To Live and Die in Spring
by: Kevin Beljan
I can’t believe last night. At least I was smart enough to leave. I’m tired of coughing up every night the next morning. Wrapping two hands around my bathroom I seem to have caught the twenty-four hour flu. I’m coughing it up. I’m coughing them up. Or maybe I’m still shaded. I don’t remember eating anything with alphabet pieces. The porcelain reads ” PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” , and my face reads something like, “Death. Disarray. Dismal.” There goes Sarah and Jake out of my morning mouth. Exceptional acquaintances really, but they are being thrown up none the less. I think I saved their numbers in my phone, probably misspelled with wrong numbers. They were great people, forgettable people. To quote the Blood Brothers ” You met Jane four years ago today dancing at some vomit stained frat party”, I felt like this was how I met her. The whole courtyard was lined with drunks. Alumni of this lifestyle were riddled all over a campus who seemed to be sponsored by Budweiser. You could see all of their sunburnt faces. You could feel the sense of entitlement, you could grope the excitement, you could fuck the good time had by all. But it was her standing there that caught my eye the most. I was drunk beyond even my own known limitations when I thought she was talking to me. She wasn’t. It was a coincidence, a mistake. It didn’t matter though, she was almost as drunk as me and I must have looked cute with my double dog dare hair cut. I thought ” was she pointing at me?!”, but I guess I already knew the answer to that, she wasn’t. She was pointing at a Sigma or Beta, some dude with khakis, sperrys, and croakies. She was trying to tell her friend that he was there or something, maybe she had a crush on him, I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I was drinking free Natural Light out of a keg upside down as people counted. I must have looked pretty heroic to the other underage drunks that day, but that was besides the point. It took me less than a second to rationalize my behavior and even less time to start walking over to talk to some attractive girl who accidentally pointed at me. I apologized for the confusion and introduced myself as the most handsome man she had ever seen. She was smarter than most the girls I have ever encountered and what was worse was that she knew it. “I’ve seen better hair cuts, that’s for sure” not skipping a beat after I so pompously put myself out there. She introduced herself, her name was Carol. I really liked her name, it was the same as my grandmother’s. She said she went to the school I was visiting and I said I was just there to have fun with some friends. She said I was different from most the boys she met at her school and I just chalked it up to my arrogant and reckless behavior. I was wrong though, and I could see it in her eyes. We talked for hours, and we skipped watching the game. I was too loaded to have school spirit. We met a nice couple who were still tailgating and they invited us to come and join them because I’m sure we looked lost or at the very least drunk. We had nothing better to do so we joined. They looked a little bit like us that day, all goofy and slightly awkward. I imagine time was a contributing factor. We knew each other so briefly that we really didn’t know what to say or why we were saying it, they had been together so long they acted the same way. Maybe I wrote them off as played out, I didn’t like to believe people could be in love that long. The two older people commented that we looked like we went together well. What did they know though, they just met us. Maybe they were just trying to see themselves in us, or maybe I secretly wanted to see us in them. They didn’t look like they had much, but they smiled at each other often. They also had Jim Beam. Carol went to the bathroom ( girls go there often sometimes for reasons unknown) and I sat talking to the man in the relationship. “You’re a good young man son” said the man, I must have said a few random drunken things, or maybe he thought my hair cut was cute too. ” I think you could have something special with that young lady young lad” said the man, I was just thinking, ” why the fuck is he saying this?” I guess he just had my best interests at heart, or he had a few too many long necks. He said we looked real comfortable around each other, he said he could tell we enjoyed each other’s company. I wasn’t sure how he saw this but I was pissed that I could be seen through. We discussed this and that over shots of bourbon, he told me about his glory days, I listened like an asshole teenager, half-heartedly, pretending to care. I couldn’t wait for her to get back, it was eerie. Maybe I was just fragile or maybe I was just naive. I let her in quite easily, as alcohol consumption goes up, logic and long term thinking go down. Carol had come back, looking slightly different, she must have reapplied some makeup or whatever it is girls do with all the tubes of gunk in their purses. She asked what we were talking about and where his wife had went and I said “Nothing” to both of the questions, we moved on. By this time the game was over and I was thoroughly tanked. Don’t let my state confuse this situation though. Drinking doesn’t cause anyone to do anything, but I mention it to say that it twisted my arm. She smelled nice, like couture fashion and daises, and we left the old man thanking him for the hospitality. Neither of us could shut up about whatever subject came up so we went for a walk to allow distance to compensate for the time it takes to say so many foolish things. It was on this walk where we came upon a bench. ” They say if you kiss on this bench that you’ll get married to whoever you do it with” she said, she looked at me and saw the slight fear in my eyes. I could tell she wanted to kiss there no matter if either of us believed in fate or magic or whatever that damn bench did to get that reputation. I liked her though, deep down, and I didn’t want to admit it, but this person had changed my life. She said it was fine if I didn’t want to and said she’d understand (lie). I, being privy to this sort of trick that women use, called her bluff and sat down. It was there we had a Las Vegas style wedding. There was drinking and then there was the kiss. One kiss changed my entire insignificant little life. It was on that bench I decided to test the power of love and challenged it to make good on it’s reputation if it dared. We walked back to an all girls dorm, she was very happy for what I did; I knew I was going to get some sort of action. Don’t get me wrong, that wasn’t my entire intention, and I definitely said a lot of things I meant. I did really like her. So after the bench it was her place. Drunk, sloppy, awkward, and long. This was the kind of sex you remember yet don’t remember. This was the kind that found me beside her the next morning naked piecing together my evening with a hundred missed calls from friends concerned I got arrested again. I wasn’t embarrassed. She took me out to go meet her friends at brunch, they were pretty good people, all be it, sort of dreadful looking. I didn’t eat anything, I’m not big on breakfast. Instead I just had water and entertained them with my absurd musings and ramblings that I don’t even understand at times. She dropped me off with my brother who gave me a look that said ” I’ve had better” crossed with ” You dirty dog you!” I kissed her on the mouth and she got my number. This is how I started a strange love affair. This was how I had stolen the heart of a random party goer. This was how a series of given started. This was where regret and longing to be loved collided. This was how I met Carol. This was how she took a little piece of my heart, and how I took a lot of hers.
