The hour badly spent

My plan for academic success was as follows:

Smuggle in some vodka and take a shot every afternoon immediately after my last class of the day. Then begin the homework. When done, take another shot. Or two. I think this shows great foresight on my part. When I got my room assignment and schlepped my suitcases up four floors to 426, I discovered that I had a roommate. NO WAY am I gonna share my liquor with some 20-year-old, I thought, but apparently that won’t be a problem. Aaron is my RA.

No, there will not be any catty "check out his hypocrisy" type of blogging, because that’s lame, and would probably go like "He steadfastly maintains he will only drink Dr. Pepper, but I secretly switched his drink with Diet Dr. Pepper and four out of five times, he couldn’t tell the difference!" But needless to say, I need a new blueprint for academic success. I think I’m going to stash some jack in the Hale Library stacks on the fourth floor, somewhere high up behind some foreign-language tomes, and just take a sip every night I go there to study. And if I don’t actually drink it, I will still be happy just knowing it’s there.

And OF COURSE I am working on that maturity thing.

In pretending to be a movie critic, I’ll straight up agree with all the rest of them and say the Joker was every bit the hype we’ve all heard.

Not that you didn’t already know that. In my fair city, the Dark Knight is sold out for the next five days, which means everyone has seen it three times by now. On IMAX.

I went into the theatre thinking, yawn, here he comes, I guess I’d better get ready to be wow’d. I also went to the theatre with this flask that looks like a cellphone, but the "antenna" unscrews and you can pour in vodka. Or whatever you like, which I’m sure will be vodka. It’s even got a belt holster. Anyway. Heath Ledger did not disappoint, delivering a strong presence in every scene, finishing it off with his tics of speech and body language. Solid acting performances all around, along with a plot that kept Batman moving and being amazing, made every minute in that dark theatre fully worth it.

The only thing nobody likes about these movies is Rachel Dawes.

Batman deserves someone with style, with understanding. Katie Holmes made me groan every time she Expressed Disapproval, pursing her lips and doing that thing with her dimples. You just get tired of it. Wouldn’t it be a shame if something were to happen to Rachel Dawes, you think, empathizing with the bad guys (ha ha, spoiler). She was more of a downer than Batman. But you could console yourself, at least, knowing she was pretty. So another groan: finding out that Maggie Fucking Gyllenhaal was going to play this role that was already overbearing, uptight, and hands-down just unappeasable.

Gyllenhaal pulled it off so much better than Holmes. Rather than just berate Bruce, now she’s an unwilling collaborator to Bruce Wayne’s exaggerated, foppish persona. Bruce strides into a party with a famous superhottie. And another one. And another one. Gyllenhaal’s lips curl up ever so slightly at the ends — you’ve gotta be looking for it to see it — wryly, smugly. How far will Bruce go to pull this off, she wonders. And so we see Bruce Wayne through Rachel’s eyes; she’s still huffing with indignation, but she remains, like the rest of us, entertained. One might believe, for a second, that there is a side to her that is a bit glib, a bit saucy, that she doesn’t have such a huge metaphorical pole up her behind (insert obvious anal sex joke here, but do it slowly and lovingly, the way I like it).

To boot, it did look pretty cool when she gut-checked the Joker (Ha ha, spoiler).

By slant and inference, you can see Bruce Wayne losing himself in "Batman." There is one part where you see him shirtless, from the back (settle down), and there are some pretty vicious bruises and scars. In fact, when he’s not in costume, he does look skinny, small; and even his face looks a bit dark and hollow, like he spends his nights being rode hard and left wet, and it hurts, but he likes it. He’s not really there until he puts on the cowl. What brings this out is, when he’s Batman, that way he looks at at the camera when someone is telling him something Really Important; his eyes narrow, focusing on the speaker, and he turns his head a few degrees to the side to hear better.

Speaking of which, that thing they did with the eyes — you’ll know what I mean when you see it  (just kidding, they made them glowey. ha ha, spoiler) — was just super kewl.

Everyone knows I’m pretty flakey. Still, my movie-nerd friend, Silver Bullet, made sure to remind me that I had promised to go with her to her sister Erica’s wedding in Palm Springs.

"Sure. Again, when is it?"

"June something."

June something took place last week. Wednesday night we picked up the groom’s brother Donnie and the groom’s brother’s wife Palim from the airport at 11 at night and right away headed to the little resort town.

We got there two hours later, dead tired. Silver Bullet and I checked in; the room was massive. We sat around, amazed at its sheer amazingness. Then we fucked and conked out for the night.

Her phone rang sometime Thursday morning. Erica was perkily inviting us down to the pool for drinks. And swimming, one assumes. We were still groggy and tired, so no. She hung up and we fucked again, which I was almost too sleepy to do at all, and didn’t even have the presence of mind to make her get on top. Thanks for nothing, doggiestyle.

We woke up for real much much later.

"Is it really noon?"

"It’s the curtains. Hotel rooms always make you feel like it’s twilight outside."

Silver Bullet’s phone went off again; sister still bugging us to come outdoors and socialize, so we did. The pool seemed kind of small for a pricey resort in the middle of the desert. This disappointment, however, was mitigated by the open bar and the fact that everyone was dressed to show off as much skin as possible, which I believe is the only upside to California weather.

Donnie ordered me a vodka tonic, then a screwdriver, then another one, which I noticed they made with tequila instead of vodka. Strange, but best to do as the natives do; in Russia, vodka make YOU!

When we were done swimming, Silver Bullet and I walked around in search of a place to eat. The town is really just a big strip mall and everything looks the same. We settled on a Mexican place. The food wasn’t terrific and neither were the margueritas but at least they were big. Evidently I sucked mine down too fast, because when we got back to our room I lost my lunch.

Then I slept.

I woke up hours later, groggy again, but in time to get ready for the ceremony.

"Hey, if you still feel sick you can just hang out in the room during the wedding. I’ll come back afterwards."

"No, I can do this. This is why ya brought me right?" I got dressed and we walked down and across the street to wherever the ceremony was taking place (my memory’s a little tequilic) and took our seats.

So. The wedding happened. Priest, walk down the aisle, speech, kiss, yadda yadda. I’m sure I was supposed to be feeling something — everyone else looks happy and moved or whatever — but I think the tequila was feeling it for me, leaving me to sit around and be bored. When the thing was done everyone walked further up the street, to a bar and grill where reservations had been made. Still bored, I decided the time had come to start shit.

"So, most of your sister’s friends are assholes, right? Which one is the worst?"

"Christina."

"Which one is she?"

"You see the girl back there in the blacknwhite dress? She’s blonde. Yeah, her."

Later on I sat down with the rest of the family — well, the ones who seemed drunk — and asked the same question: which one of Erica’s friends was most turdish? Christina was universally agreed upon as the most vile, smelly turd in the entourage. Awesome! Although I prefer to actually know and associate with gossip targets (it makes the feel gossip much juicier), this was exactly the kind of thing I’d been waiting for! Besides the sex, of course. Sadly, only Silver Bullet was willing to provide a concrete example of said turdism:

"Once I overheard her say something really mean. It was kind of behind my back, but the way she said it, I know she meant me to hear it."

"Well?"

"She said, ‘if I were as fat as Silver Bullet I’d probably kill myself.’"

It doesn’t get much more douchey than that, does it? Silver Bullet is about the nicest girl I know (most of the time); you’d have to be pretty mean to insult her like that — just condescension, no provocation. Maybe Christina should just kill herself anyway.

"Thing is, she used to be really fat. It took time, but I’m pretty sure she only lost that weight from snorting coke."

"Whaddya mean used to be? Also: cocaine is a helluva drug!"

"Are you still drunk?"

"Fuckin tequila. Yes."

The last time we met: one day before I left for Los Angeles. A spring afternoon, in her car. I reached over to hug her bye.

"Don’t try to cop a feel."

I wasn’t. Really. But I probably should have.

This may have been the last time we would ever see each other, and really this was all we had to say to each other?

Really?

When I first met her, it seemed as though I could tell her anything. Anything.

Months later, showing her my favorite movie, she buried her face under a blanket and started crying and we could barely talk about it.

After that, we only spoke to each other in this flat, burnt-out tone. Around her, conversation was weird, alien, like we were really only just gesturing to each other in a dark room. She told me I was always trying to figure her out. And she was right. I just wanted to reach her. Why was it so difficult?

One morning I woke up in her bed. Fully clothed.

I had drunk A LOT the night before and my head felt like someone parked an Oldsmobile inside it.

Right then, I had to go. I hadn’t meant to pass out there in the first place. I needed some water and I needed it to taste like aspirin and I needed to go, and I needed all this very badly. But her hair was also right there in my face. Smelling not like chemicals or cleanliness but like her, fresh and sweet. I couldn’t move. Not yet. Even though I had to go, even though I knew that everything would be spoiled when she woke up, and I knw that this was the best it would ever get, and for the rest of the day I would both just go back to being in pain all the time and talking to her like.

It struck me, that morning, that this feeling of unnamed, dreary, half-hidden pain, illuminated this morning by sunlight and hangover, is actually always there. That it might in fact be the reason this thing between me and her, whatever it is, always feels so difficult.

And if I was ever going to cop a feel, that would have been the moment.

The Poetess tries to peek at my diary journal every time I’m out with her. Thursday night I finally just said what the fuck and handed it over for inspection.

"I won’t judge you for anything I find in here." Not that it’s human nature or anything.

So, as she paged through, I felt the nerves and vessels under my skin getting all twisty. I drummed my fingers on the table. I fidgeted with my beard. I wiggled my leg up and down, insanely fast, like a meth-addled hummingbird. I noticed she was lingering on one page.

"Find something interesting?"

"It’s kind of sad."

The passage under scrutiny: I’m an optical illusion. That’s my secret. Look away and I disappear. Turn off the light and I don’t exist.

Breaking: when no one’s looking, I write reams of angsty, self-indulgent prattle. I’ve also apparently jotted down fragments of Pablo Neruda poetry. And that is definitely the worst of it what was in there (the prattle, not the Pablo). No sordid PILF fantasies (none that I’ve written down, anyway). No shocking gossip. No chronicling private embarrassing habits (I masturbate. A LOT). Am I really so dull that I have nothing to hide? Apparently so.

Therefore, the next night, chain-smoking at a party with Ariana and the usual frenemies, when Limitless Are Leaves asked about taking a peek through the big black book of secrets, I had no objection. And when Brandon, too, wanted to see it, I didn’t mind, although he did sort of seem like he was actually studying it and not just surfing pages.

The party room was so full of Swear Not By The Moon’s laughter that it spilled out through the windows and into the parking lot where the smokers were hanging out. Did she do coke again? No, she’s just always like that. Maybe she’s always high on coke.

I honestly think she is always high. Coke — so I hear, mind you — makes you feel hyper and really important, a perfect party drug. Swear Not By The Moon is a party girl. She’s got the look: annoyingly thin and blonde. She is sometimes fun but she also kind of sneers at you when you talk to her. She powerless to curb her ways. Because of the drugs, you see. Although I’m probably just mad because she never offers me any.

I and Limitless Are Leaves really only came to drink, not to party, so we sort of kept to ourselves and our vodka and let the cool kids do their thing (which, again, may or may not have been coke). It’s a good thing I was really drunk. It’s the only way to deal with certain situations and certain people. Or in my case, all situations and all people. It also somewhat explains why she and I ended up making out on the floor.