musings on a (not so) flat chested girl - part one

A depressed man in his late twenties becomes discontent with his life in Los Angeles, California. He purchases a one-way plane ticket to his previous home of Austin, Texas and moves in with his former roommates for an undetermined duration of time. The following story is true, although the names have been changed in order to protect the innocent (and to keep the author from being harassed).

On one particularly balmy night in Hollywood, I stood out on my fourth floor apartment patio and stared blankly at the city lights feeling isolated and full of self pity, even though I was surrounded by friends and well wishers and I lived in a forth story apartment that overlooked the city. I wasn't quite ready to give up on whatever goals I had come to L.A. to achieve, but I was ready to get out of town and attempt to shed the presentiment of impending failure. By 10 pm, with too much gin in my system, I said goodbye to my friends and promised that would return shorty. I wasn't sure if I was telling the truth or not.

I arrived in Austin at 6:30 am. My old roommate Garrick reluctantly picked me up from the airport and took me to breakfast, putting up with an unusual amount of energy and excitement for someone who spent the entire night awake on an airplane. He arranged for me to stay with him and my other former roommate Toby. The two of them had a place on the north side of town. When I got to their apartment the previous night's gin consumption and the lack of sleep and the pancakes the size of Texas finally caught up with me. I slept for the rest of the day on a couch that seemed to have recently been set on fire.

The next day unfolded much like the first, with everyone sleeping off whatever it is extremely lazy people need to sleep off, but the night had potential. Garrick invited me to go and visit a friend of his, Dakota, a girl who had just gotten out of the hospital for taking too many sleeping pills. He wanted to check up on her and make sure she was okay, and he confessed that he had a bit of a crush on her. We drove out to San Marcos where she lived and picked up a sixer of Lone Star and some cigarettes. We arrived at her apartment around 9pm. We knocked on the door, but no one answered. I could see her moving around inside, putting things away and such. Her apartment looked plenty clean, and I thought it strange that she would just leave us standing outside without saying a word. Eventually she answered the door and invited us in. She explained that she was a bit compulsive and things had to be in order before she could let us in. Fair enough, I thought. As she had no couch, we all sat down on the floor and I settled in. She was a pretty girl, short, slight with dyed blond hair and somber blue eyes. Garrick told her I was from Los Angeles, and she took this to mean Hollywood. True enough, as that's where I was living at the time. She told me that she was a graphic design student, although for the moment she was taking a semester off from school. We all played a trivia game of some sort, and I was embarrassed when I couldn't answer a music question that related to Elvis Costello. She made fun of me in such a dry manner that I couldn't tell if she was being mean or flirtatious. After a time, we decided to watch one of the movies I had brought with me. It was The Limey, a revenge thriller starring Terrence Stamp. Garrick and I had become quite enamored with the film thanks to Luis Guzman and three comic relief throwaway lines that he had. The three of us sat around sort of watching the film. Mostly we just talked, drank beer and smoked cigarettes. After the movie had run it's course, Garrick and I excused ourselves, but not before asking her to come to a party that Garrick and Toby were throwing in honor of my return. She said she'd try to make it. I was convinced that she didn't like me at all.

A couple of days passed and it was time for the party. Early on in the going, nothing but guys showed up. This wasn't too surprising, as the boys in this particular crew weren't exactly ladies men at the time, what with spending most of their time at work or in the huge WalMartesque gated apartment community. As the night went on, a couple of my friends from town showed, and I was well on my was to drinking myself into a stupor. (I had made a custom mix tape for the evening, so I was as happy as I could be without any women around.) Just as I was going to give up all hope on a "party," ready to get used to the "gathering," the girls showed. Dakota said hello, and told me how she really didn't want to come, but she did anyway. Luckily, I was already too inebriated to take this any kind of way, and I was just happy that some pretty girls showed up. Everyone mingled, I continued to drink. At some point I found myself outside on the patio with Dakota and my friend Edison. Edison is the kind of guy who can talk a lot, and about pretty much anything. Edison and Dakota were talking Egyptian history and folklore, and being unable to speak intelligently on the subject myself, I just sat there and continued to drink. All of a sudden, I felt sick. I leaped up from the ground and flung my head over the fence and threw up. After it was over I felt much better, so I sat back down and kept drinking. Edison commented on the fact that I was the only person he knew that could puke and then go right back on drinking. Dakota said something to the effect of how silly I looked. I was now completely convinced that she didn't like me, and even if she did, I had just thrown up right in front of her so I'd blown whatever chance I might have had.

 A few minutes after that debacle someone mentioned swimming. "Swimming?" I said, "that sounds like a great idea!" And proceeded to jump over the patio fence and head to the pool. Once at the pool, I took off all my clothes and jumped in, with no regard to anyone else who may have been watching. I swam around for a bit, feeling refreshed and relaxed. When I got out and started to put my clothes back on, two girls and a guy appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Just at the moment when I was pulling my pants up, I noticed them and they said, "Don't mind us!" I told them no worries and set about putting the rest of my dry clothes over my cold, drenched body. I was sure they were laughing at my shriveled penis but I was too drunk to care. I headed back the party and everyone asked where I had been. I told them I went swimming, it was wonderful, and they should all try it. They looked at me like I was crazy and went back to playing a card game. I put on an Andrew W.K. song, cranked the volume on the stereo and began jumping on Toby's bed, doing the best version of a back flip that I could manage in my altered state. When I became tired of that, I went back into the living room and lay down on the floor next to the couch. I found some bottle caps within my reach so I picked them up and started to throw them at Dakota. She seemed mildly amused at my drunken version of flirting, but made it clear that I should stop and just lay down. A minute later I passed out.

The next morning I woke up feeling as if I had slept on a bed of porcupines under a chorus line of jackhammers. I lifted myself off the floor and looked out, only to notice that no one else was in the room. Garrick must have gone to his room, Toby to his. I waded through a maze of beer cans on the floor and went to the kitchen, poured myself a glass of tap water, and went to the patio to recover in the mild sunlight. A few minutes later I heard some voices coming from inside. I recognized Dakota's voice. She must have slept in Toby's room. It crossed my mind that she might have slept with him, but that didn't make too much sense. I hadn't spied them getting on that well during the party, and Toby wasn't much of a seducer when it came to women. Dakota wondered aloud where I had gone, and I heard Garrick and Toby say I was probably out on the porch. She thought I was smoking, and came out to see if I was doing something so disgusting after my night behaving as a human chimney. I wasn't smoking and didn't care to, so she sat down and talked to me. We had a nice chat, I realized that she wasn't as cold as I thought she was, and that I fancied her quite a bit. After a short time, she asked Garrick to give her a ride home and she left. In the afternoon, Toby went to work, and I sat down on his computer and started tooling around. I noticed that his AOL instant messenger was on, and that Dakota had signed in. We chatted for a few moments and she proceeded to confess something to me: When I was throwing up right in front of her she thought, "Boy, here's this cute boy and he's throwing up right in front of me!" And before I passed out on the floor she was trying to get me to lay down on Toby's bed so she could sleep next to me, and that it was too bad that I was going to be in town for so long because she really liked me and if we spent time together it would be hard when I eventually had to return to Hollywood. She expressed that I couldn't possibly like her because I was so happy and excited about everything and she was depressed and confused. I told her we weren't as different as she thought and that we should spend some time together regardless. We set up a date for the next day.