The Haters (21 page)

I went back to the bar and Ash and Corey stood up.

“We'll drive over to Clarksdale together tomorrow morning,” Cookie yelled at us over the noise. “Y'all got a number I could reach?”

We all just shook our heads.

“Meet me back here around eleven,” he told us, and we nodded, and we walked out of there.

A policeman was just hanging out front, smoking a cigarette and talking to a guy in a trucker hat.

We stopped in our tracks. All of us. I had a bass drum in my arms. Ash had her guitar amp. Corey had nothing in his arms and was too drunk to stand in one place. He had to plant and replant his feet every three seconds or so.

The policeman squinted at us. He was bald except for a tiny soul patch. It was one of those way-too-small soul patches
that on first glance just looks like the chin has a belly button that is a little bit overflowing with lint.

We looked back at him. No one said anything.

Then he smiled and said, “You three sounded good.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You practice a lot?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Not going to let him drive, are you,” the policeman asked, tilting his head at Corey.

“No, sir,” I said. “I'm driving.”

He nodded but didn't say anything for a few moments.

Then he kind of snickered.

“Well, go ahead, load up,” he told us, and we did, and got the hell out of there.

Back at the campground, people were setting fires and smoking cigarettes around them. We parked in front of our cabin. I was irrationally worried there would be a person in there, but of course there wasn't.

Corey had completely passed out. I tried to wake him while Ash watched me.

WES: corey

COREY: hhhhhhhhhhhrrrhrnnhgggngnnhh

WES: come on man

COREY: ffffff

WES:

COREY:

WES: corey?

COREY:

WES: you want to come insid

COREY: nnnNNNNNOOO

WES:

ASH:

WES: should we just leave him in the car?

ASH: big time

We left him in the car. The bed would have been a little small for three people anyway.

Ash took off her shoes but nothing else and just lay on top of the covers and aimed herself at the wall.

I took off my shoes and got on top of the covers, too.

After a few minutes I kind of scooched over toward her, like an inch.

I would not be able to tell you what my plan was. I guess my plan was just, move toward Ash until something good happens. So that's what I did. Every few minutes I kind of scooched toward her.

After maybe twenty minutes, my hand was sort of grazing her butt.

She didn't make any kind of response.

I very slowly put my hand on her butt.

She made a kind of sighing noise.

I was trying to figure out what to do next when she said, “Wes.”

“Oh hey,” I said, pretending to be surprised or something. I guess I was hoping I could convey the idea of,
I was asleep, too, so
who knows how this happened. Perhaps my hand found your butt, and perhaps your butt found my hand. It is impossible to know
.

“Don't do that,” she said, and I felt awful and kind of shrank away.

“Sorry,” I said.

“It's fine,” she said. “Just go to sleep.”

“Yeah.”

I lay there in misery. In my head, I headbutted myself in the nose as many times as possible.

But after a few minutes she flopped over and asked, “How come you don't drink?”

I just shrugged.

“It's okay that you don't,” she said. “I was just wondering.”

“Someone's got to drive,” I said.

“It doesn't always have to be you,” she said. Then she reached over and grabbed my dick.

I mean, she couldn't really get a handle on it, because it was in my pants and stuff. She more or less just grabbed a random handful of my crotch, and gave it a little squeeze, and let go, and the world as I knew it basically exploded.

“Good night,” she said kind of loudly, and flopped back over and fell asleep pretty quickly, but for the second night in a row, I mean, let's just say that I didn't.

25.
ALTHOUGH I WAS ABLE TO GET SOME SLEEP AFTER MASTURBATING INTO THE SINK AGAIN

Let's not even talk about that part.

Let's also not talk about the part where Ash and I opened the car and discovered that Corey, in his sleep, had allowed himself to do some serious peeing. Because we definitely did not talk about it at the time. We just stood around stoically saying nothing while he stumbled out of the car and tried to change his clothes with his eyes shut. His eyes were shut because of his industrial-grade hangover.

“Corey?” I did ask at one point. “You need anything?” But his only response was a demon noise that he made with his throat. It sounded like
khoooomm
. So that made it feel like me helping him was probably not on the table.

While we're not talking about stuff, let's not talk about the weird silence in the car the entire time we drove back to Ellie's, where Ash was being super blank and wordless for God knows what reason but probably among other things her continued terrible relations with Corey, and Corey was pretending to be in a coma, and I was trying to think of something to say the entire time but couldn't, and it was one of those silences that keeps getting
more and more acute and unbearable, like a kettle on the stove freaking out more and more, and the only thing that reset it was Corey making that demon noise again every five minutes or so.

I wouldn't even say the car smelled worse after Corey peed in it. Just more complicated. It was a more complex bouquet of aromas in there that you almost didn't want to categorize as “good” or “bad.” It was way too complex for that. It probably smelled like the swamp that Yoda lives in.

Anyway, we got to Ellie's, and it was 11:18 because we got lost for a while, but Cookie wasn't there. So we just sat around in the parking lot and ate the rest of the Twizzlers, which the heat of the car had microwaved into a new yet still somehow Twizzlerish rubbery substance. Also we drank Dr. Pepper that was so hot that every few sips one of us would have to spit it back out.

“Hey, Ash,” said Corey all of a sudden.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Do you think growing up so rich has given you a fucked-up view of the world,” he said.

I found myself too exhausted and stressed out to intervene.
Fuck it
, I told myself.
This probably needs to happen
.

“What do you mean,” she said, in this almost bored-sounding voice.

His eyes were still squinted almost all the way closed.

“I mean, if you grow up super rich, like you can buy anything you want, does it fuck up how you see the world and like other people and stuff.”

“Still don't know what you mean.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“No, I don't.”

It felt a little bit like I was on the set of the world's worst morning TV show. A show called
Morons in the Morning, with Your Exhausted Stressed-Out Host, Wes Doolittle
.

“Like you can just buy your way out of any situation,” said Corey. “And you probably think it's pathetic when other people can't.”

Ash frowned very sadly, mostly with her forehead, and nodded to herself.

“And like you get bored with people really easily, because you're used to people like serving you and giving you whatever you want, and in general everyone wants to be nice to you and be your friend because you're rich, so you feel like you never have to try because everyone automatically loves you no matter what you do.”

“You think I feel like I never have to try?”

“I was just wondering.”

“That's what you think I'm like?”

“I don't know. Maybe. You tell me.”

“No, you tell me, Corey.”

When she said his name out loud it sounded for a moment like it was becoming the part of
Morons in the Morning, with Your Exhausted Stressed-Out Host, Wes Doolittle
where one of the guests gets up from the couch and the other guest immediately jumps up, too, and then huge security dudes with headsets come sprinting in. But we didn't quite get there.

“I'm just saying,” said Corey, “how could it not give you a fucked-up view of the world.”

Ash paused. Then she initiated perhaps the most epic sarcasm battle I have ever witnessed in my life.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. No, you're right.”

“Well, I probably
am
right.”

“No, it's a great point. Thanks.”

“Sure, no problem.”

“I really appreciate how honest you are.”

“Don't worry about it.”

“I just really appreciate when people are honest with me, instead of fawning all over me like a bunch of assholes, which is what normally happens, obviously, because I'm so rich.”

“Sure thing.”

“I've actually literally never had a genuine conversation with anyone before right now. So, seriously, thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

“No. Hey.
Thank you
.”

“You're super welcome.”

“I mean, it's
never
happened. Not even once.”

“Yeah, probably not.”

“I think maybe it's also because I'm a girl? And girls my age are the single most powerful people in the world? Everyone constantly listens to them and respects them and gives them everything they want? You know how it's like that for girls? That's probably part of what we're talking about.”

“Well, it actually probably is because everyone wants to sleep with you.”

“Oh yeah. That's definitely the best kind of power to have. There's no way
that
shit ever fucks up your life.”

“Not as bad as it fucks with other people.”

“Sure. Tell me about it.”

“You want me to tell you about it?”

“
Please
tell me all about it, Corey.”

“You really want me to?”

“Yeah.”

“Everyone thinks you're super hot and wants to fuck you, and it clearly
has
fucked up how you see people, because you think you can just hook up with people, and then just freeze them out, just be super cold and shitty, and it probably doesn't even register with you how bad that fucks with their heads, because there's no reason for you to give a shit.”

“I
don't
give a shit,” agreed Ash. But the fire had kind of gone out of her voice a little bit.

“You don't give a shit, and why should you,” Corey told her. “You're just, uh.”

We waited for him to finish his sentence.

He burped in what looked like a painful way.

“I'm just what,” said Ash.

“Hang on,” he said, and he got up and walked slowly and carefully around the side of Ellie's, and then for a while we listened to him barf violently.

While this was happening, Cookie's pickup truck pulled into the lot.

“I'm gonna ride with Cookie,” Ash told me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

“Too much drama,” she said, holding up her hands like I had a gun.

Cookie, even more stubbly and grinny and Coke-voiced than last night, scribbled me some directions to his house, in case we lost track of him on the highway. But they were completely illegible. They looked like this:

HIWY 30 2 “QTB”

THAN KEEP AN EYE UT “4” BIB RED BARM
(
LM MIM
)

R L R R @ MCGONADS

“I'm sure you'll make it just fine,” he told me, and winked, and off we went.

It was only until after I started driving that I realized we didn't even have an address.

Fuck, I thought.

We didn't have an address, and we had no phones. So if I lost them, then basically, the entire tour was over. Because how the hell would we ever find them again.

So either Cookie was disorganized to the point of being an idiot or he sneakily didn't want us making it to his place. And I didn't want to get super darked out with those types of shitty thoughts, but I did kind of feel like it was probably the second one.

And Ash sure wasn't making any special effort to make sure we got to Cookie's dad's house okay. So maybe she wanted us gone, too.

Maybe she was done with us. Because we were too much
drama. Not exciting drama. The annoying kind. We were boys and she belonged with a man.

One of us had given her half an hour of substandard oral sex and now was on an existential meltdown of binge-drinking and then producing bodily fluids. The other was a pathetic virgin who masturbated in sinks and was afraid to drink alcohol in the first place. So why would a girl who was nineteen, and had illegally dated a member of Animal Collective, ever want to put up with that.

I knew these were shitty dark thoughts that I shouldn't be dwelling on but I couldn't help it.