10 Jimmy's Night
Many places have been described as what kind of shot you may require after visiting such an establishment. Charlie's generally requires a tetanus, penicillin, or bourbon shot, and after a good night, all three. Charlie's was generally thought of as a lower standard for strip clubs, by everyone but Jimmy and Craig. They enjoyed the egalitarian nature of the bar and gleefully would recount how many bullet wounds, caesarian scars, and two hundred plus pound women they saw each time they visited. Jimmy and Craig were something of connoisseurs of 'shoe models.' They were called that because that is all they wore, the girls, not Jimmy and Craig.
Before entering the bar, Jimmy met an old friend, Geoff, in the bathroom. Luckily, for Jimmy, Geoff had drugs he needed to sell, and Jimmy had money for the power bill with him. Jimmy felt that it was his moral obligation to purchase drugs, for science of course. The night would eventually end if he didn’t.
Cameron and Craig sat stage side. Cameron was pretending to look the girls in the eye like a gentleman, and Craig was folding dollar bills and bridging them on his nose. He hoped that the young women dancing for Pampers and meth money would sit on his face, you know, like a gentleman. Jimmy exited the bathroom with a huge knowing grin on his face, walked up to the stage, swayed, and fell headfirst into the DJ's speaker blaring "Cherry Pie" for the fifty seventh time that month.
Jimmy rubbed his head while shuffling over to his seat next to Cameron. "Are you all right?" Cameron asked, amused and not at all surprised by his friend's collapse. He had been drinking heavily since five.
Jimmy looked at Cameron, struggling to recognize both his friend and the question, and silently nodded, wiped his mouth and mumbled, "Fucking, shit, fuck."
While a shoe model with a lady mullet and thighs that looked like she had been sitting on a gravel driveway slowly gyrated off beat to Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up,” Craig declared it was time to order drinks. He skipped off to the bar. The bartender, who had been pretty accustomed to seeing severely intoxicated college kids, knew a potential lawsuit when he saw one. Even in the slightly outside of the law atmosphere of Charlie's, he knew there was no way that he could serve those three, especially the one that seems to have the nods.
Cameron, losing steam and kind of wishing he was at home in bed instead of out with his filthy animal friends, watched as Craig argued with the bartender, and he knew that they were being cut off. Cameron really didn't blame the bartender; he wouldn't want the three of them in his business either. Craig with his lewd gestures and Jimmy was a wreck. Cameron distracted himself by wondering if the DJ would play The Smith’s “Girlfriend in a Coma” instead of “Rock You Like a Hurricane.” That seemed like better strip club music.
Craig motioned to the others to join him outside while Motley Crue's "Girls, Girls, Girls," blared through the recently knocked over speakers for the seventy seventh time that month. Cameron nudged Jimmy, and he swung his head while he walked Z formations to the door. Pausing once to drink another man's tequila, Jimmy smiled, holding the empty shot glass in his hand. "Awww yeah, that will fill the gigantic hole in my heart. Let's party fuckosabe."
As the three boys gathered outside of Charlie's, Craig broke the news. "Well boys, Charlie's is a no-go. We have been cut off and asked to leave." Cameron had felt pretty low before, but this was downright white trash. They had just been kicked out of a bar that refuses to give up 'midget bowling' on Wednesdays.
"What? We're fine. I'm not really that drunk." Jimmy slurred. Cameron thought he looked ashen and sick. Jimmy then swayed and snapped to after a twenty five second delay. "Okay, I'm drunk as shit, but that doesn't give me, I mean them, the right not to serve me."
Cameron considered this, "Actually, I think they definitely have the right to do such a thing. Maybe we should take this as a sign and call it a night. If we go home now, I could get about six hours of sleep before the game."
"No, we are partying through the night. You don’t stop running the marathon just because your shoes are untied, and Charlie's isn't the only titty bar in town. Let's head to Sammy's." Cameron's heart sank. Craig was nonstop and Jimmy would drink until his stomach rotted out.
"Shotgun." Jimmy hung his head out of the window as two of them drove silently listening to Tom Wait's Closing Time, one of Cameron's favorite CDs. Jimmy would occasionally mumble something obscene and generally incoherent directed at Charlie's. No one was surprised when he vomited along the side of Cameron's car at a red light.
As the car pulled up to Sammy's, a slightly less sleazy gentlemen's club, Jimmy was out of the car storming towards the door before Cameron had even put the car into park. Craig grinned at Jimmy, and ran after his swaying slurring friend. Cameron stayed in the car to count his money. He really didn't have enough to go to Sammy's tonight, but maybe the others could loan him some until they get paid by the University for running the radio station again. It wasn’t but a couple of hundred dollars a month, but for a college kid, it was a fortune. As Cameron made his way to the front door, Jimmy was escorted out by a burly security guard that had the prerequisite mullet and a moustache. Cameron mused at that point that the security guard could have gotten a job dancing at Charlie's. Craig followed behind the security guard and Jimmy laughing.
"Get out of here! Don't let me catch you coming back here again."
A new low, being kicked out of two strip clubs in one night was pitiful enough, but to be banned from one was even worse. Cameron rolled his window down and asked, "You were in there like thirty seconds, what did you do? "
Craig managed to quit laughing long enough to get out, "We walk in and Jimmy walks right by the bouncer, straight up to the stage, and he slaps the stripper on her big black ass as hard as he could."
"I can't help it, it was just....there."
After a minute of obdurate argument, Jimmy and Craig passed out on the way home. Cameron was relieved and embarrassed about how things had gone down at Sammy's. It would be almost three in the morning by the time they would get home. Cameron hoped that Tom the Bomb had left or would stay passed out until game time. He had had enough of babysitting the horndog and the drunk tonight and just wanted some sleep. He also really wanted to get away from the sickly sweet smell of vomit emanating from Jimmy. What does it say that Pukey McThrowup over there hooked up with a girl earlier tonight and Cameron had almost zero prospects in the girl department? He didn’t want to be alone, but he kept finding himself that way. Craig had girls and probably crabs too crawling all over him, and Cameron was riding solo deep again.
The party felt like it had been years ago. It hadn't really been that much fun, but so much wasn't now. Cameron felt that his best years in college were behind him now. He would graduate in two years and felt clueless about what he would do. He really wanted to do radio, but once the corporations came in there were less opportunities for on air jocks and programmers. Teaching, his backup, was looking to be in the forefront, and Cameron didn't really know if that was something he could do day in and day out. Seemed depressing.
Mercifully, Craig went straight to his room, calling it a late night, when they got home. Yelling "Get the fuck out Tom!" as he passed didn't seem to do much good. Cameron watched Jimmy wake up, ask what time it was, and walk to a bar two blocks from their house. Cameron gave the perfunctory "Are you okay?" But, the truth is he thought Jimmy would be fine. He couldn't have more than two beers; the bars would be closing in an hour and there is no way anyone else would take him anywhere else, and he could just walk home or back to his and Craig's place if he wanted. That is how Cameron could sleep with a clear conscience, until he was woken by a phone call from Jimmy from jail.
"Hullo..." Cameron answered, debating to pretend that he wasn't asleep in case the other person on the line would bother to ask him if he was asleep or not.
"Cam, it's Jimmy. I am drunk tank. I am in drunk tank. Come get me."
"What?"
"I got arrested for drunk tank. I am in the drunk tank. Come get me."
"Jimmy, if I come pick you up right now, they'll put me in jail next to you." Cameron checked his alarm clock. "It's only 5:30. I only stopped drinking three hours ago."
"Come drunk tank and get me."
"I'll be there after I sober up."
Cameron then preceded to do things to wake slash sober himself up. He did squat thrusts, drank coffee and water, showered, and when that failed, slept another hour. Cameron was fairly confident that at 7:30 in the morning he was presentable enough to pick his friend up in jail, exactly what their parents had envisioned when they sent both boys out to college with hard earned tuition money. Cameron imagined the pride Jimmy’s parents would feel when they find out that not only is he the first in his family to attend a four year program, that was most likely going to take him five and a half years to complete, he was also the first in the family to get bailed out of jail the morning after being thrown out of two strip clubs.
Cameron wore his sunglasses in the police station thinking that that would cover up his newly discovered sobriety. This of course made him look even more suspicious, but what did he know? He was still legally drunk.
Cameron found an officer sitting at the front desk looking entirely uninterested in him and working furiously at the sports section. "I'm here to pick up Jimmy Mills."
The officer frowned, looked down and groaned "Mills? Let me go check on him." Cameron waited for what seemed like three hours and was surprised when he had taken off his sunglasses to see his watch that it had only been about four minutes. "Yeah kid, you'll have to come back in a few hours."
"Why?"
"Your friend is too drunk to leave. His blood alcohol will have to drop below the legal limit before we can release him. He's way too drunk. Way too drunk. Look at me kid, way too drunk." Cameron nodded and then began to leave. The officer stopped him, "Son, are you okay?"
Cameron's heart sank, "Oh yeah, I'm fine, just sleepy. Maybe a little worried about my friend."
The police officer nodded, "Your partner will be fine; right now this is the safest place for him."
"Partner? No it's not like that, we're just friends." Why was Cameron even explaining anything to this cop? It's not like he cared what he thought.
"Sure kid, whatever you don't have to convince me."
"No really, we are not that way." Cameron was furious with himself for falling for trying to justify his manliness to this obvious homophobe.
"Alright, go home and sleep last night off. Your special friend will call you when he isn't so hammered."
"Special friend?"
"Kid, leave; I've got work to do."
Flustered, Cameron came up with the only comeback he could come up with, "Goddammit." He hated being alpha maled.
Jimmy called two hours later, waking up Cameron. "Hey, I just did the breathalyzer." Jimmy spat angrily, "It said I was still drunk, .10."
"Alright man, well I'll come get you in a few hours." Cameron answered feeling kind of annoyed that Jimmy was angry on the phone. He hadn’t realized that his friend was being held against his own will for his own stupidity, and it may have nothing to do with him; not to mention that he had been up all night in the drunk tank trying to not get molested might have something to do with his uncalled-for grumpiness.
"Are you going to the game?" Jimmy asked, calming down.
"No, I am going to put it on though and chill out. I don't think I can party like I used to. I'm pretty much ruined today." Cameron answered carefully. "Just call me when you can leave, and I'll take you out for lunch."
"Alright, thanks man." Jimmy sounded defeated.
Four hours and one lopsided win later, Jimmy was finally released from jail. Cameron didn't say much to his radio partner and best friend until they sat down with a plate of greasy fries, greasy burgers, and a trio of greasy fried green tomatoes, for a vegetable. "Okay dude, what happened?"
Jimmy stewed, angry at himself for losing control, angry that he got caught, angry that he felt so hung over, angry. "I got arrested for public drunkenness."
"Just that? What, did they pull you over before you got to the bar?"
"No, it's more than that. Look, can we just kind of keep this between us, at least I mean don't bring this part up on the air Monday, okay?"
"Sure." Cameron found himself ultra-aware and in the moment, unlike the casual conversation mode that he usually found himself in where he generally thought about how he could one-up or out-funny whomever he was speaking with, he really listened this time.
"Okay, so I was at Eegan's drinking. You know how they stay open really late right?" Jimmy got out a Marlboro Red and looked quizzically at his hands, put the cigarette away and grasped the extra-large Pepsi instead.
"Yeah that place is pretty scuzzy isn't it?" Cameron had a bar in his house; he rarely went to the late night dives unless there was a band playing that he or a friend wanted to see.
"I would have said that it wasn't so bad before today, so anyway, I get there in time to have a couple of beers before they shut the place down. There wasn't anybody that I really knew there and no lonely looking enough girls, so I head home. I'm rounding the corner and this guy pulls up in a shitty old Nissan. He says to me, 'Hey man the cops are down the street picking up kids for public intoxication. Hop in with me man, I've got some weed.'"
"So you ran away like every after school special taught us?"
"No, I got in. He said he had weed. We drove about a mile and he pulls up next to this house that is completely dark and turns to me and says..." Jimmy took a deep gulp of Pepsi and ate some of his burger. Cameron noticed how he wasn't making eye contact, just staring off out of the window. "He asked to see my dick."
"Dirk Diggler!"
"Yeah, I know. I know."
"So, what did you do?"
"I yelled 'Nooooo!' and ran out of the car and down the street to that BP station at the end of the strip. There was this cop there and I went up to her and I was out of breath and I said to her, 'There was this guy, and he offered me weed, and he wanted to see my dick, and I ran' She frowned at me and told me to turn around to cuff me. Luckily, they didn't drug test me, and luckily I had done all of the drugs before she patted me down."
"Wait, you had drugs?"
"Well yeah, I bought them at the strip club last night, Charlie's." The strip club had seemed like a lifetime ago to Cameron; to Jimmy it had been the beginning of the whole thing.
“What drugs did you have?”
“Mushrooms. That is why I got so tore up last night.”
Cameron ignored the last remark knowing that arguing with Jimmy on why he was so wasted was futile. "You had mushrooms and didn't even share? How many caps did you eat?" Cameron half-joked.
"I only had money for a few, so I ate them all…Oops.” Jimmy put his hands out palms up and comically grinned. “Look, I'm technically an adult and all, but I'm probably going have to tell my Dad about all of this."
"Yeah, you probably should talk to him about this." Cameron knew that Jimmy's dad would probably understand. He had passed off his son's past indiscretions off as 'boys will be boys,' and in reality what he had done was not that bad. He hadn't been driving. He was not caught with drugs. He had only been offered to be a male prostitute and declined. He got drunk in a bar; that seemed pretty natural to Cameron. Jimmy's dad was one issue; the University was going to be another. "You're probably going to have to go in front of the University's Ethics Committee once they get notified of you being arrested."
"Uggh, why is alcohol so great?"
"Because you're an alcoholic?"
"Exactly. I'm going to plead disease."
"Hey Jimmy, how much do you think that guy would have paid?"
"What?"
"To see your dick. I mean you could have made some easy cash showing him that wonderful gift in your pants. You should be charging for that."
Jimmy, slowly lifting the fog of alcoholism and realizing that his friend was mocking him, groaned "Shut up dude."
"I'm just saying if you are ever needing money..."