An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 3.

Have you ever had that dream where you're scuba diving with friends, and suddenly a shark zooms through and makes man-sushi of your diving partner?

No?

Ever go to a party with your best bud and accidentally leave his naked, prone ass in the bathroom for all the girls to shave, dress up, and leave on his parents' lawn with a note about NAMBLA?

That was what it was like, being a hetero male in Monica's orbit. I felt like some kind of remora. She would find a guy, milk him, and leave his desiccated corpse next to me at the bar while she whisked away with the next lucky victim. We all knew each other, too. We knew each other's stories, and we still took that ride. Well, they did.

Pillhead John was already awash in self-medication when this platinum-tressed velociraptor sidled up alongside him, smiled that wide, beautiful, I'm-crazy-but-you-already-love-me-so-do-as-I-say smile, and swamped him. I don't know if he ever recovered, either from the pills or the smile.

Dave The Genius was a computer operator before everybody operated computers, and he had the misfortune of meeting Monica in the right wrong light. The next thing I knew, I was moving her stuff out of his apartment in the middle of the night...and he was vomiting like some kind of bad Japanese cartoon monster after trying heroin in a bathroom stall. He always looked haunted after that...which inspired me to never even think about trying heroin. Thanks, Dave.

She never touched me... well not like that. She called me when it was over, many times, and summoned me for a million rides home from failed assignations or generally hairy situations. In exchange, she'd hook me up with discounts or free food or somewhere to crash or...you get the idea. I got to play hero, which is my worst addiction, and she made it as worth my while as she could.

How does it reassure you to know that somebody always has your back, if they're as flawed, self-centered, and rank with nicotine as I was then? Does it, in fact? If so, she must have slept assured that the Last Son of Guthrie would pull on that trademark longcoat, fire up the Olds, and roar into the night like I had a chance into those pants...or, more precisely, that tremendous (if toxic and permanently damaging) heart.

Some nights, I ached with a nearly intoxicating agony, knowing that there were such hearts, and that I'd never been in one. Other nights, I looked at the trail of carnage behind her, and thanked my maker that I was broke, unfashionable, and lived in my parents' basement.
It's funny when you can be thankful for such questionable blessings.

So there she was, wrapped around my neck like we were something much different than we were, and all these people are looking at us. She kissed me once on the cheek and bounced off to seek a stray professional type, but not before throwing me a piece of sage advice:
"Be sure you primp tonight. I'm sure you'll meet someone, and you deserve to get lucky."
I'm forced to wonder what she considered lucky.

An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 2.
I was the pride of the litter, I am certain. One older sister had recently graduated from Albertus Magnus, which thought it was Junior Ivy; the other was attending NYU, Columbia, and Quinnipiac almost simultaneously. I was about to enter my fourth semester as a freshman at Southern Connecticut State U., and to paraphrase Hank Williams, Jr., all my loser friends were coming over tonight.
I dressed in my finest t-shirt and jeans, and resplendent in my comic shop finery, sought out my loci.
A locus is, in technical definition, a place of concentrated activity. In my years of throwing parties, I learned that I could never catch everyone at home, work, school, or on a coke run to the loading docks by the New Haven Terminal. Patience and persistence are the keys to recruiting fellow ne'er-do-wells... but knowing where they go for coffee to hammer back last night's hangover doesn't hurt. This brought me downtown to the Daily Caffe, a place of much magic and the occasional chick who would talk to me (if only to get Steinmetz' number, which I gave out using the digits of his local newspaper, The Hour...I figured they'd heard of him.)
As I whirled back my black trench to enter the Caffe, I was ambushed by a deathly-pale blonde lightning strike.
Coffee is good, but Monica was even better.

An Even Bigger Butterfly, Part 1.
Note From The Author: This story takes place before the last one. I wanted to tell the tales in order, but that's just not going to happen. Sorry.
The sudden cold snap of a Connecticut winter will, if you're frail enough, knock you over. Sure, there are colder places, but part of the insular charm we Northeasterners exude is that we haven't heard of them, or don't believe they're worse than what we have. I'm told that International Falls, MN, is among the coldest places on Earth, for instance...but I've never been there, and they've never come within a snowflake's-breadth of wrapping their car around a Jersey barrier in slushy downtown Bridgeport (the barriers were put up to deter drive-by shootings; they were, and are, a phenomenal success in that department, but a terrible hazard to unassuming, and presumably unarmed, visitors to the Park City.)
Because we are used to colder climes, or perhaps in spite of the agonizing death of all the shrubbery, some of us celebrate New Year's with an ardor unseen since the Druids.
Every New Year's Eve, from 1987-88 to 1991-92, I threw a semi-legendary New Year's Eve party. And that last year, it threw me.

TGSNT, Epilogue.
 
Where they came from, and where they went.
 
Steinmetz who recently promo'd this blog and said some tearjerkingly nice things about it/me, was in my Marching Band, as he has recounted in excellent detail elsewhere. I decided he was ok the minute I met him, and I've yet to regret that decision. For some reason he called me Haystack on one of the worst days of my life, and it made me inexplicably happy for days. Ever unintimidated by my oft-fearsome countenance, he has never been afraid to tell me I'm stupid, and someday I hope to return the favor. That, or I will finally noogie him.
 
Jen had been in my Honors College courses, although I don't think I attended them often enough for her to notice me. She actually went to class, so she actually knows all kinds of stuff. She was, if you ask her, a bookworm when we met, and I briefly pondered that pursuit. Thankfully, my sense of inadequacy kicked in just in time, and we just became pretty good friends. How good, you ask? In 1993, when my son Will was born, she came to the hospital to visit ASAP. When she found out I was in dire financial straits, she got me a job driving strippers. That's a true friend, in my book.
 
D (not her real name, as far as you know) flashed across the Guthrian estroscope and was gone forever.  I have no idea of her whereabouts, and that preserves her as perfect. Time has not wrinkled her brow, or made embarrassing sags in once-firm territories; she will end her days as a cute, engaging, and unfathomably desirable 21-year-old. We should all be so lucky. I hope she is as happy as she made me, albeit briefly, wherever she is. I only wish I'd learned my lesson when she was teaching; other tutors have been far less kind.
 
Kat ended up marrying Hobbit Dave. Their daughter Kia is beautiful, and is an ace dog-showing person. Kat is still a very kind person, even though she's got plenty of excuses not to be, as well as being a very tough person (which is understandable, but not obvious.) I get the feeling that she knows a lot more about me than she's letting on, and that's a really, really good thing. We like her. She always drags Elaine out to see me play, and they never complain about my utter lack of talent.
 
Skip is a writer/editor/copy monkey for the local Rag. He will never admit to any of this, especially the part with the Leftists.
 
Mike Bruce strangles women, so I'm glad he's not in this story.For starters, Jen would have put his eyes out...
 
Why you looked this far down is anybody's guess, but here's something to hold your eye and warm your synapses.
 
We were all just biding time until the end of our adolescence, and Jen's house was like a community center full of bored latchkey kids waiting to get naked or picked up by their parents... and nobody's parents ever showed up, to my knowledge. Far from abandoned, most of us hid here, in flesh or in glass, until Something Else Happened. The fact that nobody ever died from alcohol poisoning or contracted AIDS just insulated us further from the real world, even in memory. We were blessed to have this pocket, this seemingly grouchless trashcan full of like-minded underachievers. We abused it thoroughly, and I'm pretty sure that's what it was there for. 
 
I have more stories to tell, but this is the only one of Austin St. I hope you liked it, or you're willing to smile and nod if you didn't. I'd appreciate feedback, no matter what you have to say. My next post will be up by Tuesday. Goodnight, and may tomorrow find you better than today left you.

TGSNT, Part 11.
 
By the way, if you're not supporting Stein's efforts to raise money for hemophilia research, or his wife's marathon blogging to aid breast cancer research, then I don't want to hear it when somebody you love dies. Simple as that. I don't give a good goddamn because you didn't. You have enough time to read my maudlin BS? Then you have enough time to send these beautiful people (ok, one beautiful person, one Steinmetz) some money, ANY money.  Do it, if only because I said to do so, and I probably know where you live. They're nice people, and I am not. End of sermon, for now.
 
I staggered back a bit, wondering how quickly a pregnancy test actually works (mere months later, I would know that answer, perhaps a bit TOO well).
"What do you mean, you couldn't have done it without me?"
 
(My experience with women is pretty easily summarized as follows: I never understood them, I don't understand them now, and chances are, I will never understand them. I merely count myself fortunate that the ones I know are, for the most part, either nice enough to befriend me, despite my many faults, or sympathetic enough to sleep with me. Sometimes both, and never let it be said that I am ungrateful for this inexplicable good fortune. Ladies, I love you all, provided we're still friends/lovers, and I still don't understand a blessed thing. Go with that; it's a constant.)
 
D laid out a tale that flattened my already frail corpus callosum. It seems that she and a number of other women (many of whom I knew, including some good friends) were part of a sexual scavenger hunt. At one end of the gubernacular spectrum was Stein, who was hardly worth any points because most of the ladies involved had already slept with him, or knew they could do so at will. At the other was yours truly, the Maltese Falcon of Connecticut Man-meat, an elusive quarry whose only appearances in that most carnal of venues had been with unaffiliated coeds from other towns or schools, and those tales were apocryphal at best (these were not Canadian Girlfriends; other people met them, and they still exist, to my knowledge. References are available upon request.)
 
At the onset of the competition, there were probably questions raised about my preference (which is understandable; until my mother walked in on me with one of the aforementioned partners, I'm pretty sure everyone who knew me, including my family, thought I was gay) or my affability. Mind you, had any of them just walked up and asked, that scoreboard would have looked like a Floridian voting booth. D won the contest, just by landing the Great White Whiner.
It seemed so shallow, so contrived...not that I minded the part about coed Greco-Roman wrestling, but why the pretense?
"It just seemed like the right thing to say."
This girl from the North Woods had come down into my beloved City and tricked me out like she was procuring tenderloin for Gary Glitter at a Boy Scout Jamboree. I'd been played, thoroughly. It was as if she hung a sign on my chest that said, "Unable to defend himself against feminine wiles" that still hangs there today (if you look at me in the right lighting, anyway.)
 
I slunk away, tail (what little there was left of it) between my legs, and went back to Jen's house eventually. Time was slippery at best in those days, and it gets no easier to grab using my flailing memory; it may have taken an hour to traverse that half-mile. I was that stunned.
 
There weren't many people left, thankfully...I'd wager that Jen's harridan of a roommate had chased them out, or that Jen herself had, in a nurturing and understanding way, explained to the guests that it was really time to go, and she'd catch up with them later. I collected my car and oozed off into the greenery of Valley Street to make sense of things. I was happy (it had been an amazing night; even the cat got pregnant), I was warm (as I tend to be, most times), but I was extremely disoriented. It would be hours before I could think of sex again.
 
Just the post-mortem left to go, kids. Then you should go see what Stein says about the same evening.
 

TGSNT, Part 10.
It took a solid fifteen minutes to find my clothes (nigh-unthinkable, when you consider how large any article of clothing would have to be in the first place), and then I sought out my erstwile mate. The second story of the house was quiet; everyone else was still motionless, stashed away in oak cupboards, safe from the building whine of my insecurities. I believe Jen was snoring, although it was hard to tell; there were a lot of people left over, some stacked atop each other like a log cabin crafted by Vivid Video.
 
I stumbled down the stairs as quietly as possible (it can be done, when you have as many years of experience as I have) and reconnoitered. No D, anywhere. No beer. No angry jocks. Overall, not a lot to work with, although I did manage to locate Stein at some point. My dreams of connubial bliss fading like the stains of Jen's sofa, we decided to head back to campus. Oddly, we chose to do so on foot. I have no answer for that; I'd driven in much, much worse shape, and it would have been faster. It would have also provided a much-needed hasty retreat, later.
 
The sky can turn white when you've spent too much time in darkness, and it did so the moment we cleared the sheltering shroud of trees at the edge of Jen's property. The half-mile hike back to the Student Center (my unofficial advisor's office at Southern, where I signed many a schedule into being using a variety of assumed names) seemed endless, and my remarkable degree of dehydration didn't help. I felt like my lungs were sandpaper, my legs were iron, and my back had been stuffed into a can marked "Peanuts", just waiting for some poor dumb bastard to open it.
 
 Typically, Stein would have analyzed my situation and damn near buried me with otherwise-useful truisms (I have a long history of ignoring the best advice,  as given by some of the finest minds on the planet, and I doubt that's changed); this time, he mostly commiserated and shrugged. I have a feeling, looking back on the circumstances, that he knew exactly what was going on. He's that type of guy; he knows stuff. Sometimes, being the kind of guy I am, I pretend to listen.
 
Stein gave me a few more pseudo-mournful minutes of supportive conjecture (as he is contractually bound to do, I am told), then headed off to parts unknown (he kept muttering something about sleep, as he tended to do in those days.) I headed for D's dorm room, in the hopes of getting some answers.
Sure enough, she was sunning herself on the front lawn of the residence hall. I made sure not to stand in her light, having already spent an evening doing just that. Her hair looked like hammered platinum; she must have showered once she got home,  since it had only looked hammered when I arrived on Jen's porch. I could just about smell her, cooking in the sun.
"Thanks," she said, "I couldn't have done it without you."
That was probably when my heart stopped. Then, or a couple of seconds later.
 

Soon.
I haven't forgotten you.

TGSNT, Part 9.
At one point, I think the moonlight left us. It had done its job, and had nothing to apologize for, so I suppose moving on was in order.
Everything in its absence was all hands, mouths, backs, and sweat for what seemed like days. Good days, some of my best, perhaps, but days. It could have been fifteen minutes, or fifteen hours...time was liquid, especially since I couldn't find my watch after that first tussle. There is a hum that fills my ears during such times; it's less like tinnitus, more like a ritualistic metronome.
Then she signaled me to stop.
She wanted to talk. It was probably 3 a.m., which is not a time for talking when you are thusly disrobed. It's not an unforgivable breach of etiquette-in fact, I am hard-pressed to think of one, compared to, say, not mentioning your ex and his friends will be in attendance at the same party-but it certainly seemed oddly timed.
"I want you to meet my parents,"she said,"I've told them all about you."
For most guys, this would be a mighty blast of freon down their BVDs...but not I. I thought this was the best thing I'd heard all night, short of the sound of Stein's voice at that near-fatal moment.
I soldiered on, in warm darkness on a borrowed mattress, heedless of the world beyond. There were only two people in the entire world that night, and I felt reasonably assured that a sequel was inevitable.
Eventually, we both passed out, comfortable, exhausted, drained of whatever angels or demons we needed to expunge.
When I awoke, in the early blue hours, she was already gone.
More later.

TGSNT, Part 8.
Part of the Tao of being very big, as I'm told that I am, is that you can't run around pummeling everyone just because it's possible. This is especially true of drunken jocks, bad drivers, and handicapped people, at least in my opinion. One is pathologically unaware, one is truly inculcable, and one is just plain wrong.
I let Testostero return to his books and sought my tempest on the porch. Diane and Skip were practically atop each other, discussing the importance of voting, or political awareness in general. I passed by the bipartisan spectacle, paid my respects to this most incongruous pairing of pulchritudinous politicos, and sought out a Virgil for the next bolgia: the living room.
The room appeared to have been furnished in Early American Overcrowded With Horny College Students. Hobbit Dave, aptly named for his size and demeanor, was macking hardcore on Kat, one of the few nice girls in attendance. Jen, ever the perfect hostess, was talking to at least three different guys in two different corners. Stein was keeping the couch in order; if I know Stein, he'd already gotten his, and was here to bask...he didn't gloat, at least not in the same way I do, despite having been quite the annoying profligate Lothario of our little scene. He certainly didn't chirp when he was dating my cousin, anyway...though I imagine she'd have beaten him to death if he had. The baseball players were milling around the fridge, emptying my sacrificial Budweiser with disturbing alacrity. Some small voice from the other end of the cosmos, perhaps Stein's, perhaps any one of a number of people's, told me that D was upstairs.
Ordinarily, my perpetual libido would have propelled me up the stairs at top speed, but I paused briefly in the front hall. I still do that sometimes, physically stopping to grab a sense of perspective. This creates a bookmark of sorts, the purpose of which I'll explain later.
I put my mind back on my business and hit the stairs at full tilt. Sure enough, the door to the spare room was open just wide enough to provide a landing strip across the small of D's back.
It got dark again, and this time the baseball players stayed away.

TGSNT, Part 7.
I often wonder what we notice first about a strange bathroom. In Jen's case, the tub is on the left side of the bathroom, there is tile everywhere, and I have just been shoved from behind by a guy who has every reason to do so.
His mind was obviously untracked by the inner torment that results from what I call "circumstantial celibacy", that awful time between lovers when the greatest fear is your own inadequacy, and the greatest risk is self-induced tendinitis. He was sweating profusely, and his eyes seemed fogged, as if his frontal lobe forgot to turn on the dehumidifier.
A grave sense of unease grew between us, at least in my mind. How much did he know? Was he aware of my protected status as a non-matriculated loiterer in the Student Center? Did he have a knife (not that the idea worried me, comparatively speaking; the house was sandwiched by neighborhoods full of warring druglords, and I was more concerned about a stray bullet creasing my cerebellum during certain enterprises upstairs, really)? Had he ever dated the Stamford Girl, the one who had called me a "farmer"? What did he have planned, and could I get a hand on his throat before he made his play?
(A quick tale of the tape:
Mr. Pitcher: 6'3", 200 lbs in heavy slacks, about 67" reach, has been drinking and feels wrongly terminated from a sweaty, if not loving, relationship with the aforementioned Upstate Girl. Probably in semidecent physical condition, but fairly inebriated. Typically aggressive.
Mr. Guthrie : 6'7", 330 lbs, 80" reach, has been unjustly deprived of drink but reasonably assured of his favorite form of cross-training will soon be transpiring with the girl in question. Definitely not in superior physical condition, but just plain old big. Typically looking for only one thing in this world, and it's not baseball.)
He staggered slightly, apologized, and peed in the sink. I was understandably reluctant to use the commode at this time, as his aim may have contributed to his single status. (Jen, if you read this, I apologize.)
If I was going to take a preemptive swat at him, now would be the time. His teammates were interspersed throughout the house (many were the bedrooms, and there was never a shortage of outdoor diversions, as well). He was too drunk to use his athletic prowess to break my glasses over my face, then my face over his knee. We were alone in that domestic debir, and his back was to me.
I thought of Jesus, and cleared my throat.

TGSNT, Part 6.
There was a great roar and then a terrible hush as the world collapsed in on me. The air had become solid flesh, and the only hope I had was to swim, harder and faster with each second, towards the dimming light. Stopping at any moment spelled disaster, like a salmon trying to cop the digits off a passing Evinrude.
Most college parties were like this for me, once midnight hit and there were ladies present. This one was an exception, though. D disappeared to brush her teeth again, and I struck out for the porch. Stein followed, like some kind of barely-post-pubescent Willy Wonka on reds, and we soon found ourselves in the thick of a Moment: The head of the local NOW chapter (a lovely young lady named Diane, who had once helped scrape me off the pavement on Fitch Street) was shoulder-to-elbow with the head of the Young Republicans (a man called Skip, who once dressed as Adam Ant in high school...after his brief and inexplicable stint in the Marines, he returned an arch-conservative.) Typically, I would expect blood and fire from these two, but the night air works wonders on even the most sincere idealogues. There were no enemies in the hazy trenches of Austin Street, only misunderstandings (like pulling your best Barry White on a sporting good's girl, unaware of his proximity) to be redressed.
One of those misunderstandings was behind me when I went into the bathroom, in fact.

A break in the action.
Dad would have been 69 today.
I don't know why I'm thinking of him so much lately, but I am.
Long day. Long night coming.
More of the story later. Part 5 is better than halfway done.
So am I.

TGSNT, Part 5.
It's often said that, in times of great mortal peril, your life will flash before your eyes. Oddly, that didn't happen. Granted, it would have looked like a Showtime After Dark presentation at that point, but even some mindless adult entertainment would have been preferable to the mystic vision I experienced.
I saw myself, blind (I could not locate my glasses, and blind is the only apt term for my myopic status), buck naked but for a pair of underwear (which were on backwards, at least in my nightmarish combat dream), fighting off the baseball players on Jen's front lawn.
(I'll give you a minute to stop laughing...although I must assure you that the idea was not humorous at the time. Now? Now it's funny, even to me.)
Salvation came hot on the heels of jeopardy. No sooner was the knob turning than I heard my dear friend and fellow reprobate Steinmetz, a Willy Wonka lookalike with too much luck with the ladies (in my humble but hypercompetitive estimation), urging the ballplayers to hit the fridge instead of the bedroom. According to his exhortations, there was a virgin batch of brew to be had. This excited the monobrows like a freshman next to an open locker, and they made off for the kitchen like a summer stock adaptation of Quest For Fire.
After we gathered our scattered clothing and confirmed our forsaken dignity yet again, D and I snuck downstairs, taking great care to be seen separately lest I have to demonstrate my ninja fighting techniques, albeit clothed and bespectacled, against a sea of foes.
I sought out Steinmetz, my brother, my Horatio, my St. Francis of the Sissies, and thanked him for my continued existence.
"I don't know if you should thank me. After all, it was your beer."
More later.

TGSNT, Part 4.
It goes without saying that I was rather alarmed by the arrival of the baseball team. Mind you, I was aware of the possibility, however remote, of their pitcher (D's ex) being in attendance, but it was rumored that he was a touch short of brow, and as such, easily distracted. This may have been one of the reasons for their dissolution; I didn't ask, when the topic first came up (during a marathon of cirrhotic antagonism at The Moon), and to this day I really don't care. My greater focus was on D's single status and overall attractiveness. She was an Upstate Girl, that strong mix of passion and durability...I have always had a weakness for durable women, and she appeared to be their Grand Champion, at least in the College Division. She was powerful but feminine, a credit to her genetics and upbringing.
Back to the peril at hand (and foot, and mouth, and several other parts I'd rather not see imperiled). The door is thumping like a Miami bass bin, and D has not moved more than a foot or so. She was still angry enough at this failed paramour to demand that he leave her alone, ad infinitum...she had, by her own report, a headache. (I can assure you that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her head or any other part of her.) This did nothing to assuage the damaged ego of the Boy of Summer (who'd been cut from the one roster I think he valued most), and his rowdy friends, many of whom sounded like inbred stooges, the kind of guys who like to drink beer and violate geeks on their slow nights, got even louder in their mewling protestations. It suddenly hit me that I had no idea where any of my clothes were, especially my glasses. As the blood ran north to my stomach, I heard a familiar click from just past my right shoulder. Mr. Pitcher was about to open the door.

TGSNT, Part 3.
No sooner had D crashed on a mattress in Jen's back room than a
nigh-mythical transformation occurred. Perhaps it was the healing power of
toothpaste, but she was suddenly awake, alert, and terribly fond of
physical affection.
Now, by the light of the day, yours truly was something of an
anthropological curiosity, I must confess. I was six feet and seven inches
of pure, unadulterated cool...from my mellow Shore Haven Afro, the Elvis
Costello glasses, terminal purple paisley shirt, jean shorts (well, at
least those were normal), to the bucked-down two-year-old docksiders with
more mileage than they were ever meant to take. Still, I carried myself
well, and I'd like to think I've always been a friendly sort, which can
compensate for my aesthetic (or at least stylistic) shortcomings. I'd like
to think a lot of things, but I know that most of them simply aren't true.
In the dark, I felt like Prince before Lovesexy tanked. It got hot, it got
sweaty, and I'm amazed there weren't ambulances. Some nights, I'll admit I
still think of those days, and the Kilimanjaro of those memories is that
party. The trouble with such romantic notions, though, is that you forget
the fear.
What was there to be afraid of, you must wonder?
How does the SCSU Fighting Owls baseball team, led by D's ex, sound?
It sounded like a knock on the bedroom door, at the time.

Word Association To Increase Traffic
Torrent
ECW
Bit
Miike
Muggleton
Beer
Ferrett
Miyazaki
John Hughes
Edgar Allan Poe
Amway
Wicca
Mormons
Fatima Mansions
Irish
Evil

TGSNT, Part 2.
Jen's house was an old Colonial with a big front porch, a sizable front lawn, and no driveway to speak of, all nestled into the shadow of West Rock. There was a party there nearly every day during that spring, and the attendance at each was considerable. As such, everyone parked on the lawn (how or if she got her security deposit back is anybody's guess; I'd wager there was kismet involved, as there always is with Jen). I slid out of the Olds like the suave cat that I am and approached the front porch. There was a small flock of bar hens there, including Jen and her friend D. D was drinking from a 2-liter bottle of MD2020 (which, until that year, had been known as Mad Dog 2020 for awfully good reason), and it was obvious that she was en route to permanent cellular damage. I dropped off my beer in Jen's fridge and scampered back to the porch. By this point, D's lunch was back to visit, and she was holding court by the far porch rail. As a sensitive modern guy, I am often found holding the gastrically-challenged's hair out of the carnage...and this was no different. Fortunately, she had really good hair (thinner hair will pull out, often leaving the already-beleaguered chunderer looking like a cancer patient) and strong shoulders (I once had a girl dislocate a shoulder while straining against mine in mid-void...you never forget that "pop" sound, or feeling, ever.) She was a pretty girl, too, despite her peristaltic difficulties.
In what seemed like an eternity, she finished purging the malt-beverage/motor oil from her system. Already spent, she decided (wisely, we all agreed) that this was a good time to brush her teeth and go to bed. Ever the gentleman, I could not demur when she asked me to keep her company.
It was hardly past sundown, but when you hide in the cowl of a mountain, it gets dark fast.