Memoirs of an English Major

NOTE: This is the first draft and will be revised within the coming weeks. I just felt I needed to post the follow up part. I will revisit this next week, add some more, and tighten up the description.

Night Boat To Cairo

“All aboard, night boat to Cairo” - Madness

   After an event like that with Evelyn, there was only one thing that I could do : Take a couple of shots with a good friend and try to figure out what the hell just happened, making sure that I tell some one just to be certain it was all real. And that friend is Johnny Elboughs.

   I take a French approach to my friends. Sure, I know a decent amount of people and have many friends, but a select few I consider to mon ami’s, friends I would die for and, if told to, take whatever information they wanted to my grave. There are only five to six people on that list, and Johnny is one of them. He’s one of the few people I value their opinion on a situation, no matter what the case is. Hell, if I were to get married at this moment in time, he’d be top on the list for Best Man status.

  I arrived at his house and, as usual, called to announce my entrance and out comes Johnny, wearing a black shirt of some punk or ska band. I can never tell these days. The man looks a extremely relaxed, probably slightly intoxicated. He scratches his head, penetrating the thick mass of brown hair, shaggy as all hell.

“What’s up man?” He questioned.

“Nothing much,” I responded, shaking the mans hand. It was about as formal as he and I got, but it was a well honored tradition. “Just got back from dropping off Evelyn.”

“Oh, how’d that go?”

“Tim almost puked on the side of the road.”

“That’s messed up.”

   I begin to tell him all the events of the night: the drop off, the IHOP coffee, and everything in between and before. I tend to give Johnny a complete rundown of the events whenever anything goes in my favor.  Not only does it help me solidify the night, but it gives me a chance to actually think about what just happened. Its both for his benefit and my own.

  “So what did she do when she got to your place?” Johnny questioned.

  “Well, like I was saying,” I answered, “I basically called everyone and invited everyone to my place to play some Rock Band. I figured with the place empty, it would be great to geek out and have some fun.”

“huh”

“In any case, when she got there, I gave her a tour of the house. Just a quick one, showed her the key points, including my room.”

“Oh, so she saw your room? So what did she think?”

“Well, she loved my posters. Especially the Homestar Runner ones”

“Oh so she like’s Homestar Runner?”

“Yeah… so?”

“So… why aren’t you messing around with this girl yet?”

   Johnny was never one to waste words. Always getting to the heart of the matter in a blunt fashion.

“Man, it’s not like that,” I pleaded. And it wasn’t. In fact, to be honest, that was the furthest thing from my thought process. Granted, in my eyes, she’s beauty beyond beauty, but I’m not in this game the same way Johnny was. It’s not that he’s a bad guy or a pervert. He’s just knows what he wants and knows how to get it. The guy can be caring at times, it’s just we are out there for two different, yet similar gains.

“It’s always like that,” Johnny said, “No matter what you say, you’re always out for that. It’s of what makes a human being.”

“Man, you’re wasted dude,” I blurted.

“Yes I am,” he said, chuckling slightly.

“Well what about you dude? How’s the prospects looking in Johnny land?”

“There’s this hot little chick in my Short Stories class.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah. She’s got this little hard body that drives me crazy! Mmmm! The things I would do to that girl. I’d kill you just to mess around with her.”

Johnny pretty much figured that if something was really worth it, he’d kill me over it. It wasn’t like he would really do, of course, but over the years it became part of his phrase arsenal that became so common that I’d forgotten where it originated from.

“But back to you, mr. ‘connections’,” Johnny redirected, “Are you going to ask this Evelyn here on a date or something?”

“Eh…” I said, unsure as usual, “maybe dinner and a movie or something.”

“Never did like the whole dinner and a movie.”

“Why not?”

“To cliché.”

“What, I thought you liked the whole ‘movie’ thing with a chick.”

“Well, only if its in my room.”

“Ah the whole ‘movie scam’”

“Best idea I ever had,” Johnny said, taking another drag off his smoke. The movie scam was one of Johnny’s better attacks in his war for women. What it consisted of was getting a girl into his room for a innocent viewing of a movie, didn’t matter which. He would then proceeded to get his female companion in the right state of mind and have his way with her. And with the movie playing in the background, his mother wouldn’t hear him in the next room. It was pretty effective tactic, one that I’ve always wondered its subtleties  and techniques.

“Yup, still love to use it,” He said, “great old stand-by. Plus it give you something to talk about before the act.”

“Oh yeah, like what?” I asked

“The movie of course.”

“Explain.”
“Well, you have to get the chick into the movie, else she won’t go for it. So, you start chatting up the movie, telling her the basic premise, you know, enough to get her interested but not enough for her not to watch the movie. It shows you have a level of sophistication. Chicks eat that shit up.”

“true”

“Well, I’ve had my fill of smoke for a bit. Shots?”

And the night preceded into it’s logical end of tequila shots. All and all , a great weekend. It would possibly be the craziest beginning to one of the more interesting parts of my love life…