Audio (read by the author):
Six of us were standing in the kitchen. Some of us were drinking cheap gin with orange soda mixed in it. Some, light beer. Others, a heavy IPA with a colorful label that was difficult to drink more than one of at a time. But they were taking up space in the fridge and someone had to finish them.
The sound of raindrops smacking the small, rounded skylight made it sound like a warzone out there. It probably wasn’t actually coming down that hard, but still we felt trapped with each other and our bottle of gin.
Everyone was leaning against the walls and counters except me. All reasonable lean-space was already taken when I arrived from the airport. It was a small kitchen. I could lean against the fridge, but then I’d be in the center of everything. Instead, I lurked in the entrance to the pantry, shifting my weight periodically between sides of the doorframe. The pantry was more poorly lit than the rest of the kitchen, and I appreciated the anonymity it afforded me.
Jess asked me about work, if I’d had any since they’d seen me last. “Not that you should or there’s any pressure to or anything, just curious.”
I said, “None of interest.” Not in a rude way. I just hadn’t done anything worth speaking about.
Gabe put his hand on Jess’s back as if to protect her from my non-answer and nodded slowly at me, as if I had said something profound about the state of the 21st century labor market.
Aria said, “Well, we’re glad you’re here.”
And Josh added, “Yeah, man, we’ve missed you.”
I guessed this was the common way to treat a guest, but it felt wrong. What did we use to do back in the day, when I lived here? Stand in the kitchen and make vague comments until our guest revealed something?
From the other room, music was playing on the TV. Some sort of sad indie rock with acoustic guitars. What else, in this house?
The sixth person in the kitchen was Emma. Her lean-space was directly across from my pantry perch. The two couples leaned on either side of the kitchen, in between me and Emma. The kitchen was narrow enough that it could have been a hallway if it hadn’t been a kitchen.
Emma was one of the people drinking gin and orange soda. She hadn’t said anything yet, other than “Hey” when I arrived. She didn’t live in that house anymore either but she still lived in town. I doubted she saw these four that often, though. She wasn’t always social, if it wasn’t convenient. I’d never seen her drink gin before. Or orange soda, for that matter.
“Did you hear about Josh?” Aria asked, with pleasure in her voice. Josh was a pilot and he’d just been hired to fly for a commercial airline based out of Denver.
“Yeah,” I said. I was about to add that Emma told me, but stopped myself. It would seem weird to acknowledge that we’d been in contact over the phone considering we’d barely said a word to each other here, in person. It was clear to everyone, based on the way I swallowed my words, that I’d held myself back from saying more. They probably thought it would be on-brand of me to put Josh down when he was moving up in the world. Really, though, it had nothing to do with Josh. It had to do with Emma, who was now the only person not staring at me, and, even more so, it had to do with me. But I couldn’t say any of this because it would seem like a cover up, so I added a small, “Congrats, man,” without looking at him, which made it seem even worse.
Gabe choked or pretended to choke on his sip of beer and said, “Yikes, man.”
Aria said, “Well, we’re pretty excited about it.”
I asked her if she was going with him and she said, “Yeah, oh, yeah… Of course.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know if it was good or bad that she followed him wherever he went. Probably good, if she kept doing it. Not for me to say.
I met Aria through Emma about three years ago. One of the first times I came to Emma’s old house, Aria sat in the leather reclining chair in Emma’s room and told us about her rotten boyfriend. Emma and I said, “Oh you poor thing” and “He doesn’t deserve you,” but, at the same time, we were mostly thinking about how close we were sitting to each other on her bed. We concealed our nervous excitement with great effort. We knew it wasn’t kind to be giddy about each other when Aria was actively heartbroken.
The first time I met Josh, then, I was prepared to resent him for being a scoundrel. I was surprised to discover how easygoing he was. The whole time we lived in that house, I never heard another bad word about him. Still, in honor of that first depiction Aria gave in Emma’s room, I maintained a mental superiority over him.
Jess poured more gin and orange soda in her cup then got out another cup, filled it with the same concoction and offered it to me. I accepted it, even though I wasn’t finished with my beer yet.
Everyone was glued to their own personal part of the kitchen except for me. I was a floater. I came into the kitchen to grab the cup Jess poured me instead of her bringing it over to me. I could have walked all the way across and leaned against the windowsill right next to Emma. This would have been a very overt move.
I asked, “What happens to the house, then? If you two leave?”
Before Aria or Josh could answer, Gabe said, “Well, you and Emma could move back in.”
Gabe. What a goof. In general everyone seemed a little embarrassed by Gabe, even Jess. I wanted to like him. I’d been in his shoes at one point in this very house. Moving in when other people had already lived there. I wasn’t as cocky about it, though. There was something about living in someone’s old space. Just because you pay the rent, doesn’t make it yours. You can act like it’s yours, but it won’t really be until you’ve lived there longer than they did. Even then, there’s history. You might have been there longer, but they were there first. There’s a humility that people like Gabe don’t seem to get.
“Is anyone living in the basement?” I asked.
Jess said, “That’s where we are.”
“Oh,” I said, “Who’s in your room then? Your old room.”
Josh took over answering because Jess didn’t seem to remember. He said, “A few people, mostly month to month. At first it was Zeus, you remember Zeus?”
Of course I did. “Funny guy,” I said.
“Horrible person, though,” Aria said.
“Horrible roommate at least,” Gabe corrected.
From the windowsill Emma made a snorting noise. She was protective of Aria.
I finished my drink, approached Jess for another, felt bold, and said, “What happened?”
Jess poured more gin for herself and me but said, “Oh, balls, we’re out of this soda stuff.”
“Do you have any OJ?” I asked.
Jess leaned to one side to peek past me and give an inquiring look to Josh who said, “Go ahead.” She went to the fridge. While she was gone, Emma handed me her cup. Now it was worth interacting with me, if the OJ was coming out to play.
Josh and Aria had barely touched whatever they were drinking. And Gabe, lord knows how many PBRs he’d had. Could have been 2, could have been 7. Jess, Emma, and I were the only ones making progress on the bottle of gin. We were about to relieve the house of all of its orange flavored beverages.
After Jess poured the drinks, I did go over to the windowsill instead of back to the pantry. No one was going to say anything about it. Emma scooched over a little bit and gave me a place to lean.
“Well,” I said, “What happened with Zeus?”
“Maybe not a story for right now,” Josh said, meekly.
But Jess laughed and said, “Oh I’ll tell you what happened.”
“Maybe let’s not,” said Gabe. He had his hand on her back again. He looked at her with his eyes open a little wider than usual. Very subtly, but not subtly enough, he jiggled the drink in his hand to send her a message. She exhaled through her nose, long and slow, and turned her head away from all of us. I was drinking my gin and OJ and feeling still bolder.
“Well, goddamnit, I wanna know,” I said.
Jess blew bubbles in her drink.
“It was a lot of stuff,” Emma said, still not looking at me.
“They told you?” I said.
“I was here!” She said.
“Here?” I said.
“Well, not here here,” she said, “But I was around.”
I was looking right at the side of her face from like six inches away. If she wanted to, she could have turned her head and kissed me, right there, on the windowsill in our old kitchen, in front of everyone.
Aria was smiling. She was always smiling, she had a very kind face. She’d still only taken about one and a half sips of her drink. Despite her smile, you could tell she was worried that Jess and Emma were getting too loose.
Did we worry about people getting too loose when I lived here? No.
But then again, we didn’t drink gin when I lived here.
“I don’t get all this secrecy,” I said. “It’s fine. I just don’t get it.”
“You love drama, don’t you?” Gabe said, in a slightly mocking tone of voice.
“I do,” I said. “Don’t you?”
“No, actually, I hate it,” he said.
“Come on,” I said.
“I hate it, too,” said Emma.
“I happen to know that’s not true,” I said.
“I agree,” said Jess, saving me from whatever comeback Emma was working up. “Everyone kind of loves drama. Especially when they’re not involved.”
“Especially when they are involved,” I said.
Emma raised her eyebrows, rolled her eyes in my direction, and, with both hands, pretended she was stirring a huge pot, like a witch’s cauldron. This was a reference to a historical joke between us, but it was also a pretty easy pantomime to decipher, even if you weren’t in on the joke.
I put my hands up and averted my eyes as if to say, “Guilty as charged.”
Somehow, as much as I’d tried to stay out of the limelight, I was now once again the center of attention. This was Emma’s doing, as much as anyone’s. How would she have felt if I turned the spotlight on her? Not good, I imagine.
When we used to live in the basement, we thought we could make as much noise as we wanted without being heard upstairs. When we first moved in, we did an experiment. She went into the kitchen and I stood down in our room screaming. She said she didn’t hear a peep. In fact, she didn’t believe that I was actually screaming, so we switched places and did the test in reverse. I heard nothing, either. So we thought we had a blank check to be as noisy as possible. We stayed up and talked at a normal volume no matter the time. She played her guitar and I sang loud, obnoxious songs about the furniture, the walls, what I’d eaten for breakfast, how I felt about her, etc. We yelled at each other sometimes, then went upstairs and pretended like everything was fine. Our bed was really two twin beds pushed together, so sometimes, when we weren’t getting along, I would move my half of the bed to the other side of the room. I doubt anyone would want to hear the screeching of bed posts being dragged across the floor by angry me. One morning, after a particularly unpleasant set of words were exchanged in our basement, Aria took Emma’s hand in the kitchen and asked if she was doing alright. Emma tried to laugh off the concern, but Aria doubled down on her grave and knowing facial expression. Apparently, even if our basement sounds were inaudible in the kitchen, they made their way into Josh and Aria’s room. Emma didn’t raise her voice above a whisper for the rest of our time in that room.
The gin was affecting me in such a way that no topic of discussion seemed off the table.
“Why aren’t you two drinking? You got something to tell us?” I asked, wiggling a finger back and forth between Josh and Aria. Despite the gin, I spoke crisp words and coherent sentences. This is usually the case. As my filter wanes, my outward composure remains steady. The result is that no one attributes my carelessness to drunkenness.
Aria forced out a laugh and Josh smiled without parting his lips. Since when were these two such gargoyles? I felt they had decided ahead of time to tiptoe around me.
Jess looked like she wanted to say something but knew Gabe wouldn’t allow it. In my state, Gabe’s subtle policing of Jess’s behavior struck me as one of the true misogynistic crimes of our times.
“And what’s going on between you two?” I said, swinging my still-wiggling, implicative finger across the kitchen towards them.
“What’s going on with you?” snapped Gabe. Seemingly, he’d used all his muzzling energy on his girlfriend and had none leftover for himself.
“I’m just trying to figure out what the vibe here is,” I said, indignantly.
“Why are you here?”
“Come on, Gabe,” said Aria.
“For real though,” he went on. “Did anyone invite you?”
“I used to live here,” I said.
“Yeah, and?”
“Back in my day, when friends wanted to come crash, they were always welcome.”
“Of course you’re welcome,” said Josh.
“Back in your day?” Gabe pressed on.
“Yes, Gabe,” I said. “Before you were born.”
He worked hard to appear amused by my pettiness. He pivoted his look of disgusted disbelief a foot to my right and asked Emma, “Was he always like this?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. And it seemed she really didn’t.
Jess busied herself screwing the top onto the bottle of gin. As soon as the lid was on, I felt completely sober, as if what was getting me drunk wasn’t the gin itself but the fumes of the liquor or the idea that there would be more when I finished my cup.
The window on my back was cold. I had made a fool of myself but no one seemed entertained. I thought Jess or Emma would at least appreciate the way I tried to knock Gabe down a notch, but they were on his side.
I had read the situation wrong. They didn’t want me to visit. It wasn’t my house anymore. They were being polite, trying to recreate the old dynamic for my sake. The old dynamic didn’t exist, though. If they thought drinking, small talk, and a cameo from Emma would make me comfortable, that had been their mistake.
I imagined a house meeting prior to my visit. “He’s been through a lot, we need to support him,” Josh or Aria probably said. “Nah, he’s an adult, I’m sure he can handle himself,” Gabe probably responded. To which Jess would have said something like, “You’d be surprised.”
The rain had stopped, but water was running loudly off gutters and tree branches. I wondered if I should gather my things and camp out in the park half a mile away. It would be a wet night, but at least I’d have my own space. I thought about trying to make an apology for my behavior, blame it on the gin, blame it on my last 6 months, say I was just nervous to see them again and didn’t know how to handle myself.
Instead, I kept silent and tried to convince myself everything was fine. Aria started telling stories about her patients at the hospital, stories that everyone but me had heard before. Even I had heard a couple of them. I kept trying to say something productive to the conversation, but every time it came out wrong.
Soon enough, Emma said she probably should be getting home. She didn’t invite me to come stay at her place or anything. She just turned to look at me for what felt like the first time all night and squinted her eyes a little. Then, she said, “Well, nice to see you, Jackson,” and walked out the door.
After she left, I was alone at the window. Josh and Aria talked amongst themselves, and Gabe searched through the fridge for a snack. I kept trying to take sips out of my empty gin cup. Rain kept dripping off the roof. I wouldn’t try to escape or text Emma something I would later regret. I would wait for someone to offer me a blanket, say thank you for having me, and go to sleep on the couch without complaining. Tomorrow, I would walk around the neighborhood I used to live in and the next night I wouldn’t drink anything. I would keep quiet for the 3 remaining days of my stay, ask others about themselves, and try to leave on a positive note. Hopefully, in the future, everyone would look back on that first night and say, “Well, at least that was the worst it got. At least he shaped up after that strange episode.” I probably wouldn’t come back to that house again. It was ok, there were other old houses and other groups of old friends. Although, the list was getting smaller.
I’ve reread this like 8 times now
I hope that all just happened. I'm very very aware of the weirdness when the hobo world intersects with the middle class try hard world . I've been you many times and have rolled up and had to roll out many times.
Usually misreading people who I thought were loving and aware.
I remember very interesting experience I had where I had met a guy in a supermarket who was quite a drifter and had him around my house once before he moved on.
Two years later he wound up at my door pretty beaten down with nowhere to go having not felt even welcome with some of his old friends he had left their house and come to my place because he remembered me.
I have course let him stay as long as he liked even though he only slept outside on the grass. My wife couldn't believe that I was going to let a guy stay that I'd met once at a supermarket two years ago and even leave them in the house while we went away for the night. But total trust is how I roll. But before he left again I asked him why he knew he would be safe and welcomed with me. And he said , I knew you were a hobo when I first saw you and that you would always have the hobo code at heart.
He's now in Hawaii somewhere living up in the bush. You gotta love your people and care for them. And drama in real life with real people is awesome and the breath of life.
What I loved about my youth was instead of social media we just had each other and all the crazy s*** going down. It was awesome . Bring on the pot stir!!
Be well.