If You Give a Mouse a Brownie

He pulled out an already stapled packet of paper.  He had a confident smirk as he slid it cross the table to my resting hands.  He had already told me his major was business because his father had reminded him, “He was much too good a writer to need to go to college for it.”  As a general point of reference I found this comment off putting.  I let my eyes stagger down the page.  His words were obscure, I would lend him that, but they were chucky little road bumps that caused more frustration than enlightenment.

            We sat together in the White House Sports Bar half watching the football games, half ordering numerous plates of food to silence the silence.  Around the second plate of bar fries, I began to feel saturated, but the sound of the back of my jaw clicking together was much more gratifying than any quip Jim could tell me about himself. 

            The smooth gasps of smoke inhaled previous to the trip on the T to the bar, had dissipated and I was left to bare the burden of conversation, and quite nearly sober.  I let my thumbs tap dance over the keys of my mobile.  I was on a direct mission to save myself by bringing along a third more familiar party to break up this long, cold November Sunday afternoon. 

            Sunday afternoons have long been my favorite time of the week, meant in my humble opinion as the most relaxing non-progressive reflective periods.  Used as means of constructing a better week, this was not to be a Sunday to my liking. 

            His insistent presence began to irritate me.  I was in full agreement within myself.  House guests are not worth it.  I should have lied and said I was going to Africa for the weekend to find the true location of Pride Rock.  At the moment I missed my long departed companion, the fabrication.  But, like a new aged mother in labor, it was much too late to turn back and call the Anesthesiologist.  So I turned to my favorite of companions, Mary-Jane. 

            I knew Mark would texted back instantly when I asked if he was in possession of my friend.  Mark is no one I would like to associate with.  If not for my herbal needs, I would like to throw him off a bridge, but life is full of relationships continued out of necessity.  So after getting confirmation from Mark, I waved Vera our waitress over.  I give her a ten dollar tip on a twenty dollar meal because not only do I like her service at this given point in time, but her bedroom is one down from mine and it can only improve homeland relations. 

            I have a two foot tall white ceramic milk jug that I procured earlier that day in an Allston thrift shop. It’s with me as Jim and I wait for the C line in the dark.  Boston public transit is much like a love affair with a junkie: turbulent, sporadic and always intriguing.  After an ungodly period of time, a train slides down the track towards us.  I step on and watch the eyes of the train spotters roll up and down my jug trying to contextualize it.

            When we get to Mark’s, there is a full excitement of sports fanfare in the air.  For how much I dislike Mark, I love the masculine pheromones of a great sports game.  Mark shows me the bag of pot.  He doesn’t smoke, only snorts coke so I know he never has a clue to the quality of his own products.  I truly miss college at this point in the game.  “Ya, it’s shwag.”  I take a look at it and it does seem to resemble shwag so I fake disinterest and acquire an ounce for 100 dollars.  I figure for the price it will be a quantity over quality night.

 Jim and I walk down the street. Everything he says melts and blurs away.  I’m thinking of my friend and not his incessant self droning.  I catch a bit of how he sold drugs to his older sister’s friends in high school and find myself transported back to the feeling in the bar, utter distaste. 

The autumn night is dark and the only light is the pairs of beams that cars lend as they pass.  Because of the amount of pot we decide to make brownies.  I have never done this before and because of the intense fullness of uncomfortable eating I wonder how this will go.  After buying oil and mix at the glowing seven-eleven we arrive in front of my apartment building, 65 Terrace Grove. 65 is a shitty number. 

            We let the butter melt into pools then shoved pieces of Mary Jane into the pot.  The seeds crackle.  As the brownies bake, we sit listening to music over my speakers.  Jim likes Fiona Apple too much.  He is again demoted in my eyes.  I put on a movie and we each chomp down a smoldering brownie.  At first I think to myself that the brownies must not be working.  Then I start to take a curious interest in Jim’s appearance. 

His hair is thinning which gives him the appearance of an old man.  His arms are long and dangle from his sides.  Thick black hairs crawl down to the middle of the back of his hands.  Sitting with his arms folded up on himself he looks much like an ape penned up at the zoo.  He starts to fall into himself like an accordion.  I’m now standing on my own planet trying to understand him.  I can’t, I don’t want to.  In fact I have never wanted anything further from me. 

The first night Jim comes to stay with me I am very polite.  I take him out to dinner and although I am extremely exhausted I stay up and watch High Fidelity.  Through the course of the night I had been the bearer of conversation torch.  Asking questions, paying compliments in the name of friendship.  Jim is quick to talk about himself, his likes and dislikes and although highly intelligent the art of conversation is lost in his self satisfying monologues.  He possibly asks me two questions about myself the entire time.  After the movie I make him a bed in the living room.  I stand in front of the mirror watching the strokes of my brush against my teeth.  I enter my room and find him sitting on my bed. 

Why is he there?  I can’t understand.  He stands up and slides and when I go to slide on to my blankets, he mirrors me.  “Oh no!  This can not be happening” I tell myself.  He is not what I want or like and he is here in my sacred place; my bed, trying to tell me more painful bullshit.  I crawl to the other end of my bed.  After twenty some odd minutes he gives up on his quest for possibly more self gratification and leaves my bedroom, giving me a kiss on the forehead that sends my tired skin scurrying in all directions. 

After and hour of the brownies effects, Jim says he is going to sleep in my bed, that he is “too high” to handle.  I am too high myself to tell him how him sleeping in my bed makes me want to scream.  My bed is the only place on earth where I feel sanctuary.  Here, I control who gets to join me.  Not some uncharismatic, self absorbed boy who doesn’t care to know I write as well and even if he did, would always have a feeling in the back of his head, that he was a far better wordsmith than I.  Fuck him.  Jim had spoken earlier about how he was well versed in drugs.  He made himself out to be the guru of drug authority.  I’m not going to deny the brownies must have been laced.  The next morning Jim was in a state.  He claimed he couldn’t feel his arms or legs.  He whined and convulsed like a child.  I tried to coax some sympathy from my bones but I just kept thinking how pathetic he looked.  He was self involved, balding and now he couldn’t even handle his drugs.  It was clear we were about as suited as friends as Hitler and Gandhi.  I worked all that day with my unwanted drug hangover, while I could nauseatingly imagine him sweating out his drugs in my bed.  I came home late when I noticed his stuff was still there, I cringed.  I didn’t have the balls to ask him to leave, I couldn’t bear the thought of Megan thinking I had treated one of her friends badly.  So I decided to wait him out.  At this point I found him collapsed in a chair in the living room, mouth open catching still particles of dust that hung in the damp apartment air.  I gathered supplies in my room. 

Water, books and tissues, I even went as far as to barricade the already locked door with a over stuffed flower printed arm chair.  After twelve hours of self imposed isolation, followed by twenty minutes of ear pressing hard listening through the door for any enemy movement, I emerged.  The living room was empty and the bed I had made for him was made up it a haphazard style.  His bag that had blockaded the television, now just a figment of my memory.  I took a deep sigh and congratulated myself on being a mental survival expert.  Ten minutes later I was tapping my sock coated foot on the kitchen floor as I scooped spoonfuls of soothing Ben and Jerry’s classic vanilla ice cream into my mouth. My eyes bobbled around the room until they came to rest on a unfamiliar object.  Reaching out I scooped up a heavy brown wallet and flipped it up to take a look.  The ape face staring back at me caused me to reflexively drop the Hempest wallet on the floor.  I paced the living room and wondered if people still felt that historical attachment to his identification and wallet.  It wasn’t but a moment after this hypothetical thought that the doorbell rang.