Everything Is Ruined, or A Long Swim in Lake Cocytus

Midford is the Third Circle of Hell. I am standing on line, and it is cold and I am sober. I am here to attend my school, the mildly prestigious Vanhallen University’s annual Fall Ball for reasons I am unable to properly articulate. The line stretches for miles ahead of me and miles behind me. Underneath my coat, I am dressed head to toe in black, except for the white undershirt beneath my sport jacket. I open another pack of cigarettes, the smoke calming my nerves and burning at my hatred of public events. I can see the disapproval steaming off of the girl ahead of me as I blow smoke into the back of her head. Stu Hoyte stands next to me; he is wearing tie-dye and his hair is a stoner’s crown of glorious neglect. I look at Stu’s watch; it’s quarter to eleven. I can already tell this is going to be a long night.
Stu takes a bolt from his flask and offers it to me. “No thanks,” I say, “I’m back on the wagon.” I can hear the delicious whiskey sloshing around in the flask, like the call of some 80-proof siren. “I’m taking it easy tonight,” I reiterate. I think back to how I ruined last year’s Ball. Long story short, I told one of the Vanhallen Vikings that I had had a black man’s member transplanted onto myself, and that I had then used said grotesque anatomy to have intimate relations with his mother. His vengeance can best be described as ‘swift and terrible’. The good news is, hospital trips get you out of problem sets. The bad news is, I had to climb three flights of stairs on crutches for a month.
Stu Hoyte slumps against the railing with an unfortunate creak. “The mushrooms, man,” he says. A sudden calm comes over his face, as if he’s just had some grand realization about the incredible vastness of life; how we are all as motes of dust clinging to the back of an insect; that the cigarettes, the school, the state, everything we know is a speck in the eye of an uncaring, otherwise occupied god; that God himself is just a holographic reflection of light in an infinite, wonderful geometry. The moment passes and he vomits on my Doc Martens. I hear yelps and OMGs and sure enough within minutes VEMS arrives. The flask is thrust into my hand. A paramedic hands me a towel and carries Hoyte away. I start to worry; I don’t want to be here alone. And I really like these shoes.
After about a week of waiting, the rent-a-cop at the door lets me in. She doesn’t frisk me; smart cop. I hear the thudding bass of smash hit “Dat Ass (U Got It Gurl)” about 35 feet down the hallway. My organs gnarl into a tight knot. I show my ID to some brown-nosed freshman with Gatorade-colored Ray-Bans and enter the Ball. It looks like the gym has been given a glitter enema and a follow-up prescription for strobe lights. The dance floor is crammed full of souls writhing in the mindless ecstasy of loud music and flashing lights. Small secessionist groups rotate half-heartedly around the perimeter. There is a familiar giggle behind me and I know without looking that it’s my cock-mouthed ex-girlfriend Pearl Necklace. It was optimistic of me to think that I wouldn’t run into her; I should know better. She walks past me, radiant on the arm of whichever Jerkwad McDouchelicker she’s with tonight. Shooting stars dangle from her earlobes. I bought her those. Bitch. She turns towards the coat rack and notices me. Her eyes say the following things, in this order: “I recognize him,” “Oh God, it’s my ex-boyfriend,” and “Is it too late to ignore him?” Her mouth says nothing. I send her daggers and keep walking. I have nothing to say to that twice-a-whore, jizzbrained slooby tonight. Maybe I’ll remind her about all the cheating, or should I simply find a knife and publicly carve myself? These thoughts multiply like bacteria on a wound and soon I become so incensed at both Pearl and myself that I can barely stand. When did I get so bitter? I need a cigarette. I ask an overweight, badge-wielding doorman, “Is there anywhere I can smoke in here?”
“I’m sorry sir, no smoking.”
“All right, if I go outside can I come back in through this side door?”
“No sir, there’s no reentry. You’re gonna have to wait.”
I need to clear my head. I go into the bathroom for some stillness and quiet.
I sit down on the toilet, close the door and massage my temples. There is fun to be had here tonight. I do remember fun, yes? I just need to sit down for a minute. Something in my jacket pocket clinks against the toilet tank. Ah, the flask! I had forgotten it. I swig, and the burn in my throat and the warmth in my gut make me sharp and focused again. I overhear two bros talking at the urinals.
“My boy over in West got Rock Band,” one bro says, “Dude, that shit is straight as shit man.” I already want to bash my head against the toilet paper dispenser.
“Yeah, I’ve heard how straight it is. I gotta check that shit out. You know I am the grandmaster of Guitar Hero 2. I lay fags to waste,” says his friend. He sounds like a lab rat doped up and forced to watch MTV Jams.
“Yeah fuckin’ right. I don’t believe you for one second; I watched you get schooled by Hawkins last week.”
“Not true man, I gamed on Hawkins like we are gonna game on this party! Have you seen the girls here? We are sailing a sea of fine, fine sloobies, bra. I saw Pearl on the way in and she is looking especially fine tonight! When I see that rack I just want to skeet skeet skeet all over it!”
“Oh dude, that reminds me, did I tell you about her and Steve?”
All of a sudden, against my will, I am paying rapt attention.
“Steve your roommate?” the lab rat asks.
“Yeah dude. I’m sitting in my room practicing Halo, right? And Steve rolls up with Pearl, who’s acting mad faded and blinking a lot and shit. He says he needs the room so I say to him, ‘Fuck no, I’m busy, go to her place.’ This was in November right before the snow fell, and it was fuckin’ freezing even in the hallways.” I try to cover my ears. There is no way this story ends well. “Long story short, he couldn’t, and, well, let’s just say we took her to Paris.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You did not!”
“I did, dude.”
“You Eiffel Tower’d the bitch?”
“Fuck yeah we did!”
This revelation is greeted with joyfulness and pride by the bros and dry heaves by myself. In November Pearl and I were still dating. I wash my hands and look at myself in the mirror. A basset hound stares back at me, and I reconsider this whole Fall Ball thing. Well, fuck it. I take a second swig. A kid I almost know trips over me on my way out of the bathroom. He garbles out some faded excuse. There’s a couple making out against the barricade. A girl curses at her cell phone as she tries to text her friends. Jesus Tittyfucking Christ: I am the only sober person at Fall Ball. I wash down this terrible thought with my good friend Mr. Beam. You’ve met Mr. Beam. I pace the edges of the dance floor, desperately seeking someone as miserable as I am. My friend CJ is perched by the snacks, arm around his blindingly hot new girlfriend Izzie. He is wearing a black dress shirt and a tie the same color as The Grimace. I like CJ because he is an absurd human being; I like Izzie because she’s fucking crazy, in a good way. They’ll have a smile and a handshake for me, and I need it. CJ’s face widens into a wicked Irish grin and he lets out a friendly “Yo!”
“What’s up man?” I ask him.
“Yo, I am drunk as shit and I am loving Fall Ball! I drank, like, a han’le an’ a half of fuckin’ Jaeger tonight dude. I am cooked!” CJ says, and then, turning his head towards the fallen angel at his side, “Id’n that right, baby?”
“Mm hmm,” she agrees, equally driz.
CJ goes to talk with one of his lacrosse team friends, a meathead who I personally wouldn’t spit on if he were dying of thirst. CJ is the only man I know whose social circle spreads so far: meatheads, dweebs, artfags, alcoholics, we all love CJ because of his one major defining trait: ballsiness, the kind that leads one to break Beirut tables, consume entire 30-racks, and run through the hallways exposing oneself. Like I said, CJ is an absurd human being, but he is also quite entertaining. Izzie, on the other hand, has the wonderful tendency to shamelessly flirt when she drinks, and she has most definitely been drinking. Her arm slithers across my shoulder.
“Hey,” she slips into my ear, “why are you looking so down? There must be something I can do to cheer you up.” God, just look at her! Still, I know better than to take her seriously.
“Sorry Iz,” I say, “I don’t fuck guys.”
“I’m not a guy!”
“Oh yeah?” I ask, pressing my luck. “Prove it.” She lifts up her dress, showing me the white lace she has hidden underneath it. If there’s one thing that turns my veins into a speedway, it’s lace. I poke her crotch. It is squishy and for about three seconds I imagine myself in paradise with her, on a king-sized bed with soft white sheets, her in lace and I in nothing. It is a noble fantasy but then her dress comes down and reality falls back into place. This place becomes even more unbearable. She asks me about Pearl, and I don’t want to talk about it, so I take a hearty swig. The last few drops cling to the mouth of the flask for dear life. I shake it and they tumble. The back of the hall is a pathetic scene: some Asian kid with an absurdly broad nose is shoveling handfuls of pretzels into his mouth; a girl who I think lives in my building smiles at me so wide she shows more gum than teeth. She has the shiniest forehead I have ever seen. I need to get the fuck out of here. My only recourse: the dancefloor. Perhaps now I am drunk enough. Let’s fucking hope.
The bodies crowd thick around the outside. I find a way in and then it morphs from a group of people into an ever-changing labyrinth. The gap closes behind me and all I can do is keep moving forward, onwards, forwards. Someone’s elbow clocks me in the head. In minutes I find myself dead center, writhing drunk bodies all around me. A man sways pendulously with his date, and in doing so rubs his ass cheeks against mine. Three meatheads have some poor froshie penned in and are doing whatever they please. I try to dance, but it’s hard to get into it. I don’t know anyone. They’re all having so much fun, but what am I doing? Why am I even here? No one is talking to me or even looking at me but they’re all saying the same thing: GO AWAY. YOU DON’T BELONG HERE. WE DON’T WANT YOU HERE. GET OUT. What else can I do? If I have to be alone, I sure as hell don’t want to be alone here. I stagger off the floor in an monomaniacal daze and I know, with absolute clarity, I know that if I stay in this place for one more minute my heart will explode, my brain will leak out my ears, and I will collapse dead to the gymnasium floor.
Some drunken fool has knocked over the coat racks, spilling everyone’s jackets into a huge chaotic pile. Somewhere in that Kilimanjaro is my coat. I dive in, burrowing through the pile like a crazed mole, squinting and flinging other people’s jackets with complete abandon across the floor. Fuck this. Fuck all of this. I find mine and stumble out the side door. Goddamn it, it is so cold outside. I need to go somewhere, there has to be somewhere to go – somewhere with liquor. My phone says I have a text from Jacob Shiner, who we sometimes call Shiny. It reads, “i kno yr not at fall ball. party here.” I love it when things work out.
Shiny plays bass in the only decent band on campus, The Passive Fists. I’ve known him since freshman orientation, when I helped him draw moustaches on pictures of the RAs in the hallway. We got to talking about music, life, the usual. He’s a pretty cool guy, just a little too much pretty and not quite enough cool. But, he will talk to me, and at any given time he’s probably holding several interesting drugs. All in all, a good friend to have.
Shiny lives across campus, on Crane Road, but it’s worth the walk. Besides, what else am I going to do, sleep? The walk to Crane Road is long and cold so I light up to keep warm. Thing is, I can’t stop thinking about Pearl. I can’t stop thinking about Pearl with an enormous black cock in her mouth. It’s completely irrational; I don’t even think she likes black people all that much. I throw my cigarette to the ground in disgust, but it’s too goddamn cold so I light another one. But I can’t get that cock, that enormous, monstrous black cock out of my head. Her lips, those great lips, running up and down that cock and not mine and it’s driving me crazy! It’s too much for me and I toss my cigarette again. But it’s still too goddamn cold! This continues all the way to Shiny’s and it is unbearable. A miserable fate indeed, haunted by a porn star’s huge black cock. Christ, Poe’s man had it easy. I shouldn’t even be feeling this way. Fuck Pearl, what do I care who she blows? She’s gone, and it’s not my problem any more. Shiny’s house comes into view like a ship out of the fog. Save me, 44 Crane Road! Save me from the cold, and the throbbing of the hideous cock! A few scattered snowflakes run recon behind me as I walk up the steps.
The door opens onto a glorious chill scene. Shiny is there, of course, and so is Daniel, Alex, Penny, Veronica, Dallas, and everyone else who calls him Jake. They look posed, static, beautiful. Dallas’ Zippo clicks as she lights a joint. There’s a table with various boozes and they all look delicious. An old Velvets record chugs away on the stereo, and a dusty mirror sits temptingly on the corner table. Shiny comes up to me all smiles and greetings and a hearty, “Hey, what’s up, man! Glad you made it!”
“Oh, of course, man, wouldn’t miss it for all the whores in Harlem,” I say, unsure why. He asks me how I’m doing and I lie and tell him I’m fine. He nods and his frizzy black light-socket hair sways in accord. He offers me a welly rail, which is the best news I’ve heard all night. Shiny crushes the small orange pill under his Vanhallen ID and hands me a pink snooter. Wellies have that punch to them, a certain citrus tang in the drip, and then all of a sudden things are flashing all around you and your nerves start to glow and quiver and the edges of the room sharpen and it’s all you can do not to start jumping and screaming about how great you feel.
Somehow through the spin cycle of my drug experience I realize that Shiny is talking to me, and I feel a strange urge to tell him the truth. My hand lands on his shoulder and I lean in towards him. “Why?” I ask, only halfway addressing Shiny. “Why is it, when you let…when you let someone take hold…they always twist? They always twist, why?” I think I know what I’m trying to say, but I can’t quite get it out. Must be the wellbutrin. Jacob gives me a look somewhere between understanding and frustration. He takes my hand off his shoulder.
“Listen,” he tells me, “you can’t let this shit hang you up. Not Pearl. Especially not Pearl. We went to high school together and the truth is, ask anyone who went to Charter and he’ll tell you, she spreads for anyone who can string three sentences together.” No, don’t tell me these things. “I mean, she’s a decent person or whatever,” Stop it, Shiny. Don’t you know I care? Can’t you understand? “but she’s just loose, dude.” I’m starting to boil. You shut up or I will make you shut up. “Pardon my Swahili, but she’s a dirty fucking whore.”
My tendons snap like rubber bands and my fist launches out towards Shiny’s face. I feel bones against my knuckles and before I fully realize what has just happened he falls to the floor. I look at my fingers while I clench and unclench them. They are red. Didn’t know I had it in me. I look back up and the whole place has gone Deimoiselles on me, twisted inhuman faces staring me down, unmoving unblinking unspeaking. An eerie silence holds the room. There is no way to fix this. I calmly walk over to the table, pick up the largest bottle I can find, and leave. The door slams shut behind me.
It’s a liter and a half of Stolichnaya and after about ten minutes in the Massachusetts night it’s nice and cold. The snow is really falling now and I feel like a Russian dissident on his way to the Gulag. The sky is black; the asphalt glows with light pollution. The air is restless. Frozen air particles attach themselves to me. I feel sick, and then become so on somebody’s driveway. Is this punishment for something? Is this whole awful night a form of divine retribution? Where’s my lighter? These are the questions that run through my mind as I move blindly through the back streets of this frozen pissant college town, bridges burning behind me. Thick black tendrils of smoke drift up into the air, becoming one with the other pollutants. I have never in my life felt lower than I do at this moment. I am scum; I am a leper. I might as well be covered in boils and smell like mold. Everything turns to shit in my hands; anyone who looks at me turns into a pillar of salt. It would all have been so much better if I just didn’t go to that stupid dance. Stupid! For no reason! No. That’s not true. I know what I really wanted. I wanted someone whose name isn’t Pearl to touch me. It’s another fine mess my balls have gotten me into, another man led astray by his selfish desires. I punched Shiny in the face! What did I do that for? What, exactly, did I gain? The weight in my hand reminds me. I look at the bottle, now half-empty, and wash away my thoughts with cool clear Russian Comfort. I careen sidelong into a shrub and the branches moan like vacuums as they scrape against my coat.

***

My foot misses the next step and I slide down a whole flight of fire-escape stairs on my face. The metal is wet and cold and when I look in the mirror the next day I see dark bruises on my cheek and forehead. I lie there, on the landing, dazed, for a minute or two, then slowly pick myself up and get my bearings. I’d somehow made it almost all the way up to the third floor before slipping, which is just as well because I live on the second floor of the building. My door is just over there, on the right; yes, the one someone who better not be my roommate keeps drawing penises on. Once, it was ejaculating swastikas onto stick figures with skirts and pigtails. I appreciate the artistry, I guess, but can’t he do that on his own door? I hear groaning animal noises from inside the room and decide not to investigate, instead making my way to a strategically placed couch around the corner. I slump down onto the cushions and the room begins a lazy spin. Look where I have brought myself now: The walls are the color of Pepto-Bismol, and there is an eerie preschool vibe to the place, especially with the empty swings and jungle gym visible from the window. My stomach complains but I am far from functional. I need bed, I need sleep. My eyelids start to drag and for the first time in my life I am completely lucid and aware at the exact moment my dream begins.
I’m walking down the street in San Francisco, down a hill, in fact, when I notice that there is a trolley right behind me. I start to run, barely keeping ahead of the front of the trolley, which is twisting and stretching and trying to grab me like an old toy robot’s claw. I run as fast as I can and I start to pull away from the trolley when suddenly I trip and fall. I see the tire roll towards my ankles in sickening slow-motion, unable to move, or to do anything at all. I try to ready myself for unimaginable pain by repeating to myself, oh dear god, this is real, this is real and there is nothing I can do to stop it, but when I open my eyes I am of course still on the couch in the hallway.
Across from me, on another couch, there is a girl wrapped in a pale, worn blanket reading a book. I look at her and take off my coat. I see long black bangs poking out of her hood, which is gray, and a small pointed nose, and I realize that she is probably very pretty. I ask her what she’s reading, and she looks up at me. The soft predawn light flatters her eyes, which glimmer like aquamarine crystals. The book is a Portuguese tale of a city overcome by an epidemic of spontaneous blindness. I tell her that it sounds terrifying and she agrees, but it’s also fascinating, she says. I make a Stevie Wonder joke, and she laughs, softly, like morse code.
“You’re funny,” she says to me.
“Thanks” I say. “Can’t sleep?” I ask her.
“I was asleep about an hour ago,” she says, “but then my roommate came crashing in, drunk off her ass, really upset about something some asshole frat guy said to her, and then she started yelling and throwing things.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, I calmed her down, got her some water, put her to bed, you know, roommate stuff. But then she starts snoring! This loud disgusting bubbly Ppppbbbbllll. Ugh. There’s only so much of that you can take, you know? So, uh, now I’m out here. Got my book, got my blanket. I’ll probably go back in an hour or so and, you know, pass out.”
“Not a bad idea,” I say.
“What did you do tonight?” she asks.
I groan. “It’s been a long night,” I say. How do I tell her that all I really did was stumble from place to place and feel shitty? “I went to Fall Ball,” I say.
“Why?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same question. Hope, I guess? People are supposed to go there and enjoy themselves, right? Isn’t that what they do? They go and they drink and dance and act stupid and everyone has a great time. Except me, I guess. Everyone except me.”
She lets this hang for a moment, and then says, “You talk about people like you’re not one of them. So what if they do those things. What do you do?”
“Do?” I ask. “I don’t do anything. I’m just here. I’m always here. No matter where I am, it’s still here and I hate being there.” Keep in mind that I am still far from sober. “I just need to go somewhere, to see something, anything worth seeing! I need to be where it happens, but when I get there I’m either too late or too early and it isn’t there or it wasn’t ever going to be there. There’s nothing there! And when there’s nothing there, you’re nowhere. You aren’t anywhere. You’re just there, all alone…” My incoherent ramblings have started to worry my new friend. She places her hand on my forehead and her brow furrows.
“I’ll be right back,” she says, and she is, holding a glass of water. I sip the water and it is cool and clean but my stomach isn’t ready for anything clean, or for that matter any liquids at all, and I violently expel Christmas-colored bile onto the carpet. She yelps and pulls over the trashcan. I cling to the plastic rim and empty myself. I’m sweating. A filthy acrid smell surrounds me. I convulse and retch and make disgusting noises until everything in me is gone. The last bit of matter makes a “plop” sound as it falls onto the trash, and I have the unmistakable feeling that something on my face is dripping. There’s a towel in my hand, and I wipe off with it. She lies me down and makes me drink more water. I’m overwhelmed by her kindness, and my own dizziness.
“Hey,” she says, crouching in front of the couch to look me in the eyes. “You’re going to be alright,” she says. I smile weakly, and she returns the favor.
“Glad you think so,” I say. “Sorry for making you deal with me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she says before she leaves, “Just go to sleep now.” Outside, the sky is a shade lighter. I stare out the window at the gray dawn and wait for the sunrise. I’m still waiting when I fall asleep.