Blue eyes that could pierce diamonds and a smirk so sharp it could make the dullest of platitudes seem retroactively witty. Not that she ever stooped to utter anything dull. She wore a pink dress like a girl from the 50’s who did things Her Way, subtly brazenly original without being cocky about it. And most importantly, she kept looking at me. Or did I keep looking at her? Anyway, I blew it. Again. Of course. I always do.

I planned what I would say, and then, in a personally unprecedented move, ten minutes (one Mississippi times sixty times ten) later, I actually said it.

She was sitting next to me when my grandmother, for reasons still unclear, handed me a full bottle of wine. I then turned and reached out to hand it to her as a joke, she smiled, I put it down next to us, she said something like “Sure, can’t turn down something like that.” I smiled. I went back to reading Hunter S Thompson. I waited too long to respond, so something needs to HAPPEN before I can say something to her again.

You should take the wine. My family is really annoying when they’re drunk. Are you in this frat with my sister?

Everyone stands up to watch the lame Over The Years slide show of my sister’s lame frat and then everyone goes outside to take lame pictures to be shoved into the abyss of Facebook. Everyone except me, and her. And an elderly couple. By now her free spirit had moved her to standing about ten feet away, and the couple was about nine feet away, so I couldn’t talk to her without dragging those helpless old people into it or at least making them acutely aware of my strange blunder of seduction.

The elderly couple left. She walks past. This is it.

She walked past too fast.

She came back. This is it. For real. Do it, you pussy.

“You should take the wine.”

She’s caught of guard, but she smiles, I can’t tell if it’s just to be polite. “My family is really annoying when they’re drunk.”

“No, that’s ok, I have enough of my own.”

“Are you in this frat with my sister?”

“You mean sorority?”

“Yea”

“I guess, who’s your sister”

“Meghan”

“…Maggie?”

I guess I was mumbling, I didn’t want to seem like I was too into the conversation or anything, like I cared about who my sister was or anything.

“Meghan.”

“Oh, Meghan.Yea, but I’m a sophomore, so I’ll be here forever.”

I’m also a sophomore, except I kinda dropped out of school, but I got into a good school too and I’m your age and by now it’s too late to figure out an orderly way to make you aware of these things, the pause has been too long.That’s it, she flutters away.Don’t use words like that Kevin, she’s a person you white male writer fuckwad.

You mean sorority? She corrected me. She didn't get I was an aloof genius poking fun at and dismissing her precious ridiculous gendered institution. Maybe it was for the best.

And then, like a movie, she was the friend Meghan texted to come play pong at her frat. I knew she would be, too. The universe was pulling all its strings it could for me to lay everything I had on her, but I had nothing.

I hit the pong ball over the pipe for an instant win, my half sarcastic arms in a V. My "YEAH" seems to annoy everybody. "I DID IT.....Right? I GOTVITVERTHE AND INTO THE CUP". I skipped over the spaces and the word “pipe.” I talk like that when I'm not concentrating on my enunciation. Takes a lot of mental energy to properly enunciate. If I make it to old age I'll probably get deeper into the depths of dementia than ever thought possible. "I just saw a high ark." "I didn't see it." "We believe you." "Write your name on the wall." "Are we gonna keep playing?" "Yeah, he'll just write his name and we'll keep playing."

According to the rules, I had won the game for us. But I got more and more the sense that I was appeased, that no one really believes we won, that I won just for fun and now we're getting back to the real game. As it went along, I couldn't even convince myself that I had won.

Two champagne-drunk women way too old to be playing pong burst into the room and ask if we’re cool with them changing the music. They begin listing bands they’re thinking about playing. “Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Grateful Dead…” I say "yeah, play Sympathy for the Devil" someone else says "yeah, the Grateful Dead is good too." But the ladies just keep listing bands.They won’t stop, and they’re nearing a pressure point of the collective temper of those involved in our interrupted game of pong. By the time they get to B52, everyone practically yells in unison “Just do whatever!” The communal boredom with her repetitive questioning combined with this sudden jarring burst of enthusiastic noise obviously gave her the idea that B52s would have a huge positive response here, much bigger than, say, the Rolling Stones, and she left promptly to play them instead. Everyone else was fine with this error and its impending results. We were doomed to Rock Lobster and then, even worse, to what other terrible songs the B52’s have written that haven’t seen the light of radio.

After I fuck up again, I say “C’mon Meghan,” blaming my pong partner for what was clearly my fault. "It's getting old," my sister’s boyfriend Alex says, to me, in front of everyone. He doesn't say it loudly. Not passively, not aggressively, and everyone acts like they didn't hear it. I know, I know, I really should get around to killing myself, I've been putting it off for way too long.

I didn't speak, and felt like I looked noticeably sad, because I was. I had to be corrected in my joke making. Adults don't do that to socially competent adults, but to pathetic annoying little cousin tag along wannabes. But then, against all odds, Sympathy For The Devil came on. Suddenly, I was unstoppable.An unbelievable Olympic comeback, getting cup after cup. I was dancing the whole time, because it's one of the best songs of all time, not because I was being cocky. I suspect I was misunderstood.

I try to give Meghan and Alex the hint that I'm in love with their friend before leaving to be alone in my lonely lonesome loneliness but when Meghan says “she's cool” I just say “yeah” instead of a more pronounced “yes, she IS,” which probably would had done the trick. Doesn't matter.

They stole it. They took my book from me again. I was carrying it with me all day for a reason. What on earth would inspire this ass backwards helpfulness of taking my book and putting it in the room that I'm going to at the end of the night. I'm in a foul mood and my sister tries to guilt me into whatever by saying ‘the only reason you're here is because Alex is driving your parents home because everyone figured you wouldn't want to,’ so now everyone's upset because I'm not doing something I was never asked to do. I carried the goddamn chairs didn't I? I held up the goddamn Christmas tree. No gratitude, no appreciation. Everyone hates me and I hate myself. My grandmother talking normal but claiming drunk says she loves me.

I'm in a foul mood. I'm infuriated by every pause in this stupid ping pong game. Every time my sister holds on to the ball just to talk or my mom takes forever to comically grasp the ball I want to punch my hand through a wall. I start doing pull ups out of frustration, but I stop because people might think I'm trying to impress them.

“Why are you bringing a leather jacket,” they snickered, “it's going to be like 85 the whole time.”

Because I don't trust you.

Even in my leather jacket I'm near shivering on this sad foggy morning. Droves of stooges out to celebrate the completed loss of their $300 grand. No one is smiling. The seat-savers stare straight ahead with slight but firm frowns. We were all hoodwinked by the system's formalities at least one final time. Seats are disconcertingly full before 8am stumbles around, and Haley, a paid seat-saver, is nowhere to be seen. It's getting closer and closer to 8:30, the time Meghan got to leave her seat-saving job last year. Haley’s making $60, so at 8:30 that'd be $20 an hour. Christ, or did she say $50? Where are my grandparents? They were supposed to be here an hour ago and liberate me from this cold, moist chair-prison. I'm not going to be able to talk to Haley ever again. That was all I got and I butchered it. I had internal plans to find Haley groggy in the morning and say to her something like “if I asked for your number would you give it to me.” I'm really THAT bad at this shit. I throw my water bottle at a big sign and it makes a huge gong boom sound.

After a couple hours I’m finally freed from my chair when the whole family arrives.We didn’t bring enough chairs, so two people are going to have to sit on the floor.My dad asks “why don't you let your mother sit?” Always chipper Alex says “we can sit on the floor, we’re young!” I walk away.There’s gotta be a piano in one of these Capitol Buildings they have littered all over the place.

A girl stops me.

“You seem like the only normal person here. I hate to do this, but do you have weed? Cigarettes? I’m sure you feel my pain.”

“I don't smoke.”

“Fuck.”

She walks away.

I'm wearing a t shirt with a skinny tie over it. My hair is half blonde, and not the good half either. I'm listening to Radiohead on huge around-the-ear headphones and wearing women's designer sunglasses. I'm desperately trying to show whoever is keeping score around here that I'm not on Team Normal.

After banging out another Moonlight Sonata in the unlocked basement of a gaudy temple of education, I make my way back to the Great Lawn. The director of religious and spiritual life starts her speech by apologizing to the Native Americans who owned this land. Every speech in America should begin with the acknowledgement of the innate theft, rape, and murder that allowed said speech to take place.

Before I was rudely hauled off to this terrible place, I texted my sister: “I don’t know if I can handle sitting through a David Brooks speech, Meghan. I think it might make me a noticeably worse person. "She thought I was kidding. Anyway, it turns out I couldn’t possibly be a worse person. I knew David Brooks as the articulate, almost-convincing, homophobic op-ed spewing dunce that the New York Times can point to and say, “look, we’re not all biased liberals!” His commencement speech was by far what I was dreading the most about this otherwise breezy trip. He ended up giving a lovely, insightfully human speech about freedom versus commitment after a surprisingly incisive intro mocking formulaic commencement speeches and college students.

“You tell your friends you like Kendrick Lamar, but secretly you like Jason Mraz… two paths ahead of you. One leads to a soul-crushing job as a cog in the corporate machine. The other leads to permanent residence in your parents’ basement… these addresses have a certain formula. The school asks a person who has achieved a certain level of career success to give you a speech telling you that career success is not important. Then we’re supposed to give you a few minutes of completely garbage advice: Listen to your inner voice. Be true to yourself. Follow your passion. Your future is limitless. First, my generation gives you a mountain of debt; then we give you career-derailing guidelines that will prevent you from ever paying it off. I especially like all the Commencement addresses telling graduates how important it is to fail…”The second half of his speech essentially said that the freedom to find what you truly love is not an end, but a means to making a commitment to what you truly love.Honestly, not bad for someone who just wrote an article about how gay people are too intolerant of people who don’t tolerate gay people.

Single, distant, pathetic female woo's shoot out of the audience like deflated balloons for each name called.

Their outfit looks ridiculous; baggy robes and square hats. "Your outfit looks ridiculous." Meghan doesn't hear. Good. "Shut up, Kevin." I say at the same volume. No one hears

I retire to my sister’s sorority house, A Couple Greek Letters, to read and take a nap. I elect not to ask the laughing sweatpants in the middle of the room if Haley is around.

I slip into eye contact and she smiles, but she has the uniform of a waitress on. She works here. Doesn't count. I say nothing. This is the second time this has happened in 15 minutes.

Alex tells us a story at dinner of his “hilarious” cousin who always makes a toast where he says “To my success!” Naturally, this is the funniest thing my parents have ever heard.

“To my success!” “To my excess!” "I love that!" “To my excess success!”

To your success

No, to my success

Hahahah

Hahaha

Hahahaha

HAHAHAJAHAHAHAHAHH

HAHA

HA

H

fuck this

Jesus God, twice in one dinner. They just made these jokes fifteen minutes ago. And yesterday. And the day before. To my success. To my EXcess. Roaring laughter all around.

House of cards is a terrible show. They turn all the lights off and use clunky shark metaphors to clue people in that they’re watching a serious drama. The worst part is that this works. They’ve fooled all the critics. No character development, Underwood’s schemes are nonsense, the dialogue is inhuman, and there are blatant production errors. They switch camera angles in the middle of a line, and at the second angle the mouths don’t match the words of the line. They figured they could fix everything in post and then they didn’t even bother, and no one cares. The show is mostly gratuitous scenes with the transparent sole purpose of revealing character traits that were already obvious from the start. Look, here’s Claire taking a leisurely jog through a graveyard. How cold-hearted!Look, here’s Claire firing people.How cutthroat! Secret plans are sold to the audience as genius that actually don’t make any sense at all. Frank threw a brick into his own house, and then publically blamed it on someone feuding with him, and then told that guy he’s feuding with that he threw a brick into his own house, all in the hope that that guy would then punch him in the face, and then that guy punched him in the face, and then Frank blackmailed the guy who punched him in the face into stepping down by threatening to go public with the face punch.Just dumb, dumb stuff, all with a bad fake southern drawl. Couldn’t make it halfway through the first season.

Alex begins ranting in praise of this poorly lit catastrophe of a television show, and as I begin to offer my response he cuts me off immediately to explain to me how compelling and just in-credible Kevin Spacey’s acting is. Just when you think Alex is about to switch adjectives to astounding, he uses that word again, spacing the ‘in’ from ‘credible’ longer than ever thought possible, creating an almost entirely different word.

Granny asks why don't I help Alex with the chairs after I already carried all four of them all the way last time. No sign of Clair. I mean Taylor. I mean Haley. And so it goes and such is life and on and on.

I justi don't knI want to kill myi think we should break up

I don't want a yoga lobotomy. I don't want zen. I want to stay out here on the suicide front, braving the elements, running straight ahead with a brick on fire in place of a head and intermittently collapsing on the ground in total despair and playing moonlight sonata during a lightning storm, using half articulate rage and vague indignant rebellion and self assertion, getting blown around by 100mph emotional whirlwinds of self doubt and apparent pariah status and enclosing ominous walls of systemic oppression and the tired nitpicking dreamdead fuckwad sitting at the front desk. Any victory is immense and gratifying and mine.Any failure is just how it goes. Any friendship or sexships formed are for novels. Everything is a story.

Impossible to live like that when your parents are involved, however.

The waitress was talkative. I wasn’t.

"You hardly touched your shake." "Yea...(I was too hungry to drink it, which is not a feeling I think anyone can relate to until it's actually happening, and it's almost unwaveringly forgotten as soon as it's finished happening. Then when I got my French toast it clashed with my milkshake and I recognized I'd be able to savor the taste of my gorgeous black and white malted milkshake much better after I finished eating and let my saliva wash out the syrupy crumbs for a minute, but I was full before I even finished the French toast, so there was no desire left to finish my food right then, let alone my milkshake. But my parents were still paying for it and it was still a good milkshake and I maturely looked beyond my current state and took initiative out of consideration for my future self and asked, unprompted, for a to-go cup so I can enjoy this elegant shaken milk sometime later if I somehow manage not to forget it in one of a quarter-dozen motel mini fridges)... Yea"

Who gives a shit. What’s the point.

“Why don’t we go kayaking like you said we would, it’s so nice out.”

“We’ll go tomorrow, it'll be beautiful tomorrow.”

“But it's already beautiful now.”

We did not end up kayaking at any point.

“God dammit I left my water bottle at that cabin when I went to return One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.I should have just stolen it.”

“That's not the conclusion to make,” says Alex.

I walk away abruptly but silently and not entirely without grace with Radiohead in my headphones and a hand touches my arm softly, and a warm but unfamiliar voice asks if I'm staying here or going back to a dorm tonight. Who is this person? How does she know who I am? What does she want to hear from me? "Uhh.. I'm staying at a.. Hotel." She smiles and responds in timely fashion "Good to get some real rest!" or something like that and walks away with a smile.

Walking around the campus, I am amazed by the homogeny.I had forgotten that all college kids look the same. Regardless of race or gender, regardless of whether they’re wearing sweatpants or khaki shorts, they all look like no sleep, too many textbooks, an untuned slightly small acoustic guitar, and a couple of pretty good jokes.

“Your parents are so cute. Your parents are adorable.” I hate them. Jesus did I say that out loud? I could hear the ‘th’ sound come out of my mouth, I certainly at least whispered it. Did anyone hear? No way to know. Radiohead blaring makes it harder to tell and I just write it off as more mundane depressing shit to add to the pile that Radiohead beautifully navigates.

“Are you coming back?” asks the lady at the desk.

“No.”

“My daughter has the hots for you.”

What the fuck? “Maybe.”

“She said you're her next husband”

Get me out of here.

There's no food or books in this store, it should be closed at once.

“There's books two stores away,” she said smiling.

I wasn't prepared for anyone to have heard my lunacy, let alone respond it

I smiled and nodded. "Oh, thanks."

“You want her to be one of those?” I ask my parents of their ogling of an ostentatious college degree frame. “Hang it in her office and every time someone comes in they hear a nasally voice shoot out of the trash can saying "I went to dart-mith."”

“Not her office.” “Your office?” “Her apartment or something.” “That's even more pretentious.” “Kevin, would you just.”

As I walk towards the car, the sound of a thousand starving rabid hyenas yell “NOO” in my direction, and a defensive rage immediately boils inside me. I wasn’t going to open the car door with the metal sign right next to it, and even if I did I wasn't going to hit the sign with the door, I'm not an ape. I have to suppress the thunderous, jarring I KNOW my stomach was preparing but it still comes out as an obviously annoyed “I Know.”

Janis Joplin looking girl turns and smiles at me when I ask Meghan how come she doesn’t like music after she elects to go to the bar without live music.Turn the corner and she’s gone.

I was whisked away to this quaint vacuum of Midwestern politeness to celebrate my sisters success of an institution I wholeheartedly rejected myself. I didn't even go to my own high school graduation. This is a vacation for them, but I hate this shit. My family’s entire arsenal of humor is that I don't like the taste of vegetables and I'm tall. “Want some spinach Kev? Ah-ha-ha-hoooo” go fuck yourself. These frilly ass restaurants keep putting syrup all over my meat. And the chorus concert, my dear god I bit my finger ‘til I bled. I've never done that before. How many cheeky 1800’s songs about drinking can you possibly endure before death by lack of stimulation. I said Hi but she looked away and I kicked the parking meter, but it was a plastic one and I couldn't kick it hard enough to hurt myself.

I thought I was here for the graduation, but I wasn’t.I thought there was some five day process to support my sister in, but there wasn’t. I quickly figured out that my parents just really like this place, and want to savor it all they can before my sister graduates and they have no excuse to come back. They’re not here for my sister, they’re here for the boring little Norwich Inn and its grumpy bartender.There was no thought put into my part in their little plans. They just made me take five days off of work so that I could be at their convenient disposal whenever they felt like having me exist at a certain place.

I felt trapped and disregarded, totally unwanted except for the vague 1950s idea of me as the brother of the graduate, the last die cast set piece needed to fulfill some image of a happy lobotomized nuclear family. I felt as if the ideal situation they wanted from me was my holing myself up in a cardboard box all weekend only to come out just in time for picture time wearing Nice Clothes, and that anything I had to say was rude and unwelcome in their world. The more I was dragged around at the whim of others, the more I felt like a rag doll that won’t sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, the more bitter I got and the worse things I had to say.

No Kevin, you are the worst person I know. You go into every situation thinking, ‘what can I get out of this.’ But you can't get anything out of it and it makes you miserable, so you take it out on those who are actually enjoying themselves because they're better at it. All you do is mock people, either silently or not, when you do happen to feel like talking, because their conversation doesn't live up to your 100% on Rotten Tomatoes black comedy dialogue that you somehow think your life deserves. Grow up. Get out of your own head.

The brakes are terrible; any time my father momentarily stops paying attention to the road and then looks up and realizes the cars in front of him are at a dead stop while he's cruising at a smooth 70, the brakes decelerate the car way too quickly, knocking my head into the soft back of the seat and causing a drop of my covered tea to hit my dark shorts.If the brakes worked the way they should, I would be flying out through the windshield, blissfully sailing into the ether with a smile on my jangled face, surrounded by a beautiful cloud of sparkling glass and the echoes of screams and crunched metal.

My father is getting annoyed with our expressed disappointment in his jarring driving style."I'll show you jarring" he says, without humor.

The cup holder is also too small.Why is the AC on?It’s not hot. Two thumbs down to this space age dipshit wagon, the ubiquitous white Honda CRV.

Home. Run up to the toilet, shit it all out, and off to band practice. Put off the suicide til later.

One and a half stars.