As I lay in my hotel room, 400 miles from home, my minds wanders from the pundits opining on the television. My mind wanders to a time many years ago, before life and responsibility had imposed their grip on my soul.
I grew up in Derry, a small town about 20 miles from Wichita, Kansas, Derry is your typical rural community; big on football season and farming, not so big on those goddamn hippy liberals. Th e jocks ran my high school and the good old boy network ran the rest.
I didn't fit the profile of this town. I am a natural contrarian. While my contemporaries wore Wranglers, drove pickup trucks, and wore out their George Straight cassette tapes , I opted instead for Jnco's, a beat up Ford Escort, and Rob Zombie. High school was, to say the least, a difficult time. I had a small group of friends who shared common interests, most importantly a hatred for the fascist regime that the cool kids represented. Heading into our collective senior year, though, I think we all decided that our lives together would soon come to an end, put our petty differences behind us, and thoroughly enjoyed each others company for the rest of the year.
I had one friend, however, that was a jock. Well, Frank was only a jock insofar that he ran track and was on the swimming team. Frank and I had known each other since we were knee high to a grasshopper. (I know you like the folksy reference, don't lie.) Our dads were friends for most of their life. It came to a tragic end when his dad was electrocuted working underneath a house. My parents divorced soon after (nothing to do with the accident, more like dad slept with every woman in Derry), but Frank and I remained close. While my other friends and I shared rock music, a love of weed, and not much else, Frank and I had a history, and sometimes history is enough. We still mostly kept to our social cliques, but made time to hang out occasionally.
Our friendship changed forever one night during our senior year in high school. My mom had left town for the weekend to go camping with her friends, and I decided the time was right to throw an epic party. I won't get into a lot of specifics, but it involved a blunt being passed around a circle the size of my backyard and coke being snorted on the roof. It seemed as though my whole class had shown up, but in my drug induced state I can't be for sure. Unbeknownst to me, my neighbor had called the cops. We were stable enough to realize what was happening and succeeded in stashing all the dope. Unfortunately, the cops broke up the party and everyone dispersed. Probably a good thing too, as it would have been difficult to explain why I had allowed a half-dozen coke crazed morons to hang out on my roof. I decided to remain at the house to clean up because I knew good and well that I would be in no condition to perform the task the following morning.
Midway through my massive clean up task, the doorbell rang. Ready to tell whoever happened to be there that the party was over, to get the hell out, I opened the door and saw Frank standing there.
"Heard the party got crashed," he said with a smile. "You're such an idiot." I laughed. It's tough to be offended when it's the truth. He stepped inside,
"Thought you had to work," I asked him as I wandered back to the pile of trash that stood heaped in the kitchen.
"Didn't have a customer for over an hour. Jerry told me to go on home." Frank worked at a drug store in the next town over that was having a difficult time competing with the big box store that had opened up across the street. "Thought I would see what you were up to."
"Cleaning up, man. You see this shit? Potheads are such lazy fucks. You wanna help? I got beer," I replied in my most please-for-the-love-of-god-help-me voice. He cocked his right eyebrow at me, then shook his head as he reached for the beer in my outstretched hand.
"You're such an idiot."
W spent the next couple of hours getting hammered. Before we knew it, the house was spotless. Not even my anal retentive mother would be able to find fault in our efforts.
"Whew," Frank muttered under his breath as he wiped the sweat from his brow. "That was a pain in the ass." He took off his shirt and threw it over the loveseat. He collapsed on the couch. I scrunched up my face at him.
"Are you really going to lounge on that couch with your stinky ass? Good lord." He laughed drunkenly and stood up.
"My bad. Listen, you mind if I crash here tonight? I'm trashed and don't want to hear it from my mom."
"No problem," I answered as I headed to the kitchen for another beer. "You want one?"
"Yea. Hey one more thing..."
"Jesus. What now?"
"You wanna call my mom and let her know what's up? I'm in no condition." Frank gave me a pleading look.
