Ain't Life Grand? (part 1)

The boy wasn’t paying attention to where he was going because his attention was on a little device in his hand. The little device was showing him the phrase, “r u out yet? lets go 2 nick’s”

What that actually meant was, “Are you out of your class yet? If so, let’s go to Nick’s English Pub.” But the person who made the phrase appear on the boy’s phone didn’t have the time to make all those extra letters appear. He was too busy pushing buttons on a little device in his hands, which made images of soldiers kill each other on a screen across the room.

The girl wasn’t paying attention to where she was going either. Her attention was on her her own little device, which was pretty much the same as the boy’s. She was busy using the little device to send a message to every one of her friends, as well as anyone else in the entire world who might be interested. Her message said, “OMG just bombed a test in psych lol. Cant wait 2 go out wit my gurlz!”

What her message, which was now visible to most of the world’s population, but more immediately to the 1227 people whom she regularly sent messages like this to, actually meant was, “Oh My God, I probably just failed an exam, and I am laughing out loud (which she was not). I’m excited to go to Nick’s English Pub with my friends.” Most of the 1227 people who saw this message promptly ignored it, while 3 others “liked” it, which is the modern version of congratulations. Those three were the two friends she referred to, and a guy she hadn’t spoken to for over a year.

As I said, the boy and the girl were not paying attention to where they were going. As a result, they walked right into eachother, and they both dropped their little devices.

“Oh, sorry…” mumbled both, as the boy knelt down and picked up both devices. He handed her device to her. “Thanks,” she said. Then they kept walking, in opposite directions, without another word.

The boy then promptly made a phrase appear on his friend’s little device: “4sho. i just ran into sum girl lol”

About that time, the girl was telling 1227 and the whole world this: “Just ran into a boy, such a klutz lol”

The boy and the girl were probably soul mates.

***

Later that night, the boy found himself standing at the bar at Nick’s English Pub. The place was brightly lit, with people on all sides of the laminated cherry wood in the middle of the huge upstairs room. It was noisy, and crowded, and there were girls all over the place. They were laughing in groups at the tables around the edge of the room. They were standing and flirting with guys at the bar. They were dancing together by the jukebox. He was waiting on a pitcher of beer for him and his friends, and he noticed a girl with a pretty head of blonde hair staring down at a device in her hands. The hair was all he could see, because she was looking straight down. Her long-island iced tea was set down in front of her, but she didn’t see it.

The boy waved his hand down where the girl could see it, and the girl looked up. At first the girl looked annoyed, and that’s how the boy recognized her. Then the girl smiled wide. The boy hadn’t noticed that the girl was very attractive when they had crashed into each other the first time. Anyway, the boy liked it when the girl smiled.

“Your drink is there.” Said the boy, while he pointed to it.

“Thanks,” said the girl. Then she grabbed it off the bar and took a sip from the straw. He was still looking at her.

“Didn’t we crash into each other on campus earlier?” the boy asked her, knowing full well that they had.

“Well, you crashed into me.” Said the girl.

She was still smiling, and just at that moment the boy’s pitcher came, and distracted both of them. He picked up the pitcher.

“Well, I hope I crash into you again some time.” Said the boy. He smiled at her and she smiled back.

“Me too,” said the girl, and then they both walked away, in opposite directions, to rejoin their friends.

***

They did crash into each other again. This time it was on the other end of the bar, where the girl was drinking a shot of tequila with her friends, and the boy was making the jukebox play a song called “suspicious character.” They lyrics started like this: I like all the girls, and all the girls like me.

The boy thought these lyrics fit him well, and as far as I can tell, they did. After he made the jukebox put those words in everybody’s ears, he picked up his little device from his pocket, and sent the lyrics as a message to all 849 of the people he regularly sent messages to. Soon the boy would send messages to 850 people, because he would send them to the girl too. The girl’s messages would go to him, too. He was the 1228th person she would send messages to. Both of them read every one of each other’s messages for a long time, because they also suspected that they were soul mates.

The girl heard those lyrics for the first time when the boy put them on. She started dancing a little bit and even singing after the lyrics repeated a few times. They repeated a lot in that song. She looked over at the jukebox and she saw the boy standing near it. He was looking down at his little device, sending the lyrics of the song to 849 people.

“Hey,” she said to him, “did you put this song on?”
“Yep,” said the boy, “you like it?”
“Yeah,” she was smiling again. The boy really liked it when she smiled.
“I’ve never heard it before,” she said, “who’s it by?”

He told her it was a band called The Blood Arm, and they continued to talk for a few minutes. He made her smile a few times, so when he asked for her name, she told him. Then she told him that she had to go back to her table with her friends. She asked him if he had a “Facebook,” which is the medium through which the boy and the girl sent their messages out to the world. He said yes, and she grabbed his little device as made it so that she could get his messages, and he could get hers.

This is how people get acquainted at universities. They were now officially “friends.”

***
An hour later the boy and the girl were together again at the bar. This time taking a shot together, again it was tequila. They kept talking, and they laughed a lot. After two more shots of tequila together, one of the boy’s friends appeared, and told him that their group was leaving, headed to a different bar. They wanted to leave because there weren’t any girls talking to them, though they didn’t say that. The boy said he would meet them there.

After one more shot, the girl’s friends all came over and told her it was time to go. They were going to a different bar also. They wanted to leave because they didn’t want the girl getting into trouble with the boy, though they didn’t say that. The girl didn’t want to go either. She had to go, in the end, because her friends would leave without her otherwise.

“I guess I gotta go…” she said, looking disappointed.
“It’s okay,” he told her, “I’ve got your number, I’ll make sure we crash into each other again.”

She smiled again and hugged him very tight, and then walked off to join her friends, who were already headed toward the door. On her way out, she looked back and blew him a kiss. He smiled at her and turned back to the bar.

***

The boy didn’t leave to meet his friends just yet. He ordered a pint of beer and peered around the bar. It was even more crowded than before. When his beer came, he closed his tab and left the bartended a $12 tip, one for each drink he bought. He was feeling quite drunk, but he was used to that. This was Thursday night, and already the second time he had been out to the bars this week. He wandered over to where he and his friends had been sitting, only to find it occupied by a group of girls. His jacket was still on the chair that one of the girls was sitting in. He walked up to the table, by the chair his coat was on.

“Hey, sorry, can I get my coat from behind you?” said the boy.

She turned to him, with a confused and annoyed look, “What?” she said, almost disdainfully.

“My coat,” he said nonchalantly, “it’s on the chair behind you.”

She looked back, “Oh sorry,” she said, with much less derision in her voice, and she laughed a bit nervously.

He picked it up.

“Thanks,” he said, “You girls got here fast, my friends just left a minute or two ago.”

He took a drink of his beer.

“Oh,” said the girl. She turned back to her friends and laughed a bit, as if the boy was no more than a strange interloper.

“Well, have a good night,” he said as he walked away. He was suddenly much less jolly. He hated when girls treated him like that. She’s just a brat, he told himself, she thinks she can treat people like dirt, and she’s not worth any amount of thought. This didn’t cheer him up. He finished the last half of his beer, and he decided it was time to move on. He went down the stairs (the bar was on the second story of a building downtown), and out the door. He pulled out his box of cigarettes, and as he was taking one out he surveyed the scene in front of him. He saw a line outside of Kilroy’s, people walking each way down the street, and two other guys standing to the side, smoking cigarettes and talking. He put the cigarette in his mouth and replaced the box in his pocket. He reached for his lighter, felt it in his pocket, but he didn’t take it out.

“Hey guys,” he said as he walked up to the two other smokers, “one of you guys got a light I can use?”

“Yeah,” said the one with the beard and long hair put up in a loose fitting knit cap, “here you go.”

The boy did this all the time. It was a great way to get into conversations with strangers, especially when he didn’t have anyone else to talk with.

“Thanks,” said the boy. He lit his cigarette and handed the lighter back. “You guys havin’ a good night?”
“Yeah, man,” said the other smoker, “just kickin’ off the weekend.”

***

Meanwhile, the girl and her friends had made it to Kilroy’s Sports Bar (everyone just called it Sports). It was way too crowded here. Everyone was packed in shoulder to shoulder, it took at least 15 minutes for anyone to get to the bar for a drink, even longer if the buyer didn’t have breasts. There were no places to sit, and just getting from one end to the other took a lot of pushing and shoving. It was certainly a fire hazard.

“Ugh this is lame,” said the girl to her friends.
“What?” shouted the nearest friend.
“This sucks!” she yelled, “Let’s go back to Nick’s!”
“No!” shouted a second friend, “we’re going upstairs to dance!”

So they slowly proceeded to cut through the crowd, towards and finally up the stairs, then through another crowd before they finally found where anyone was dancing. The dance floor was pretty crowded too, but the girls just started dancing toward the edge of the pack. It wasn’t long before a pair of boys came up and asked the girl and one of her friends to dance. That was usually how it worked, because her other friend was not nearly as attractive as she was.

“Um, no thanks,” said the girl, as if she was surprised to be asked.

Truth be told, she wasn’t at all surprised. She always got asked to dance. She was beautiful. She was only five feet tall, with a voluptuous, curvy figure, but not even a bit of excess weight. She had curly blonde hair, perfectly tanned skin, bright green eyes and pouty red lips. She was, as the boy she crashed into would describe her the next day, a “dime-piece.” A dime-piece is a girl who rates a perfect 10/10 for attractiveness.

The boy who had asked her to dance looked disappointed. The girl hated making people sad.

“I was actually going to get a drink. Wanna come with me?” said the girl with her bright smile.

Of course he would. And when they finally made it to the bar about ten minutes of boring small talk later, he bought her the Long-Island Iced Tea that she wanted. They made their way out of the mob around the bar, and talked for another minute, and then she excused herself to find her friends. They were still dancing, but she didn’t feel like trying to get through the other dancers to get at them. Instead, she reached for the little device in her back pocket, and made a message appear on the little device belonging to the boy back at Nick’s.

“OMG Sports is sooo lame. U still @ Nicks?”

***
The boy didn’t notice that his little device was waiting to deliver the message. It was too noisy where he was. As it turns out, the boy was not still at Nick’s, he had joined up the other two smokers, and they had decided to go drink at the Video Saloon (aka the Vid). They were currently playing a game of cut-throat, which is a three player variation of billiards, in which each player tries to eliminate the other two. As it turns out, all three of them were quite drunk, and so it was becoming a very long game of Cut-Throat, and it was extended even longer because all three repeatedly left the table to go play their favorite songs on the jukebox.

The boy missed his shot and headed over to the jukebox, to make sure that the song, “No Rest For the Wicked,” by a band called Cage the Elephant, would be the next song played, after Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” ended. A girl was standing next to the jukebox, and when he finished giving his command to the jukebox, he turned to her, and she looked right at him.

“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” she answered back with a smile.
“Can I ask your opinion on something?” he asked her seriously.
“Um, I guess,” she said, still smiling, but looking a bit confused.
“What do you think of my sweet moves?” he asked, and instantly clapped his hands and spun a 360 degree pivot, and then thrust his hand up and pointing to the left, imitating a Michael Jackson dance.

“Oh, wow,” she said, laughing so hard that she almost spilled her drink, “your pretty amazing.”

“Thought so,” he said, and he picked up his beer and took a little sip, “I got some skills.”

“Oh yeah,” she agreed with a roll of her eyes, “you should teach me how to get down like that.”

“Wish I could…” he said, with a false grimace, “but you gotta be born with skills like this.”

The whole conversation was sarcastic and pointless, but it was making them both laugh. The boy liked making girls laugh. I think that’s why girls liked him so much. They kept the conversation going for another few lines, and then he told her he had to get back to the billiards game, which he had completely forgotten about. She told him okay, but to come and find her later so they could have a drink together.

The boy went back to the pool table to find it occupied by new players, and his two new smoking buddies were nowhere to be found. He decided he wanted another cigarette, so he pulled one out and headed outside. There were plenty, literally dozens, of people out there smoking for him to have a conversation with, but instead he just leaned against the cold brick wall and took in the scenery. A huge number of people gathered around the entrances to the Vid and Brother’s Bar & Grill next door. They were smoking and joking and having a blast. The same was going on across the street at the Bluebird Bar, and down about a block at Sports. As he looked across the street saw Rocket’s Pizza-by-the-Slice next door to the Bluebird, and suddenly thought that a slice of pepperoni pizza might be the greatest thing in the world.

The boy crossed the street, quickly, and stepped up onto the sidewalk. He was right in front of Rocket’s when he heard someone yell his name from the Bluebird. He looked back and saw his friends who had left him back at Nick’s, and he was about to yell back to them, when he crashed head-on into a girl playing with a little device in her hands.

It was the same girl he ran into earlier that day.