Hornrims

Hornrims This guy in horn-rimmed glasses is trying to out-woe me. My dad drank more than yours; my mom’s cancer was MUCH more malignant. I’m at this fucking party Jess dragged me to, eating a fig wrapped in bacon and drinking a hot toddy. It’s a far cry from the grilled cheese and Bud I’d be enjoying at home on my couch-ass-crater with the Mets losing on the TV. The drink tastes like lacquer, that wood-finish stuff my dad used to plaster on everything. Somewhere in my mom’s basement, there’s a pile of half-built pinewood derby cars, all slathered in that Miniwax shit.

Jess knows I’m not having fun, not that I’m really trying to hide the fact. I slink into the corner, looking for a way out, a secret portal, maybe a bookshelf that opens into an escape tunnel. I pull on a sconce but no passageway appears. “Sometimes I think you just like being miserable,” she says and rolls her eyes. I forgot my Xanax. My glass is empty. And here he comes again, this effete little horn-rimmed scion. “Cowboy killer?” he asks, wagging a pack of off-brand cigarettes in front of my face. They look delicious, smell wonderful, these little nicotine sirens, but I answer with haughty principle, I don’t smoke . He smirks and crescents of tobacco fog curl out of his manhole nostrils like vaporous rhino tusks.

Jess is on the other side of the room taking prurient interest in some guy’s diatribe about God knows what—maybe free trade coffee or honeybee colony collapse or gender fluidity. This has got to be what it’s like in hell: the upholstery’s all velvet, avocado green and some weird hybrid of gold and slime. The whole place stinks like Salvation Army stores and the piss-puke stench of a nursing home. Milo’s adoptive grandmother died in that armchair; Asher’s surrogate parents frottaged on that loveseat. Everything is vintage, even the conversation: “Coltrane sounds so much more authentic on vinyl.”

On the drive home, Jess gives me the silent treatment. She wears a grimace that signals I’ve ruined the night. Again. You’re gonna side with those POSERS ?, I opine. I whine. I take out one of the cigs I bummed from Hornrims and light it dramatically. I apologize but not without a caveat: it’s not totally my fault, you know. My mother was ALWAYS sick and you should have met my father, the consummate PRICK.