You Arrogant Bastard

How I Spent My St. Patrick's Day, Part One

Two weeks before St. Patrick’s day, I encountered the free-wheelin’ Patrick himself, slithering around the Woodrow Wilson High School stage. He carried with him a box of grapefruits- he told me there were fourteen and I took his word for it (a mistake?). He must have counted them out upon purchase, or at least sat down and counted the fuckers out while, I don’t know, shaving his beard off, boning a sophomore or something. The grapefruits were ripe, there was no doubt about that. He had obtained them recently. From where or for what reason, I did not inquire. Such is the beauty of these incidents- how or why he came upon these grapefruits was unimportant: they were his now, and that was all that mattered. How long do grapefruits stay ripe?

Vandals had recently attacked the Wilson stage and we were surveying the damage together. They had really gone all out this time. Super-sized tags scrawled in felt-tip marker coated the walls of our inverted theater like some sort of cheap, self-absorbed wallpaper. Kind of like Tyvek house-wrap, but without the applicable use and color screen-printed text. The whole operation seemed to have been done by two or three guys, probably in a single class period. Nothing was left untagged: walls, stairs, tables, furniture and flats- “Neyo” had conquered them all. Further investigation would indicate that “Neyo” is actually a member of both the class of ’04 or ’05, as well as popular rap group Da Lench Mob, or some sort of imitation thereof. Why “Neyo” would attempt an operation of this scale is unconscionable: if you tag a wall somewhere, nobody will care enough to paint over it. You paint the walls with your name, however, and it will get erased.

Patrick had set down his grapefruits upon one of Neyo’s tables. Also on the table was a Chipotle bag that I had brought, and a viscous orange liquid (spilled). I didn’t ask where the liquid came from, or why it was there. Would it have mattered, even if Patrick had known? I wasn’t touching it either way. It was probably Neyo’s. He’ll be back for it.

“Watch out for that liquid, man.” I told Patrick as he hoisted himself onto the table.

“It’s not going anywhere,” he told me. Patrick is always one step ahead of the game (or at least claims to be). “It is sticky, I touched it before.”

I nodded, yeah, and then I took a bite out of my burrito. I was holding it with a napkin, because it had been sloppily wrapped. When things speed up at Chipotle, as they usually do around 5:45, those preparing your burrito are more likely to carelessly roll your burrito, causing much of the food to spill out of either end, or roll the burrito too tightly, which can cause (heartbreaking) tears in the hull (or ‘chassis’) of the burrito as a result. Either situation causes a disruption in standard burrito-consumption strategy, and must be dealt with on a situation-by-situation basis. To the dismay of many, there is no cure-all for a poorly wrapped burrito. In my case, the burrito had been rolled loose and without care. One end carried too much weight, and guacamole and rice was forced out. Wrapped in its aluminum sheath, the green and white mixture had crept all around the body of the burrito, coating it in a chunky goo that I would like to refer to as amniotic, but I’m sure the fluid inside the amniotic sac is far from green and certainly not as delicious (though modern cinema and its corresponding ‘making-of’ DVD bonus-feature documentaries would beg to differ). Forget it, I could have gone low-brow and said it looked like the tasty excrement of a fabulous green daemon. Anyway, the only thing saving the burrito was its exquisite taste.

“What are you doing on St. Patrick’s day?” Patrick asked. He started to lie on his back, atop Neyo’s table. Fucking Christ! His head was mere inches from the orange liquid!

“I don’t know, nothing. Why?” I had to keep my cool. Shut up, man. Just eat your burrito. Let him worry about the viscous orange liquid.

“Well, we don’t have school the next day.” Patrick said.

“Oh yeah?” I was talking through a mouthful of rice and tender steak. My god! I’ve forgotten the name of their cooking technique. Mesquite grilled? He is practically touching that orange fucking fluid! I couldn’t restrain myself any longer. “Seriously, you’re about to put your head in--- just watch out for the liquid, man. Watch out for that fluid.” He sat up. Okay… crisis averted. Now then, what’s the frequency, Kenneth? Segue!

“Alright. Well, I know this guy who works up at the mattress store, who buys cigarettes for me sometimes but usually just bums cigarettes off me. I told him to call me his bitch, and he told me we could party in the basement of the mattress store!”

“Say that again. Slowly.” What is written above is my best recollection of what was first said to me. As one could easily deduce, his statement made no sense at first.

“I know a guy who works at the mattress store.”

“Which mattress store?”

“The one next to Record Exchange. We’re pretty good friends now, and he offered to let me and a group of my friends party in the basement of the store. He has done it all the time with his cousins. He told me about a time when he had like 20 of his close cousins down in the basement. They were blasting music and drinking and having sex and –“

“Hold!” I begged. “His cousins were having sex with each other?”

“No… they brought friends. Anyway, he has parties down there all the time, and he said we could do it whenever we wanted.”

I have to say I was disappointed in the lack of incest-upon-mattress. “Who is this mattress man?”

“He goes by the name of Doc. Want to see his business card?”

The card was white but I doubted that Doc was. Does that make me a racist? I swear Patrick told me he was Arab, but I may have just been looking at Patrick while he talked to me (thought process: Before you stands an arab, sir. If he puts his hands into his pockets, dive for cover--- he could be carrying an airplane).

To make a long story short, the pros:

• ton of mattresses (mattress-fort-making probability much higher than at a standard house)
  
• Soundproof basement
  
• Multiple rooms (multiple forts! plus mescaline lounge?)
  
• Past successes = Present security?

Cons:

• Whatever would happen if a cop saw a kid hanging around in an unlit, closed mattress discounters
  
• Doc’s questionable motives (altruism? or a craving for the schoolyard poon?)
  
• This could all just be small-talk blown out of proportion

Another problem with this party is that (according to Patrick) we wouldn’t be able to continuously open the rear door of the Mattress Discounters: we’d have to gather up the kids outside and smuggle them all in at once, like balloons upon balloons of heroin into a fat baby at the airport. This would look weird to a passerby. Nevertheless, if anything would come out of this fabled mattress party, it would certainly be a good tale to tell.

Patrick’s past track record involves a lot of embellishment, and sometimes outlandish lies- though some which are assumed to be untrue yet have gone without concrete disproval (his brother’s porn company, his royal bloodline, his father’s personal ties to the Bin Ladens). Will Patrick prove us all fools for doubting him? Shut up, you fat fucking idiot, they’re talking to you now. Inner monologue will save no man, unless he has one of those computers that reads your thoughts and then speaks them in a computerized voice, like Stephen Hawking. Man I wish I paralyzed myself cliff diving like he did. What amenities! Shut the fuck up! Do the scene.

I finished the rehearsal and walked out of the building. I snagged a grapefruit along the way. One thing was certain: there’d be breakfast tomorrow.

Stay tuned for part two.

Posted by sw at March 24, 2004 08:36 PM