Not-So Short Story Part II

His short reminiscing over, Evan's head now turned to pounding.  He rubbed his eyes and made his way over to the couch.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone.  Three missed calls:  two from Carl, one from Shawn.  It was already 11:15.  The sun had gotten high enough in the Hawaiian sky to peer through the living room window.

"Close the fucking shade," a voice said in a raspy, worn-out tone.  "It's too early."  Shawn had finally sat up on the floor.  Unable to stay upright, he had eventually crawled over and propped his back up against the wall.

"It's already past 11:00 ass hole," Evan replied.

"You guys look like shit."  A new voice interrupted.  Evan looked to his left to see that Carl was up on his feet.  "Where's the spic?" joked Carl.  "Did he have to get up early to get to Home Depot?  If you get there early you have the best chance of getting trabajo."

"Fuck you asshole."  Brian was untangling his legs from the mess of wires and cables that had somehow attacked him in the night.  "I'm Puerto Rican, not Mexican."

"Ha."  Carl had always been the wise ass of the group.  "That just means you stand outside of Home Depots in Florida instead of Cali."

By then Shawn was coming back from his kitchen tossing Gatorades and pain killers to each of them.  Shawn's house thought Evan.  We're at Shawn's house.  After winning his small fortune in Vegas, Shawn had paid off his student loans, finished up college, and invested the rest of his money in a small software company.  That company had eventually grown into one of the leaders in the video game industry, and had left Shawn with nothing to worry about monetarily speaking, when they decided to sell out to Nintendo.

The house in Hawaii was the first big purchase Shawn made.  Evan had always heard how awesome it was.  Beachfront property, maids and butlers, a giant swimming pool with a grotto bigger than the Playboy mansion.  Come to think of it, mansion was probably a better way of explaining it.  The most important thing about the place, was that it had six bedrooms, all of which were master suites with adjoining bathrooms and walk-in closets.  All the bedrooms were on the second floor, and each had its own lanai with a view of the ocean. 

As he sipped on his Berry Blast Gatorade and washed down his pain killer, Evan once again looked around the room.  "What the fuck happened here?" He stood up shaking his head and stretching.  "I thought we went out last night."

"We did," responded Carl.  "I specifically remember going to that new club in Waikiki.  Shawn called a limo for us."

"No."  Brian interjected.  "That was Monday.  We went to Sidelines last night."

Sidelines had been their favorite sports bar for at least the last decade.  There were summers when they claimed they used it as their meeting place to get the night started, but ended up staying until closing.  When the original owner had decided to retire, it was all too perfect timing for Shawn to buy the place.  He didn't make any money off of it.  In fact, he barely broke even.  But the memories and having a familiar place to call home made the investment well worth it.

"Yeah, we went to Sidelines."  Shawn was laughing obviously remembering what had happened.  "I'm pretty sure we ran them out of Grey Goose.  Which is why we brought the party back here..."

"That's right," agreed Evan.  "The whole bar came with us.  I think some of the waitresses too."

They were more right than they realized.  Even though it was a sports bar, Sidelines was their own private playground.  They had finished the first three bottles themselves, and the rest of the bottles were used up in Lemon Drop shots that Shawn had mistakenly decided to buy for the entire bar.  After four or five rounds of these shots, when the bar manager had explained that they were out of Grey Goose, Shawn stood up and announced that the party was moving.

There had been over a hundred people in the bar, and they must have spread the word, because it seemed like more than a hundred and fifty people showed up at the house around 1:00am.  Evan had images and short flashes of what he could only assume were memories running through his head.  "Brian slapped a waitress' ass."

"I know, and I'm pretty sure I saw Carl making out with a college chick."  Brian was quick to change the subject.

"Her name was Tasha."  Evan nodded in agreement.  "...Or Tyra."  He held his head in his hands and squeezed, hoping to get some juice out of the damaged fruit that was his brain.  "...no Tanya.  Yeah.  I'm pretty sure it was Tanya."

Making out with a college chick wasn't that bad.  Definitely not a crime, not even a peccadillo.  It was all in fun.  It was a party after all. When Carl looked up, all three of his friends were laughing at him.  There was nothing to do but laugh back.

The rest of the morning was spent trying to remember the rest of the previous night's events.   Brian had recalled trying to shotgun a 40 ounce beer, but successfully drinking only twenty ounces of it.  The rest had gone all over his shirt.  Evan remembered carrying a bottle of champagne around wearing just a wife-beater and boxers.  At that same moment Shawn had been throwing people into the pool, and yelling, "He shoots he scores," every time someone went in. 

An hour later, Evan's stomach made a curious sound.  "I'm starving."

"Yeah, let's grab lunch," Brian and Carl both agreed, almost in unison.

"Alright," Shawn said as he stood up.  "I'm gonna shower.  You guys figure out what you wanna eat."

"Rainbow's?"  Brian was nodding as if he meant to agree with himself.

Nobody argued, and the three of them had started to return to their rooms to get ready when they heard the splash.  They couldn't help but smile as they saw Shawn in the pool, and almost laughed as they saw what his idea of a "shower" was. 

They paused a moment, then walked down the hallway, and started up the stairs.  Carl was in front and Brian was quick to kick him in the back of the heel as he took a step causing Carl to trip and almost fall face first on the stair landing.  They chuckled like 8th graders and kept going.  Evan, who was behind Brian, decided to flick his right ear.  When Brian turned to the right in annoyance, Carl turned around and slapped him on his left cheek.  It was like the three stooges reunion tour.  All three were laughing like kids on a playground as they headed to their rooms.  All their laughter stopped in an instant.

"WHAT THE FUCK!!!"  Carl's scream echoed through the whole house.

Evan almost ran into Brian as they met in the hallway, they raced for Carl's door not knowing what was going on.  He and Brian found Carl staring at his bed.  Carl was trembling as a soaking wet Shawn came rushing into the room only seconds later.  Even he had heard the scream.  Evan followed Carl's stare to the bed and his jaw dropped faster than a lead weight in water.

It wasn't so much the amount of it, but the placement of the blood.  It had soaked through the pillow and was rolling off her fingers.  Her mouth was slightly open, and her body was completely still.  The fact that she was completely naked, save for the twisted bed sheet slightly covering her from knees to waist, made it all the more obvious to the four of them how young and lifeless she was.

Evan turned when he heard a sound coming from Carl's bathroom.  Alarmed at first, he relaxed when he saw Carl's back, and then winced as he heard him throw up.  Evan almost threw up himself as he heard the chunks land in the toilet.  Carl's knees hit the floor with a thud as he hurled more of last night's alcohol into the toilet again.  Then a muffled sound came out of his mouth.  Evan thought Carl was going to puke up the purple Gatorade next, but as he walked towards him, Evan realized he was trying to say something.  A word...  No... a name.

"Tanya..."

to be continued...

A Not-So Short Story (Novella?) by Kimo Go

Wednesday

The ring of the telephone was shocking enough to shake off even the deepest of hangovers.  He rolled his head off of the empty cardboard box that had apparently doubled for a pillow, and realized he still smelled of sausage and mushroom pizza.  He brushed his hand through the side of his hair, and as a piece of crust fell to the floor, he realized why.  As he got to his feet, Evan attempted to recall the events of the previous night.  Needless to say, it had been fun, and alarmingly normal for the week.  It wasn't often that they could all get together anymore, but when they did, the fun was as good as they had always remembered.

Where the fuck am I, he thought, and where the fuck is that ringing coming from?  While he scanned the unfamiliar room for the source of the ringing, he spotted them.  All of them.  They had managed to all survive the night and were strewn about the room in a random fashion.  It was as if a bomb had exploded in the middle of the night, and this morning's chaos was all that remained of the crime scene.  Evan chuckled at the site of the room.  Screw it ran through his head, as he gave up on looking for the phone.

Carl had gotten married first, the wedding had been expected for about 12 years, since they were seniors in high school.  Vicky was his high school sweet heart.  If she'd stuck with him through his crush on Brian's sister, Brianne, and his partying lifestyle in college, not to mention the first of four D.U.I.'s in his life, there was no reason to think she'd leave him... EVER.  She was as patient as he was immature.  So Vicky probably wouldn't be too mad at him for passing out face down on a coffee table with his legs resting on an adjacent ottoman, causing his torso to form a human bridge spanning the gap between the two pieces of furniture.

Brian, meanwhile, had found a nice little niche between the television stand and the wall.  His feet were tangled in cables, and he took on the look of an overgrown ultra-sound because of the fetal position he had slept in.  Brian had gotten married in September.  Evan and Carl hadn't really told him the way they felt about Patricia, or Fatty Patty as they had not-so-lovingly dubbed her.  While Brian was always a fun and outlandishly exciting guy around them, he'd always been a pushover for her.  She dressed him, checked his email constantly, and even got to the point where she went through his credit card bill.  And this was before they were married.  Now that they were, the fellas hardly got to see him.

Finally, as his eyes shifted from the television, to Brian, then to the wall, Evan caught a glimpse of someone's torso in the gap between the couch and the Lay-Z-Boy.  Shawn was the only one of them who had stayed remotely sober.  Well, least drunk was probably a better way to put it.  He had started to stir a little and let out an awkward "Heh... Heh heh," as he scratched his balls and farted.

It was amazing to Evan that Shawn was still as disgusting as ever.  While he was the only one who hadn't been married, he was by far the richest.  On his twenty-first birthday his high school buddies had taken him to Las Vegas.  It was there, under the shiny pyramid of the Luxor Hotel that he had gotten completely wasted on free shots of Jagermeister chased with Jack and Cokes at a ten dollar minimum black-jack table.  Despite his inability to walk straight, or keep the spittle in his mouth while he squeezed slurred words through his paling lips, he somehow had made his way to a progressive slots machine.  He plainly missed on his first three attempts to put the crisp twenty into the machine before he finally got it in.  As Evan, Carl and Brian laughed at him, he pushed the max bet button.

BAR-BAR-CHERRY

After a few dings the machine went quiet.  Evan was almost in tears as he watched his inebriated friend fumble the buttons of the slot machine like a teenager trying to undo his first bra.  Shawn pushed Max Bet again.

CATTLE-BAR-DOUBLE BAR

It was only then that Carl had realized the machine was a Western Ranch-themed one, that would pay out the jackpot only when the reel read "3X CATTLE" all the way across.  After a few attempts at trying to explain what symbols he needed to hit the biggest payout, Carl gave up with a grunt.  He had spent five minutes talking to a wall.  Hearing was apparently the first sense to go when Shawn was hammered.  They stuck around to watch a couple more spins before they started to turn their attention to a roaring craps table.

Shawn, meanwhile,  kept all the focus he could muster on the machine in front of him.  He kept max-betting and won and lost for the better part of an hour before it happened.

The lights flashing and alarm going off weren't enough to outweigh the alcohol keeping Shawn glued to his seat.  But when the machine started mooing like an angry bull, he knew something had happened.  Before he knew it his three friends ran at him, grabbed him, and jumped up and down with him on their shoulders like a team that had just won the super bowl.  They bounced up and down as the casino security informed him that he had just won over fifteen million dollars.

The panic and jumping had Shawn's face turning an interesting shade of purple, then green, as the gaming manager shook his hand.  The amazement and wonder were hidden behind the drunken glaze of his eyes, and even his friends couldn't believe what had happened.  The three of them just stared with eyes open and mouths agape as Shawn posed for pictures on a high platform with his ridiculously over-sized check.

The only one of them who could think enough to talk had been Brian, who shouted, "Holy SHIT!" 

It was the last thing any of them had heard before Shawn puked on every last inch of all three of their faces, including into their gaping-wide mouths.

to be continued...

Winter IS Coming... but Fall First

Fall... the greatest of all the seasons.  Summer's heat is beginning to wind down.  There's Halloween to look forward to, somewhere in non-tropical climates the leaves will begin to turn yellow and orange and several shades of red, and for all my fellow football fans, it means about 20 weekends worth of Christmases.  That's right... You aren't a red-blooded American if you don't celebrate the start of the football season.  We can argue about right-wing left-wing politics, we can argue about monotheistic and polytheistic religions, but we can't argue that the real opening day is the first day of the NCAA College Football season.

That being said, I am and always will be a University of Oregon fan.  The blood runs green in my veins... and yellow, and black and silver and day-glow green and anthracite.  For Ducks like me, the start of the football season isn't just about coming off of the winning-est season in the history of Oregon football.  It's not just about being the reigning two-time, two-time champion of the Pacific-10 - now Pac-12 - Conference. It's not even just about beating rival Oregon State in 3 consecutive "Civil War" games (the longest streak since the Ducks won 4 in a row back in 1994-1997).  It's also about having the greatest uniforms the world of football has ever seen.  And since we've worn the same jerseys for two years in a row, the 2011-2012 season will be the debut of some brand new threads.  This is the uniform that Oregon is supposedly wearing in the season opener against LSU in Dallas, on September 3rd.

There are those who are saying, "Oh, here goes Oregon with all that Nike money again," or maybe, "If it wasn't for Phil Knight, Oregon wouldn't be where they are today."

To those people, I can only say, "I don't care."  Chip Kelly prepares his team (my team) to play another team every single week.  He can't live his life based on "what ifs" or "how comes."  What if Cam Newton was ruled ineligible before the championship game?  What if USC had to sit Reggie Bush in 2005?  Sorry, we can't go back in time, and as a friend of mine is notorious for saying, "It is what it is." 

And what "it" is... is AWESOME.  I love SEC fans that claim Oregon has no tradition, or that Oregon has a "gimmick" offense, and a defense that has a "puncher's chance" at best.  Guess what, our defense came closer than anyone in shutting down Cam Newton, and did well enough to go undefeated in conference play.  And that "gimmick" offense, has the best coaches in the nation visiting Eugene, Oregon, just to see exactly how it's run.  As far as tradition goes:



I can't wait for football season to get here.  It's been a slow week for sports.  Let's get this thing going.

"Our expectation is to win every game.  I don't know if that will ever happen... but you can't rise to low expectations." - Chip Kelly