You Arrogant Bastard

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

On the eve of St. Patrick’s day, it became apparent that the rumors would be substantiated: in third-period Spanish class, the Freewheelin’ Patrick himself floated past the door’s four-paneled plate glass window that have over the years become so comfortingly familiar to the DCPS crowd, pausing when he caught me out of the corner of his eye. He twisted his supple Arab form to address me, knowing full well that the glass would serve as an impediment to any message he had intended to relay verbally. He mouthed some words to me. I am no whale-chasing deaf woman, so I find it difficult to read lips precisely. I picked up on the vowels, though. And the ‘s’ sounds that ended some of the words.

“AAauress ppaarree is oo”

I deduced that he was trying to say “Mattress party is on.” I rejoiced --- stopping momentarily from the drawings of old men sodomizing animals that make up my standard classwork in AP Spanish. My leap into action drew the attention of my Spanish teacher, who hollered at me in her thick Dominican Spanish. I’m no whale-chasing Dominican, so I find it difficult to comprehend the heavy accent she carried on the raft ride over here. (I’m sorry, that was insensitive: I meant to say “log-bound aquatic conveyance”). I picked up on the vowels, though. And the ‘s’ sounds that ended some of the words.

“Thaaawehhl, kehhh ‘staahss asssiendo.”

Shit! Leave me alone… “No estoy haciendo nada. Simplemente estoy estudiando.” There we are… got that monkey off my back- large Dominican monkey. Now then. How do I finish this camel? Ah yes. With the robust phallus of an elderly man.

Flash forward to that evening. Things start slowly in the evening, but the promise of grasshopper parfaits at G. Bakers house was enough to drag any straggler out of his cave. T. Vladeck got wind and beat us all there, throwing up a classic Tom Vladeck away message to make sure everybody knew. When I arrived at the scene with J. Russell, we were presented with glass cups filled to the brim with gelatinous liquid that I could only assume was the pureed essence of a good many mid-atlantic grasshopper. We were pleasantly surprised when Gabe told us that it was the cookie “grasshopper,” not the insect, that made up these homemade fake French treats. No matter, I thought, though you cannot substitute the nuance of a crushed insect in any pudding-based confection, a Keebler-made girl scout cookie imitation was just as good as any twisted racist mint ice julep, and certainly better than nothing. We ate the parfaits quickly. They were sweet and damned fine.

Ah! Here comes Julian and Joey, with new right hand man Lukas Manneun. They sample Gabe's tasty parfaits, reject the notion of a mattress party and move on. Trevor shows up and we get the same response. Gabe himself gives us the standard spiel, “I- I- uh- I – don’t- [want to go]- to – y’know- the- if it’s- uh- ah!- eh..” I admit I was skeptical as well, but it is my deep-seated conviction that any social event going on in the basement of a mattress store is worth my 4 loonies, and the fact that it was not gonna cost me a dime sweetened the deal (despite the five-dollar cover. Loonies…that’s what they call dollars in fuckwad Canada. “Three loonies for the whole pack” and so forth. “But the pack only contains one” “Fine. Toonies for the pack.” Toonies means two loonies [dollars]. These are the only monetary units in the great white north. All other trade is conducted through elaborate fur dealerships and Corn Palaces.) Tom was the lone holdout, always up for a wild evening of grassroots eccentricity or coked up schoolgirls from the suburban sprawl. I sped off with J. Russell and Janet, who was dropped in the Jew-zone after some obscure dinner. We were bound for home, leaving Tom with a singular promise: that we would meet again. Later. In the motherfucking mattress discounters.

My push for a trip to the 7-11 for a poor man’s daiquiri was met by veto, so we set off by foot to the heart of Tenleytown. Doors at 10:30, we were told, and we were fashionably late at 10:40. When we reached the alleyway that runs behind mattress discounters, a silvery car passed us. Lauren and Cara were inside the car. The kids at the party were damn young, they said. And they weren’t sticking around for no Vienna sausage-fest. That blonde girl who drives them around every once and a while seconded the motion. Her nightly vocabulary consisted of three relatively uninspired phrases: 1) “I’m like the only person there that’s old enough to get arrested,” 2) “This is the gayest shit ever,” and 3) “I am a insufferable bitch.” Okay, I made the last one up. But after talking to her for about 30 seconds, it became clear that this femme was a spoilsport. And my policy is, if you don’t like it, fuck off. She was clearly better suited for a neon-lit eurotrash nightclub pumping shitty trance, overpriced rail drinks and throbbing euro-phallus. Anyway, Janet worked some persuasion magic and convinced them to check out the scene indoors. Scorpion showed up and we all attacked the party with high hopes and healthy skepticism.

I would like to make clear before I go any further that there is a certain range of possibilities of what could have happened at any party taking place in the basement of a retail store, from mass gang-rape to mass arrests. So it is wise not to get your hopes up, and honestly I was surprised that the damn thing even happened. But, Wayne, this mattress party was everything I could have asked for and more. I stepped inside and was greeted by Doc himself, finally unmasked, a smiling gent with mild facial hair. The door was craftily disguised with plastic trash bags, and bolted shut with what Douglas Darden would call a two-by-four. When I walked down the staircase, all my doubts were erased. Before me stood legions of people, all Wilsonians with a few notable exceptions (Paul Joyner, Sarah Ozment). You could cut the street cred with a fork in that room. That basement was the convergence of 15 years of Tenley culture, all drinking from the same spout, manned by the steadfast Pablo. Skinheads and thieves, hip-hoppers and Queerben, plus a nice peppering of masters of the written word… SPOK wasn’t there, but I’m pretty sure that OVER was. And AHOY. J Russ lit the room with a pulsing dub soundtrack- perfect subterranean music. Saul wielded a hammer with cunning expertise, ‘Drew Lander played the role of the drunkard, and Darréll his kindly guide. Scorpion socialized. More than one hundred passed through the shop that night, as time brought St. Patrick’s Day to the present. Have a look around the room yourself, soak up the ambience.

Lines of mattresses created corridors of merriment. No forts, but it didn’t matter. I bounced on those fucking mattresses. There were two bathrooms- the basement latrine- filthy to begin with- was quickly oversoiled, and the upstairs employee room was often filled with a disoriented ‘Drew Lander, giving you any of the classic drunkard lines as you knock on the door to make sure he’s got the right end of his body over the toilet.

Self: Drew, you still breathing in there?
Drew: This man!… this man right here…! This is the king right here.

The upstairs room was quite sanitary, and a visit provided the rush of being in perfect view of any passers-by near the storefront.

The basement lounge stayed lively til the wee hours of the morning. J Russell cut out early in a spell of paranoia. He left his dub disc but it took damage due to an irresponsible faceless troublemaker who left it out on the concrete floor. Some of my crew accompanied a group of juniors to your Steak n’ Egg, to highten their evening speedball of street cred. I find that dangerous, however. Straight crack for me. Uhh… of street cred. Picture of the evening.

All was well in the mattress party. It concluded with zero interference by John Law. The evening wrapped up around with Saul providing a generous transport homeward. Yesterday I was dismayed to learn that Doc had lost his job. The Freewheelin’ Patrick Himself lamented that this was because of our beloved mattress party. This sad news came after repeated assurance of future mattress functions, but I became skeptical after some shady accounting on the part of the hosts (“We made a $700 profit,” then later, “We have a $400 debt”).

Curtis Morales ended the evening on a brilliant note, perched atop the Washington monument, mandolin in hand, crooning softly toward the moonlit Patomac river:

“And so we strode, hands entwined once more, waylaid by the setting sun.”

Yeah… I made that part up. Fuck. I’d better quit while I’m ahead. Ah well, I’m satisfied. Got to say ‘phallus’ twice. Oh fuck. I mean three times.

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.

Fisticuffs?

I spent the majority of last night coasting around the same few rooms over and over again, conversing with the old timers, catching up on recent events only to forget them moments later, and toggling between conversations and greetings with nimble expertise. The vocabulary of a high school party is basic. If kindergarteners were physically developed enough to drunkenly wrap their car around a tree and knock each other up, they could participate as well. Assuming, that is, that they can keep up with the volatile nature of current slang (latest trend: sound like a fucking moron). Oh, yeah, and, if they’re really hip, they should learn how roll a twenty dollar bill into a straw narrow enough to fit in their nose. Nights like this made me proud not to be deadlocked into the stereotypical social mainstream. And I’m not even anti-hip enough to be accepted into any sort of underground ‘scene.’

I made several promises last night, but we all know that party promises are like meringue cookies: they look nice at first, but they are hollow and tasteless, and will only complicate your already-formidable bowel difficulties. I promised to draw more Placenta comics. I promised to make a Deck Unit music video. Fuck, man. I think I even promised to collaborate with Mason and Ted “End of Mary” Jurith on some kind of film project. Chalk it up to the carefree environment. And the heavy meth usage. I would like to uphold one of these promises: I have Placenta plotlines ready and waiting. As for the others, well, I don’t much like doing work. So, credit me as an executive producer and I’ll take my cut. But don’t ask me for my tripod: the easy-snap head is missing. Read that as you will.

My night was tainted, however, when I witnessed a conflict between two opposing forces: we’ll call them Frowney and Deddy. Depending on who you’re hanging out with, they are both cunts and kings. There have been times when I would have liked to see either of them take a punch. Yesterday, I didn’t give a fuck who was the bigger douche: the poet with the Wonderboys haircut or the jock with the “DEA” hat and bandana wrapped around his forehead. What I didn’t want to happen was exactly what happened. I was standing by the front doorway, talking to someone or something, when Deddy forced his drunken bulk past me, uttering in his smoke-stained, high pitched rasp, “Frowney out there?” Here we go, I thought. The moment of which the Saul Cohens, Ben Storches and Nick Wisemans of the world had prophesized, with varying usage of the word “striz.”

Frowney was out there talking nervously with someone. I wasn’t sure whether to admire him for facing the situation that had been haunting him for so long, or to look down upon him for the foolishness that would bring him to the same vicinity as this suburban beer baron.

Several months ago, Deddy, who carries with him a reputation for going to parties and disrupting them, breaking stuff and being obnoxious, hosted a party of his own at his home in the Maryland suburbs. Frowney, who carries with him a reputation of being pompous, rude and abrasive, was one among many who was rejected entry into the party, with a line best paraphrased as, “I don’t know you. You can’t come in.” Deddy had been to a party hosted by Frowney in the past and wound up urinating on his basement floor or something like that, so Frowney was understandably incensed. Frowney aided Mike Hopkins in orchestrating a call to police that resulted in the breakup of Deddy’s super fun BCC beer party (and, like, 20 ppl got citations!!!!!!!). What began as a shrewd revenge tactic snowballed into a PR crisis for Frowney, who made the n00b mistake of bragging to everybody he could find about his clever prank. I can testify, as my coach rolled up to the house mere moments after Frowney was denied entry- we left shortly after when Hopkins tipped us off: he was on the phone with the police (uhh.. we were also denied entry). The following week was turbulent for Frowney, with repeated eggings of his house and threats from the ‘unstoppable’ Deck Unit: “I’m just sayin’…Frowney’s gotta step the fuck back- we gonna fuck him up,” the all-white Unit proclaimed. They decided to get high and sit down instead. Ever since that night, however, Frowney strove to distance himself from Deddy, who held the grudge throughout the winter, awaiting the glorious day when he could punch someone much weaker than him.

Deddy burst through the door last night, throwing his girth across the lawn like a some sort of magnificent land-walrus, accompanied by his two cronies, striped collared shirts and all. Frowney muttered “Shit” a tone of unmistakable desperation. Deddy approached him and got into his face, pushing his gut and obtrusive nose into Frowney’s legendarily malodorous personal space. It was the standard I-am-about-to-fight-you stance. The aggressor saunters forward in a homoerotic mixplate of jeers and chest thrusts, head cocked sideways, eyebrows locked in a Sonnabend-esque glare, as though they were being weighed down by invisible sacks of hubris, and face switching angles with every threat, as though tilting his head would somehow give a better angle at which to harm Frowney. A foreigner would have been confused as to whether or not the two were about to kiss.

Frowney took the route of the frightened junior: “Listen, man, it wasn’t me who did that.”

“Who was it then?” Deddy replied.

“Michael Hopkins!”

“Where is he?”

“He’s not here!”

Deddy paused for a moment, then unsheathed his moneyshot line, the cream of his verbal crop: “I’m gonna fuck you up.”

At this point, I stepped in, with the aid of J. Denvir. Crowds were flowing out into the front lawn from the house like water. If there is one thing that will empty a house full of drunken teenagers quicker than the shout of “Cops,” it is the promise of a fight. The drunken are reduced to their most primal of urges: the sex, the violence, the loud noises. The liquor had run dry, and the children had a thirst for blood. We attempted to calm the furor, to pacify the hunchbacked beast preparing to decimate the proud poet, but our slick wordplay had no effect on Deddy: this was a man of action. He was not going to disappoint the crowd.

Frowney was begging for amnesty. “I don’t want to fight you, Deddy,” he repeated over and over.

For a fleeting moment it appeared that Deddy had been talked down- he put up his hands and stepped back, saying “Ok, ok.”

Frowney turned to walk away.

Deddy wheeled and took a swing at Frowney, landing a hit squarely in the side of his head. The crowd went wild.

Frowney fell to the ground. His fall damaged the gardens around the front steps where the hit took place. Dazed and holding his jaw, Frowney struggled to his feet and walked backwards up the small hill that sloped down toward the street in front of the house.

Somebody pushed somebody, I didn’t see who they were. One of them had a striped collared shirt. Another fight was very close to breaking out. It did not, and the crowd continued to focus their attention on the main event.

Deddy pursued Frowney up the hill. He took another swing, again locking a solid blow into Frowney’s head. I didn’t see where it hit that time. Frowney didn’t fall over. Frenzy ensued, and somebody held Deddy back.

The beating was over- to call it a fight would be a misnomer. Frowney receded into a protective shell of gentlemen from the high school class of 2003. Deddy went back into the party to celebrate his fantastic triumph of punching somebody in the head when he wasn’t looking. He tightened the bandana surrounding his tortoise-like head and preceded to wander around making noises and getting drunker. A game of beer pong, old boy, to savor the victory. I helped to herd the masses of kids back inside. This is what we had hoped would not happen. Nothing gets a party busted like a bunch of kids hanging around outside making noise. As the cattle filed back in I noticed that a lot of them bore telltale signs of kids from the suburbs. I'm no Nathaniel Mills, but by playing the violence card, Deddy put everybody's wellbeing at risk and ruined any chance of a Tuesday night blowout at the same location, and these kids were cheering him on.

What occurred made me sick to my stomach. I was punched in the back of the head once, when I wasn’t looking. It was in sixth grade. The experience was unpleasant, and I would not want it to happen to me again. Unfortunately, some seem not to have progressed much from the age of 12. I am no Shaolin warrior, but I know honor from dishonor. I’ve read enough obituaries of Harry Houdini to know that taking a swing at somebody when they do not face you is dishonorable. Deddy stood before Frowney like a rhinoceros before a smoking pig, but he was too cowardly to fight him like a man.

I know that there were plenty of people at this party who publicly will declare their hatred for Deddy that would just as soon cheer on the beating of Frowney. Be that as it may, the sight of Deddy dealing the cheap shot and then moving back to receive the carefully choreographed handshakes of his suburban cohorts truly upset me. Some kid in the suburbs was just beaten to death because some drunken fucks hit him for too long. The fact that Deddy would hold a grudge for months against somebody he barely knew is a testament to the hollow life I would like to assume he leads. J. Denvir put it best when he said, “I’d really like to know what a guy like Deddy does in the daytime.”

If it weren’t for Peter Pakhomkin, I would assume that everybody at BCC is a Deddy or a Deddy’s crony, making the school deserving of my hi-larious acronym Beer Consuming Cunts. Do us all a favor and keep your cowardly bullshit back in the suburbs of Maryland where it belongs. Don’t poison our beloved City of Chocolate. Nonono, not you, Peter. You come in here anytime. The door’s open. Live sex show.