Justin Halpern - More Sh*t My Dad Says

“Listen, you might be right, but that also sounds like something someone who left the after-prom to do cocaine would say. That’s why we have no ins and outs, so I don’t have to be the judge.”

I didn’t have the energy to keep arguing. The muffled sounds of music and laughter inside the Bali Hai drifted away as I walked along the boardwalk, which hovered just ten feet above the glassy ocean surface, back toward the lot where I’d parked. It was pitch-black out, save for the lights of the skyline glowing across the bay.

As I neared my parking spot, I noticed someone about twenty feet away, struggling to heave a large rock into the water below. When I looked closer, I realized who it was: Michael, the toughest kid on my Little League team, my partner in the greatest homeless man’s porn heist our little suburb had ever seen, and the most fearless person I had ever known. I hadn’t stayed in touch with Michael since those days; all I knew was that he’d been expelled from our high school in tenth grade after he’d gotten into an argument with a classmate, then grabbed the kid’s bicycle, rode it two miles down to the cliffs above the Pacific, and hurled it into the sea.

“Hey,” I yelled, walking toward him.

“Fuck you! I’m allowed to throw rocks, dickhead,” he hollered back.

“No, it’s Justin Halpern,” I said.

“I know.”

He set the large rock down onto the concrete and walked toward me. He was wearing a wife-beater and slacks, and had a collared shirt tied around his head like a bandana. His body had leaned out since our Little League days, but his face had hardened, and he looked as intimidating as ever.

“Is there still a magician in there?” he asked, pointing at the Bali Hai.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t get in. They said I’d already shown up and wouldn’t let me back in.”

“Ah, fuck, sorry. I used your name to get in.”

He grabbed a joint out of his pocket and lit it up. I decided I should probably head out before the combination of Michael and drugs landed me in jail.

“All right, man. Well, good seeing you,” I said, turning to walk back to my car.

“Can you find out if that magician is still in there?” he asked.

“Why?”

“He was doing some fucking dumb magic trick, trying to make this deck of cards disappear. So he’s like, ‘Does anybody know where my gay deck of cards are?’ and I raised my hand and said, ‘In your pussy.’ Fuckin’ guy had me thrown out.”

Finding out whether the magician was still at the party seemed easy enough, and I felt a bit proud that Michael was asking me a favor, so I walked back to Mr. Bartess, who confirmed that the magician was still inside. Then I went back and told Michael, who was lying on the jagged rocks between the boardwalk and the ocean, polishing off his joint.

“I’m going back in there,” Michael said, sitting up quickly. “If you come with me, I’ll sneak you in.”

“Uh… I don’t know, dude. If they catch us, it wouldn’t be good. I think I’m just gonna go home.”

“Fine. I’ll go by myself,” he said without hesitation.

“What if they arrest you or something?” I asked, genuinely wondering whether Michael ever thought things through before he acted.

“Look. All I know is, that magician thinks I’m his bitch. And I’m not leaving tonight until I tell him he can eat a dick.”

My gut told me just to leave; I didn’t need this night to get any worse. But I thought about what leaving meant. I’d drive home, crawl into bed, turn off the lights, and that would be the end of prom—and, really, the end of high school. Maybe I hadn’t had the kind of prom they made movies about, but sneaking into the after-party with Michael felt like giving myself one more chance.

“Okay. Let’s do it,” I said.

We approached the restaurant, walked around to the back, and waited for one of the kitchen staff to open the service door. When a heavy-set cook in a white smock came out carrying a huge bag of trash, we snuck past him into the kitchen, which was dark and empty. Beyond the dining room door, I could hear the sounds of a crowd.

“When we get in, we should just hang out in a corner or something for a bit, so no one notices us,” I said.

“That sounds fuckin’ dumb,” Michael said. With that, he pushed through the kitchen doors into a room filled with makeshift blackjack tables and fake palm fronds. Michael headed straight toward the balding forty-year-old magician, who was surrounded by a dozen of my classmates, all staring at him like they were either on drugs or really into disappearing birds.

Michael pushed aside a skinny kid and planted himself in front of the magician.

“Hey, you fucking piece of shit!” Michael yelled.

The magician and all of the students surrounding him froze, staring at Michael, wondering what would come next.

“Eat my dick!” Michael yelled.

The magician’s face turned bright red. He whirled to his right and, before his cape could catch up with his body, screamed for security.

Within seconds, two large men with black, puffy EVENT STAFFjackets stormed Michael from behind and grabbed him by the arms. Michael immediately went limp, forcing the guards to drag his lifeless body out of the restaurant as he shouted obscenities. Just as they pulled him through the doorway, he threw both his arms up in triumph and yelled, “Fuck everyone!”

I glanced around the room and saw that none of my friends were there. They’d probably already checked into hotel rooms somewhere. I was about to leave when I spotted Nicole by the ice-cream bar. She was wearing a long cream-colored dress that perfectly accented her olive skin. As I watched her shake sprinkles onto her soft serve, I realized that my prom night had really started going wrong two weeks before, when I’d wussed out on asking her. Here was my chance to redeem myself. Still reeling from Michael’s scene, I suddenly realized: this could be my Eat a dick! moment. I strode up to Nicole with a sense of purpose I hadn’t felt all night.

“Hi,” I said, gently tapping her on the shoulder.

“Oh, hey!” she said, beaming and giving me a hug.

“How was your night?” I asked.

“Awesome. How was yours?”

“Pretty awesome. So, this is going to sound really weird, but I wanted to ask you to prom,” I said.

As soon as I said it, I felt as if my stomach had dropped out of my pants.

“You did?”

“Yeah,” I said, a bit more sheepishly

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I thought you’d say no and then nobody else would want to go with me because they’d think they were my second choice. But I really should have just asked you, right?”

It felt good to tell her. Even more than that, my mind filled with fantasies about what her response might be. Even though she wasn’t my official prom date, maybe we could hang out the rest of the night. Maybe we could even start dating. I had my mom’s Oldsmobile Achieva for at least another hour, and it still had a half tank of gas. Maybe Nicole and I could actually get crazy after all.

“Awwww,” she said sweetly, my heart rate picking up as she smiled at me. “I would have said no, though,” she added.

“What?”

“I’m sorry. I’m just being honest. You’re not really my type. I wouldn’t have gone to prom with you.”

Just then, a thin, handsome guy with a goatee came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. He looked old enough to be in college.

“Ready?” he said softly into her ear.

Nicole nodded, then gave me another quick hug and left, her fingers entwined in her date’s.

Nicole’s rejection didn’t sting quite as much as I expected, and the only reason I could figure was because for the first time that night, I had done exactly what I wanted to do.