Day Dos

I have a network of characters that I keep wanting to do something with keep re-entering my writing of their own, uninvited accord. Names, faces, relationships all stem from Penn State's University Park campus (that year must've done a number on my psyche), except no one wants to read about college so I'll have to pick them all up and place them somewhere else. The concept I'll hold onto, maybe. That being said, reworkage of a place with some oldie-but-goodie characters:

Lacy and John’s apartment is notorious for their wild bashes. If you go to the University Park campus, you know about Lacy and John’s, and if you run with a certain crowd, it’s where you spend your Saturday nights.

You probably met Lacy in class. Maybe in English 452: 19th Century Literature and Society, because she’s a Comparative Lit major and you are too. You sit next to her in class, and have developed a bit of a girl crush on her. She’s tall with short dark hair and skinny so she looks even taller. She always wears at least three shades of eye shadow, and does her makeup like you wish you could. She doesn’t say much until the class starts on Stoppard’s plays, and explains to you that any interpretation of “et in Arcadia ego” other than a momento mori is idealist and shouldn’t be taken seriously. You nod and agree with her despite that you really have no idea what she’s talking about, and she invites you over to borrow Goethe’s Elective Affinities.

The first thing to know before even entering their place is to take your shoes off. Lacy is a little obsessive compulsive, and while on Saturday nights the hardwood floor is covered with spilled beer, sticky shoe prints and puddles of stomach acid and mixed drinks in the corners, on any other night the floor is clean enough to eat off of.

While you’re here, check out the bathroom. Most people’s bathrooms serve a utilitarian purpose; pooping, peeing, showering, the brushing of teeth and the washing of faces are pretty much all that goes on in most normal bathrooms. But in addition to all those things, Lacy’s bathroom also experiences copious amounts of puking, fucking, crying, breaking, laughing, groping, yelling and cowering. But the thing is that it just looks like a normal bathroom, except for the fact that it’s unusually clean and even a little cozy. Lacy devotes her Thursday and Sunday nights to cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, so you won’t find any clumps of sticky lint and hair, or a stray pube when you lift the toilet seat.

When you walk into this bathroom, you will first notice that it’s pink. The walls above the tile are a pale powder, and the fluffy rugs in front of the toilet and the bathtub are fuchsia, and the shower curtain is baby pink with coral polka dots. The sink is to your immediate left, and when you look into the mirror, Marilyn Monroe is gazing down upon you with a coy smile; her photo is mounted in a black frame on the wall behind you.

Know that when you pop a squat in this bathroom, you’re taking a shit in a little piece of history.

If Lauren gets a hold of Malibu rum by 9 o’clock, you will find her kneeling at the toilet and puking up the bottle’s worth by 10:30. A friend in rotation will be in there to hold her hair back, and to unbutton her jeans so she doesn’t piss herself.

Once, too drunk to even sit on the toilet by herself, she fell into the bathtub with her pants and blue sailboat panties around her ankles, smashed her face on the soap holder and broke her orbital. At the hospital, she told everyone her boyfriend hit her with the teddy-bears-in-love snow globe paperweight she keeps on her desk. Despite numerous eyewitness accounts, and the fact that her boyfriend was actually tonguing some Tri Delt at the ol' sorority house at the time, he is currently under review by the University's Office of Judicial Affairs.

Fin.