Mike Gets a Surprise: Part Two

Part One

“Mike!” yells this guy James. “Mike, you won’t believe what just happened!”

Fuck, not now. “What happened, man?” I say. I sip some of my beer; it’s warming up a bit on me now though. I’m not drinking fast enough. I’m irritated, a bit, that James came over to talk to me.

James, he’s laughing like some crazy bastard, and it takes him a few tries before he can spit out what he wants to say:

“You know that girl Denise? She looks hot except for her face? Oh, ha ha ha!” he laughs.

Shit James, just tell the story, I’m kind of busy here, I'm thinking. He’s bent over double, the veins on his head popping out, he’s laughing so hard. But I start to smile at him a bit though anyway. It’s pretty hard not to when a guy is laughing like that. I’ve stopped being mad at him.

“So yeah, Denise? I got her into my tent over there, and I was sweet talking with her. She was totally into me man, I swear. So you know what I did? I started telling her about my Cree heritage. About how we have all these rituals and shit. She thought it was deep. Anyway, I got this amazing idea because of how butt-ugly she is. I told her that the Cree, we have this ceremony, it’s how you “Become a Man”, and during the ritual, you have to have sex with your woman with a deerskin sack on her face!” he shouts laughter, laughing straight up in the air, and I start to chuckle along too.

“So what happened? What did you do?” I say. I’ve forgotten all about Shelly for a second.

“I don’t have a fucking deerskin sack! I’m not even 100% Cree! So what I did was, I said that we could fuck in the tent, but for the ceremony, I had to put a grocery bag on her head while I banged her! And she did it, man! A fucking grocery bag! She even asked me if it was any good! Bwah, ha ha ha!!”

I laugh like crazy, feeling like some lousy bastard, but rocking around in my chair at the same time anyway. Who has the balls to tell a girl they can fuck so long as she puts a bag on her head? That’s just evil. But so funny, gawd. And Shelly’s right here, too - but how can I not laugh? Seriously, I don’t know. Maybe it makes me a bad guy that I was laughing, I don’t know. It’s just one of those awkward situations.

James is wiping his eyes. “Fuck, so anyways, I had to tell you that story, man. I’m going to get some smokes now. See ya, Mikey,” he says. He wanders away, his shoulders looking pink and really un-Cree in the sunshine.

“What an asshole,” Shelly says, frowning after James, and I shut up right away. I knew it was a mistake laughing with James, but that was just a fucking great story. It was impossible not to laugh about it.

“Yeah, he’s kind of like that with women,” I say, very seriously and all. I’ve got this wicked poker face when I need to use it, nobody can ever tell when I’m bluffing. “He’s not very sensitive about their looks. That girl Denise, I bet she feels bad right now about what happened,” I say. But I struggle to keep in another runaway chuckle about the story, and I stand up out of my chair at that moment, in case I get to laughing again. I need to go take a leak anyway.

“Listen, Shelly, I need to go to the bathroom. Do you think you want to come inside with me? We could maybe chill on the couch or something, without so many people around and talk and things,” I say. It’s real aggressive of me, I know, but…

“Okay,” she says, right away. “I’ll be right in. I’m going to jump in the pool for a couple of minutes, and then I’ll come find you,” she winks.

Suddenly, all I can do is smile. “All righty then,” I say. I pad away to the basement door, setting my bottle on a nearby table. The beer in the bottom is practically warm as piss now. But I couldn’t care less about that, even if I knew there were more cold ones in the cooler, if you know what I mean. My mind is on other things. Shelly, she’s a really nice chick, I mean it.

The bathroom, it’s inside the door of the walk-in basement. It’s an unfinished basement, probably because Dan’s parents knew a bunch of kids would be walking around down here someday in their swimsuits, throwing shit around at each other and using the can. The bathroom is unoccupied right now, so I manage to do my business without having to wait at all. That’s something that makes me happy, a bit. When you’ve really got to take a leak, and you can’t wait another second, and here’s this quiet place to go do it in - I don’t know, that just makes me feel glad inside. When I finish up, I look at my face in the mirror for a little while. It always looks different to me when I’m drunk somehow. I start to make faces at myself, frowning a little and baring my teeth and stuff, trying to look like some badass. For some reason, after I've been drinking, it’s always like I’m watching somebody else in the mirror, like somebody else is pulling faces on me. I don’t know why. My cheeks are all red from the beer and the sunlight, and I stick a smoke behind my ear for later on.

Just then, I hear footsteps padding up quickly outside, and I feel happy again all of a sudden. Shelly came in earlier than I expected. I swing open the door with a big smile on my face.

Conclusion