“Who?” Portland Patty interrupts, shuts the door, walks towards him, “oreGONE xmas ‘95” continuing behind her.
“Nothing.” Ronnie stumbles to the couch. “No one. Maux. But . . . ”
“What about her, Ronnie?”
Ronnie falls backwards, lands on the couch, leans back, puts his hands behind his head with fingers clasped, smiles the smile of the overserved. “Aw, you know, they think we’re dating. But we’re not dating. We’re friends. That’s all. Fffffffffffriends!” He laughs, he smiles, he unclasps his fingers, extends his arms into an embrace and says, “I like you. They like you. Isn’t that nice? Isn’t it? Nice? Right?”
Portland Patty has to smile. Beneath the attempts at charm, the rumpled yet almost “punk” clothing, there was a lush—a great big comical lush—like the kind they used to draw in caricature in the 1930s—with red clown noses and floppy holey shoes and a stick with a knotted handkerchief holding his meager possessions. Portland Patty recalls a song from when she was a kid, a song from the kids’ show The Electric Company—“I’m just a clow-wow-wowwwwn / who’s feeling dow-wow-wowwwwn / since my baby left tow-wowwwwwn.” They were teaching kids about the “ow” sound in words, but maybe it was about Ronnie, or Portland Patty, or everyone in Gainesville flopping around doing nothing all the time. Ronnie the Lush. She promises that, no matter how annoyed and angry she gets with Ronnie, to keep that nickname to herself. She doesn’t want to saddle him with it, as someone with a faraway, long ago, hardly remembered hometown in front of her name.
“Well. The pizza’s almost ready if you want some.”
“Hell yeah, brah.”
Ronnie picks up the VHS cover of the movie Portland Patty rented. Opening Night is the title. He flips to the back, closes one eye so he can focus on the words, laughing in perceived recognition as he reads:
“. . . The master narrative of all of Cassavetes’ films is to force characters to shed their own skins . . . the discovery of who we really are can begin only when our routines are disrupted . . . we must be forced out of our places of comfort . . . not to break down, to maintain your old routines at all costs, to hold onto an established definition of yourself with a death grip . . . is to be truly damned.”
Portland Patty removes the pizza stone holding the newly formed crust from the oven, sets them on the kitchen counter. She spreads the tomato sauce, sprinkles the soy cheese, plops the peppers, puts it back in, as oreGONE, xmas ’95 plays “24” by Red House Painters and the lyric and I thought at 15 I’d / have it down by 16 / and 24 keeps breathing in my face / like a manhole / and 24 keeps pounding at my door . . . And now, she’s twenty-five. Years of never having it down, years of fleeting thrills and nothing substantive.
When it’s cooked, removed, cooled, she cuts the pizza into slices, divides it between two plates. She carries the plates into the living room. Ronnie’s head is tilted back. He smiles as he snores, mouth agape. It is too ridiculous to be angry. She sets the plates down, goes into the kitchen, stops “oreGONE xmas ’95,” carries the bottle of Shiraz into the living room, turns on the TV, the VCR, starts the movie, cranks the sound to drown out Ronnie’s snores, eats, drinks, drinks, drinks, tries to enjoy this fleeting man and this fleeting moment, so far from home, so far from home.
•
Yes, at the bar, Paul and Neal were trying to give Ronnie all kinds of shit about Maux and Portland Patty. It was the primary topic of conversation during the Drunken Mick’s all-you-can-drink Happy Hour from 5:00-8:00 p.m.
“Maux’s gonna kill you,” Paul said, seated to Ronnie’s left, facing Ronnie, slapping him in the arm with each gesticulation, black Caesar cut and sideburns, hunched over the bar, head tilting to Ronnie, to the mirror behind the liquor bottles, back and forth in nervous darts. “She knows about this, and she’s going to kill you. Then, while your body is still warm, she’s going to draw a brutal caricature of you in the paper.”
“Haw haw haw,” Ronnie said. Both brothers were plying him with whiskey shots, Paul on the left and Neal on the right.
“And Portland Patty’s cool,” Neal said, less fidgety than his brother, but no less strident, concerned, nagging. Neal’s approach is to buy Ronnie beers, shots, to make up for the awkwardness of talking this way, after they showed up at Ronnie’s house and flat-out told him, “We’re taking you to the Drunken Mick to let you know how fucking stupid you are.”
“You can’t do this, Ron,” Neal added, waving to the bartender for another shot, another beer, fingers pointing in Ronnie’s direction.
Ronnie downed the shot. “You don’t understand, man. Maux, she doesn’t really wanna date. Portland Patty, I just met her. So so what?”
“So you’re a dumbass,” Paul said, slapping Ronnie in the arm.
“What would Doug Clifford do?” Neal said, then to the heavens, shouted, “Why can’t you think of Doug Clifford?” Hairy black arms in the air, hairy black hair, hairy black eyebrows, lamenting upward, “Why doesn’t anybody think of Doug Clifford?”
Ronnie laughed, numbed into drunken intuition, but no less resolved. That final shot pushed him over the cliff. The mouth and the brain were in sync, and Ronnie talked and talked and talked, gibberish along the lines of:
“Haw haw haw, naw I can’t decide because actually it ain’t a bad arrangement you know because Maux she keeps the distinctions blurred like and really at the end of the day I like being in her apartment and I’d do more with Maux if she only gave me the chance but then there’s Portland Patty she’s great too and yes greater than Maux I think but I don’t like to you know unattach myself to girls to like breakup and end things and not only that but having two bodies makes up for having, heh heh heh, nobodies, got me? Haw haw haw?”
Nevertheless Neal and Paul continued to berate him in a steady stream Ronnie only half-listened to, lllllllloaded as he was, not feeling all that happy in this alleged Happy Hour. Through the whiskey and beer haze, Ronnie caught phrases like “fucking moron,” “juvenile excuses,” and “selfish drunkard.” The last phrase catches his ear and sends his thoughts spiraling down, down, down. Why did he have to drink like this? Christ, he was lllloaded! Was it mere boredom, Floridian boredom? Was it believing he was a writer, believing that this is what writers did—they drank, almost as much, if not more, than they wrote? Because he was still young—even if 24 was pushing it? Tradition? Genetics? Personal choice? Maybe it was all of that, but really and simply: Ronnie enjoyed it. He laughed a lot, felt relaxed, made connections he believed he could not get any other way. He gained experience. It got him to the state he wanted to reach as a person, someone who could freely talk, who could be fun, someone with the confidence to trust his intuition. It melted frivolous annoyances and stresses. It put life firmly in the present. Righting the balance of the world. Or, as it did in the past year, it numbed pain. It left Ronnie ok with sitting in his room despondent and disconnected, blasting the Germs, the Stooges, Crime, DMZ, Television, Flipper, tuning out bad breakups, finding and losing jobs he hated, awkward transitions into the world of post-college. He hadn’t done anything terrible—yet—and the great times far outweighed the surly and alienating times. He didn’t physically need it. More than anything, it was, you know, just something to do.
Blacked out. Neal and Paul dropped Ronnie off at Portland Patty’s. They were still telling him what to do and how to be as he opened the passenger door and lurched down her driveway to the front door, turning, yelling to them, “There’s nothing to end! Doug Clifford thinks you guys are fags!” He fell over, onto the grassy-dirt of the front yard, stood, brushed himself off, knowing that inside, there is pizza, and Portland Patty will be ok with this. Why wouldn’t she be? Everything was alright.
. . . So when he wakes up on Portland Patty’s couch, in total darkness except for a VCR digital clock reading 3:36 a.m., it is still alright, even with the slight headache and the massive dehydration. He feels through the darkness, finds the hallway, finds Portland Patty’s bedroom. He climbs into her bed.<
br />
“Hhhhhey,” Ronnie mumbles, nasty old booze breath, clothes reeking of bar smoke. Portland Patty turns away as he pulls up the covers, tries draping his arm around her shoulders. She stares into the darkness, looking away from Ronnie, as much on the mattresses’ edge as she can be without falling out of bed.
•
In the morning—is it morning? afternoon? does it matter?—Ronnie feels a poke and a nudge. He is awoken from dreams of sitting in sunset jungles underneath palm fronds blowing in hurricanes. He opens his eyes. Portland Patty stands over him, saying, “Ronnie? Ronnie? I think you should leave.”
Ronnie stretches, yawns. “Leave? Why? I’m still tired. I was kinda drunk last night, huh—heh heh?”
“I just. I don’t know. I’ve been thinking.”
“Thinking.” Ronnie repeats. He looks at Portland Patty. She looks serious. Grave, even. Sad. “You look serious, Portland Patty. Grave, even. Sad.”
“You should stay with Maux. You like her.” Portland Patty steps back from the bed. To say those words, her sad mood melts. Confidence takes over as she says, “I can’t go along with whatever it is you’re doing, here, with me, with yourself.”
“What am I doing?” That sinking feeling of knowing he would be leaving a bedroom, a girl, probably forever.
Portland Patty opens the blinds, lets in the ever-present sunshine. “Well, you’re not doing anything, Ronnie. That’s the problem. I like you. But you’re not doing anything.” She wants to tell him he’s like all the others, which is what’s so disappointing, disheartening.
“I do like you, Ronnie Altamont,” she continues, “but I think I want to be alone now. Please leave.”
Ronnie, half-asleep, fully hungover, rolls out of bed, lands on his feet, pats his body like someone trying to recall in which pocket he kept a pen. He moves like some slapstick goof in a forgotten silent movie. Portland Patty stands by the window, reminded of why she liked him. She wants to laugh, comes close to taking it all back, wants to keep him. But there is Maux, and this slacktastic lifestyle of leisure just like all these boys in Gainesville. She wants to forgive him his youth and inability to think beyond today, as he looks in the mirror and ruffles his hair like he’s trying to straighten out bedhead in the clumps of that growing-out brown mess.
He turns from the mirror, looks to Portland Patty. “I’m sorry.” he says. “You’re right.” He extends his arms, makes doe eyes, and in a move Portland Patty suspects is practiced, he asks, “Friends?”
She nods. “Friends.” She steps away from the window, around the bed, to Ronnie. This shouldn’t hurt.
He steps back. “Well. Goodbye,” he says. He smiles, like he doesn’t believe her, like this isn’t real. “See you at the shows.” He turns, walks out of the bedroom. She hears his steps across the carpeting through the living room, to the foyer, the open and shut of the front door. She falls into bed. Tears. It isn’t Ronnie—not entirely—it’s hope meeting reality, the way it always does with her.
Ronnie begins the long walk through the heat, humidity and sunshine down 13th Street, south towards home. Portland Patty will change her mind. Even if she doesn’t, there’s always Maux, or that girl on her bike there, or those girls on the sidewalk, or the girl in the Volkswagen next to him at the stoplight. Nothing is serious. Nothing is ever serious. To take anything serious means taking life serious, and why would you do that? There is only fun. Fun is the ideal. Fun is the center. If it isn’t fun, there’s no need to bother.
It feels like hours, but it’s really only 45 minutes until Ronnie makes it to NW 4th Lane, but instead of going into the Myrrh House to brood on Portland Patty in hungover agony, he thinks the better move, the smarter move, is to keep walking, past the Myrrh House and through the parking lot shortcut, two blocks to Maux’s. Maux will make this ok. He wants to be with Maux anyway, and who cares what anyone else has to say about it? Her apartment will be nice and dark, vodka will be in the freezer, and she’ll show him her latest drawings. Then, they will climb into bed and ignore this stupid, stupid world.
He parks, walks up to the second floor of her dismal apartment building with its motel walkways and motel railing, knocks on her door.
“What do you want, douche?”
“Let me in.”
“Why aren’t you with the hippie?”
“The hippie? She’s just a friend. Let me in.”
Maux opens the door. She’s wearing this silver-sequined miniskirt, newly-dyed indigo hair. He wants her. So. Bad.
“I’m not letting you in,” she says. “I can’t do that.”
Ronnie smiles, digs deep for the charm. “Aw, c’mahhhhhn. I’m only friends with her. That’s nothing. I want to see you, Maux.”
“You’re like the rest Ronnie.” She looks past Ronnie, in the direction of UF it seems, but it could be anywhere behind Ronnie. “I mean, I don’t hate you, but what we’ve been doing? It’s a farce. I mean, friends of mine—and I do actually have some friends here, Ron—overheard your drunken bullshit last night at the Mick and told me all about it. They always thought I was too good for you anyway.” She looks at her watch. “I need to graduate. I need to get out of here. I can’t waste any more time.” She looks at him, sneers. “I mean, this is a college town, Ronnie. You graduated college. What are you even doing here?”
Ronnie wants to answer, “To write! To play music!” but he can’t say that. He shrugs. “I like it here. I’m going back to school.”
“No you’re not,” Maux says, shuts the door.
Ronnie faces the gray metal door where Maux had just stood. He knocks three times. “Maux? Maux? Hey, I just want you to know? This is fine. I mean, I understand, but I’m wondering. You’re not going to draw me, are you? I don’t want to be in the paper. I mean, the haiku drawing is fine. I just don’t want a caricature of me like, I don’t know, a flounder? Floundering around as a medium fish in a small pond? I’d say you could use any of these ideas, but I’d prefer you didn’t. All I’m saying is, these things happen, but don’t draw me, ‘kay? Maux? Maux? Alright. Well. Later.”
Maux sits in the dark of her living room, listening to this nonsense on the other side of the door. She wants to laugh at what he’s saying, almost wants to let him in, to tell him, “Get in here, jerkoff. You’re not even worth drawing, and I wish I hadn’t drawn you and all those stupid haiku you write.”
Instead, she listens to him walk away, turning her thoughts towards graduation, to escaping Gainesville, to whatever is beyond all this dumb childish futile whatever.
JULIANNA
Julianna reclines on the couch, watching the sunset light filter through the sliding glass back patio doors of the apartment she shares with her boyfriend. She has almost finished the fourth tall glass from a now-emptied box of white wine, holding the glass with both hands on her fatter-than-it-used-to-be midsection. Some ’70s cop show, all sideburns and implausible shootouts, story-arcs to its predictable outcome on the unwatched muted television in the corner. New Zealand indie-pop from the early 1980s whispers out the speakers in every corner of the room. After coming home from work today, a quick glance in the rear view mirror revealed her first gray hair, a barely perceptible white thread in the blond, but there just the same.
The apartment is on the third floor, in a beige and pastel building surrounded by the twelve identical buildings that make up the apartment complex. Julianna straightens up, finishes the white wine, takes the five steps from the couch to the tiny back patio. The breeze is a warning of the cold to come. This is only the beginning. She has never been outside of Florida for the fall and winter months. How do people stand it? Why do people stand it?
The view from the patio: parking lot, swampy retention pond, and, directly across, an apartment building. It wasn’t even a bad day at work. It was a nothing day. Julianna’s boyfriend of ten years waits tables at night. Since the summer months, he has been coming home from work later and later. New friends from the restaurant who Julianna has yet to meet. In the morning,
as she leaves for work, he’s asleep, hungover, guilty of something he’s too dumb to hide. Scott reluctantly moved up here when Julianna got the job, but he’s hit his stride—friends, a new life, reinvented as someone he wasn’t in Gainesville: a dick. At least that’s how Julianna sees it. When he comes home, she knows he’s been cheating, but doesn’t say anything, and she knows that when Scott sees her, he sees a past he’d rather forget. He has carved out a niche here, but for Julianna, there is nothing but this too-small apartment, and their basset hound, Charlie, who always looks how she feels anymore.
There is nothing to do in Charlotte, North Carolina.
There is nothing but this job for the tiny academic press, translating Russian Criticism into English for advanced Russian Studies students sprinkled across the North American continent. She sent them her resume on a whim, not thinking it would be her ticket out of Gainesville. Finally. It was the change she thought she needed. Seven months later, after doing nothing but translating all this criticism, she’s not sure. It isn’t simply criticism of literature, existence, the government. It is criticism of everything. Toilet paper. Bank tellers. The tonality of door bells. Nothing escaped the critical eye of these Russian theorists. Every facet of existence, no matter how mundane, should and must be critiqued. Julianna has nightmares of a world like this, filled with people yelping yelping yelping about every interaction in the consumer economy. Wasting their intellectual capacities, their advanced educations, on assessment. To waste your life on knocking down rather than building a better world. What if everyone fancied themselves a Russian critic? Pop culture. Restaurants. Toll booth operators. Cheese graters. Bars. Dandruff shampoo. A world of critics. The job, immersing herself in this level of criticism, is nightmare enough.
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