that I have neither the time nor inclination to get to know most people beyond their subjectively imposed stereotypes—Prep is a bastion of entitled fucksticks. The school’s coffers are lined by old money trust funds and new money CEOs who buy their “Prepsters” Beamers on their sixteenth birthdays. Meanwhile we “Ridgies” aspire to little more than attending the next pig roast, slugging pure grain alcohol, and shouting as racecars make left turns for three hours. Excepting the fact I have my own personal automobile pipeline courtesy of Dad, most of us Ridgies drive fifteen-year-old cars inherited from an older sibling—Camaros, Firebirds, Dodge Royal Monacos, and trucks. Lots and lots of trucks.
After the hockey game, we were eating our way to sobriety at the McDonald’s down the street when two Prep girls, one a petite brown-haired girl named Carrie, the other a taller brunette named Mary, introduced themselves. They were new in town, their fathers both engineers who’d transferred in from the East Coast. After a half hour of dedicated flirting on both sides, Mary invited us to her house that following Saturday on Gotham Lake, punctuating her invitation with four very unfortunate words: “Bring whoever you want.”
Hatch has procured a new half-gallon of Beam. He pours himself another shot. “Some party,” he says.
I wipe the traces of Mountain Dew from my mouth. “Yeah.”
By my rough calculations, “Bring whoever you want” has translated into two hundred and fifty people since the party started. Hatch and I sit at a table on the second floor balcony overlooking the carnage. Every potted plant is dumped out on the floor, creating a carpet of peace lilies, rubber trees, philodendrons, and potting soil. There are zero exposed surfaces. Wine cooler bottles line the fireplace, cigarette butts floating in every third or fourth bottle. A case or so of shot-gunned beer cans are piled high in the kitchen sink, and multiple decks of playing cards are crawling amongst the refuse.
I’ve been drinking off and on since we got here this morning, some eight hours ago. I’m wearing nothing but a towel. Someone bet me twenty bucks to walk out to the middle of Gotham Lake, which is half-frozen at best. Formed by two limestone quarries adjacent to Empire Quarry that were later connected and flooded, Gotham Lake is shaped like a horseshoe. The bet was to walk out to the middle of the widest part of the lake, which is in the middle of the right curve of the horseshoe. I won the bet, but I lost my clothes, plunging chest-deep into the horseshoe just as I was nearly back to shore.
Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits 1974–1978 starts up on the back deck of the house, replacing Fore! by Huey Lewis and the News, which inexcusably made the playlist. “Swingtown” is a few chords old before someone skips to “Jungle Love.” The techno introduction echoes across Gotham Lake. Hatch and I simultaneously mimic the whistle with our fingers in our mouths, transitioning to dueling air guitars, and then dueling air drums. Aside from us both flubbing the second line and saying “you thought you’d been lonely before” instead of “you thought you had known me before,” we sound pretty good.
Hatch ducks into the bathroom, reemerging with two beers in one hand and a set of car keys in the other. “Shotgun?” He pretends as if I even have the option of saying no.
This time around I don’t even bother going through the motions. “Give it here.”
Hatch hands me the beer. We each take turns cutting a quarter-sized hole in the bottom half of our cans with his dirty car key.
Hatch drives a serious piece-of-shit Volkswagen Beetle that burns through a couple fan belts every month. His idea of a car stereo is me holding a boom box in my lap and making sure his fourth copy of Van Halen’s OU812 doesn’t get eaten by his ravenous tape player. Hatch and I have developed a growing affection for Sammy Hagar, much to the distaste of our diehard David Lee Roth friends. Although Van Halen’s self-titled ’78 debut has to be considered one of rock’s all-time great albums, lately I look to Roth less for his debatable musicianship and more for the gratuitous D-cups and G-strings in his music videos.
Hatch asks if I’m ready. Grunting in reply, I put my mouth on the opening of the can, careful not to cut my lips on the jagged aluminum edges. I pop the tab on the other side of the can and suck the beer through the opening. One full beer down in maybe five seconds. I let out a relieved belch. Hatch leaves a good three or four swallows in his can as he crushes it and throws it on the floor.
We work our way through three more beers. I point to the foam dripping out of his third can. “Fucking cheater.” I punctuate the accusation with a loud, wet belch.
As is the natural order of a party in southern Indiana, Johnny Cougar’s Uh-huh finds its way to the front of the playlist. The opening guitar riff of “Pink Houses” commands a wave of dutiful shouts and catcalls in the house. Although most Ridgies choose to defer to the more sentimental “Jack and Diane” or the more obvious “Small Town,” for me and Hatch it doesn’t get any better than “Pink Houses.” This is our “New York, New York,” our “Yellow Rose of Texas,” our “Old Kentucky Home.”
Hatch and I stand up. When “Pink Houses” plays, you’re required to stand up. We hold our beers high in the air, crooning to no one in particular.
“Ahh, but ain’t that America, for you and me…”
“Hank?”
Hatch and I turn to the sound of the voice. It’s coming from the master bedroom. It’s Mary.
“Yeah?”
Mary steps out of the room, my shirt and pants in her right hand. “I think your clothes are dry. You want to come in and, uh, get dressed?”
“You tired of me walking around half-naked or something?”
Mary smiles and winks. “I’m hardly tired of that, Henry.” She turns and walks back into the bedroom.
I stand up. Hatch stands up as well, shaking his head. “Henry?” He punches me in the shoulder, then sings, “Little pink houses, for my pal, Fitzy!”
“Oh, shut up.” I pretend as if the girl who has just invited me into her room to get undressed has not been flirting with me all day.
“Don’t forget this.” Hatch picks my Velcro Def Leppard Pyromania wallet off the table and throws it at me. “Try to be careful in there.”
“Careful?” I feel the impression of the off-brand condom I bought out of a machine in a gas station bathroom. “It’s not like she’s going to eat me.”
“She might only be sixteen, but she’s an East Coast girl,” Hatch says. “There’s no telling what she’ll do to you.”
I enter the bedroom. Mary is sitting on the edge of the bed, smoking a cigarette. With her brunette hair she looks like a much younger, tanning bed version of Erin Gray—the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Erin Gray as opposed to the Silver Spoons Erin Gray. I try to picture her in one of Erin Gray’s signature skintight bodysuits, although the elongated cigarette in Mary’s left hand and the bottle of Heineken in her right skews the fantasy.
“Here,” Mary says, patting the bed with her left hand. “Have a seat.”
I stumble forward. The alcohol in my system has made the outer edges of her face fuzzy. I manage to find my way to the bed and sit down beside her.
“Smoke?” Mary hands me a long, peculiarly thin cigarette.
“Sure.” I roll the cigarette between my fingers. I grab the pack off the bed and hold it up to
