We leave the fair in a huff. Charlie and I have already waited twenty minutes for Jason to wander his way to the entrance/exit where we intially came in, but after six Somas and a 'happy pill' later, there's no telling where he thinks he is. Time slows down for Jason, as Charlie (drunk as a skunk) desperately fights back the urge to get into a fight with anyone walking by. I try and diffuse the entire fair situation, and finally -- low and behold -- a scraggly head of blond hair with matching goatee on top of a red GWAR shirt comes staggering through the crowd of people.
The crowd of thousands suddenly stops dead in their tracks. They're all frozen, and slowly fade to a shade of gray under the dim carnival lights and neon flashing ride signs. A man and a woman are frozen mid-kiss. A child with a giant corn on the cob is happily licking the butter and Lawry's off his fingers. A trucker-hat clad broham is lighting a cigarette, while the cigarette rests between his lips, lighter only millimeters from the end of his grit, his eyes are fixated on his girlfriend's large breasts happily bouncing out of her revealing wife-beater as she whips her hair back to tie into a bund all the while making sure her rather nice tits are on display. Time has stood still for these people. This moment is meaningless. It ends abruptly when Jason runs into us with a howl of approval as he scans the fair -- for what I don't know, and neither does he most likely.
As we walk past the exit, the tension has already begun to build between Charlie and Jason. They're arguing about a game of horse shoes they played earlier at our friend Bret's house. Who won, who should have won, who throws better, who is a sore loser, who landed more ringers, who's dick is bigger, who has fucked the most girls, who has fucked ugliest girls -- who cares?
We barely make it past the exit when Jason begins telling us (for the tenth time) the surpisingly amusing story about the girl who he gave two cigarettes to and in turn got $5 for a barbecue beef sandwich. Despite how amusing the story might be, he fails to realize that both me and Charlie were standing two feet away when it happened.
"...and I can't believe I got a BEEF SANDWICH for two cigarettes!" He goes on for two more minutes. "Two fucking cigarettes! Tell me the last time y'all got hooked up like that! When? Never! Beef sandwich for two cigarettes!"
The next thing Charlie says will unkowingly spark an angry tsunami that will make the Indian Ocean in 2004 look like a popped waterballoon. "I'll give you a beef sandwich for free!"
It's not that funny. It really isn't. But in the spirit of the night, we both laugh -- Charlie and I, that is. We cackle and crack more jokes about beef sandwiches, rib at Jason a bit, and he decides he's had enough of both of us. He's been reduced to the mental capacity of a small child, and he stops dead in his tracks, crosses his arms, and says, "Fuck y'all. Go on with out me. I'm staying here."
We're supposed to stop, slap him on the back, tell him we're kidding, to lighten up, to not take things so seriously, that we love him, if he needs one of us to tie his shoes, and so on and so forth. We've done this routine a hundred times or more. I know this act. It's drunken childlike behavior, and I'm not fond of it (which is why I never act this way, even while inebriated). I loathe this type of behavior to such an extent that I become flushed red with frustration, but I yield immediately and remember my duty as designated driver and what it entails; making sure all of us have a good time, beef sandwiches or not.
But something happens. Charlie and I don't stop to cradle Jason. We keep walking. We look at each other, exchanged laughs, shrug and continue to walk. It's not working this time, Jason, I think. It's not working and it will never work again.
We keep walking until I take the time to turn around and see if he's waffled and begun trying to catch up to us, but there he is. Still posted up by the exit with his arms crossed, cigarette in his mouth and chin up in the air. Maybe he knows we're through with his act but he's too stubborn to fold and give in to us. Maybe he thinks we're coming back for him after some reconsideration... no matter what he thinks, I'm not turning back.
Fast forward to the car; Charlie and I are posted up by his car which I'm driving as designated driver for the night. Twenty minutes and more beef sandwich jokes go by, plenty of laughter, and just as I'm about ready to abandon Jason to his own devices in fucking Costa Mesa which is miles from our fucking neighborhood, I get a mysterious number calling me on my cellphone. I already know the score: Jason has borrowed some ones phone in the crowd and is trying to get ahold of me.
"We're at the fucking car. Get your fucking ass over here before I fucking leave you here Jason."
"...hello?"
I'm getting that flushed red sweaty feeling again, and suddenly I am extremely annoyed with the humidity licking at me despite it being 10:15 PM.
I give him direct instructions to get to the car, and he staggers along twenty minutes -- twenty fucking minutes -- later. Right away, the jokes start again, and old wounds that span over five long years of friendship are reopened within sixty impressive seconds. Games of darts, puking at parties, fat girlfriends, whores, slutty sisters, ugly moms, arrests -- it's rattlesnake season and anything is free game here.
Charlie calls the final ultimatum out: "Alright fool, if you wanna handle this with fists, lets fucking do it. Lets fucking do it. I'm tired of your mouth bro, so lay it on me. Lets settle this. C'mon. Step out of that fucking car." He's had enough, and I can tell by the tone of his voice he's gone beyond drunk threats and is dead serious about throwing some blows around.
Now they're out of the car, squared up, and it begins. I don't know who throws the first blow, but it's all over relatively quickly. They roll around on the ground for a minute or two, and as I light up a cigarette, a group of three attractive -- attractive? fucking sexy -- ladies walk past the scurmish. They stop, jaws dropped, looking at the two children wrestling about on the blacktop of the parking lot, trying to make out what's happening under the dim flourescent lighting, and suddenly become aware of me.
I'm leaning on the trunk of the car, in the middle of lighting a fresh cigarette, when I look up as calmly as I can be and ask them, "How's it?"
They exchange shocked looks at each other, give an uneasy laugh, and continue walking. Some one in the truck next to me -- that I just pissed on ten minutes ago -- rolls his window down and tells me to break it up, that I have to break it up, that they're going to kill each other, that they are out of control, and I tell him to shut the fuck up and stay in his truck and let the men (children really) handle their business. He rolls his window back up, flips me off, and begins to drive away. I flick my freshly lit smoke at his car and pick it back up after it bounces off his car and he's long gone -- it's my last one.
This is an ordinary night to me. Some broham in the distance is screaming kill him or some bullshit like that, and I'm too annoyed to tell him to fuck off. I tune him out instead. I tune out the dim parking lot lights. I tune out the fact that Charlie has Jason by his hair, pinned underneath a car, kneeing him in the side. I tune out the blood coming off Charlie's forehead. I tune out the blood oozing from Jason's mouth. I ignore the security guard screaming towards us, besides telling him to fuck off and find a real job -- and when it's finally all over with and Charlie has tossed me his keys and instructed me to take Jason home then pick him back up, I tune out Jason punching spiderwebs into Charlie's windshield until his hand begins to bleed.
The crunch of the windshield brings me halfway back down through the atmosphere of anger, and I pull Jason off the car. Realizing I can't drive the car with a fucking shattered windshield, I cuss out Jason and remind him how fucked we are, that we will never get home, and that he took it too far.
I don't really care about any of this. While the clash of the titans unfolds before my eyes, I am bored with it and it is already over quicker than it started. I call Nikki and tell her she needs to pick me and her brother up. Charlie stays at his sisters. Death threats are lobbed back and forth via cellphone like Qassam rockets into Israel all night. The storm will soon pass and tomorrow this will all be meaningless. The cronies will have been phone up for nothing. None of this fucking matters, I think on the ride home while Jason curses the world from the seat behind me. On the freeway, the tailights and oncoming headlights become tiny fireflys of some sort. "Oh my god," I say aloud -- "they have their own fucking freeways!"
The crowd of thousands suddenly stops dead in their tracks. They're all frozen, and slowly fade to a shade of gray under the dim carnival lights and neon flashing ride signs. A man and a woman are frozen mid-kiss. A child with a giant corn on the cob is happily licking the butter and Lawry's off his fingers. A trucker-hat clad broham is lighting a cigarette, while the cigarette rests between his lips, lighter only millimeters from the end of his grit, his eyes are fixated on his girlfriend's large breasts happily bouncing out of her revealing wife-beater as she whips her hair back to tie into a bund all the while making sure her rather nice tits are on display. Time has stood still for these people. This moment is meaningless. It ends abruptly when Jason runs into us with a howl of approval as he scans the fair -- for what I don't know, and neither does he most likely.
As we walk past the exit, the tension has already begun to build between Charlie and Jason. They're arguing about a game of horse shoes they played earlier at our friend Bret's house. Who won, who should have won, who throws better, who is a sore loser, who landed more ringers, who's dick is bigger, who has fucked the most girls, who has fucked ugliest girls -- who cares?
We barely make it past the exit when Jason begins telling us (for the tenth time) the surpisingly amusing story about the girl who he gave two cigarettes to and in turn got $5 for a barbecue beef sandwich. Despite how amusing the story might be, he fails to realize that both me and Charlie were standing two feet away when it happened.
"...and I can't believe I got a BEEF SANDWICH for two cigarettes!" He goes on for two more minutes. "Two fucking cigarettes! Tell me the last time y'all got hooked up like that! When? Never! Beef sandwich for two cigarettes!"
The next thing Charlie says will unkowingly spark an angry tsunami that will make the Indian Ocean in 2004 look like a popped waterballoon. "I'll give you a beef sandwich for free!"
It's not that funny. It really isn't. But in the spirit of the night, we both laugh -- Charlie and I, that is. We cackle and crack more jokes about beef sandwiches, rib at Jason a bit, and he decides he's had enough of both of us. He's been reduced to the mental capacity of a small child, and he stops dead in his tracks, crosses his arms, and says, "Fuck y'all. Go on with out me. I'm staying here."
We're supposed to stop, slap him on the back, tell him we're kidding, to lighten up, to not take things so seriously, that we love him, if he needs one of us to tie his shoes, and so on and so forth. We've done this routine a hundred times or more. I know this act. It's drunken childlike behavior, and I'm not fond of it (which is why I never act this way, even while inebriated). I loathe this type of behavior to such an extent that I become flushed red with frustration, but I yield immediately and remember my duty as designated driver and what it entails; making sure all of us have a good time, beef sandwiches or not.
But something happens. Charlie and I don't stop to cradle Jason. We keep walking. We look at each other, exchanged laughs, shrug and continue to walk. It's not working this time, Jason, I think. It's not working and it will never work again.
We keep walking until I take the time to turn around and see if he's waffled and begun trying to catch up to us, but there he is. Still posted up by the exit with his arms crossed, cigarette in his mouth and chin up in the air. Maybe he knows we're through with his act but he's too stubborn to fold and give in to us. Maybe he thinks we're coming back for him after some reconsideration... no matter what he thinks, I'm not turning back.
Fast forward to the car; Charlie and I are posted up by his car which I'm driving as designated driver for the night. Twenty minutes and more beef sandwich jokes go by, plenty of laughter, and just as I'm about ready to abandon Jason to his own devices in fucking Costa Mesa which is miles from our fucking neighborhood, I get a mysterious number calling me on my cellphone. I already know the score: Jason has borrowed some ones phone in the crowd and is trying to get ahold of me.
"We're at the fucking car. Get your fucking ass over here before I fucking leave you here Jason."
"...hello?"
I'm getting that flushed red sweaty feeling again, and suddenly I am extremely annoyed with the humidity licking at me despite it being 10:15 PM.
I give him direct instructions to get to the car, and he staggers along twenty minutes -- twenty fucking minutes -- later. Right away, the jokes start again, and old wounds that span over five long years of friendship are reopened within sixty impressive seconds. Games of darts, puking at parties, fat girlfriends, whores, slutty sisters, ugly moms, arrests -- it's rattlesnake season and anything is free game here.
Charlie calls the final ultimatum out: "Alright fool, if you wanna handle this with fists, lets fucking do it. Lets fucking do it. I'm tired of your mouth bro, so lay it on me. Lets settle this. C'mon. Step out of that fucking car." He's had enough, and I can tell by the tone of his voice he's gone beyond drunk threats and is dead serious about throwing some blows around.
Now they're out of the car, squared up, and it begins. I don't know who throws the first blow, but it's all over relatively quickly. They roll around on the ground for a minute or two, and as I light up a cigarette, a group of three attractive -- attractive? fucking sexy -- ladies walk past the scurmish. They stop, jaws dropped, looking at the two children wrestling about on the blacktop of the parking lot, trying to make out what's happening under the dim flourescent lighting, and suddenly become aware of me.
I'm leaning on the trunk of the car, in the middle of lighting a fresh cigarette, when I look up as calmly as I can be and ask them, "How's it?"
They exchange shocked looks at each other, give an uneasy laugh, and continue walking. Some one in the truck next to me -- that I just pissed on ten minutes ago -- rolls his window down and tells me to break it up, that I have to break it up, that they're going to kill each other, that they are out of control, and I tell him to shut the fuck up and stay in his truck and let the men (children really) handle their business. He rolls his window back up, flips me off, and begins to drive away. I flick my freshly lit smoke at his car and pick it back up after it bounces off his car and he's long gone -- it's my last one.
This is an ordinary night to me. Some broham in the distance is screaming kill him or some bullshit like that, and I'm too annoyed to tell him to fuck off. I tune him out instead. I tune out the dim parking lot lights. I tune out the fact that Charlie has Jason by his hair, pinned underneath a car, kneeing him in the side. I tune out the blood coming off Charlie's forehead. I tune out the blood oozing from Jason's mouth. I ignore the security guard screaming towards us, besides telling him to fuck off and find a real job -- and when it's finally all over with and Charlie has tossed me his keys and instructed me to take Jason home then pick him back up, I tune out Jason punching spiderwebs into Charlie's windshield until his hand begins to bleed.
The crunch of the windshield brings me halfway back down through the atmosphere of anger, and I pull Jason off the car. Realizing I can't drive the car with a fucking shattered windshield, I cuss out Jason and remind him how fucked we are, that we will never get home, and that he took it too far.
I don't really care about any of this. While the clash of the titans unfolds before my eyes, I am bored with it and it is already over quicker than it started. I call Nikki and tell her she needs to pick me and her brother up. Charlie stays at his sisters. Death threats are lobbed back and forth via cellphone like Qassam rockets into Israel all night. The storm will soon pass and tomorrow this will all be meaningless. The cronies will have been phone up for nothing. None of this fucking matters, I think on the ride home while Jason curses the world from the seat behind me. On the freeway, the tailights and oncoming headlights become tiny fireflys of some sort. "Oh my god," I say aloud -- "they have their own fucking freeways!"
