I Looked Around.
Blackouts happened to me frequently during my senior year of college. So when I went home to explore my new abode and started that exploration at Barry’s Bar, I blacked out before I ever saw my new apartment.
When I woke up, I was in a twin bed three feet from the front door, and that door was opening. Larry walked in, cigarette dangling, jangling loudly with keys and wearable chains.
My head felt like a boulder. I had no idea where I was, let alone where I might find my cigarettes. Or my clothes.
I looked around.
Other than the twin bed where Larry and I slept, there was a pile of clothes on the floor – ah! there were my jeans! – and a two-drawer nightstand that doubled as a place for an ashtray. The door opened into a two-tier wire shelving unit that looked large enough to maybe hold a loaf of bread.
A black and white TV with rabbit ears sat there; we’d moved up in the world. We had a TV.
The toilet flushed from somewhere nearby. But Larry was standing right next to the bed. I sat up, naked, and startled as a complete stranger walked out of the bathroom at the foot of the bed.
There was no door on the bathroom – just an open doorway. He just appeared.
The stranger held a cigarette between stubby fingers, which he waved briefly as he dipped his head beneath wavy black hair, averting his eyes from my bareness.
“Hey,” the man grumbled. He was a brooding type, barely older than me. But his face was hard, his hands calloused, black oil under his nails. Still, he was the youngest person I’d met in Larry’s world.
Larry laughed when he saw my jaw drop. “That’s my brother, Danny,” he said. He called after the man: “Danny, Kirsten; Kirsten, Danny.”
Larry used my name.
But I couldn’t see Danny anymore. He’d disappeared around a corner into a place I mistakenly believed was another room.
From the bed I could see the door-less bathroom to my left and a “hall” straight ahead, about eight feet long with a 24-inch window’s worth of sunlight. At the end of the eight feet, there was a two-person fold-out chair, folded out with a pillow on it.
Apparently that fold-out chair was Danny’s bed.
Danny came back around the corner, grumbled something, and blithely ducked out the front door, a cloud of cigarette smoke trailing behind him. The hallway was blacker than my boots.
After Danny left, I checked out the very, very tiny bathroom. As I moved away from the toilet, Larry slid past me into the bathroom, dropping ash onto my nakedness and snickering as he brushed it off.
I begged: “Diet Coke?”
“In the kitchen!” Larry announced, as if I would know where a kitchen might be.
I wandered into the space where Danny had disappeared, my head pounding. Around the corner was a rusty sink, a two-burner stove with crumpled clothes piled on top, and a dorm-sized refrigerator underneath.
Danny slept in the kitchen.
I opened the dorm-sized refrigerator. I found a nearly empty jar of mayonnaise and a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke lying on its side.
I guzzled my caffeine straight from the bottle, ignoring my surroundings. Once I got my head cleared and un-parched my throat, beer was sure to follow.
I was home.
