when you did it, did you listen to adult contemporary stations, too, like us? we sat there, cheering on the other at 12:30ish to drink more of the schnapps - to become one with it, and also to become one with our notion of american youth. drinking from some weird peach schnapps drink that i had stolen only minutes earlier from a twenty-four hour shoppers food warehouse. we went there so sarah could look at hair dye, killing time until vince got off work at blockbuster. we wandered through the wine section and i saw this peach schanpps drink and i got very excited. this is not the good stuff. this is a grocery store - not a liquor store. the stuff was 7.5% alcohol. i was thinking of yanking a nice bottle of cabernet, but was so enthralled with this bottle of schnapps, that i somehow managed to fit this huge bottle into my coat pocket.
and after the first few drinks from the bottle, the sweetness of it became unbearable. it was like drinking cough syrup or something. sarah said it tasted like eating pure sugar on a stick of butter. the analogy sort of grossed me out, but the accuracy of it cannot be denied. the stuff tasted like s-h-i-t. shit. maybe even Shit. we could not go back into the 24 hour shoppers because that would just look sketchy, so we waited in the parking lot outside blockbuster, chugging the gross shit, singing to the radio, and talking about how we felt like our teeth were going to fall out.
also talking about crossroads, the horrible, horrible britney spears movie that we saw just a couple hours earlier. the movie was just ridiculous, but i am still glad i saw it. i can say i was there, when american popular culture was at its nadir - i witnessed the thing know as britney. can i get that printed on a t-shirt? one of those "i survived the..." type t-shirts.
making fun of the movie between forced chugs of the yuckiness. we went to the diner eventually, sans vince, because he had to comfort lisa who was crying about something or other. oh and ps - we did not even get the slight bit tipsy from that gross schnapps - all we got was probably a couple of cavities, and a yucky feeling in our stomach, like we had just eaten a whole birthday cake - the kind with lots and lots of thick frosting - the sheet type cakes.
we got to the diner, which ps - is out in the boonies, it is out by landmark, far far away from any place i would ever expect to see anyone. but this is where sarah and her friends always hang out, so we went there, and as we are walking up to the door, sarah says, "is that ty?" my heart stops and i glance into the window of the barnside diner, and realize that yes, oh fucking shit, that is ty robinson. i hate this boy with a passion. we stand at the door, wavering about going in. i am trying my hardest to convince sarah that we shouldn't eat there - that i do not want to have to talk to ty at all. please please please, let's just go eat somewhere else. sarah really wanted to eat there, and thought i was being silly in my reaction to ty's presence at this diner.
i don't even know how to explain ty. i don't know if i should even try, because the explanation will never be good enough, he is just someone that has to be experienced to understand the full breadth of his assholeness. in high school, he was one of "the cool kids," and i was briefly good friends with him for a couple months in eleventh grade for some strange reason. i was so enamored with his "coolness," that i failed to see for a good while the whole extent of his dickheadness. he is such the pretty boy. he is your really evil, pretentious, much hotter than thou type gay boy that just does not have the time for the likes of you. except he's not gay - or at least he says so - but we all know. you do too. and well, i let him know my annoyance with his attitudes and behavior many a time, and needless to say, we stopped being friends. but we are still cordial. and so, i was dreading having to interact with ty, just wanting to eat at a denny's or something, but i think sarah wanted to see me squiggle around in a forced conversation with the monster known as ty. we are still peeking through the window - me being very chicken about going in. i am trying to figure out who is sitting on the other side of the booth from him. they don't look like anyone i know, but all we can see is the back of their heads. okay, we are being big time silly peeking through the window, but whatever.
and hey, did you see that really dramatic hand gesture that that girl just did? that sort of looks like something that she would do ... is it? wait, i can't tell. and we are peeking through the window trying to determine if the girl is mary miller, one of my really good friends from high school - one of the people that sarah hated throughout high school. ha, it is her! it is! and upon my confirmation of this girl's identity, sarah screamed and suddenly the tables were turned. she did not want to go in this diner at all. for some reason, we ran with our jackets over our heads, from the front door, to sarah's car. me really fearing encountering ty, and sarah really fearing encountering mary. fearing our good-looking selves, that would invariably size us up when we went in to the diner, and give us one of those oh-look-at-you type looks which really mean oh-look-at-your-ugly-self. and yeah, this is all really silly, but hey these are people from high school, which was a very silly place. sarah and i primp ourselves, staring at our reflection on the side of her car. sarah really does not want to have to talk to mary, but now i really want to go in to talk to mary and find out why she is not in school in austin.
we collect ourselves, and walk towards the diner. mary is up at the front paying for her check. i walk inside, stand next to her, and push her to the side, trying to seem like some rude customer. she's about to comment on my rudeness, when she recognizes me, and screams, and gives me huge hugs, and is her normally dramatic self. people in the diner look at all the commotion. and she is just as surprised to see me in this out of the way diner as i am to see her. mary is maryiln monroe, and she, even more so than ty, just has to be experienced. she seriously wants to be marilyn monroe - has hair that is blonder than blonde, talks in an affected tone, saying dahling all the time, and making extravagent motions with her hands, like the world's biggest fag. she made her prom dress - and it was the dress from diamonds are a girl's bestfriend, and it was the silliest thing ever, but she thought it was great, i thought it was great in a funny way, and people that weren't our friends thought it was rude and o.o.c. and yeah, you probably don't care what some mary miller in northern virginia wore to the west potomac high school prom in may 1999 - but if that's the case, then don't fucking read my diary, because i saw someone that i haven't seen in so long from high school, and it brought up vivid memories of high school, and so i am going to talk about them. fuck off.
we talk for a while, and i see sarah looking as uncomfortable as uncomfortable can be. mary in her drama queen way says that she had to leave school for a couple of weeks because her boyfriend tried to kill her. long story, she says, in an i'm-a-fucking-movie-star type way.
ty and mary's new boyfriend came to the front to leave. and i had to talk to ty, and oh it was such forced politeness on both of our parts, asking what each has been up to, and neither of us fucking cared. ty sized me up, and said i looked taller. i really have grown since high school, since now i am probably two inches taller than ty, and before ty used to be slightly taller. i wanted to say you looked short, but didn't, i held my tongue. mary and i exchanged numbers. hers being (703) 867-1268, and i am writing this here because i know i'm going to lose that little scrap of paper that she wrote it on. she said sincerely, with no hint of irony, "really, we must get together soon, dahling," as she held my hand like your grandmother probably holds yours, or probably how she used to hold it when you were littler.
sarah and i breathed a sigh of relief when they exited, sat down in a booth, and trash-talked the respective pretty person of our sex.
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