Picking Up a Girl Part 1

What am I doing with my life? I don’t have a girlfriend. I don’t have a job. I mean, I go to school. I study diligently. I have a 4.0, don’t I? I have friends, too, other students. This place is crawling with strange, creepy, creepily and strangely lovable people. These people brag about doing things that people in other places would go absolutely buggy about, things that the majority of this great land would never believe. People from other places would dismiss my friends entirely out of hand. Example case’n’point: My friend, Tommy Aberknol . Tommy likes to climb buildings in what our deliriously S.A.D. afflicted little populace calls the downtown area. There are tons of ways to get on the rooftops downtown. There’s even one place right next to a mini-mall where you can literally walk on top of a bar and from there get on top of a two story bank, and from there get to most of the taller buildings on that block. I’m not exaggerating. Tommy tries to get me to go on these voyages into Daralect’s skies all the time. I’ve gone but once. My heart trying to hammer out of my chest as my fat-ass tries to cling to a rusty ladder that’s not even really attached to the wall 50 feet off of the ground so I can go and lie on a rooftop in a very illegal manner listening to bums getting arrested by cops that could be arresting me for being drunk on some FUCKING DANGEROUS rooftop at 1 AM is not, my idea of a good time. But I have immense respect for the guy. I mean, how could you not? He’s badass. He breaks into the zipline at night by removing the little shacks’ rooftop bolts to get inside, steals the real commercial equipment, goes and has a blast, and then he puts everything back the way it was and ninjas’ back the way he came and nobody is ever the wiser. I guess that’s why I respect him. Tommy is a real life ninja. The guy knows how to make C4. He even looks like a ninja should look. He’s a tallish half Korean with yellow green eyes and of slight wiry build and has a half smile half smirk permanently affixed to his thin-lipped. Tommy is just one of Daralect’s denizens, I mean, the place is made up of people like that. Among his friends, he’s not even that cool. I don’t know why the guy hangs out with me. I’m just some Emo/Goth kid from Seattle. All I do is play WOW and listen to Postal Service, Trail of Dead, NIN and cry about my ex-girlfriend in my dorm room.  But not last night-- well that’s a lie.
Last night: I’m chilling in my dorm listening to ‘The Ruiner’ and crying about my Ex of 2 years over a half full 40 liter of diet Pepsi, other half vanilla Straus ice cream (because you can’t stint yourself on the good stuff when it comes to ice cream, even if you only eat ramen and pizza) and a speaker issuing blaring commands for an AP raid via Ventrillo, maybe, if all our guilds mains show up when a knock comes at my door. “What the fuck? It’s 12 O’Clock at night.” I say to myself voice coming out hoarse from all my wallowing. There’s no way I’m letting anybody in my room. They’d see the mess I’ve made getting all that ice cream in that nozzle. They’d see my eyes red from crying. They’d know me for the sad sack of shit that I am. I try to wait it out. *Knock* *Knock*. No avail.
“Dude! Open UP, MAN! It’s Tommy!” Of course it’s Tommy. Who else would come and pound on my door this late. No one, because no one likes m—“Man! Open up!”
Gods. “Hey, man,” I say my voice coming out thin and reedy, “I’m not really up for anything, I was just going to go to sleep, I got a test tomorrow.” Which is a lie, I wasn’t going to go to sleep, and I don’t have a test tomorrow.
“Quit yer bitchin! I’m coming in!” –wait, what?! It’s locked, my room is locked. I hear clicking at the door. I panic. I throw some pants on. I get a rag to mop up the small, green, foldable table I used to concoct the elixir of misery. My pants fall to the floor as the door opens. I forgot to get a belt, and the torrent page is up with so many porno ads adorning the sides when all I was doing was downloading add-ons for the raid. Crap.
Switch
Man, what a day! I’m gonna have some fun tonight. That Drake kid is such a character. I had to scale the drain pipe to the second floor just to get into the dorms. Nazi bastards! You’d think that since I’m a student I could just go in! But no, “I’m a liability”, they say, “street signs went missing when you lived here”, they say, “didn’t we get a restraining order, yet?” they say. They say a lot of shit, but when it comes down to it, we all know they’re just Nazi scum. Well, not all of ‘em. I gots’ me some good teachers and some bad ones, just the way the world goes, I guess. My chem teacher is badass, she falls asleep during the piteous hours that the man doesn’t have her slaving to teach sheeple what they should already know and lets me come in to take small amounts of things that I honestly need for my *cough* work, I guess you could say. Not that I want to get her in trouble, I don’t take all that much. Just a pinch of sodium here, a dab of Potassium Nitrate there, maybe some iron oxide and magnesium ribbon goes missing sometime, but not enough for anyone to notice. My English teach on the other hand, is a raging bitch, she gets mad at me all the time for stupid grammatical issues and my papers are always nearly perfect, but she’s a cunt, so what can you do? Shit! Where was I? oh yeah, the dorms. So I had to scale the drainpipe to a window that one of my bromies leaves conveniently open most of the time to get in the building. I mean, really? C’mon? Why don’t they just leave the front door open with a sign that says go away, it’d be just as effective as leaving those pipes attached to that wall and having a bunch of 19 year old college kids that are just dying to let me in so I can buy them beer. If there’s one thing this life has taught me growing up, it’s this: if there’s a fence, go over it, see what’s up, and drink a beer there. If there’s people there, give them some beer, or run, it’s easy to tell which you do when you get there. That’s life.
So I get to Drake’s room. And I knock. And there’s no answer, but I know he’s there. He’s kinda lame sometimes, playing that stupid game when he could be going on a real adventure, but he’s smart and knows shit about shit that I have no idea about and he’s got a weird sense of humor. I think he might be anorexic, cuz he’s always bitching about how fat he is and he’s not that big, maybe 200 at 5’ 11”or something. He’s got black eyes, black hair and pale skin like someone out of a Steven King movie or something, that alone makes him pretty cool. It’s hard to find cool people, most are just drones or Nazis or fucking tweekers. Plus, when you grow up in Daralect you know everybody, so if you can find a dude you don’t know that’s even half-way decent, you might as well call him friend. As I’m thinking about all of this I’m picking his lock, which I learned about from a book some kid gave me in grade school. I love books.
It makes a clicking sound as the locking mechanism springs free. I open the door to find him, get this: Totally embarrassed, his cheeks are on fire,  Pants around his ankles with a sopping wet gooey rag covered with what looks to be seaman, and he’s totally looking at porn. “What the fuck, man? Having a party and you didn’t invite me?” I’m such a riot “But seriously, man! Not cool, I gave you fair warning, dude. You should have been on that shit, I look at porn too, but that’s for alone time, ya know?”
“Tommy. Um, it’s not what you think.” His voice is thick, like he just swallowed a toad and his eyes are all red. Duuude…
“Drake, man, dude, are you stoned?”
He blanches for a second, looks guilty, says “Um, yes?”
“Are you or aren’t you?”
“Yeah!” he practically shouts it.
“Man, keep it down, you know if they find me here I’ll get kicked out for good, and probably expelled too.”
“yeah, sorry.”
“Oh no! Bra, don’t be sorry, be chill.” I pause for effect “I thought you didn’t puff the stuff man?”
“Yeah, well, um, some guys wanted to go… look at the lake, and I had nothing to do.. well, you know how it goes” he looks at me hopefully.
“Oh yeah, man! Of course, dude! I’m the party king. I rule with a kind hand. Get it, kind?”
“Um, no.”
“I’ll learn ya, boy.”
“Teach.”
I look at him. I hate it when he corrects me, I know how to talk and stuff, just sometimes I choose not to. I don’t dog on him though cuz I don’t know how well he takes shit. One time my friend Sam said something and he left all in a huff, and it’s not like Sam knew his mother had died or nothing, so I keep my gob shut for a second.
“So anyway, it’s time you get you laid, bra!”
“Wait—what? No I don’t think so, I’m not going to one of those crazy parties in the woods with you again, last time I did you stole those peoples’ chainsaw and—“
“I brought it back to them, no harm, no foul, am I right?”
“They had fucking guns! I thought I was going to shit my pants! They stormed the fucking campsite and held us hostage and you guys threw pinecones at me and Haily from the trees.”
“Yeah, and nobody got hurt, so you’ve got no argument my good man.” I sound all smart for that part “but listen buddy, that’s not that point anyway because tonight we’re going to the bar, that’s where a guy like you will fit in until I teach you about the rugged ways of the great yonder, than you’ll be rollin in the pussy, but until then it’s the bar.”
“I told you Tommy I got class tomorrow.”
“No. you don’t. And why you gotta lie to me, man? I had my friend Tim that works at the help desk print me out your schedule so now we both know that your class don’t-“
“Doesn’t.”
“yeah, whatev, man. The point is, come out with me, it’ll be fun.”
“Tommy, I’m not even 21!”
“Doesn’t matter, I got you.” I take out the thin plastic card that my friend out the road made. It’s perfect. This girls got a real honest to god DMV machine. They thought it was broken, and it was. But you can’t dump shit like that around here, because somewhere there’s a kid that’s got WAY too much time on her hands and the internet and shit tends to get fixed.
“Holy shit! It looks real… hey! Did you steal the picture from my student ID? How the fuck did you pull this off?” I smile.
He looks at me like a deer caught in headlights. I’ve got him. Sweet. Time to get Drake Westin laid. I unlatch his window and then leave by the door to go get some babes for the foray to the bars. This is going to be one sick party.
Switch
I can’t believe I let Tommy talk me into this. The bar can’t be open for that much longer. I look like shit. I mean, I cleaned up a little bit. I washed my hair in the sink and put on deodorant. I brushed my teeth. I flossed. I had a miraculously clean shirt and decent smelling pants lying on top of some crumpled clothes under my bed. I still look like shit. Man, oh man. I don’t want to do this. I guess it beats the shit out of staying in my room, bawling in my misery float. And he got me a fake! I can’t believe it! It looks just like a real ID. I don’t care how he got it, all I know is that it’s cool, but I really hope I don’t get caught. I’m not really stoned. I’ve only smoked weed here once. It’s too strong, I don’t know if it can even be considered to be marijuana. Tommy was the one who got me stoned, maybe that was why, his friends say he can find good stuff, and stuff here is better. He said it was called “Alaska Defchron #4”, that’s a mouthful. I thought I had wet my pants for an hour straight, I mean, I was really paranoid about it. I hadn’t. It was just in my skull.  I guess the lesson is don’t smoke weed with a name like a national emergency or maybe don’t smoke named weed in general. Before he left Tommy told me how he got in the building. He told me about how he scaled the building, and something about fences that didn’t make that much sense. But what gets me, is how offhand he told it. Like it wasn’t a big deal to him. I managed to get the computer off the torrent page and steer the conversation away from the very trying beginning of our greeting. Don’t I get a big bag of win.
So now I have to act stoned? Or can I forget that part? It’s probably a big deal to him, but by the time he gets back he will have most likely forgotten. Tommy, might as well call him Dorey, like in ‘Finding Nemo’. It’s 12:30 by the time he gets back. I had to wait in my room because I don’t want to go try to find him in the dorms and get laughed at by all the people he told about how I was jacking off when he came in. I really don’t know about all this. I’d rather use my fake ID to buy beer at the store and drink it in my room. But I know that if I want to keep the fake, I have to at least humor Tommy. I know I wont get laid anyway, so I might as well try—“Dude!” I spasm, look over. How the FUCK did he get back into my room without me noticing.
“Tommy! Where the hell did you come from?”
“Oh I climbed in through your window, I unlocked it before I left, remember?”
“No. Dude, listen you can’t just clim—“
“Well, I did, so lets go. You look good man!”
“Um, sure.”
“I’ll meet you outside, kiddo!” He exclaims as I reach the door, I look back just in time to see just his foot on the sill, the rest of him blocked by the wall. What the fuck? As I’m closing my door, the resident Security Guard, Paul, comes up to me.
“Have you seen Mr. Aberknoll around here?” His face is stern, tan, he’s got frown lines from a constant grimace that the rigamortis of a person that has died while taking a constipated shit would be jealous of.
“No, sir.” You have you say sir to Paul, because he’s ex military but couldn’t get into the police department for some reason, so he’s got some power trip that he tries to exert over everybody that likes to have a good time in the dorms.
“I know you two used to hang out.” He growls “Back when Tom used to live here.”
“Haven’t seen him, sir.”
“Well if you do, let us know, he’s not technically trespassed yet, but if I catch one whiff of him or his pot smoking friends it’s your ass!”
“Can I go now, sir?”
“Yes, Drake, but know: I’ve got my eye on you.”
That was scary. Not. The constipated asshole couldn’t be scary if he tried, unless, maybe, if he had some real dirt on you.