XENITH

All of Brooklyn’s Parties
by Ben Nardolilli

I almost fell for him. He was that convincing. I have never met anyone who worked with pity like a craft, using such precision.

It seemed everyone was moving out of Manhattan junior year. I was the only one of my friends still living in the dorms. They tell you to call them residence halls, but to be honest, with everyone else living farther away, they were just places to sleep. Since all the students around me, including my own, were so much younger, it would require making a trek to the outer boroughs if I was going to have any real social life,. Nobody wanted to come back to the City once they were done with classes.

Because people were spread out, no longer concentrated within a walking distance from one another, there was no casual getting together. There could be no hanging out. We had to make plans to bring as many people together as possible. Parties seemed to be the only way to do it, and now everyone was turning twenty one, we had a reason to celebrate, and the means to do so.

I met him when Frieda, my German-American friend and former lab partner, was having a birthday party at Eve’s apartment. Eve was a mutual friend of ours. She had lived on my hall and was in one of my comparative religion classes. We grew together by making fun of our professor and sneaking wine to our rooms past everyone who told us we couldn’t have it. In fact, it was a dream about her that convinced me I was a lesbian.

She wasn’t interested and for a year it was a problem, but it was in the past and that night when I went up to her apartment and knocked on her door, I was not nervous to see her. By that time, we were friends again. Eve opened the door and gave me a hug. She could feel that I was breathing heavy. There were no elevators or escalators working between the Bowery and Park Slope and I was not used to going up and down so quickly.

I went inside and made a cocktail. I mixed something red and sweet with a clear liquor that I assumed was vodka, but it burned so strongly that it could have been a cheap version of anything. I then sipped on it slowly and let myself take it in loudly, nobody would notice I was drinking slower than them.
By the time I finished my second drink, I had said hello to everyone at the party that I knew. I was feeling hot, but decided to keep all of my layers on. I debated with myself if it was worth undoing my pigtails and letting my hair hang free. Ultimately, I decided against it. The dark strands would look unseemly, and I would be hotter, my hair forming a brown hood around my head.

One of the people at the party who I didn’t know came up and saw me looking uncomfortable. When his feet came close to mine and he stopped, looking at me, I took a long drink, seeing the bottom of my glass for a moment and then drowning the sight of it again. Having loosened my mouth up a bit, I was about to talk to him when he spoke first.

“I think you should keep your hair in the braids. I like ponytails.”

“What?”

“You had that look on your face, you couldn’t decide what to do with them.”

“How could you tell?”

“Oh, your eye kept wandering to the upper corners of your lids,” he did an imitation of what he had seen, his blue eyes rising and falling like two drops of energetic rain.

“Well I guess if you think they’re fine, I’ll leave them up. I’m just so hot in here.”

He smiled. The flash of a white picket fence in between his thin red lips sobered me up a little. I realized that I gave him an opportunity to be lewd, something I try to avoid around college guys. They’re always waiting to deliver their latest line. But he surprised me.

“Do you want to go up to the roof?”

“There’s a roof?” I coughed a little.

He laughed. “Of course, how do you think the walls keep from falling down?”

It was the first time I had blushed since elementary school. “I meant,” I put my hand out for emphasis and hit the guy in the chest. He smiled as I withdrew, and I knew no apology was necessary, “to say that as a question about whether or not we can use the roof. Obviously,” I almost fell over him saying it, “I know we have a roof. I just don’t know how to use it. Plus, maybe it’s raining.”

“No, there’s a way up.”

“Is anyone up there?”

“They’ll follow us, I’m sure.”

Out on the fire escape I dropped my drink and it fell five stories below, landing on the sidewalk in front of a group of Dominican men, who swore at me in a circle with a mixture of Spanish, English, and universally understood hand gestures. My blonde haired guide told me to ignore them and I did, taking his hand as I went up the ladder to the roof of the building.

Once we were over the ledge that ringed the edges of the apartment complex, we fell over and collapsed onto the loose rocks spread out to cover the top. There were small enough not to cause any major damage, but my right hand hurt because I had landed on top of it. The guy smiled and brushed away the pebbles that were still embedded in my skin. A constellation of red marks was left, but I ignored the painful sight.

He was sitting down now, holding his hands together on top of his erect knees. It made him look poetic. His face was at a profile and I could see his face losing itself in a moment of inspiration, gazing out over New York Harbor. He looked ready to say something important or inspirational. I sat on my knees, spreading my weight out so the rocks would stop biting at me, waiting for him to open his mouth and bring an end to the silence.

Nothing was said. The only human sounds in the air were from the party down below. I wanted another drink. Standing up, I remarked about the skyline and the stars, and how wonderful the view was so the guy wouldn’t feel bad about having led me up for just some fresh air. But I was bored and it was cold. I was also sure everyone downstairs was getting all sorts of ideas about me, rumors I didn’t want spread around. They would do me no good.

My back was turned to him and I heard his body coming up off the artificial ground. I did not want to turn around and appear hesitant. But his silence bothered me and I turned around to make sure everything was okay. Physically he appeared fine. His blonde hair and blue eyes were in place and he had lost no height or weight. His skin was the color of the pale rocks beneath us. We both were glowing in the crescent moonlight.

“I think the view is fine from here too.” He licked his lips. I could see they were dry from nervousness. Something maternal in me wanted to hold his hand, put his head on my shoulder, let him tell me everything that was bothering him and then get him to agree that everything would be alright.

But I could see he wanted more than that and when we sat back down he told me his story. I learned that he was a freshman despite looking much older, was in a long distance relationship he could not get out of, afraid that he would die without ever knowing true love, and that he was also afraid of dying a virgin.

When I heard the last fear, I noticed his hand was on my knee. My skirt was covering it, but the feeling of each fingertip still came through. Small flames flew from where we made contact and warmed me up. I didn’t want to go back down and scooted up to the edge of the roof, where I would no longer have to worry about supporting myself. There was gravity in his shoulder. I put my head down and rested there. For some reason I found his story compelling. He could do no wrong, as far as I was concerned, since so many bad things had happened to him, and I begged him to tell me more. I wanted to believe this was finally the man for me, and maybe it had been a phase after all that I was going through.

He went on, indulging me in his sorrows and it was wonderful to hear each one. Part of me was happy to hear tales of straight male woe, to learn that a position of privilege can’t mend a broken a heart or make one comfortable with themselves in bed. But also by sitting and listening to him, I felt like I was doing something for the common good.

I guess I was too drunk to realize what he wanted, for me to help him with the problem. He kept talking and I kept nodding, eventually I went to sleep in his arms. It was a wonderful revelation for me, when in the morning I realized that it was all I had done, but he was not happy about it. He had wanted to sleep with me, but in a more private place, after being exhausted from a heavy bout of screwing and/or lovemaking.
He quickly got his things together and snuck down the fire escape. He didn’t want my phone number. He claimed his throat was too sore to call me. It made sense at the time and I thought it was a perfectly reasonable excuse. I was also hung-over and tired. Thinking about him and what he had told me and how he was treating me in the morning did not interest me. I wanted a greasy breakfast and a soft pillow.
Eve had a friend, Laura, who lived nearby. She had fallen asleep in front of the stereo and could now barely hear. Loudly, she told me not to worry and that eventually she would regain her hearing. She also told me that I looked pretty good for one who had just spent the night outdoors. I thanked her, unsure of how to handle a compliment now that every sound, human and mechanical, seemed to squeeze my head like a dirty dishrag. But her voice was sweet enough to sound normal then.

Laura saw that I was tired and offered me a bed at her place, a few blocks away. I wanted breakfast first, but I would take a comfortable bed, especially if it was not of the prison variety that the University liked to provide its residents with. We went out into the street and the only signs of life were the cars that I presumed had drivers inside them. I wanted to take advantage of the space and walk apart from Laura, yelling at her instead of plain talking. I wanted to use a real outdoor voice.

But I wanted to walk as close to her as possible as well and I found our hands brushing up against one another. Neither of us felt bad about it and soon we were coming into contact with one another for longer moments. She smiled at me and I thought we would start a fire rubbing together over such a small space for a long period of time. To keep the heat from becoming a danger, we began to spread the area of contact out. Hands were held in order to bring elbows close together and feet grazing one another.

And when we climbed four flights of stairs, together, we found that both of us were tired, but not tired enough to go to bed. Our hearts were racing too fast. If we tried to shut our eyes, we would open them again, afraid that we would be missing something exciting. To calm ourselves down we simply lay together, hoping the coolness of the sheets and the darkness of the room in early morning would be enough. But it wasn’t. Laura believed the problem was one of comfort and she removed her top and pants, and I followed suit. If I had remained totally clothed, it would have ruined her theory.

It was right before the Winter Break. Hoping to get everyone together one last time before they all headed out of the City to go back to their original suburban abodes, Laura threw a party, with my assistance. That morning I did a lot of baking, making use of her kitchen, which was larger and better stocked than mine. Cookies, brownies, cupcakes, I made them all and was soon covered head to foot with flour. Laura, who was putting up decorations and cleaning up the place, told me to go shower before she cleaned the bathroom.

I undressed and turned on the shower. A white stream flowed from me down the drain. I imagined my skin being washed off. There was a worry that I would clog the pipes, a mass of dough forming underneath the bathroom from the mix of water, flour, and oil that was coming off of me. If yeast got into the mixture, then the mass would rise and expand, causing the floor to bend and the pipes to burst. I called out to Laura half seriously, to see if she wanted to come and join me. But she was quiet.

Soon I was clean, the apartment was clean, and trays of deserts and polished bottles of alcohol and soda were out on the counter. I was in the kitchen, putting the last touches on everything, while Laura went and greeted the guests, changing the song playing on the stereo to suit the mix of people in the room. Because I was behind a counter, turning every so often to see who was inside, I quickly lost track of the guests. All that I knew was that the crowds were getting bigger. More and more kinds of voices were coming into the apartment.

Laura turned the music up so no one speaking could drown out the tunes. She wanted everybody to dance, but when I turned around, I saw she was the only one. Her eyes reached out across the living room and played with me. She wanted me to join her, to inspire everyone else. But I shook my head, I had to make fresh frosting for the cupcakes. If she wanted me to be her domestic, she had to let me do my job.

As the blood alcohol level in the room increased and the recycling bin filled up with empty bottles, people began to take Laura’s advice and started to move to the music. There were few couples out on the dance floor, and so Laura didn’t feel as lonely. She could pick almost anyone to move with. I noticed her flying from girl to girl, occasionally settling on the random gay hipster. I wasn’t jealous though. She was just dancing, and I kept telling myself that except for the hipster, most of them were probably straight.
When I was done I went to dance with Laura, but she was too tired now. I find dancing by myself too depressing, so I drifted around the apartment, making sure everything was working and people were having a good time. In one of the bedrooms two guys were making out, and slumped over in the hallways were a guy and a girl, both drunk on flavored rum, and trying to say how much love they were ready to give to each other.

Coming back to the living room, there was a guy talking to a girl. The back of his head, which was all I could see, looked familiar. I realized that I had seen it before, at Eve’s party. It was the guy I had gone up on her roof with. I wanted to say hello to him and thank him for coming over, preferably with Laura on my arm just in case he was still beating himself up inside about that night.

However, as I went up behind him, I saw he was talking to a girl. Instead of reintroducing myself, I hid from both of them, my body pressed against the wall of the hallway. It was cool to the touch, like a hard flat bed. I drank, pretending to be in my own world, but in reality listening to the conversation between the blonde haired guy and the young girl who seemed interested in him.

“Well, she goes to school in Chicago.”

“Oh, so long, long distance.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. I just don’t know what we’re going to do this summer. I feel like we’re in two different worlds.”

“It’s hard. My boyfriend went to Boston College. And it is SO different up there, even though it’s a city, it’s nothing like New York.”

“Are you still together?’

“No,” I could almost hear her smiling at him, “We broke up two weeks ago. He had someone on the side already. No point in staying with me. I couldn’t blow him through e-mail or IM.”

“Yeah. Hard to compete with someone real, I mean, something real, flesh and blood…not to say you aren’t real, you’re really real, really beautiful.”

I could tell it was one of those seductions only made possible by alcohol. Of course I was sure everything he was saying was true. The girl felt sorry for him, but she also probably thought he was cute, and that she could find someone to get on the rebound with.

“Thank you.” They both took a long sip. I was sure they were smiling at one another from under their oversized red plastic cups.

“No problem. Sometimes I wish you could just say that to a girl, to a woman, and it shouldn’t be weird. Let her know she can be, is, appreciated. We say ‘hot’ all the time, but what about beautiful, why can’t we say that? Why is ‘hot’ so much more acceptable?’

“I think you are beautiful too.’

He laughed. He patted her on the shoulder. “And I should take that as a compliment too. Beautiful. It’s sounds so weird when a man is called that. Beautiful. Not handsome, but Bee-you-tea-full.”

“It’s absurd.’

“I know, I know…but everything’s absurd, you are beautiful, but by yourself, I am beautiful and really by myself except for this girl in Chicago, we’re drunk and can only talk like this and use these words because we’re drunk, it’s all absurd. Who are these people here? I don’t know anyone.”

“Well you know me.”

“I’d like to get to know you better.’

“I wouldn’t mind that.”

“You want to know you-you better or you-me better?”

“Both!”

They laughed and when they were finished, she sighed, as if joyously accepting a burden. She would make this man happy for the night. He seemed like too nice a guy for anyone to feel sorry for. The crescent outline of his blonde head set behind the horizon of the threshold I was standing next to and I came out from behind the corner just in time to see her leading him away by the hand. The door slammed behind them and I was the only one who seemed to notice that they had even been at the party in the first place.

After Winter break there was the sudden need to bring everyone back together again. Even though correspondences had been kept up electronically, and some had managed to go on trips with one another, students felt the need to come together as one, even if for just a brief moment before classes started again. There was a fear that a month had kept us separate for too long and that without shared experiences during that time, we could have all developed separately from one another. Parties were held, small beacons of fraternity lighting up the East Village, Brooklyn, and Long Island City.

Many were held clandestinely in the dorms as well. The night I got back from home, where I debated telling everyone about “Laura” under the guise of “Lawrence,” just to avoid the attention, there were several parties sprouting up in the building. A clever network connected them all. Once one was broken up by one of the graduate students paid by the university to police us, the partygoers migrated to another floor, in a different part of the building, keeping quiet and then growing louder, until they were evicted and the cycle began again.

By the time I got to my floor and put my things away, it was hard to get to sleep, even though I was tired. The hallway was full of noise. It sounded like a concert was going on, but the band had already packed up and left their instruments behind and the audience to its own devices. When I went out to try and find who was making the sounds, I saw flashes of light coming from under a door that was a few feet down from my room. A strobe light was going off in a dark space.

When I knocked on the door, they let me in. I wasn’t going to complain, but the hosts of the party were willing to pacify me with cheap beer and the company of fellow students. They probably thought I was one of the grad students come to ruin their good times. I looked so much older than them. A few of the kids could’ve been sophomores, but most were freshmen. Many were getting drunk for the first time. I kept to myself, navigating around desks, sofas, and small refrigerators. A girl across the room kept smiling at me and I guess I kept smiling back, because she was always there no matter where in the room I was.

In order to rest, I sat down on the floor, propping my back against one of the standard couches they gave to everyone. If it wasn’t so loud and the place was filled strangers, I might have mistaken it as my own room, stripped off my clothes and taken a shower. However, not everyone there was unknown to me. Sitting above, on the couch, was the blonde haired gentleman whose plight I had sympathized with and whose machinery of seduction I had spied on. I would have joined him, but he was not alone. There was someone sitting on the other side. He was trying to turn the couch into a love seat.

Of course he no longer had anything to worry about. He had finally lost his virginity. I was not stalking the guy, but I happened to see that the girl who had gone to bed with him posted pictures of them online. Not having sex, but the implication was clear enough. They were intimate when the camera was not focused on them. He seemed relaxed in every photo. She considered me a friend of hers, though I could never recall her name when I kept bumping into her. She was a brunette though and the girl he was sitting with now had platinum blonde hair that lit up like heated magnesium when ever the strobe light went off.

I got up and left them. I couldn’t remember his girlfriend’s name. I didn’t count as a witness to infidelity. The familiar contours of his speech came to me and I heard them as I walked to the door, laughing.

“That’s too bad.”

“Yeah. And she wants to save herself for marriage.”

“Where is she now?”

“Far away, in St. Louis.”

“You seem happy about it.” I turned around to catch him trying to step back into character. A smile had slipped onto his face and was quickly swallowed.

“Yes, so very far away. Where I cannot touch her. I wonder sometimes if I will ever notice when it’s spring.”

She put his hand on his shoulder to comfort him as I put my hand on the door.

***
Ben is a 23 year old writer living in New York. His work has been published in Underground Voices Magazine, Heroin Love Songs, Ditch, Perigee, Elimae, Farmhouse Magazine, and The Delmarva Review. He also maintains a blog at http://mirrorsponge.blogspot.com

Related posts:

1. Chris Castle – Witness

   “Thank you," he said, as I settled down in the chair opposite. He was late twenties, early thirties, same as me. Similar, without the smoke and drink; we could have been brothers or I could have been him, if I’d made the right decisions. “I want to talk to you about Jesus…” he began to say, like Jesus was a...

2. Chris Castle – Megan and Finn, 1973

   [...] They raised their glasses in the booth. The pitcher sat in the middle of the table, Billy loosening his tie, Jeannie pushing her hair back and lighting a cigarette. They talked about the town, the fireworks, the local gossip; everything but the papers. They moved over to the pool table, just the four of them in the empty bar,...

3. Noah Uitermark – Implants

   [...] I look over, and it is about perfect. The man’s done a flawless job. That’s what we wanted. That’s why we came to him. [...]...

4. Lana Kempe – Treading

   [...] The house was saturated with silence. It seemed to be saving up its energy for an event we had not yet planned. Looking over at the clock I saw it was 10:15. I had hoped it would be past noon. [...]...