Riots Of Passage

By Jason McGathey

In this highly anticipated follow-up to his memoir "One Hundred Virgins," the author continues to document in riotous fashion life on a major college campus, in a major U.S. city. Though specifically Ohio State University and Columbus, Ohio, in a sense the particulars don't matter because such experiences, though often outrageous, are universal ones.

Joined by his familiar cast of fellow reprobates, along with a healthy crop of fresh recruits, this crew closes out their final year exploring campus. If the first six months were centered around discovery, then this epoch finds them operating under the banner of refinement and expansion. As always, the journey is nothing if not wildly unpredictable, and a continual reminder that it's often best to just start running, with no end goal in sight.

"If I had to describe how any of us, and certainly yours truly, ever manages to accomplish anything," McGathey observes in these passages, "I would say it runs something like this: we start down a hallway toward the object of our desire at the other end, but a rug is pulled out from under us, just about on a daily basis, before we get anywhere near it. Yet every so often, after landing on the floor, you happen to spot this secret passage in the wall that you never would have noticed otherwise. Certainly not by remaining back on the starting block. And this passage commonly leads to something as good as or even better than what you originally mapped."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jason McGathey
• Release date: Dec 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463144480

Jason McGathey

Formerly much more inclined to meander along the eastern coast, Jason McGathey now forces himself to remain in one place and work on his next magnum opus.

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Riots Of Passage

Copyright 2019 Jason McGathey

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

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https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com

https://lovelettertocolumbus.com

Also by this author:

Night Driving (2001)

One Hundred Virgins (2006)

Accelerated Times (2013)

Survive The Strip (2015)

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camps divided

1

We have spent this entire summer living on chipped ham and No-Doz.

This is the quote of the year. I only wish that I had been the one clever enough to come up with it, but no, the credit for this belongs to Mike Nelson. A quote that’s memorable, concise, and accurate all at once. You live your life hoping for one line as good as this.

He first utters this oft repeated gem one afternoon in their kitchen, to an audience of Lisa, Doug, and me, near the tail end of this epic season. Even now, people still have this image of me riding everywhere on bicycle, mostly the result of a couple crazy months from this sleepless summer. And whatever the mode, it sure seems like everyone is moving from points A to B to C at the same constant manic clip, although admittedly there’s not a whole lot of free time to contemplate what anybody else is doing.

Damon and Paul have sequestered themselves up in Mansfield ever since school let out, this much I know, and Alan has been pulling an assload of overtime at the airport. Separated into such distinct camps, our paths have scarcely crossed, and we’re relying on borderline urban legends to inform us what might be happening elsewhere. Breathless updates when Alan and I briefly catch sight of one another, say, for five minutes in the kitchen, or weird developments such as Mandy and Erik, who are crazily enough now dating, dropping by out of the blue - the first and last occasion he ever sets foot in our pad, and possibly Columbus as a whole for that matter - to retrieve some sleeping bag she left here months earlier. Alan almost on a recon mission of sorts one other occasion when he happens to be up north and hangs out with Damon for a few hours. I haven’t seen the dude in eons, and he asks what the hell I’ve been up to.

Jason’s been partying his ass off, is Alan’s reply.

That might be partly true, but it’s only a matter of necessity. Whoever could have imagined that hanging out at keg parties could become a matter of survival? Somehow I landed in this one precise spot of the hamster wheel, and have been stuck here ever since. I have no car, and my schedule is absolute mayhem. Beginning in early May, they will pencil me in for 119 out of 120 days opening the dining room at the restaurant – though I manage to switch out on three of those occasions - and to top it off continue putting in either four or five nights a week, part time, at the Kroger further up on Bethel. When the car broke down, soon so did my energy for pedaling all the way back to campus at such a late hour. Particularly as Doug and his maniacal roommates are throwing down almost every evening, just down the street from our store, and are always willing to let me crash there.

It’s about a 16 mile roundtrip from home to Kroger and back again, but by crashing at Doug’s, I shave a good five off of that figure. So this soon turns into waking up there every morning, bicycling to campus, then returning to this neck of the woods to close down the meat department and party with these lunatics again. The only break in the pattern occurs on the nights I’m scheduled off and can actually chill at my own damn house, or maybe check out campus for once with Alan.

He’s up at the apartment on Bethel quite a bit himself, as the summer progresses. This fact is directly related with how, improbably enough, I don’t sleep with Lisa for a few years following just that one night in the spring. If we were ever alone again, it probably would have happened. But this never transpires, and I still don’t feel bold enough to paw around at her in front of, say, Mike or Doug, or her brother Tommy, who’s around now all the time as well. One night we’re actually sitting side by side on the couch (AKA Doug’s bedroom) and she pats me on the thigh, in this living room full of people watching some TV show, and hints around saying, remember how we used to watch movies in my room together? But I don’t feel like making a spectacle of responding to that, either, with all these people around.

Well, the day after that heinous misdeed, I did confess to Doug, figuring she would tell everyone anyway and I would head this off at the pass by claiming I was insanely drunk. Which wasn’t true, and anyway Doug wasn’t buying it.

Eh, you don’t do anything drunk you wouldn’t do sober, he replies.

I was, and am, even as the summer ends, still figuring out the social code here in the big city. It never occurred to me that she wouldn’t tell a soul. Meanwhile, I’m not just telling Doug, I’m shouting about it to Damon and Paul in Maxwell’s, during one of the last nights we ever hang out there and before they basically disappeared from the face of the earth for the next three months. Those two will spend pretty much every night this summer drinking until the wee hours at Erik’s apartment, in Galion, whether or not Damon and Erik and Frank had played a show that night or not.

I will later realize that they probably didn’t even hear me. Paul chuckles and says, that’s cool, while Damon just nods. Granted, it is kind of hard to remember stories about someone you’ve never met, even if my words are understood over this club’s bass heavy roar. Well, Paul has met Lisa, although she isn’t exactly the type of person he would pay much attention to. As for me, yeah, it’s a boast in some respects, although more relief than anything - relief at finally getting off the schneid here in C-bus. Lisa isn’t that fat, after all, and she has a pretty face. She’s far better in both respects than, for example, the other Lisa, the one who donated those jet stopping pink panties to our kitchen wall.

Still, I didn’t move to the OSU campus to get hung up on some half-assed one night stand like this. That probably wouldn’t happen regardless who it was. But more than anything, I must admit, damaging though it might be to any man’s ego, the main reason Lisa and I don’t hook up again is that she gets one look at Alan, and instantly latches with a stranglehold on his nuts.

Again, he has in fact been at this apartment a couple of occasions prior, although these were massive blowouts and her mind was apparently diverted elsewhere. The first night she actually notices him, we’ve chipped in for the latest Tyson-Holyfield fight and he too has driven over to Doug’s to watch it, after getting off at the airport. Lisa and I are in the kitchen, and she points through the wall to where Alan’s sitting on the couch, drinking a beer.

"Who’s that?" she whispers.

That’s one of my roommates, I tell her.

She nods as if simply filing away this factoid, unimpressed. But this pairing will soon develop into one featuring more action and sparring than the actual boxing match. It being the infamous bout where Iron Mike launches into cannibal mode - prompting Doug’s own most famous quote of the summer, I could respect the first bite, but not the second - this one will wind up a resounding dud for which we should have pocketed our money instead. It does lead to what was surely inevitable anyway, though, as Alan and Lisa soon become major fuckbuddies.

This wouldn’t happen the first night, but I believe it did the second. The three of us somehow sit on the front stoop drinking for hours, watching the traffic on Bethel as we wait on Doug and Mike to return from their softball game. Instead we eventually learn they’ve stopped at Sluggo’s - a bowling alley bar on Sawmill - for one drink that turns into a dozen. The three of us finally say screw them and drift up to DiMarco’s anyway. Return with some others to a house full of people for cards and, yes, first those two are rolling around on the floor, and Alan’s winking at me, then they’re disappearing upstairs together.

So he’s in the regular rotation at this apartment as well. Most nights, there are eight if not nine of us crashing here - him and Lisa in one upstairs bedroom, Doug on a couch, Mike and Amber on another couch, me on the floor, Tommy and Junior in the basement. The only variable seems to be whether Maria is fucking this Dane character, who was recently hired to join Doug and me in the meat department, on that particular evening, or if they’d gotten into an argument and he left.

Even when shit blows up, the basic configuration doesn’t change much. Things are so frantic that some opportunities fly by so fast you wonder how you missed them, and what the hell you might have been thinking - but that’s just it, we can’t even stop to think. One night two girls we’ve never met before, Christina and Kate, whom Dane just met somewhere and invited to the party, are standing in that kitchen telling me and Alan that they have this ongoing debate about who gives the better blowjob. They’re looking for volunteers to judge their efforts. If I had to speculate, these two do seem to be serious, and we shrug, say sure, yet continue to stand there talking and never do take them up on it. Granted, Lisa is surely lurking just around the corner, negating Alan’s chances. As for me, I don’t pounce, but the shorter, plainer looking of the girls, Christina, does begin dating Junior, briefly becoming the tenth person crashing here on a regular basis. Until one night a bunch of us are out at Yucatan Liquor Stand and somehow she and I start groping each other, begin making out on the dance floor.

You’re a lot more my type! I remember her shouting to me, though we are both quite hammered. Next thing I know Lisa’s shoving me halfway across the dance floor, and then Junior’s poofy Elvis hair, his ridiculous moustache and ever present Hawaiian shirt are looming above me, grimacing in distaste at this sorry scene. I apologize profusely for this stunt. He even eventually moves out with this chick, months later, to the nearby town of Marysville.

Nobody really holds it against me, though, not even Junior. And now that Lisa’s hooking up with Alan, she especially treats me like an amusing yet harmless little kid, never mind our history, not really fit for prime time in her elevated land of adults. I don’t mind, in fact I’m used to it. But if the first six months down here in Columbus had been about establishing ourselves, then the next six months, I’ve decided, will be about refining the operation.

In pursuit of this elusive goal, the party rolls on without pause, though providing an ongoing education. One Saturday night we’re closing down the meat shop and Doug asks me if I feel like going to church. I think he’s joking and laugh off the suggestions - yet this is just my ignorance, as I have no idea the extent to which Catholics get down. It turns out there’s this huge festival at St. Timothy’s, tucked away on some sleepy street in Upper Arlington, one which basically combines your average street fair with a Las Vegas casino. Booths selling beer and brats and burgers, stands showcasing various games of skill, games of chance, not to mention the huge indoor building with two dozen card tables, including blackjack played for money.

All proceeds benefit the church’s coffers, a cause increased greatly by our arrival on its grounds. Somehow four guys and nearly twice as many females, among them a pair of newbies Doug roped in from work, cram into just two vehicles for the relatively quick jaunt over here. As Doug and Roy lose their shirts at cards inside the church, Miles and I tote around bottomless plastic cups of draft outdoors, occasionally intercepting the roving pack of girls we came with, as they throw plastic rings around Coke bottles or bulldoze quarters around the grass midway. But we’re mostly checking out the others, pure strangers in the crowd. Lisa, in Alan’s absence, is suspiciously plying me with beverage, though she’s never a consideration. Instead the real entertainment is provided by Miles, this musclebound, thirty-six year old black dude from our store, a known pussy hound who makes no effort to conceal the eyes popping out of his head as he whistles and rotates his neck 180 degrees to ogle points of interest.

Of late the tropical winds blowing through our fair city, particularly after the sun has gone down, bring with them an optimism telling me that anything can happen on any given night. Even so, I’ll look back at ones like this and they will seem a dream not even 24 hours later, ones which somehow surpass our campus shenanigans on the pure weirdness scale. Can this much off the wall crap happen in one night? Yes. And so it is that after a quick pit stop at some sports bar for another handful of drinks apiece, it’s back to their apartment, where Carrie pukes up a considerable volume of the Purple Hooters she’s just consumed and lies on Mike’s couch, laughing her head off, while Lisa bitches a storm about cleaning the mess. Then the front door breezes open and some well-dressed, decent looking but quite trashed brunette none of us have ever seen before drifts into the fray. She has mud all over her ass and says she was trying to find some guy she had sex with last week, but just fell out of a tree while attempting to locate his apartment. She heard us partying and thought this might be the place. Sits and tells us this same tale approximately fourteen times, then she pukes in the same downstairs bathroom Lisa just cleaned. Now I can’t stop laughing, too, though the queen of this estate remains less than entertained.

Lisa’s occasional haughty fits aside, you begin to suspect nobody gives a fuck anymore, including law enforcement. We walk up and down the sidewalks of Bethel with cans and bottles of beer all the time. One night I’m idly hanging out by the ATM as Doug withdraws some cash, watching traffic and holding both our brews en route to DiMarco’s, when a police car cruises past and keeps right on moving without incident.

As if things aren’t action packed enough, another relatively new hire to our meat department, this quiet, bespectacled black dude named Clif, lives just up the road from our store as well, on Dierker. In time his pad becomes another regular piece of the arsenal, if nothing else for variety’s sake. His inclusion in the canon is anything but assured in the early going, however, as we’re not even sure we’ll ever make it over there. The night of his first party, Doug, Dane and I are closing down the shop, and I ask these two if they plan on attending.

Come on, man, Dane mumbles, with the shaggy blonde hair and stoned aura of a surfer, though as far as I know an Ohio native, "this is Clif we’re talkin about. What kind of party could this possibly be?"

Doug, who has been on the fence, smirks and tells me, he’s got a point.

But I manage to talk the two of them into it anyhow, another eye opener of a night. Though merely a casual social drinker himself, Clif becomes the first person I’ve ever hung out with who actually keeps a comprehensive liquor cabinet stocked and loaded on premises at all times. Far more importantly, though, this fairly average, two story apartment is crammed to the rafters full of people, many of them young, pretty, impressionable females. As Dane and Doug had alluded, Clif doesn’t strike many as especially debonair or smooth, and yet this doesn’t matter. It’s all in whom you know, volume is everything. As it turns out Clif has worked for pretty much every restaurant chain one could name, and half of the grocery stores as well.

It doesn’t seem fair, but a related observation was one of my first lessons upon moving here to the big city months ago. For whatever reason, going to school with people just doesn’t create the same bonds as a few days spent working in the trenches beside them. By virtue of attending classes at OSU five days a week, Damon is surrounded by collegiate tail, but can’t seem to gain much traction, at least not in his half year spent there so far. In contrast, while clearly not hitting it out of the park by any means myself, I feel like only by working daytime shifts at some middling restaurant on campus, with a much, much smaller sample size, it’s been far easier to put some things together socially. Sure, everything is inverted at the moment in that my nights all summer have been spent almost exclusively in Upper Arlington instead of on campus, yet nonetheless, the example of Clif’s ability to string together some insanely happening parties despite his apparent dorkiness is another piece of the puzzle, snapping into place.

Though attempting to glean as much as possible from these influences, I still can’t quite seem to entirely pull off behaving like most quote unquote average people. Granted, much of this might be attributable to my attitude, as hanging out with others does often seem like a hilarious art project. Yet, I am persistent, and I’m figuring things out. All you really need to succeed in life is time, energy, and maybe a good memory for what works and what doesn’t. And this next half year will be all about elevating our game to a higher level.

Things are already beginning to somewhat gel for me, and really for all of us. But even when you are figuring some stuff out, maybe, and life appears to be on the upswing, you still have to focus. One of the girls from the restaurant, Marlene, is having a pool party at the poorly named Governours Square apartment complex and I attend, bringing Alan with me as a wingman. There is no shortage of nice-looking ladies, most of whom I know, running around in swimsuits, and it would seem we’ve arrived in some sense by even being invited to such an event. But between the beer in the cooler and the food coming off the grill, I feel like we spend half our time staring at the admittedly amazing ass of a banquet manager, Val, in her bikini bottoms, and the other half in the clubhouse watching sporting events with the dudes. I lament allowing this to become a much more brotastic adventure than envisioned, mingling far less than I wanted with the females, regretting it before even leaving this place. This simply cannot happen in the future.

You have to focus in both senses, micro and macro. You have to keep your head in the game in the moment, but also remain locked in to your long range objectives. So the end of the summer’s theme becomes getting my house in order. I’ve sent my cousin a check for this car she was trying to sell, now I just need to find a way to get up to Mansfield and retrieve it. Once I have some wheels, I’ve decided, it will be high time to quit Kroger and focus on this campus scene proper, by working days and nights both at the restaurant. This madness simply cannot continue - on both a physical and a social level, all these nights spent away from campus are killing me.

Before either of these developments takes place, though, life does soon have us on our heels with the sort of rapid fire jabs that Tyson couldn’t seem to manage back in July. At summer’s end, Doug receives a call one night about a high paying construction job for which he’ll have to move back home the following morning to accept. Which he does. In one unforeseen fell swoop, our hero has vacated the scene, and with it the summer of chipped ham and No-Doz falls away behind us. As it does, I have my concerns about how we have split into two distinct camps, between Damon and Paul up north, Alan and me down here, and wonder if things will ever return to their former state, if we will ever be as tightly knit again. By this time, I’ve started going out some with Stacey. And Alan will soon have a serious girlfriend himself.

2

Stacey’s schedule is almost as insane as mine or anyone else’s. Part monetary need, part greed, part this being all we know and part I think somewhat of a thirst for this lifestyle, for whatever reason it’s almost impossible for any of us to say no to picking up additional shifts. Alan, for example, has been putting in doubles like a madman at the airport for months. If anything, though, it’s possible the restaurant industry in particular is afflicted with this malaise more than any other. Stacey not only works part-time at our Damon’s Place For Ribs on Olentangy, she pitches in at the Cooper Stadium location, too, and also, oh yeah, happens to bartend a few nights a week at the River Club downtown.

Stacey doesn’t wear much makeup, as a general rule, yet this fashion decision coincides quite alright alongside the rest of her trampy image. Long, shiny black hair rough-hewn along the edges, a nice ass packed into tight jeans, squinty eyes and a smoky voice - these aren’t the qualities of a pinup model, perhaps, just the kind of girl you’re always glad to see at your favorite local watering hole. This explains her popularity as a barmaid at our own establishment, but not why it takes us so long to get together.

We discuss going out off and on for months before ever managing to. She’s definitely the more insistent factor in this equation and I’m not sure what my deal was. In part more concerned at the time with doting on that married chick, Amanda, though this turned out as not such a hot idea. Also, everyone kept telling me Stacey was banging one of the Clippers, and I wasn’t sure what to think about this. But sometimes you do have to conclude that by being an inscrutable weirdo, you accidentally come off as pimp or something, like you’d had a ton of better options, and that this might work out even better. Mostly, though, all I kept thinking was what a hassle this would be, logistically, even if it did work out, before finally coming to my senses.

In the early going, every single time, Stacey wants to meet at Fats, this pool hall just off of Bethel Road. I never actually figure out if this is somewhere she likes to hang out on her own, or if she’s just suggesting it because this neck of the woods is often where I wind up at night. Although Mondays are especially jumping there, at least for folks in the same trade as we, because this is Restaurant Employee Appreciation night and they feature dollar beers. Whatever the case, she finds considerable amusement for some reason in my part-time meat department gig, and just about any time I mention the place, she starts singing this "we grind it on a Monday, a Monday, a Monday..." song which was apparently a Kroger commercial way back when, though I don’t remember that.

Later I will realize there might be some double meanings at play here, or at least coincidence, for Stacey has recently dropped down to working just Mondays for the most part at our Olentangy Damon’s. But you could definitely say my first interactions with her away from work are wake up calls on a number of different levels. For one, which has happened a million times but somehow you immediately forget this lesson and have to relearn it, over and over again throughout your history of working for shitty companies and/or dating, she looks twice as good in street clothes as she does our goofy uniforms, and wasn’t half bad to begin with. Aside from all that, though, it’s always good to get an insider’s take on what your fellow coworkers are saying about you, as well as some juicy gossip you couldn’t acquire on your own.

One night she tells me that people keep asking her what kind of drugs I’m on. "They’re all like, he’s gotta be high!" she laughs, and adds, "but I’m like, no, that’s just McGathey!"

The funniest part about this revelation is that she’s even more unreadable, and mellow, her voice never rising above a silky purr. Her bizarre humor is partially to blame for my blowing off those initial entreaties, because I just assumed she was fucking with me. A veteran bartender who’s really popular and kind of hot but keeps asking me out? Yeah, this has to be some sort of joke. Also as it turns out she knows more than a little bit about being high herself.

Don’t tell anyone, ‘cause even his wife doesn’t know, she confides at another juncture, but Dave buys pot off me now and then.

Dave who? Manager Dave?

Yeah.

"You’re kidding me!" I shriek.

It’s always a point of endless wonder, the people you connect with in this crazy world of ours. Sometimes you are wrong about a person, and it takes a while to warm up to them, but more often than not you seem to hit it off with someone right away. But you don’t always know why you hit it off with them. It’s as though a million subconscious signals are rattling around both of your brains from the word go. The fascinating part, though, is that every subsequent revelation merely serves to reaffirm that you’d been right about this person all along. And so it has been with Dave Weinle, who felt to me like he would be a comrade five seconds after we met, and every day has seemingly established this to a larger degree.

I often think the same about the now dark and silent apartment directly below us on Summit Street. More than half a year has gone by and, though our efforts have surely been off the wall at times and scattershot throughout, there’s no denying my roommates and I have exerted a lot of effort into landing some girls all over this giant city. But if I had to zero in on one female whom I seriously think might have been the greatest prospect of them all, the most compatible mate thus far - no offense to Stacey - it would without question be the girl who’d just moved out and had been living right under our noses the entire time, Stephanie, beautiful and cool and smart all at once. In other words, the first girl any of us met upon landing here, five minutes after we moved in. We’ve even seen her naked countless times, but couldn’t lift a serious finger beckoning her toward us.

Well, Stacey might eventually give her a run for her money, although then again she and I also forged some sort of connection from the outset. I never lumped her in with the clubhouse bitches, for example, either mentally or verbally or otherwise, despite her working behind enemy lines this entire time. And the pipeline of revelations continues to flow unabated.

Mark Stokes, she tells me a little further down the road, again unprompted, smirking with that distinctive feline purr, I know Stokes isn’t his last name, but I don’t know what his real name is. He’s wanted in a couple states, something to do with drugs.

Okay so some of this intel, if I were attempting to publish a magazine piece or something, might require a little scrutiny from the fact checking department. Then again, in a way this revelation makes total sense. Anytime you stumble upon someone who seems way more competent than his meager job requires - as is the case with Mark Stokes - then you know something is probably amiss. Nonetheless, though he’s not exactly a ray of sunshine, I have mad respect for the guy. I’ve never encountered anyone quite like him, in any other job I’ve ever held. If he is on the scene, then every aspect of the operation is under complete and absolute control, end of story.

Maybe because she spends most of her waking hours behind a bar, Stacey doesn’t ever suggest we go sit in one. Pool halls are her leisure pursuit of choice, apparently, and I’m totally fine with this. Fats Bar & Billiards, lording over the giant hill just beyond where Hayden Run splinters from Bethel, with its seemingly endless rows of tables visible behind the plate glass from the road, looks more inviting on the outside than I find the interior. They do offer a perfectly amusing and entertaining karaoke night on Saturdays, though this is mostly just background noise. I think I’m just enamored with campus still, a magical land where even the scuzziest dive for whatever reason holds sway, and meanwhile actual classy establishments such as this one come off as tacky.

She’s a little bit older than me - which is perfect, for the most part - and is over this whole scene down where I live. The bloom faded from that rose a long, long time ago. But when we talk on the phone this particular Saturday, it is she who suggests Suzi-Cue’s, a couple of blocks from my house. Also, though it isn’t specifically articulated as such, our roommates will be involved this particular outing - I’m bringing Alan, and she’s bringing Michelle - in the not-so-vague hopes that they will hit it off and hook up. And in one further, unexpected wrinkle, after these plans have been sealed, we receive word that Damon and Shannon will make it down, to spend the night in preparation for a concert at Polaris tomorrow.

So maybe the status quo will return once school ramps up, who knows. Perhaps familiar patterns will hold after all. But our situation is just as likely to fracture and explode, if even I can develop a social life down here. And anyway, what I’ve said about being enamored of everything campus isn’t entirely true - the three of us actually swore off Suzi-Cue’s quite some time ago. Though featuring a surprisingly diverse beer selection and your best bet here on campus if in dire need of a pool table, its harsh white lighting and cinder block walls blast away any potential charm. It kind of feels like a members-only club where cops play poker, or a three lane bowling alley attached to a convenience

store. Stacey might think this a compromise but it’s in some ways an affront

From the outset, it’s pretty obvious that Damon is not in the best of moods. I’m wondering what it is, exactly, he’s getting out of the Shannon situation. This isn’t a knock on her, because she’s pretty and funny and really cool. The problem is he doesn’t seem entirely sold on having a serious girlfriend, and if so then what’s the point? I wouldn’t quite term his attitude tonight sour grapes, that I’m with Stacey and Alan, as expected, is hitting it off with Michelle, more that he’s less than thrilled with being shackled himself.

As Alan and I are playing partners against our ladies, Damon and Shannon sequester themselves clear over at the other end of the establishment. Stacey makes the expected wisecracks about liking my little pinkie bridge, the way I sprawl my left hand to support the pool cue. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. She offers her husky, throaty laugh for the pleasure of any bystanders who haven’t caught that rare treat, though, and while she knows people at Fat’s, this does actually seem to be fairly unfamiliar terrain for her.

This maddening game is something at which I used to actually be decent, but you pretty much have to play every night in order to retain your form - and Stacey quite clearly has. There’s something emasculating about a chick whipping your ass in billiards, which she does quite handily. Meanwhile, when not wincing over these results, I’m watching Alan’s cool handed efforts at seducing the roommate. To summarize, his approach is to merely blow cigarette smoke out the side of his mouth and nod at every sentence Michelle utters. What can you say, some girls just eat this up.

I’ve met Michelle before, of course, and am not sure what to think about her. Not just a roommate, she also shares the same job as Stacey, as the two of them work banquets together down at River Club. She isn’t a knockout, though there’s something compelling about her features all the same. A wiry, blue eyed blonde with a wild mop of curly hair and an equally manic glint in her eye, she’s the kind of person you can’t look away from, though reasons may vary. Clad tonight in a black leather jacket, to boot, even though we’re still in the sweltering final fits of summer. The main attraction though would clearly be her jittery, high voltage personality, bounding from one subject to the next regardless of circumstance or hour.

Though residing close enough you could - for example, not that I’d know anything about this - push a filing cabinet home from this strip mall, the girls had for some reason insisted upon driving from our house. Damon and Shannon walked to meet us here, but once we tire of this place, all six of us pile into Stacey’s ride for the return voyage. In one of life’s constant wild coincidences, she drives the same truck as Alan, same year, as far as we can determine the exact same shade as well, some sort of what I guess you’d call deep electric blue. A Freud enthusiast, or some strain of pop psychologist, anyway, mind read more into this, but it’s safe to say I knew nothing about Stacey’s vehicle when first agreeing to go out with her.

Not five minutes later, she’s pulling into the gravel lot behind our house. Beside Alan’s truck, actually, a fact made slightly less remarkable when considering our building is half empty now. Following the back to back blows of Sherrie and Stephanie vacating both downstairs apartments roughly a month apart, we noticed we hadn’t seen nor heard anything from the bland cowboys upstairs beside us for quite some time, and eventually figure they must have moved out as well. Thus for at the very least a handful of days, we are the only souls - and really it’s just Alan and me - occupying any quadrant of this spacious, carved up house. That is at least until the Crip Keeper moves in.

Give Damon the credit for the Crip Keeper moniker, even though, in the name of journalistic integrity, I must admit he hasn’t actually coined it just yet. That won’t happen for a number of weeks, when she moves from Sherrie’s former apartment, across the hall into Stephanie’s. It’s funny, though, I can’t think of her name now, and am not sure I ever knew it. She does have a 20 year old daughter and a 14 year old son living with her. The son, Will, we will eventually befriend and in some ways mentor more than is probably sensible, and though in our last night together, Stephanie had been railing against parents raising kids in this infernal neighborhood, this is precisely the attraction of her abandoned digs: hers has that extra bedroom behind the kitchen, whereas Sherrie’s does not. By making the move, Will can have his own room. The daughter eventually moves out, somewhere around the time of the apartment switch. As for the Crip Keeper, she’s this overweight, blonde, paraplegic middle aged woman with glasses, albeit one whose voice sure does sound an awful lot like that skeletal host of Tales From The Crypt. Hence this play on words is born. Allegedly, she’s been hired by our landlord Wayne Ault to manage this property while he deals with his assorted legal quagmires.

As Stacey and I settle into lawn chairs on the front porch, Damon and Shannon immediately traipse up to the third floor, sequester themselves behind his bedroom door. Alan and Michelle complete a similar journey, albeit one room shy of that destination, and with differing purpose - namely, that he’s going to teach her how to play the drums at this hour.

We can hear them banging away up there (Alan and Michelle, that is, not the other pair) until three o’clock in the morning. In this neighborhood, and especially this time of year, it just doesn’t matter. You can tell it’s summer vacation around here, if only for the comparative lack of any other noise. Campus is a veritable ghost town during these lean three months or so, where even places of business scale back their hours, and the population shrinks accordingly. Despite its size and its presence smack dab within this thriving city’s ribcage, OSU feels like a country crippled by war, anyone left standing a hardy survivor. For every guy like Alan or me weathering the storm there’s a Damon, someone who’s moved back home while school’s out, to save money and get his bearings straight, creeping back into town maybe once or twice before the madness flares up again full swing.

Michelle’s modest efforts are audible up and down our sleepy street, clearly distinguished from Alan’s. Though I have occasionally referred to us in jest as hack musicians, that term only applies to me, or perhaps our collective shambolic stabs at learning some tunes to play around campus. In reality Damon is a phenomenal musician on many levels, only a handful of which are tapped in his weekend gigs up north with The Get-A-Way Band, and Alan is quite simply one of the better drummers around. Even so, it’s funny to think that we probably aren’t the only household, even along this stretch of Summit, which has foregone a true living room in favor of a jam space. In fact, only the extreme heat of our poorly ventilated confines sets it apart from any of these other cribs, a leading factor toward Stacey’s setting up camp here on the porch.

She’s definitely in one of her quieter moods tonight, and I’m wondering what she’s thinking about. You need a nice girl, McGathey, she tells me, flicking her hair back with a graceful sweep of the arm.

"Yeah, but I don’t want a nice girl, I tell her, right now, I need a bad girl. They’re so much easier."

By this, I don’t mean easy in, well, the easiest sense of the word, only from the standpoint of effort exerted. I just can’t muster the energy to chase anyone around, and she knows it. Still, as we shoot the breeze and watch the occasional car zip down the one way street of route 23 before us, risking occasional expeditions into the sweltering jungle of my kitchen for rounds of beer, her mood does improve back toward that which I’m most familiar, the unflappable purring jokester, smiling much more readily. Our porch light burnt out at the moment, too, which only enhances this semi-intimate scene.

Meanwhile inside Damon and Shannon mope around the kitchen, as they’ve not said much of anything all night for reasons I can only guess at. Shannon probably upset in some female fashion at the attention these other girls are getting from Alan and me, Damon bummed out because his girlfriend’s here and he’s missing out on all the fun. Further compounding their gloom is attempting to order pizza from Gumby’s, and learning that even they close much earlier in August. Soon enough, those two are hoofing it down Woodruff, in pursuit of the all-night UDF on High Street for some much needed junk food.

I do wonder if I’ve been out of line somehow with my enthusiasm, muted though it feels. Like always it’s a mystery to me as to whether I’m offending anyone or not. As far as dating Stacey is concerned, is this a big deal or isn’t it? She might not be a goddess, but I think she looks pretty damn good. Actually as far as I can tell she’s the best looking girl any of us have been involved with thus far in Columbus. The only x factor really would be that chick who was blowing Alan at work - I haven’t seen her, so it’s hard to say. Judging from how eager he seems to be here with Michelle, however, I would say at best we can maybe assume she looked as good as Stacey, not markedly better. So I should be stoked. Even so, even if I am going out with one of my coworkers - yippee, how many people in this gargantuan town can say that? This isn’t quite setting the world on fire to the extent we envisioned when moving down to OSU. Stacey isn’t even a student, not that this matters.

But then I start to think, well maybe it does. I mean, take this particular night out with Stacey as a more or less average, unexceptional one. If we’d enjoyed none before it and none would follow after. What if Damon had managed to whisk his classmate Meredith out for this exact same poolhall adventure? Wouldn’t that have been epic? I feel like it would have been, to the extent even I would have known every millisecond of that date. So what’s the difference? We’ve even progressed beyond this point. While I might not be as comfortable as some of these guys are with detailing play-by-play recaps of my amorous adventures, she and I left the getting-to-know-you jitters behind quite some time ago. And anyway, had Damon landed so much as a kiss with Meredith, let alone anything more than that, surely we would have heard every aspect of that escapade - and delivered with greater enthusiasm than mine, to boot.

And yet on the flipside, I don’t know. I sometimes suspect I’m kind of annoying to be around when things are going well. Or make that annoying, period. Further that you doom yourself on occasion getting a little too cocky when they are. In the end I just have to conclude that it’s best to keep a low profile and let the chips fall where they may.

Then there’s Alan, sliding with aplomb into Michelle’s good graces, whisking her around with a savvy befitting his reputation as a ladies man. They arrive now on the porch sweating and beaming as if they’d just performed the deed themselves, rather than pounded on some drums for hours, a case study in newly acquainted bliss. I take a look at him and it’s obvious he doesn’t trifle himself with such twisted concerns, so why should I? If someone’s having a bad night, oh well - the show must go on. They catch their breaths and suck down a beer, before a trip to the other nearest all-night emporium, the BP station on 17th, with whispers that they need cigarettes.

Those two are back before Damon and Shannon, who retreat to his third floor bedroom without a whole lot said. Michelle’s bouncing from one subject to the next with a fury, as is her wont, for she’s easily one of the most talkative yet curiously humorless individuals I’ve ever met. Alan meanwhile is the perfect blank slate for playing off of this vibe, nearly devoid or opinions or insights yet masterful at slipping into the spirit of the space around him. So he’s pretending to like bluegrass when she enthuses about that, and agrees with her assessment of the Beatles as geniuses. Meanwhile keeps a tight lip when I throw out some other, more modern names who I consider fine songwriters in their own right. Stacey meanwhile continues with this quiet turn she’s been projecting all night.

No, no, Michelle says, disagreeing with my assessment of the current music scene. Her eyes are closed, but then snap to life and dart around like butterflies, landing on every surface in sight. Wow I wish we had some pot right now.

When Alan tells her I’m a writer, without warning she launches up out of her lawn chair and begins reciting one of her own poems from memory, some sunny confection with candy coated references to animals and trees. A testimony to the nature lover within, apparently, the kind of girl who professes to dig bluegrass. Stacey, clearly bored with this scene or - understandably, I would say - running low on enthusiasm for the manic roommate, says something about heading back to her house. So we’re all in motion, and at one juncture, right around this time, with Michelle’s back to me, I look over at Alan and shrug. Point to Michelle, then pantomime doing her doggystyle, then point over back at him. He purses his lips and nods. So yes, game on.

They live in a hulking brick monstrosity themselves, on Dennison Avenue near Goodale Park. That would apply to all of the buildings along this stretch, actually. Though located near Victorian Village, I wouldn’t call these houses Victorians, but then again I’m not sure what style they are. Whenever I see these massive old homes they remind me of nothing more than campus housing, although in Stacey’s neighborhood they are typically much nicer and are carved up a little less. As for the interiors, I can only attest to this one, which boasts the best of both worlds in some respects - all the merriment of a somewhat outrageous arrangement, typical of our neck of the woods, though painted and decorated in vibrant if oddly modern fashion and of course the expected cleanliness of an exclusively female touch.

I didn’t care much for those girls last night, Damon will tell me the following evening, after he and Shannon return for an encore appearance at our house, following their concert.

Oh really? I laugh, why not?

I don’t know, he shrugs, they just both kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

I do allow that Stacey seemed to be in a quiet mood last night, easily interpreted the wrong way if he’s just met her. But I would never describe her as bitchy in all the time I’ve known her. Mostly, I’m now wondering at the motivation behind his assessment. Concerning all the high fiving I’ve given these guys over the years, in response to their own triumphs, I’m sure he’s speaking his mind on the level and isn’t salty out of turn…but I also know that dour, wet blanket feeling of exclusion, when you’re stuck with a girlfriend and therefore missing out on a potential good time with your buddies. So while either scenario is possible, I’m leaning toward the latter. After all, his exposure to these girls was almost nil. And Michelle might be a little much to tolerate after a while, though that’s about all the negative you could say about her in this limited scope.

Then again, maybe he does have a point, at least concerning Stacey. Owing to the funky arrangement of their house, in order to access Michelle’s bedroom, you have to travel through Stacey’s bedroom first. As so it is that when Alan’s exiting Michelle’s quarters on this particular fine morning, following our doubles night out with them, for some reason Stacey springs to, by appearances, vindictive life. She pops up on one elbow and retains this pose, fixating him with a dirty look until he’s exited this room as well.

"What the hell was that all about?" he later asks me.

I tell him that’s it hard to say, really. Somehow, Stacey isn’t quite as forthcoming with this bit of intel.

3

Enough old friends fill these days to keep us grounded, reminding us of how things used to be and could once more. One night I happen to be at the house, alone, and there’s a knock on the door, Dan Bandman on the other side of it. He said he’d heard someone playing the drums and was wandering the neighborhood try to figure out which house it was coming from, then gave up and decided to swing by. Last seen kicking in the door of my downstairs neighbor’s house, during his only other visit, he at least remembered where we lived.

That turns into a memorable rap session spanning hours, over beers and the radio atop our fridge. He’s basically filling me in on the last few years of his life, in other words since we regularly hung out, and I’m doing the same at least as much as I ever do. Dan has bounced around campus here for most of that time, from house to house, but has finally landed about a block away from us at the corner of 20th and 4th.

A few days after this, he and Dave Kemp, who is yet another friend from back home now living down here, drift into the Damon’s where I work, and fill out an application in the lobby, because they know I’m here and will put in a good word for them. As it turns out both accept a job offer down the road instead, at the Champps in the Lennox shopping center, but this encounter matters more in the sense that lines of contact have been reestablished.

Tonight Dan rings up the house and talks to Alan, suggests we meet him at this place up the road called Café Bourbon Street. The two of us have never frequented this establishment, though it sits just a few blocks from our house. With its eyesore interior of tacky multicolored tile and walls painted so bright they nearly glow, the horseshoe shaped bar in the center is a point of refuge we scamper for and cling to, more so than usual. The bar stools represent a small chain of islands, ports against the storm of crass interior decoration. Of course we’re still left basking in an eerie hue of orange and green overhead lights, molding our faces into monstrous masks if we catch the wrong angle.

Dan is one of the good guys, among the cooler people I’ve ever met, a stout, dark haired, conscientious Jewish boy who’s loyal to his friends and kind to the casual stranger. When he smiles his face actually seems to shine, somehow. Our core group often remarks that he could and should probably be the fifth member of the inner circle. The only reason he isn’t, really, aside from possibly not having quite the same enthusiasm for our more off the wall stunts, is that his first passion has always been music, and he works relentlessly at it. Hence the instrumental demo cassette he’d played in our kitchen earlier this summer, featuring him and another friend, Travis Tyo, and a drummer we’re not familiar with by the name of Dave Copper. I liked it, but at the time ruffled some feathers by suggesting it was kind of power poppy, a little heavier but in the vein of early Cheap Trick.

Cheap Trick, Bandman had scoffed, shooting me a dark glance as he ejected the cassette.

I suppose at least one band member is bound to be offended, or at least find it ridiculous, whatever comparisons you make or genre you suggest. It’s best to say you dig it and move on. Now however it seems I’m getting into hot water as we sit at the bar, when Dan tells me they’ve settled on the tentative moniker Superstar Rookie. I think it’s great and suits their sound like a well-oiled kick drum, but Dan is having second thoughts, at present considers it a mismatch.

The old man who runs this place is pacing around between this bar and the one next to it, Summit Station, a lesbian hangout. He owns both and oversees each through a door connecting these two disparate establishments, though he doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything at either. Wondering how he’s going to pay the bills this month, maybe, judging from the sharp creases on his brow.

Slinging drinks here, while the owner paces around, is a sharp Asian fox by the name of Seresa. Seresa, it turns out, graduated from Clearfork, a country school district in the sticks about ten miles southeast of Mansfield. She smiles a lot and flits through each of the conversations taking place at her bar, which at this hour and day doesn’t amount to much. Her shiny silver blouse and tight black slacks accentuate a body I’m already a big fan of, that and everything else I’ve seen from this girl.

You gotta watch her, though, Dan cautions, she’ll start you a tab and keep slapping drinks down in front of you when you’re not paying attention. Last time I was here she hit me with an eighteen dollar tab.

Aside from the three of us, Dave Kemp’s sitting further down the bar, at one of the corners, next to another face I remember from high school, Tiffany Miller. Tonight Kemp’s already drunk and just as hilarious as ever, though he’s also apparently taken a serious turn with his music, and is now playing in a band called Secret Of Flight. As for Miss Miller she’s wearing a sleeveless black blouse with tattoos up both arms. She’s younger than the rest of us and I never really knew her, but don’t recall that she ever looked this incredible before. Elsewhere, across the bar from us sits a tall, lanky goon who resembles the bass player from Nirvana, with a couple teeth missing and messy black hair. He and the chick sitting next to him, representing the only other people in the bar right now besides Seresa and our Mansfield crew.

One of the perks hanging out with some fresh faces delivers, apart from the possibility of catching up on old times, is that it allows you to shake up your conversational game. With Alan, Damon and Paul, the four of us pretty much never talk about anything else but girls, alcohol, and classic rock music. That’s it. Entire weekends have been kept afloat without a single variation in this material. Seated at the bar tonight with Dan, however, we’re venturing into offbeat topics such as Beethoven, jazz, and the films of Kevin Smith, all of which are welcome diversions - although some of the old standbys aren’t necessarily verboten, either.

"You guys try that Pink Floyd/Wizard Of Oz thing?" Bandman asks us at one point.

No, I admit, having somehow become the mouthpiece for our party as Alan’s not saying much tonight, we keep meaning to rent that movie, but I always forget.

My roommate Norman tried it, Dan explains, and by this he means Norman Flores, yet another familiar face from our Mansfield days, "but he said it didn’t work. I don’t really see the connection anyway - The Wall and The Wizard Of Oz?"

No! I protest, laughing, "it’s not The Wall you’re supposed to use, it’s Dark Side of the Moon!"

"Dark Side?" Dan returns, intrigued, as if he’s just been afforded some amazing revelation. Well, no wonder it didn’t work…I’m gonna call him right now actually…

At this, he strolls over to this alcove where a working payphone awaits. I take this opportunity to have a look around at the rest of this fine enterprise. A piano along one wall, a jukebox next to it. A tiny raised platform in one corner utilized exclusively on karaoke night, as they’ve never had live music here in all the years that old man’s owned this tavern. By the door, this minuscule booth with a window serving a small selection of pub grub, though closed at present and the lights turned off.

Concerning the embargo on live music, Dan addresses this upon returning, when he explains that they’ve just about convinced the wearied owner here to host his first ever rock band. Naturally, that band would be Superstar Rookie. They wouldn’t fit on the stamp sized karaoke stage, obviously, but there’s no reason a handful of tables couldn’t be shoved aside in that vicinity, enough to cram in their gear. They’ve been practicing with a singer of late, Brandon Tuber, another Mansfield alum, are just about ready to play out. The owner isn’t sold yet on the concept but they’re convinced they can draw enough if persuading him.

It doesn’t help that she’s ugly, and has concave tits, Alan’s telling me, the following night, as he and I have decided upon on a pointless stroll around campus, just to see if there’s anything worth getting into. Conquering college town one step at a time, poking our noses wherever they’ll fit - noble causes all. Despite whatever occasional grousing we might indulge in as to the aimlessness of this lifestyle we never once wish for anything else, to be anywhere but here.

I swear, he adds, I think they actually curve inward.

We’re trooping up Woodruff now, the last leg of a long walk home. Another block or so and we’ll reach the point where this street dead ends into Summit, directly in front of our house, though it’s not the comforts of home we’re seeking just yet. Like a familiar pair of shoes, albeit ones we haven’t slipped on much this season, we’ve decided on a victory lap of cold beers at Ruby’s to cap off the night.

Okay, so the girl in question, under the knife of Alan’s examination, is of course Michelle. What happened in the wake of that first night together, predictably, in my estimation, is that they were joined at the hip for the next two days to follow. Off at the airport for a change, which itself was a major impetus for our hitting Suzi-Cue’s on Saturday, he and Michelle race around from one end of this city to the other, hand in hand. At the conclusion of which he decides he’s kind of burned out and might distance himself from her entirely.

Well, if nothing else, she may have been an upgrade over Lisa, another one for whom he quickly tired. Lisa was going as far as leaving notes for him on our front door, which is about the point at which he decided to pull the plug. But whatever the female,