Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“What's she like?”

“What is the point?”

“Who?”

“The lady-friend.”

“You're a fucking douche bag, that's the point.”

“Fuck-buddy.”

“Jesus Dave, you're like a child who wanders into a movie….”

“Hey, who ordered the shots?”

“The bartender picked up the round,” I respond.

“Looks like somebody's getting his dick wet tonight.”

“And it's not going to be you, you misogynistic fuck-stain.”

“Yeah, it's Alex's old roommate.”

“Thanks for spelling that one out, Dave.”

“I'm not a misogynist, you bitch.”

“Fine. You're a fucking twat, then.”

The shots are taken. The mood once again becomes gregarious and far less slanderous. Personal stories and quotes from favorite movies and television shows are traded like baseball cards. Dumb and Dumber has a surprisingly large number of fans. Books eventually get their time in the limelight. One of the nameless cites Cormac McCarthy as his favorite author. He claims the judge in Blood Meridian to be metaphorically tied to Cain, but cannot provide an explanation as to what the bear at the end of the book is supposed to symbolize. “Is the bear the wilderness of North America? I mean, there is that one bear that kills one of the guys in the group in, like, the middle of the book. The bear in the last chapter could represent the…the…you know, the….”

“Subjugation?”

“Yeah…and destruction of the wildness, as well as the breakdown in Western morality — like the sanctity of life and all that. I don't know, though; something tells me it goes deeper than that.” He asks if there is a bear anywhere in the Bible. Someone responds that Sodom was filled with them. Laughter. This is followed by an etymological query: Is there such a thing as a Gomorrite? A debate on sexual perversions—“A socially constructed concept,” as is evidently not obvious from the word's appearance almost exclusively in value statements — blossoms from the fecund question. I hear of felching for the first time. Munging is defined. The conversation ends with an awkward silence among intoxicated and slack-jawed extroverts.

Two people decide to make their way to the dance floor soon after, which initiates a domino effect that nearly empties the table within a few minutes. As the organs begin to grind, minutes dissolve into memories, smiles become abundant, sexual tensions oscillate. Ilkay disappears. The music ceases to have a discernible melody. At one thirty, I get a text message from Tomas that reads: “LIC party like orgy stop get yer ass herf [sic.] now stop.” Tables get rearranged, reconstructed. People find themselves in new contexts, experiencing transculturation on a microcosmic scale — at least that's what one of the grad-students muses at one point. Vinati and I eventually find ourselves sitting next to one another.

“Evan Klein and the Babymakers,” I respond to a question about my high school band.

She laughs. “Evan Klein and the Babymakers.”

“I was one of the Babymakers…obviously.”

“And you played the bass? You played the bass in a band called Evan Klein and the Babymakers?”

“Yeah.”

“Any relation to Naomi Klein?”

“I wouldn't know.”

“Do you know her?”

“No.”

“Oh, she's great. Probably the best journalist out there right now.”

“I'll check her out.”

“You should.”

“Is she a friend of yours? Another girl from Queens?”

“No, she's Canadian. And I was just born in Queens. We moved to a brownstone on Berkley Street, about half a block away from Prospect Park, when I was four”

“What do your parents do?”

“Is that your phone?”

I look: Tomas.

“It's not important.”

Caesura

“You were saying.”

“Well, my dad owns a few restaurants — mostly in Brooklyn.” She names three in Park Slope.

“Never heard of them.”

“Not a fan of Indian food?”

“Not a frequenter of Park Slope.”

“You should go there more often. There's a new bar that opens, like, every week.”

“You're still there, I take it?”

“No, I've moved into a place in Williamsburg last September. It's kind of a shithole, but it's cheap.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“You're there, too?”

“Bushwick.”

“Bushwick or East Williamsburg?”

“Bushwick — a few blocks from the Knickerbocker stop on the M.”

“Shut up,” she exclaims. “Why are you living all the way out there? It's dangerous.”

“I didn't really have any options.” She squints. “It's kind of a long story.”

She nods slowly. “I worry about you.”

“I know how to handle myself.”

She's unconvinced, but doesn't push the subject. “So Ilkay took off, huh?”

I roll my eyes. “He was like a shark out there. I didn't even get a goodbye.”

“Neither did I. You'd figure he'd want to spend some time with his friends because he's going to be gone for, like, a month. He's so fucking inconsiderate sometimes.”

She is quiet for a moment. I can feel my voice growing hoarse because of the volume of the music, and the pause in conversation is tacitly welcomed. We look to the human shapes dancing to a standard two-thirty-in-the-morning jam without much in terms of substance propelling them along. There is the reoccurring theme of sex (or, rather, the anticipation of sex with a desired object) in the lyrics, but the rhythm patterns convey the drudgery of orgasmless fucking. It's very Libertarian, very free-love without the love. Faces and voices are difficult to make out, so one can only read a body language that has a lexicon consisting of consent or rejection. It's usually straightforward enough, though there are a few people probably looking for “innocent” fun, the types who wear their wedding rings in their jeans or purses. Pragmatics rears its ugly head even in binary, evidently.

Vinati seems like the dancing type: tiny, cute, and friends with Ilkay, who habitually frequents places that refuse to grant you admission if you're not wearing the right shoes. These are the types of places guarded by men behind velvet ropes, men who give you the once over as though you are a cut of meat, men who tell you whether or not you're cool enough to pay thirteen dollars for a bottle of Amstel Light after waiting at a bar for over half an hour to get it. The real problems with places such as these, of course, are those you encounter once you pass through the gates of Elysium: guys without necks try to pick fights with you, girls without grace try to convince you to buy them drinks, dipshits run into you, thereby sending about three-dollar's worth of beer down the only shirt you own that has a label reading dry clean only. Wealthy E-Harmony couples and blind dates attempt to be delicate as they explain themselves above the music that throbs like a bad case of priapism. The people around them drink in a communion of decadence that will ultimately lead to intoxication, conquest, crabs. The dance floor is an orgy of egos. Things are going on in the bathroom. Bad things. Speed freaks scan the room with fidgety eyes and try not to jump out of their skin. The people who are rolling hard are accepting resumes for fondling positions. The few people too humble to jump into the whirling madness stick out like anchorites in Caligula's court.

Maybe I misjudge her, though. There are certainly those who simply like to dance without all of the hedonism that usually gets attached to the club scene. She's here with me for whatever reason, gazing to all of the people lost in the sea of light and sound with a less than sober grin and an unusually reticent demeanor. “Do you dance?” I finally ask.

She smiles. “I've been dancing all night.”