That Girl at the Party (Part 1)

“I heard Sylvia Plath, she’s awful!” I said upon hearing the name Sylvia Plath.

I walked out of Bodin’s room, two beers quickly traveling through my system in jolly mayhem.  The facial expressions on the two girls sitting in the living room were ecstatic, jaws dropped, and all hell about to go boom.

“Did you just say, Sylvia Plath sucks?” one of the girls said with the slowest ill intentioned tone she could possibly establish.

“Yeah, she’s pretty awful.  Are you a fan of depression or sticking your head in an oven?”

“I don’t know if you know anything about Sylvia Plath, but she is amazing.”

“Not as amazing as John Keats, Pablo Neruda, or Charles Browning.”

“You just named three male poets.”

I looked at her and her focused effort to prove anything.  “Emily Dickenson,” I said in reply.

“Well she’s pretty good.”

“I like Charlotte Bronte,” the other girl said.  “I have a really old used version of Jane Eyre I found in a used bookstore.”

“Yeah?” I said intrigued, “Did it have a little inscription in the cover?”

“Yeah, it was a nice letter or something.”

“Cool!  Did you watch Definitely Maybe?”  I asked her.  Her face suddenly broke.

“Yeah. . .” she replied nervously.

“Wow, well you’re just a pretty little liar now aren’t you?”  She didn’t know anything about Jane Eyre, she just watched the movie Definitely Maybe, and said she read the book because of the part where Ryan Reynolds finds his old love affair’s copy of Jane Eyre she’s been looking for all her life.

“No I read it!  Really!” she proclaimed.

“Okay so what’s the first few chapters about?”

“I don’t know, I read it a long time age,” she replied.  I couldn’t stop laughing at seeing her try.  The other girl, the more feisty argumentative one, got up from off her chair and proclaimed that Bronte sucks.  She was weird.

She was “that” girl at the party.  The one that had to prove people wrong.  She had the solid cementing tone that broke the liquid flow of the party.  She was a downer!  A few hours earlier she had come into Drake’s room as he was choosing music.  With every song that Drake put on, she would comment saying the music was either emo, or screamo, or pop punk.  We would all stare at each other to silently acknowledge that we were all on the same page about ms. know-it-all.  Her name was Dina.

It wasn’t supposed to be a party.  My friend Gavin decided to pick me up along with our other friend Nina, to come hang out at Drake’s house for a chill night.  By the time we got over there, the house was filled with about 15 short skirts and several of flip flops and stilettos.  These girls didn’t even look anywhere near our usual type of crowd.  We all chilled in Bodin’s room isolated from the others, with our 36 pack of MGD beer and packages of store bought cookies, as  we listened to new age heavy metal; not the screamo stuff.

I felt out of place.  I usually do, most of the time I don’t, but this was different; I had a girlfriend.  I lounged around floating in between the large crowds of people that formed from inside the hall, to the kitchen, and into the dining area.  I watched Drake have this conversation, that almost seemed interesting, with this 29 year old girl who talked only about herself.  She was drinking water from a wine glass.  It was all a very confusing group of people.  Heavy make up, furry white jaguar printed coats, and big loopy ear rings.

After 4 cans of MGD, I was pretty much set.  I heaved back and forth in my seat heavily sedated and stumbling over my words.   The house was finally thinning out.  A large group of women disappeared and there was only a few more left stranded.  I found Dina sitting in the hallway, her back leaned up against the wall.  I took a seat next to her on the carpet.

“Hey Bronte lover,” she said.

“Yep, that’s me,” I replied.  “You got a better book that defines your Victorian literary personality?”

“I don’t know,” she said.  She looked like she was about to fall over.  “I like J.D. Salinger.”

“What the fuck?” I said promptly, “Catcher in the Rye???  Nobody likes Catcher in the Rye.  I mean it’s only the most uneventful book in all of history.  Everyone just loves the climactic conflicts beyond talking to hookers and blowing smoke in the faces of nuns,” I said describing my thoughts on Salinger.

She looked at me, her eyes turning sideways.  “You okay?” I asked her.

“. . .  I need to puke.”

The door to the bathroom opened across from us.  Dina got on all fours and crawled herself into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.  The guy who just came out of the bathroom watched her travel from where I was sitting to the now closed door.  He turned back to look at me, “Is she okay?” he asked.

“I think she’s puking. . .”  I said.

To be continued.

Read last literary piece here:  No You Cannot Have My Number:

Boyfriends Don’t Cheat