Indelible Laughter
It was a cloudy September morning in San Francisco and my body had decided that everything inside of it was poison. It was 8:34 a.m. on a Thursday and I was hungover at work, sitting behind my desk praying that my breath smelled like coffee and not vomit. It wasn’t very often that I was praying for coffee breath but, desperate times. The fluorescent lights were giving me a migraine and I wanted to wear my sunglasses, but I knew that wearing them inside would look suss as shit. As far as I could tell, only musicians got to wear sunglasses inside, and I wasn’t confident that telling my boss I can slay at Guitar Hero would grant me the right.
I was popping aspirin and splashing cold water on my face in the bathroom when a co-worker rushed into a stall, teary-eyed. I listened to her muffled sobs and contemplated what to do. I considered knocking on the door and saying something like, “Hello… you good fam?” I considered sliding her one of the edibles in my pocket. I considered emailing her a Sylvia Plath poem so that she could see how someone always has it worse. I considered what I would want someone to do for me if I were crying in a bathroom stall, so I left without saying a word and walked back to my desk. I’d been planning on hiding in the bathroom for the rest of the morning, reading movie reviews and scrolling through Instagram, in between vomit sessions, so, you’re welcome, Annie.
During my first hangover, I didn’t get out of bed for two full days. I stayed under the covers, throwing up in a trashcan, sleeping, and watching cat videos on YouTube. Sometimes it felt like I was doing all three things at once. The night before, I’d been at some rich kid’s party in the suburbs of the Bay. It was a Halloween party. This prissy girl who’d already been accepted to USC months before senior year even began—whose parents “donated” heaps of money to the school every year—had valet and a tough looking bouncer crossing his arms in front of her stupid house party. I threw the old-fashioned key to my banged up ‘96 Subaru at the kid wearing a black suit and tie. He caught it, hastily ducked into my dank-smelling shit hole, and drove it slowly down the block. A cheerleader pulled up behind me in a black Tesla. She was dressed like an angel and her friend who spilled out of the passenger-side door was dressed like a devil. The angel tapped me on the shoulder as I told the bouncer my name and let him stamp my wrist. “Are you supposed to be Charlie Chaplin?” she asked.
“La-di-da,” I said. I was wearing brown corduroy pants, a white button-down shirt tucked into my brown corduroy pants, a black vest over my white button-down shirt, a chunky blue tie tucked under my black vest, and a velvet hat. Picture a vaguely masculine Mary Poppins. “I’m Annie Hall,” I said. Clearly, the last Halloween party I’d been invited to involved an empty pillow case and asking strangers for candy. I noticed that neither the devil nor the angel were wearing costumes that covered their entire bodies, and neither of them were wearing ties. I admired the angel’s long legs and the devil’s long neck. I admired the way their tight costumes hugged their pale, delicate skin, and the way their long hair rolled easily off their shoulders. Suddenly, I felt horribly out of place. As I was planning my exit strategy—ask the bouncer to go find my car? run after the valet? slowly start backing away from everyone saying, “Sorry, sorry, sorry”—the angel took me by the arm. “I love it,” she said. “So vintage.”
I strolled into the house with the angel and the devil, offering to roll them a spliff and announcing that I could kick their ass at beer pong. They said their names were Amber and Alison. It wasn’t long before the house was packed, the music was loud, and kids were stripping and jumping in the pool. I was sitting on the couch smoking a spliff and drinking out of a forty when this kid named Toby sat dangerously close to me. Toby was the kid who picked his nose while giving book reports and who drooled too much during phys ed. Somehow, he’d convinced kids he was cool by high school, but he’d always be a drooling nose-picker to me. His pupils were hazy. He was so wet I almost thought he’d joined the other idiots who’d jumped in the pool, but from the smell of his ugly dinosaur onesie, I could tell that he was drenched in sweat. He draped his arm across my shoulder. I audibly gagged.
“Why aren’t you smiling?” he asked, poking me in the ribs. “It’s a party, aren’t you having any fun?”
“Toby,” I said, picking his arm off my shoulder as if I were picking up a rat by its tail. “I mean this in the nicest way possible: you smell like dog shit. Please, get your sweaty ass away from me and find some friends who are as equally fucked up on molly as you, so you can all be disgustingly overheated together.”
“Yo! You know this song?” he asked, pointing towards the ceiling. Before I could answer, he said, “Hey! Did you know that Pete and Amber are fucking in the pool house?” He laughed as if he’d said something funny.
“You remember the whole thing I said earlier?” I asked. “You know, about you being disgusting?” Finally, this girl in my second period English class saved me by yanking my arm and pulling me outside.
“Thanks,” I said as she took the spliff from me and took a hit.
“I gotchu,” she said, before handing it back to me and cannonballing into the pool. When she’d arrived, she was dressed like a bottle of sriracha, but now all she was wearing was her red shirt and some white boy shorts she picked up somewhere.
I kept smoking and found a half-empty bottle of cheap vodka near some Rainbow flip flops. I drank it while I watched this closeted girl who’d been sexting me the night before make out with Toby inside on the couch. I’d see her a few days later with her incredibly religious parents at some church fundraiser. I’d resist the urge to make fun of her for letting that drooling nose-picker touch her tits.
That’s when I heard people cheering.
I turned just as Pete was opening up the pool house door. I watched him slide on some ratty band tee and walk out to a crowd of cheering football players who were handing out high fives and “hell yeah, bros” as if they were throwing candy off a float in a Fourth of July parade. As Pete buckled his belt, I raised my vodka bottle in his direction. He nodded back. We’d spoken in passing. The last thing he’d said to me was “Pound it. I dig chicks too,” so make of that what you will. Pete and his friends wandered into the kitchen to take shots, tussling each other’s hair and laughing at nothing. I passed the bottle off to someone and walked around the pool towards the pool house, stepping over wet clothes and red solo cups. I sat on some ugly outdoor furniture and waited, smoking, while someone shot water through a pool noodle on the grass next to me.
After a long time, the pool house door slowly opened. Amber wearily made her way outside. One of her wings was bent, and her halo was crumpled and crooked. There weren’t any high fives or “hell yeah, bros” for her. There was just me.
After a long time, the pool house door slowly opened. Amber wearily made her way outside. One of her wings was bent, and her halo was crumpled and crooked. There weren’t any high fives or “hell yeah, bros” for her. There was just me. I watched her eyes dart back and forth across the yard before they caught mine. I offered her the spliff. She shook her head “no” and sat down on the ugly furniture next to me. We listened to the techno song that was blaring out of some massive speakers and watched drunk people almost drown for a while.
She adjusted her white dress, but it continued to sag. “What just happened?” she asked, turning towards me and wrapping her arms around her long legs.
I offered her the spliff again. This time she took it and stuck it between her lips. “Everyone’s been saying you fucked Pete in the pool house,” I told her, flicking my head towards the door she just came out of. She didn’t look. She didn’t say anything. She was silent, and I felt that I should fill the space between us. “Do you want me to grab your devil friend?” I asked. “Maybe you guys wanna like, I don’t know, compare notes about dick size or like…” my words felt hollow and weak as they fumbled out of my mouth, so I stopped trying to fill anything.
She took a long drag before quietly saying, “I can’t remember anything.”
I considered reaching out my hands towards her, gently, and brushing a stray strand of hair from her face. I considered marching inside and earning the nickname The Drunk Tie-Wearing Bitch Who Punched the Varsity Football Player at a Halloween Party.
I considered reaching out my hands towards her, gently, and brushing a stray strand of hair from her face. I considered marching inside and earning the nickname The Drunk Tie-Wearing Bitch Who Punched the Varsity Football Player at a Halloween Party. I considered calling 911. Instead, I said, “That’s some shit dude.”
I’d spend a lot of nights wishing I’d said something else.
She handed me back the spliff and stood up. “I think I’m gonna get out of here.”
“Can I drive you?”
She laughed to herself, maybe at the thought of driving around in my ugly-ass Subaru instead of her Tesla, or maybe at something else. “Nah, it’s chill,” she said. She began wandering through the backyard, down some hill towards the highway.
“Hey,” I called after her. “Valet and shit is that way.” I pointed back towards the house.
She looked through the glass pane, towards the boys taking shots. Now, Toby was tearing his shirt off like the fucking Hulk and Pete was taking pictures. We could hear their laughter all the way across the lawn. “I think I’m just gonna walk and find my car on my own,” she called back. I thought about running after her, but I didn’t. I sat there smoking until I knew I had to leave. I dropped the butt of the spliff in Pete’s tequila-filled shot glass as I left out the front door.
Six years would go by before I’d find myself hungover in San Francisco behind a desk in an office building. I arrived back at my desk, head swimming in nausea, I attempted to read through some emails and keep the grimace off my face. When I felt as if I were about to spew bile all over my coffee mug, notebook, and collection of pens, I stood up from my desk, snatched a box of tissues off my co-worker’s desk, and walked back towards the bathroom. Annie was still there, trying and failing to cry quietly. I stood there quietly for a long time, holding down the contents of my stomach. I listened to her sobbing. After I collected myself, I walked over to the stall she was in. I slid the box of tissues under the door and she went silent.
“Feel free to ignore me,” I said, “and I’ll take the hint and leave but… are you okay?”
She was quiet for a long time. I wished I had a spliff to offer her. She slowly opened the door. Her clothing was wrinkled, and her face was wet. She was holding the tissue box and using one to wipe her nose.
As we stood in the bathroom, congress was conducting a job interview with a rapist. He liked wearing black robes, drinking beer, and holding down young girls on unwashed sheets. Lindsey Graham was yelling at a brave college professor for telling the truth, and our president was stitching a new “Grab em’ by the Pussy Gang” letterman’s jacket.
“I get it.” I said.
“This whole thing just really brings up some bad memories,” she said. We stood in the bathroom for a long time. We didn’t say anything because we didn’t have to. When I rushed into an adjacent stall to vomit, Annie laughed. She laughed until she cried, and then she cried until I offered to buy her some coffee.
As I stood in line at Peet’s, drinking water, I wondered if Amber was watching C-SPAN somewhere, or if she was crying in some bathroom stall. I’d run into her a few years after the Halloween party, at a coffee shop in Oakland. I’d waved to her and she’d waved back. I’d stuck my nose back in my book, and when I’d looked up, there was a note next to my cappuccino. “He’s at Harvard studying law,” was all it said.
Anita Levin is a poet and essayist from San Francisco, California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Lifted Brow, The Lindenwood Review, Barnhouse, and Hypertext Magazine, among others. She has worked as a bookseller for an independent bookshop, a poetry editor for Jeopardy Magazine, and she currently works in publishing.
