It’s 1:15 am. I’m staring at a room full of people, coked out of my mind, again. My roommate, Red, is strumming his old acoustic next to me, but all I can think about is how I can never drink enough while I’m on blow.

You know those informative materials law enforcement agencies put out that describe cocaine as a party drug? Well that was pretty much advertising it to me.

Red stops strumming in order to ask me, "What’s the name of that singles bar your cousin was telling us about?"

"Weasels," I reply, giving him enough satisfaction to zone back into his music. Red always thinks of random shit while he’s attached to his guitar.

My attention turns back to the room carved out of flesh and filled with smoke. I scan the people spilled around the room, taking particular notice of Liz Madrigal. The rest of these assholes I could give two shits about. Two-thirds of them I can’t remember their names or any of the alcohol induced conversations we might have had in the past. Plus, there is only one person I’ve wanted to hump ever since last March when I met her at a tiki bar. Only one person I’ve been half putting time in on at random gatherings here and there. That’s the girl they call Liz Madrigal.

Liz is your average, garden variety natural knock-out with an IQ of about 150. That regular old type that the divine company discontinued on May 5^th, 1982. Coincidentally the same day she was born.

For some unknown reason she has been throwing me positive vibes for awhile now, despite her knowledge of my past behavior. Despite her ability to think rationally. She looks at me as though she kinda digs the fact that I’m tainted.

I’m really into her whole scene as I look at her. Her scene being her long black hair and her naval cleavage.

I’m really not into her environment. Her environment being her eye contact laden conversation with Brian Nichols.

Brian Nichols. The cottonmouth blowjob.

Brian is the type of guy that has a trophy collection of empty liquor bottles in his room. Commemorative hardware of possessing the rare ability to drink alcohol.

The guy that talks to every girl from a distance of as close as he can get away with. He’s doing this shit to Liz right now.

Despite Liz’s scene or environment, I’m hesitant to go over and talk to her. Nothing would make me happier at the moment than to go over there and steal Liz’s attention all the while shooting Brian’s ego in the knee. To have us both take a second to watch it limp awkwardly away. But all that may have to take a back seat in this ride.

With Liz Madrigal there is no definite outcome and driving this ride is coach, my easily available boner that feels like superman on heroin and steroids when I’m on all skied out. Not to mention J.D. and Anheiser Busch are along on the ski trip.

Coach wants me to access my options. He wants to look at the ass I would be passing on in order to go for the preverbal gold. Coach tells me to look at the game film.

Role projector.

Coach showed me the conversation I had with Dana. Dana, I can’t even remember her last name. Dana looks like Carmen Electra’s uglier, slightly rounder, more fake tanned little sister, but you still wanna fuck her because she looks like Carmen Electra. Kinda. Sorta.

Close enough.

He showed me the positives. How she blew a cigarette in my face and told me she wasn’t going to drink because she had signed on for a 5k run for charity tomorrow. I persisted to make her blow that shit off. I believe my Abe Lincolnesque eloquence went something like, "Fuck that shit," but she still refused.

Coach showed me the negatives. How that bitch Flo, with her flesh melting laser eyes, was with her and argued against me to run with her the next day. Flo and her gimme a drag of that smoke dialogue. If I could only stuff her ass into a beer bottle and recycle her into Britney Spears’ uglier, slightly rounder, more fake baked little sister and pull off a threesome. In a perfect world though, eh.

Nothing’s more of kryptonite to a guy’s lay game than a dumb, slutty girl’s persuasive best friend.

Moving on.

We went over the Hilary situation. Hilary with one L. How I saw her walking down the far hallway towards another unknown area of the party. The way her ass swayed in unison with her flowing arms was poetic. Coach tells me you can’t teach that.

I began to follow her, knowing she’s a great prospect to start on Coach’s team. One, because she’s a fucking slut. Two, because the mere mention of coke sends her through the roof, right into a bed naked and willing.

On my way to make an offer, Landon pulled me in the bathroom and orders an injection of a gram of coke directly into my brain, through the nasal passage. Landon always had the type of shit that peels your skin back like a Chaka Chan make-over. I would call him a cock-block if I didn’t go so willingly.

Landon always gives me free blow because he admires me in some strange Yes-man sort of way. I suppose it’s kinda like the way people who knew Stalin admired him. Monsters may excel in different arenas, but in the end they are all still monsters.

When I rejoined the party, Hilary with one L was nowhere to be seen.

When the game film stops I’m left with one clear answer. Try and bone Liz Madrigal.

By the time the decision is made, Liz by herself, sitting on a table with her feet swinging beneath her. She doesn’t see me as I push through the crowd, trying to get to her before some new bunk goes up to her wearing his clown shoes and tries to compete with Coach and me.

Before I can reach Liz, Michelle inadvertently crosses my pass.

FUCK is the only word that comes to mind.

I stop and say hi but yearn to move on quickly. By the way she half smiles and leans diagonally away from me, I can tell she feels the same way. It is not only because I feel awkward or the in-stone fact that she despises me. It is that three months ago I almost raped her after a 50s swing party. She didn’t do anything about it because she’s terrified of me. I was different and she was new from a small town and didn’t realize that she was in over her head until I was double-clicking her mouse.

It was awkward then and awkward now. I guess I do entertain these painfully brief conversations because we both know how pathetic I am, yet I still have all the power in the relationship.

No means no, you just have to try really hard to convince me.

The bullshit 'I’ll talk to you laters' end and I’m standing in front of Liz. My posture sends an earthquake that leaves the two of us alone on an island in the middle of the party.

She looks me up and down like she always does with her left eye half winked because that side of her face is crooked in a smile.

I try hard to wipe my coke face off. Normally I wouldn’t give a fuck but she does and Coach really gives a fuck that she does.

"Hey sailor," she says to me before taking a drink out of her beer bottle, not losing eye contact with me.

"Liz," I reply, my face numb from blow intake. We play this ‘little I know you want me to fuck you, but you’ll have to bring your best’ game every time we see each other socially.

"I trust you’re having a good time tonight," I say putting my left hand on the table a few inches away from her right leg. A total Nichols move, but fuck, it works.

"Like always," She says, "But I see you’ve been to see Landon tonight."

"How do you mean," I say knowing full well that she knows about Landon, but may be testing the waters about my contact with him.

If I can hide being on coke from a cop, Liz doesn’t stand a chance. So I’m cocky, but when am I not.

"Alexander S. Ryerson," she says taking another drink. I love it when she says my whole name. Coach gives me a high five. "You’re pathetic," she adds.

I lick my lips in confusion, trying to read what she means by this when my question is answered. The salt on my tongue is that familiar taste of blood. The taste you never forget from your first cut. When you touch the blood with your index finger and will yourself out of curiosity to taste it. Vampires pop their cherry the same way.

"Fuck me," I say pulling my eyes away from her stare. I dab at the blood coming out of my nose and see it mixed with little white traces. I keep staring and dabbing as if I do this enough times, the blood will have ceased to ever have existed.

When I look up she’s gone but the ghost of her sitting there tells me fuck you and good-bye.

I guess I said it first.

I grab Red, who’s so stoned he’s staring at the back of his hand, and tell him we have to go. He’s about as assertive as he is apathetic so we are out the door before he can even grab his guitar.

The night is crisp and damp as we walk down the deserted side street towards our apartment. Red stops to piss in a truck bed while I tell him about my encounter with Liz.

"Yeah, you’re a fucking idiot." Words of encouragement coach couldn’t have said better himself.

"Yeah that bitch Liz is a fucking keeper," he adds as he shakes and zips. I know he’s admiring his art work of how he splashed his piss all over the back window.

"Thanks, dude." Here’s where I get deep. "That was shitty timing. Liz is one of those girls you wanna fuck, but you’re still exited about the first time you’d get to kiss her. That’s love, isn’t it, dude?"

Red gets done soaking the handle of the gas cap in a pool of his piss and putting it back in that tiny little compartment on the side before he breaks back in with poetic insight. "Put it this way, brother. She’s not the girl you should think about when you beat off."

I sure as fuck do.

We reach the front door of our apartment and I have to wait for Red to fiddle with the lock because he can’t do it one handed. He does this one handed because he’s too high to think to set down the giant potted plant he stole from the last house we passed.

"Yep, I’m gonna call him Mr. Plant. Set his ass right down next to Mr. Fish’s tank so they can keep each other company." Red has more friends than I do.

Red looks over Mr. Plant's leaves once we get inside while I tend to the dried blood that has pseudo-dirty Sanchezed my upper lip. I wipe it clean and lay down another line and pull it into my brain about as quickly.

Red plays with the leaves and hears what goes on in the kitchen. "Like I said, dude. Fucking idiot."

It hurts when your pot-head, plant stealing, public urinating roommate feels superior to you.

"How’s about we go to that Snake’s place your cousin….."

"Weasels."

"Yeah. How’s about we go to that Weasel’s place your cousin was telling us about tomorrow night. Get you a girl you deserve. One more on your level there Alex." Red my guiding star with bedside manner. "Yeah. That’ll make you forget about this whole Liz and bleeding nasal passage thing."

I pull out a beer from the fridge and open it before I look back at Red, who’s been giving my guidance while playing botanist to his new best friend and our fourth roommate.

A girl I deserve. Red with his brain filled with infinite wisdom that he dropped in a pile of dog shit. One more on my level. Red with his truth. Alex with his bullshit.

I don’t say a word before I take my ass down the hall to the nuclear explosion of dirty clothes and used paper plates that is my room. It’s 3:27 on my clock and I’m staring at an empty room full of my entire existence, and I’m coked out of my mind.

I close the door and turn only to find I can’t move. My thoughts paralyze me with a question asked by my subconscious who can’t seem to rest. Probably because he’s too coked out as well. How can you not want to change when your afraid, because the only thing left to hate is yourself.