while we looked up at the Milky Way and I pointed out the summer triangle to everyone. Finally, after a few words we were too far away to hear, accompanied by some tense body language, he resumed his rhythmic hip thrusts, apparently without making the connection between us and the impact he'd heard-- but not seen-- against the side of the ranger station.
Stupidity so monumental deserves its own special reward, so Fallon teed up again. This time the guy spotted us before the ball reached him, while Andy was still in his follow-through. He had no time to react, though, before the ball-- we saw it this time, even if he never did-- ricocheted off the wall of the station about three feet to his left, and away into the dunes. He dropped out of sight like he'd been shot, and the bimbo with the tallest hair and the mintiest mint-green dress popped up into view. The effect was like they were at opposite ends of a see-saw. We were laughing too hard to even scramble for the cars while she screamed.
It wasn't the dainty, horrified scream of a fair young maiden who's just glimpsed the army besieging her castle; it was the enraged, nasal shriek of a mallrat who's just been spotted sucking off a guy in a ketchip-stained powder blue tuxedo for the price of fast food.
The limo driver was walking towards us, and he didn't look any too pleased with the situation, but he didn't seem in any particular hurry either, so while the rest of us piled into the safety of our cars, Fallon, his bloodlust awakened, took aim again. Mr. Ketchup-stain had gotten up again, and was leaning on the balcony railing bellowing threats at us, while his ladylove shrieked curses at him and directed a flurry of slaps at his shoulders and back. We were too far away to make out her words, but they probably went along the lines of "Oh my gawd, they can't do this ta us! Dooow somethin' Vinny, you asshole, you said no one would see us here!"
Andy struck the parting shot perfectly: glass shattered behind the happy couple, and they both ducked out of sight. We decided that discretion was the better part of valor, made quick U-turns and headed back north over the bridge as fast as we could. My last view of the scene, in the rear-view mirror, was of the limo driver standing with his hands on his knees in the parking lot, laughing uncontrollably.
When I got home later, mom was walking the dog. I got out of the car whistling Metallica as she was coming down the driveway.
"You seem cheerful. Have a good time?"
"Meh. Same old stuff. It's too hot to move."
"Try not to think about it. Did you see all the limos? I think Patchogue-Medford is having their prom tonight."
"Oh yeah? I didn't see that. Hope the weather's not ruining their night."
"Oh, they're probably getting drunk and going to the beach the way you did. I don't think high school kids should be out drinking."
"You know mom, you're right... they should stick to minigolf or something." The night was suddenly too good to remain silent. I headed back out to the barn apartment and the loving caress of the concrete floor, singing "Sanitarium" in my best heavy metal growl.
User Reviews
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2009-01-30 19:23:35 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I can definitely picture you with a heavy metal growl.
Submitted by rob_berg (user info) at 2008-03-12 02:04:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"Dave Peters has a 12-pack of Bud. And we have some pretzels. Dylan and Andy Fallon are around. We were gonna do some gaming. Star Wars or Shadowrun. Are you in?" My turn to pause. Jon's would be smoky, and I hated that. The whole fuckin' house would smell like his mother's dogs, and I hated them too. There was every chance that I'd come home in a few hours pissed off, smelling like smoke, and sporting a fresh dogbite on my leg. Still, at that moment, even bad beer and bodily injury seemed marginally less unpleasant than lying on a bare concrete floor in my underwear waiting for the night to cool down enough for me to masturbate without drowning in my own greasy sweat."
This was possibly the best idea a man had come up with since, oh, fire.
---
Awesome stuff. Thanks for the link.
Submitted by Alter (user info) at 2007-09-26 20:34:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No, Comment.
Submitted by foster (user info) at 2006-10-30 18:21:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Hey look I'm in this. Yay!
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-10-19 18:11:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by rad1101 (user info) at 2005-10-19 03:46:57 (#)
There are a solid four pages of +2 streaks with 30 or more reviews. That is stupid. I am weeding it all out by giving every one of them a +1; that way posts that have 1.99 with 200+ reviews gets best ever.
--------------------------
Feeling self-important, are we?
Let's see you keep it up. I see a few perfect streaks up there today...
Submitted by rad1101 (user info) at 2005-10-19 03:46:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
There are a solid four pages of +2 streaks with 30 or more reviews. That is stupid. I am weeding it all out by giving every one of them a +1; that way posts that have 1.99 with 200+ reviews gets best ever.
Submitted by rollerboognish (user info) at 2005-07-31 04:11:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
a nudge up the best-ever ladder for one of my all-time favorite posts.
Submitted by supadupapupa (user info) at 2005-07-04 01:29:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
That was a great story, sadly, I could relate
Submitted by Soley_Trinity (user info) at 2005-06-01 05:23:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is +2 worthy on so many different levels.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-06-01 04:48:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by SilvrWolf (user info) at 2005-05-31 05:52:03 (#)
One thing has made me wonder about you, though: How do you know about the bars in Blacksburg? You once nailed the name of the college here in a post where I only mentioned names of bars
------------------------------------------------------------
I'd completely forgotten about that! If I'm remembering the circumstances correctly, I was waiting for a huge image processing job to run, bored out of my mind, and just put a bunch of bar names or a neighborhood or something into Google to see what would happen.
God I miss having the time to be bored.
Submitted by SilvrWolf (user info) at 2005-05-31 05:52:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
It's good to see old posters showing up in recent days.
One thing has made me wonder about you, though: How do you know about the bars in Blacksburg? You once nailed the name of the college here in a post where I only mentioned names of bars. Pre-dawn curiousity, I guess.
Awesome post.
Submitted by Phallic_Cymbals (user info) at 2005-05-02 00:10:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"It wasn't the dainty, horrified scream of a fair young maiden who's just glimpsed the army besieging her castle; it was the enraged, nasal shriek of a mallrat who's just been spotted sucking off a guy in a ketchip-stained powder blue tuxedo for the price of fast food. "
Oh yeh, that one.
Wonderful story, very easy to read due to the relaxed tone.
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2005-04-30 14:43:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You rock my fucking world.
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2005-04-29 09:16:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Coyote: Glad to see this post has gotten some decent exposure.
I think you're right about the complacency. They got married...had kids...all that mess. It's hard to be a bad boy of metal by night and a daddy changing diapers by day, at least for very long. Cliff's death had something to do with it too, I think. James was always kinda the genius behind the band, but I think Cliff's attitude was a major force that drove the direction of the band. He was just a take-no-shit, no-holds-barred kinda dude, from what I gather.
Why do I keep coming back here talking about Metallica? Let's discuss Slayer instead.
Submitted by Wazza (user info) at 2005-04-29 04:36:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
yes stick to mini golf, ha ha ha ha
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-04-29 04:24:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Pentameter-- I'm not complaining, it already has way more hits than I usually get.
ets-- "Whatever happened" is a damn good question... my ex-roommate swears it's connected to them sobering up and getting drug-free, my brother thinks Cliff Burton was the genius, and I'm kind of leaning towards a theme of 'success leads to complacency'. Not that you want my advice, but go with the originals! Break out the offbeat Metallica covers during shows the way Primus used to (another one for the 'what happened?' file...)
Submitted by thehauntfest (user info) at 2005-04-29 01:20:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
BK then a BJ. Classy.
Submitted by stevie_says (user info) at 2005-04-29 00:55:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Fuck was this good
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2005-04-29 00:05:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
My friend and bass player knows all of Orion. I know most of it. I could learn the solos and stuff pretty easily, I think. THat might be fun to remake... Problem is, we have so much original stuff we haven't even started on because of the whole Nirvana project. I don't know if we'll ever have the time. We'll see. THat break in that song about halfway through when it goes into that porno-like slow bass line - that's awesome. The whole album was genius. Whatever happened to them?
Submitted by jumpinjellyfish (user info) at 2005-04-28 17:43:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2+2+2+2+2!!!
Really good story!
Submitted by runswithscissors (user info) at 2005-04-28 16:59:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Well done! Thanks for sharing....
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2005-04-28 16:51:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
nice
Submitted by rollerboognish (user info) at 2005-04-28 16:47:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Have another. I want to encourage this level of quality in writing on this site.
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2005-04-28 16:47:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
YUP
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2005-04-28 16:36:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Pentameter (user info) at 2005-04-28 16:05:21 (#)
Ranking: 2
It's a sin that this doesn't have more reviews and hits.
Excellent, excellent job.
Submitted by Adjomak (user info) at 2005-04-28 16:11:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Good Shit
Submitted by Pentameter (user info) at 2005-04-28 16:05:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
It's a sin that this doesn't have more reviews and hits.
Excellent, excellent job.
Submitted by yermom (user info) at 2005-04-28 13:10:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was really long, but really good.
Submitted by Jungle_Jimanee (user info) at 2005-04-28 13:01:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2005-04-28 12:45:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You don't post nearly enough my friend.
+2 for the story and every awesome line it.
+2 for Ministry (Saw them in concert some months ago - Yes they still tour)
Submitted by rollerboognish (user info) at 2005-04-28 12:26:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This kept my attention all the way through. Awesome story.
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2005-04-28 12:09:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"Uh, we're having a big party. Girls, drugs, porno. Same old, same old."
"Really?"
Pause. "Dave Peters has a 12-pack of Bud. And we have some pretzels. Dylan and Andy Fallon are around. We were gonna do some gaming.
The whole thing was golden, but that made me laugh out loud.
Submitted by kimmy02721 (user info) at 2005-04-28 11:51:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked this.
Submitted by MANICMOTHER (user info) at 2005-04-28 11:34:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is LONG. I stopped afer the first paragraph. BUT...
"than a second skin of glistening saline ooze that can't evaporate in the humidity"
I'll give you a +2 for the most poetic description of deep humidity sweat I've ever read.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-04-28 11:29:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-04-28 11:21:30 (#)
Where the fuck have you been?
-------------------------------
Long story... unfortunately not involving zombies.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-04-28 11:27:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
mbstateside-- the guts of the story actually happened more or less as written; allow for 12 or 13 years of intervening memory failure, some editing for highlights, and a little bit of dialogue reconstruction.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-04-28 11:21:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Where the fuck have you been?
Thanks for adding a little meat to the usual thin and unsatisfying uberbroth.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-04-28 11:20:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
wookie-- I'd have enjoyed that too... alas for slice.
Circe-- Thanks, but I think I've risen to my own level of incompetence...
ets-- Play Orion, fuckheads!
Submitted by mbstateside (user info) at 2005-04-28 11:13:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nicely written,
Did this actually happen or is it just a story?
Submitted by WildcatMcGee (user info) at 2005-04-28 11:11:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Good stuff.
Submitted by choc_bongo (user info) at 2005-04-28 11:08:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Jeanneee (user info) at 2005-04-28 11:06:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 for Ministry.
The story kicked ass too.
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2005-04-28 11:05:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2005-04-28 10:47:27 (#)
Ranking: 2
This is amazing.. you don't belong here. You have talent, humor, and skill... you write like I wish I could. Dear god, man, do something with it. You're too fucking good to moulder here.
-----------
Look who's fucking talking.
Submitted by electrictoothsyndrome (user info) at 2005-04-28 10:52:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"It's just a convenient excuse to drive around and shoot the shit and send the last earthly remains of dead dinosaurs into the atmosphere where they belong."
That's a great fucking line.
This post was fucking awesome.
I have nothing else left to say, so I'll sing with you... "Fear of living on... Natives getting estless now... Mutiny in the air... Got some death to do... Mirror stares back hard... (I LOVE THIS PART) KILL is such a friendly word... Seems the only way for reaching out agaaaaaaaaaaaaaain!" (Solo)
Submitted by Circe (user info) at 2005-04-28 10:47:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is amazing.. you don't belong here. You have talent, humor, and skill... you write like I wish I could. Dear god, man, do something with it. You're too fucking good to moulder here.
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2005-04-28 10:41:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"Oh boo hoo, it's just a golf ball. If it kills anyone it's evolution's fault for not making people's skulls thicker."
I enjoyed this.
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2005-04-28 10:26:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Really good, solid writing. I would have liked it even better if one of those golf balls had caught some teeth...
Submitted by indoninja (user info) at 2005-04-28 10:23:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by knucklesnelson (user info) at 2005-04-28 10:10:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
^5
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2005-04-28 10:08:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Wrote this awhile ago. I was feeling nostalgic today and decided to post it...