I Need to Talk to Max!
So I didn’t go to the river with Jeff. I went, instead, to an enormous last-day-of-school party. I was moving 300 miles away and this was my last day to party with my best friends.
I don’t even remember who was there – except for Mickey and Max, neither of whom were my friends.
I remember drinking lemonade mixed with whiskey in the school parking lot. They called it “Rockadade,” which sounded great to me. My head was spinning when I got to the house – whoever’s house it was – but I started drinking beer immediately. I equated “best time in the world” with “completely obliterated.” And like any good addict, I drank fast, just in case it ran out before I got my share.
I remember someone chanting – too late – “Whiskey on beer, never fear. Beer on whiskey, mighty risky!”
The chant implied that I was going to be sick, so I went to lie down.
I was sprawled, immobile, on a pile of coats on a bed when Mickey wandered into the room and closed the door. Mickey and I had a class together, but we’d never talked.
Without a word, Mickey dragged me to the edge of the bed and pulled off my shorts. He was unzipping his fly when – unbelievably – someone knocked on the door. Mickey yanked me off the bed, threw me in a closet, tossed my shorts at me, and shut the closet door. Then he left.
I was 15. My thoughts? He should have kissed me first.
Whenever I hear the words “me too,” I wonder whatever happened to Mickey.
Somehow I stumbled into a bathroom to vomit – and didn’t stand up again for the rest of the party. My “friends” didn’t seem to know I was missing. Probably I was there for hours.
Finally, someone came in and I blurted, “I need to talk to Max!”
Max was a guy with long, blond hair who hailed from the exotic state of Florida. I’d been following Max around school like a lost puppy for two years. We’d said maybe six words to each other but I’m pretty sure that every time he turned around at school, I was standing 10 feet behind him.
Another guy walked in and saw me cemented to the toilet. “Where’s Max?” I wailed. The guy ran away.
Several more people tried to use the bathroom without success, each time confronted by me raising my face off the bathroom tile just long enough to slur, “I need Max!” and then pass out again.
Eventually Max felt compelled enough to visit me during my finest hour. He stood there, looking at the ground. Overwhelmed with gratitude for his presence, I pushed my puke-coated hair out of my face and told him that I was never going to see him again because I was moving. I may have declared my undying love.
Perhaps I expected him to kiss me goodbye. Instead he said, “Okay. Well goodbye.” We did not touch.
I don’t remember how I got home, but I remember that my mother – somehow – knew that I had been drinking when I got there.
“How much did you drink?” she cried, appalled.
If someone had paid me a million dollars, I couldn’t have said how much I drank that day.
“Three beers,” I told her. This later became my standard response.
For the first time, I decided not to drink alcohol ever again. It had ruined a perfectly wonderful party! And I didn’t drink whiskey again for many years.
But I said “never again” a thousand more times before I actually stopped drinking.