The Insisters could have been a lot cuter, but they had more
tattoos than any of the local dudes, which made them semi-sexy, I suppose, and
I liked how skinny they were. There isn’t that much to do around here except
eat junk food, and most of the local dudes are like obese. I didn’t like the
music very much, but I liked that it was so loud that Alykzandra couldn’t hear
a word the pair of Privilege dudes who tried to hit on her after the fourth
song were saying, and I could tell she thought they were hot. At my school it’s
like a status thing to date a Privilege dude because he has to drive 12 miles
each way to see you.
The group didn’t play very long because the guy with the big
guitar with four strings passed out and had to be like carried off stage. They
announced that he had the flu, but Alykzandra, who likes to pretend she knows
everything about everything, snickered and said he’d probably OD’d. I wasn’t
sure what that meant, and I don’t think Britt did either, but we both pretended
to, and then the lame warm-up band came back out and started playing all the
songs they’d sung before, and they weren’t any better the second time. In fact,
they might have been even suckier, so when this dude with a really cool tattoo
on his neck — a dotted line and the words Cut Here — asked us if we’d like to
meet The Insisters we said why not. We didn’t want to appear like over-eager.
It was kind of fun going backstage. I’d been to the Crest
around a million times, but never been back there. The Insisters dressing room
I guess you’d call it had a big table with lots of sandwiches from Jimmy Johns
and big bottles of Coke and Sprite and whatever. I was hungry, but it looked
like somebody had put a cigarette out in one of the sandwiches, and there was a
syringe on top of another one, and one of the Insisters came over looking like
he might have the same flu as the passed-out one, and put his arms across Britt
and Alykzandra’s shoulders. Totally like entitled, even though he looked a lot
older close up than on stage! It was like I wasn’t even there. His speech was
all like slurred. He asked if they wanted to party, and I was hoping Britt
would say no way so she could drive me home and I wouldn’t have to see that Uber
guy again, but she let Alykzandra speak for her, and Alykzandra said, “Why not?”
like it was a really clever or whatever.
I didn’t know what to do. The dude hadn’t actually invited
me, just Britt and Alykzandra. I thought he probably wouldn’t mind, especially
if he got a good look at Alykzandra’s skin, but what if he did? It would be
more like humiliating than I could bear. So I was relieved when the Cut here tattoo dude asked if I wanted
to do some smudge. He was actually better looking than the actual Insister guy.
I didn’t know what smudge was, but it didn’t really matter at that point. Eat
your heart out, Alykzandra!
He said his name was Venom, but that I could call him Ven. He
wanted to go back to my place. I told him I didn’t have a place yet, and that I
lived with my dad. He took a long hard look at me and asked how old I was. I
told him, and it seemed to like excite him Maybe somebody will be able to
explain to me why old dudes like really young ones when the young ones probably
don’t even know how to like do it yet. But whatever. I wondered when we were
going to do the smudge, or if that had been like a “come-on.”
We went back to the Ramada Inn — gee, how did I know they’d
be staying at the only classy motel in town? — and went up to his room. I’d
expected it to look like my little brother who stayed with my mom’s — like a
hurricane or whatever had hit it — but it was like totally anal, everything in
its place and a place for everything. Maybe they hadn’t been in town long
enough to like trash it. The weird thing is that there was little model train
set up on the little table where you’re supposed to eat or whatever, and Ven
wanted to show it to me. It didn’t look that impressive — nothing like the one
that big department store whose name I forget had in its front window last
Christmas in Yankton. Ven was so proud of it his eyes were like glistening, and
that freaked me.
“You don’t like model trains?” he said, like it was the
weirdest situation he’d ever been in. “Wow, I’ve been like totally into them
since I was like maybe seven.”
I said maybe I’d better get home since it was a school night
and everything, and my dad would be stressing. He didn’t like protest because
he wanted to have weird sex with me or whatever, but because I wasn’t
interested in his stupid train set. The third or fourth hottest girl at Bolsinger High is supposed to get wet over a model train set? Hello? But who’d want to have weird sex with
somebody so stupid as to believe that Friday’s a school night?
I’m telling you all this, but not Britt and
certainly not Alykzandra. They both claimed to do stuff with the Insister dude
that I don’t even want to repeat here, so I didn’t really have a choice but to
say that me and Ven got majorly kinkier than either of them, for hours. Alykzandra
looked at Britt and said, “I like so don’t think so, since I looked out the
window and saw you getting in Tim Pritchett’s taxicab at like 11.” I said maybe
she’d been like hallucinating, and Britt, bless her heart, said, “God knows I was!”
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