Story for Monday 4/20

That’s What Friends Are For
“Everyone is meeting at my house at six,” Doreen had said. “Everyone” referred to a small group of us who had remained close friends since high school. January 2nd was a brutally cold and windy night. I pulled onto Doreen’s small dead end street a few minutes late, and to my surprise I was the first one there. With my teal-colored low-cut cocktail dress and red leather wallet in hand, I walked up to her door and rang the bell. My bare arms immediately erupted with millions of little goose bumps, and I regretted the decision to leave my jacket in the car.

After several minutes, when no one came to the door, I started to become very frustrated. I was tired, cold, hungry, and had the worst migraine but I knew these dinner plans were really important to Doreen. I walked back to my car and turned the heat on as I pressed the speed dial on my phone to reach Doreen. Before I could bring the phone to my ear, a knock at my car window startled me. Louisa stood outside with a cheesy smile and waved frantically as she pointed to the inside of my car. Her father dropped her off as her car was in the shop, and she asked to wait in my car. She was wearing blue jeans and a stylish scoop-neck t-shirt with a pair of yellow heels that seemed a little too big for her. Louisa always had a unique sense of style and it matched her unique personality.

Doreen finally picked up on the other end of the phone, and I placed my index finger to my mouth and asked Louisa to hold on a moment.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Hey babe! I’m on my way home from dinner right now, I’ll be there in about five minutes. Sorry I’m late! I’ll see you in a little bit?” She spoke so fast I didn’t realize until after she hung up that she had said “on my way home from dinner.” Frustration began to fill my car as the smooth jazz over the radio attempted to sooth my temper.

We both agreed that we were starving, and that the last we heard we were all going out to dinner…although now it sounded as if plans had changed. I wasn’t too surprised due to the common knowledge that plans often changed at the last minute with Doreen; however it was cold, and we were hungry, and I wasn’t thrilled about going out in the first place. Several minutes later, Louisa and I watched the rest of our friends as well as Doreen pull onto the street outside Doreen’s house. They were all dressed in cute pants and tops, and I glanced down at my classy cocktail dress and the high heels on my already sore and suffocating feet.

We all got out of our cars and began to meet in the middle of the road. Apparently Louisa and I were the only ones who were not aware of the change of plans, and everyone else filled us in that we were not going out to eat at a nice restaurant, but to a club instead. Normally I would have enjoyed going to a club, but I knew that clubbing meant we wouldn’t be back home until very late and I had to be at work at 6:45 the following morning. I was so hungry stomach was beginning to eat itself, and when I realized I didn’t have the proper attire for a club, I really began to wish I stayed at home. When she mentioned that the club was about an hour away-in Pennsylvania I almost turned around and got into my car to drive home. I’m fairly certain in a few years that will be the new typical ironic and sarcastic saying. Conversations will begin:

“I really am going to start going to the gym more often this year.”

“Oh yeah right…when there’s a good club in Pennsylvania”.

I put my frustrations aside, and followed everyone into Doreen’s house where we all prepared to get ready. I borrowed some of Doreen’s clothes, and they promised Louisa and I that we could make a stop at a McDonalds or something. McDonalds certainly wasn’t the fine dining I was hoping for, but it would keep my stomach from growling at me. They also promised that we would be back by one o’clock. I reminded myself that it was Doreen’s birthday and she was a good friend, and that it was important to her that I was present.

After about an hour of playing with our hair, makeup, and wardrobe all seven of us crammed into two cars, and made our way to the club pitifully known as Montana West. The outside was surrounded my cornfields and the smell of cow manure, and I knew this was going to be a long night no matter how early they promised to leave. We walked into the door, paid the cover charge, and got our hands stamped. Some of us were still under 21, including myself, which meant that the stamps on our hands signified humiliation and a miserable night to come.

We walked into the club and I glanced around. It was still early, and the place was pretty empty. The walls were decorated with cowboy hats, beer labels, old country records, bull horns, and various other items that I didn’t look at long enough to notice. There was a dull lingering smell of old cigarette smoke and booze. The bar was roped off from the rest of the club, and it was impossible to get in unless your hand bore the right mark. In one corner was a mechanical bull which greatly added to the country “in-the-middle-of-nowhere” feel.

The time seemed to drag on, but an hour or so later, the club began to fill up with what looked like a bunch of kids who recently turned 18 and were overjoyed at the prospect that they could now go to a club. The typical girl had bleach blonde hair, a mini skirt, and a little tight top with love-handles hanging out as an added accessory. The typical guy was skinny and wore Abercrombie or American Eagle gear. One of the skinniest of them all assumed that he could come up behind me and dance with me. Although I moved away from him, he continued to follow me, dancing like a dumb slug that hasn’t used the bathroom in a while. I finally managed to get rid of him. I realized I was in some farmer’s land daycare, and I couldn’t even escape to the “big kid’s side” because I was a few months short of being twenty-one.

Those of my friends who were twenty-one escaped to the bar, and had been there for a while when I went to sit down at a little table on the side, along with Louisa and another friend of ours who also both bore the confining mark on their hand. We sat at the tiny table for almost an hour and a half before we finally saw the rest of the group. They clearly all had fun drinking, and came back laughing, some of them with random guys hanging on their shoulders. We tried being nice, but I’m fairly certain everyone wanted to start throwing punches. At least I did.

“Aww…are you miserable and sober?” The question came from another girl who slurred her words, whose eyes were glassy, and she had to lean on the table to hold herself up.
The much desired drive home wasn’t any better. We had to pull over several times so another friend could throw up. She sat in the front passenger side and moaned and complained the whole ride home. By this point I was majorly PMS-ing and was not only bloated, and extremely moody, but also feeling extremely sick myself. I didn’t have a single drink in my system, but every time I heard her choke on her vomit, my hand fumbled for the door handle in fear of my own stomach revealing its insides of the McDonalds I had eaten earlier. I tightly closed my eyes and tried to block out everything that was going on around me. When we finally reached the familiar bumps in Doreen’s dead end street, I opened the car door, and without so much of a good-bye, got into my car and cursed the night and Pennsylvania in the silence of my car.