{"id":502,"date":"2024-11-30T01:41:26","date_gmt":"2024-11-30T01:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/?page_id=502"},"modified":"2024-11-30T03:26:46","modified_gmt":"2024-11-30T03:26:46","slug":"thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/thanksgiving\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Luke Allison<\/span><\/p>\n

I hear his footsteps, confident feet, climbing the stairs. I am in bed listening to The Magnetic Fields \u201c69 Love Songs\u201d on vinyl. All the words remind me of her. I can still smell her; all perfume and post-workout sweat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I can still hear her words, \u201cIt\u2019s over; I\u2019m falling out of love with you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Her hair still lies around the room long blonde curls, scale maps of where we were before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is Thanksgiving break of my sophomore year of college. I came back home last night to an empty house. My parents are visiting my dying aunt in Montreal, and I chose to stay home in Indiana. I hear a pounding on my bedroom door and let my friend Kyle in. He walks in with an athletic gait, as if anything physical is fun. Then he stumbles and sits down beside me on my bed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou should have been at Tommy\u2019s,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I ask knowing it was just a typical, superficial party. I have been to countless ones like that at his house. Drinking Milwaukee’s Best, PBRs, and \u201cNatty Lights\u201d\u00a0<\/span>
\nAnd endless weed smoking circles, like That 70s Show.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDid I miss anything good?\u201d I ask.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo, the usual shit. But I drank eight beers. Eight beers,\u201d Kyle says<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019s in his usual imperial garb: nice sweater, designer jeans, and spotless shoes. He is in good shape. I have freshman fifteen, bulges after two consecutive years of cheap beer, NETLFIX, and delivery pizza. I dress the opposite of him, graphic tees and skinny jeans. Less skinny year by year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

His breath reeks of bourbon. Belle Meade Madeira Cask or Hillrock Estate. Something top-shelf.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

His hair is an uncalculated mess, very unlike Kyle, who usually keeps a neat pompadour.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDarren, you\u2019re my best friend. Best friend\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know, so are you,\u201d I say. I smile at his drunken self.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI mean it. I don\u2019t know what I would do without you,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThanks, buddy,\u201d I say, not knowing what else to say. He is much more intoxicated than I first estimated. I am relatively sober discounting the three or four gin and tonics I had while watching The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Or, the joint I smoked while driving back from dropping Kelsey off at her parent\u2019s home, after our fight. I might not be sober but I\u2019m not drunk like Kyle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He puts an arm around me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s go outside and have a smoke,\u201d Kyle says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a cold November night. The wind is whipping though the trees something fierce, and we have to light our cigarettes with my father\u2019s heavy cigar torch. I sit down at the table on the stone veranda.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat would you like to drink? And no more alcohol,\u201d I say<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWater, wait no, milk,\u201d he says<\/span><\/p>\n

I go to the kitchen where the blinking kitchen timer says it\u2019s past 2:00 A.M. I pour a cold glass of milk and bring it out to Kyle. His face looks white and pale. All the stressed-out days and nights at Amherst must not be bidding well for him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAre you alright?\u201d I ask.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow would you do it?\u201d Kyle asks while staring blankly into the woods behind my house. His face omits all emotion, empty, appearing forlorn.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDo what?\u201d I say, already knowing what was on his mind. It was something we often talked about. The final escape.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always worried about Kyle, even as we were children, he has a dark side. I think sometimes his family is too hard on him. They are all so perfect in the public eye of town, and so perfectly flawed at home. Millionaires by the way of oil and inheritance, they work hard to give their surname honor and pass down wealth. His younger sister has recently suffered a breakdown while at a prominent theater school and is back home \u201cgetting well.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI sometimes lay in bed all night thinking about the thing, of different ways to do it.\u201d He says<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think about it too. But I wouldn\u2019t do it,\u201d I say.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI just look at my hands and I don\u2019t want to ever see them wrinkle.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think about it a lot also. Not so much in the way to do it, that doesn\u2019t matter much to me, but the idea of it, the means to an end. But you shouldn\u2019t think about it right now everything is all right buddy. I have your back.\u201d I say.<\/span><\/p>\n

I feel foolish for those words. Who am I to put anyone at ease? I want out just as much as he does. Maybe more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We finish our cigarettes and go back upstairs. I think I see tears in his eyes. We sit on my bed, and the needle is making the rhythmic skipping at the end of the record. I turn on the television in my bedroom. CSPAN is on, and the senate is voting about a recent scandal with the President and the Middle East.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kyle walks in and sits right next to me. We both look at the screen in front of us and don\u2019t talk. After ten minutes of this, Kyle reaches over and puts his hands in my pants. I want to scream out. I want to say \u2018What in hell are you doing?\u2019 I don\u2019t, I say nothing. His hands are warm. I stare and the screen and it seems blurry, just people and brightly lit colors. I finish right away. He walks out of my bedroom silently, not even looking back. I just lay there for what seems like hours. I stare at the screen until it seems fuzzy and my mind feels blank. I don\u2019t know what I am going to do I just want to hide from the world and everyone I know.<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

I wake up Wednesday morning with the sound of my dog tapping on the glass door in the kitchen. A foggy rainy morning, I have to clean Oscar up so he doesn\u2019t soil the white carpet. Then I go out for a jog because I\u2019m feeling self-conscious about how much I smoke.<\/span><\/p>\n

The neighborhood is quiet. I run up and down the hills noticing everything that has changed since I left for college. A new home is being built on Jefferson and another is being torn down. I try to listen to music on my iPod but all I can think of was last night.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why would he do that? Aren\u2019t we supposed to be best friends? This changes everything. The drizzle stops and I run past my empty high school. I think about visiting my favorite teacher Mrs. Apatow later in the day. Her subject is Biology, but she really teaches about everything in life. The choices we make in our daily lives that make us human. And humor she loved playing old Saturday Night Live videos. Chevy Chase and Bill Murray in the seventies or the 1990s with Adam Sandler and Chris Farley with their Lunch Lady Land. I remember Mrs. Apatow crooning \u201cslop sloppy joes\u201d on top of her voice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When going up the hill to my house I see the neighbor woman with frizzled hair and a gray bathrobe. She helps run a fundraiser with my mother. I nod in her direction and she mutters something under her breath and flips me off. I have no idea what I have done to her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After my run, I go to the grocery store. I push the cart down the linoleum aisles humming to myself. There is a broken wheel on my cart. It spins wildly with haphazard momentum. It makes me paranoid. Everyone is watching. I am doing something wrong. I can\u2019t seem to get the old lady out of my mind. What had she said? Had she called me an asshole or something worse? I keep seeing the image of her finger pointing at me. What did she know?<\/span><\/p>\n

As I push the cart through the produce section I see old reverend Tom. He is the assistant preacher at my parent\u2019s church. I don\u2019t go anymore. I walk behind him not letting him recognize me. He bends over some cantaloupe and brings one up feebly to his nose smelling it. His arms are bony and skin wrinkled. He looks so weak. He has a stretched face and a big ugly nose. Like a hook. I hurry up and pay and leave.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My friend Margery calls when I\u2019m in the car and says she doesn\u2019t want me to be alone on Thanksgiving. \u201cIt\u2019s fine, Marge,\u201d I say. She doesn\u2019t let me say no and invites me to a party Thanksgiving night. She says she wants everyone to dress up like adults, whatever that means.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I spend the afternoon wandering around my house. I can\u2019t get three things out of my head. Kelsey leaving me, what the old lady said to me on my run, and Kyle last night. I have never been with a guy before but I feel apathetic. He is my best friend; my head is pounding from what, a hangover?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Kelsey is on my mind. She and I are childhood friends and both decided to go to Bloomington, IN for college. We never dated in high school and she acquired a boyfriend during welcome week named Chad. They have been dating a year and a half. He is a junior and plays lacrosse. He is not particularly bright but is very good looking and knows the right people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our affair began when Kelsey and I began studying a lot for humanities together. Some nights she would sleep over instead of trekking back to her dorm room on east quad. One night we drank Wild Turkey and we hooked up. It was the hottest night of my life. I fucked her on the cold bathroom floor at a frat house. The door was unlocked and we both thought someone was going to come in. It\u2019s been an off and on relationship ever since. The first night of Thanksgiving break she put an end to it saying that she would honestly \u201cnever date me.\u201d Those words still ring through my head like an unanswered call.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I only have three nights of being back home. After taking a nap and watching television, I get bored and call my friend Drew. He doesn\u2019t go to college and works for a catering service. He says he is going to bars tonight and wants to me to join him to catch up on things. I am cautious I think he doesn\u2019t like me anymore once I left town for college.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At 9:45 P.M. Drew knocks on my door. We walk up town. I\u2019ve already had a few close calls with drinking and driving. We get to Main Street. My town is small, and Main Street has two churches, three bars, a coffeehouse, a tavern, and the post office.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We go to the American Legion. The inside is dark and filled with smoke. The place is a private club for military veterans, but the youth of the town have found a loophole that allows them to drink there despite not being veterans.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSee the young man sitting in the old man’s bar waiting for his turn to die,\u201d Goo Goo Dolls lyrics come to mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instantly everyone seems to look up to see who has entered the bar. Drew gets handshakes and hugs. I receive stares. I think about leaving but go up to the bar and get a beer.<\/span><\/p>\n

I sit down on a stool and pretend to watch the college football game on the screen above the bar. Two old patrons argue about the candidate\u2019s debate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShe has no common sense, she\u2019s a criminal, and liar,\u201d a squat balding man says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe is no better, a rich blowhard, no fucking way he will be my commander and chief,\u201d says a tall woman in her mid-fifties.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNothing he says is wrong,\u201d says the bald man.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s sexist,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe is trying to make American great,\u201d says the man.<\/span><\/p>\n

At this point I can\u2019t take any more politics, order a whiskey double on the rocks, and sit down with Drew at a table. A group of guys from my high school play pool and chain-smoke. They look like they have aged ten years more than I. They are still dirty from the oil wells. They have become frackers. They hold them themselves in a new light because they have a little more money in their wallet to waste. \u201cGoddam it\u201d one screams losing a game of pool. A tall kid who once was a basketball star for our team, the West Lake Badgers, shoves his girlfriend when she says she wants to leave. No one reacts. Greg, a smart quiet kid is with them. It pains me to see him here. I always thought he would get out of town and become something great.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sid sits down at the table at with Drew and his friends Sarah and Lindsey. Sid used to be my dealer in high school but now I have cut ties from him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHow are you Darren? How is college?\u201d he asks. I sense condescension in his words.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fine,\u201d I say.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAre you going to stay there?\u201d asks Sarah.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I think so,\u201d I say.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lindsey looks at me with interest. I had always thought she was sweet, but I only saw her as a friend. She starts asking me all these personal questions about school over drinks. \u201cWhere do you live at IU? Are you seeing anyone? Why aren\u2019t you seeing anyone? What are the parties like?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I drink several more whiskey doubles and someone keeps playing the same Billy Joel song on the Wurlitzer. I go out back in the alley to have a smoke and be alone. <\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanksgiving morning, I wake up at dawn. My head hurts from all the drinking. I walk to my bathroom and splash water on my face. I stare at myself, my well-trimmed beard looks ragged, my eyes bloodshot, and my face pale. I look at the toilet and feel like I\u2019m going to be sick. I throw up several times. Then I walk downstairs in my boxers and sit on the back veranda sipping coffee, watching the sun come up above the trees in the valley.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I look at my phone and I have several messages from last night. One is from my mother saying that my aunt is in the ICU unit again. Things aren\u2019t looking good. I look at the orange light glowing over the trees and wonder why I don\u2019t feel anything. My aunt, the woman who taught me how to swim, babysat me as a child, and helped me with science fair projects, and now she\u2019s dying. And I feel nothing. Maybe it is because we didn\u2019t have a close relationship when I grew older? Am I really this narcissistic? Is this how adulthood works, are we destined to become our parents?<\/span><\/p>\n

Kyle keeps texting me, but I ignore him. I take Oscar out for a walk around the neighborhood. The worst thing about Kelsey is the way she comes and goes out of my mind, indicative of the way she comes and goes out of my life, she claims that she loves both Chad and I. When I first got involved I thought I could keep her as a friend and our time together wouldn\u2019t change our friendship. It was just a one-night stand, I told myself. Then she told me she loved me and everything changed. She said it one of those quiet hours between midnight and the sun when the world seems to slow down and allows quiet magic to happen.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I try reading Dostoyevsky for class but get distracted. I finally give up and go to the movies alone. I don\u2019t even know what is playing. I just go. I walk into the film as the previews are ending. I sit in the back of the cold movie theater and settle down for the film, it is an action movie, and the type where there is a good cop and a bad cop and everything seems to blow up. At the end everything will be resolved and justice will prevail. I turn off my mind and just zone out and watch the film pass by.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I leave the theater and pick up liquor for the party. There is a new sign in my town that says \u201cUtopia Starts Here.\u201d It scares the shit out of me, and I walk faster. I pick up Chinese take-out for the potluck. I don\u2019t feel like cooking dressing or making gravy, nor do I know how. I get really nervous for some reason before the party and think about not going. I go outside and put a Modest Mouse album on the poolside speakers. I smoke a joint and try to calm down. Then I go upstairs, shower, and put on a sports jacket, a skinny black tie, and black corduroy pants. I grab a gray scarf and go out the door.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I turn the radio up really loud. Punk rock calms me down. The streets are deserted so I drive fast. I keep pushing my Camaro to the limits. I watch the speedometer dial and flirt with the governor. I top out at 120 mph on a long stretch of Old Mine road. Telephone poles flash by, the night is empty, and I feel the blood pumping in my heart. The road ends in a sharp turn. I slow down and take it way too fast. I start to fishtail. I don\u2019t over correct myself. I stay calm. I just watch. I slow down. My car comes to a stop.\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nI arrive at Marge\u2019s place a lot of people are already there: friends from high school, people I recognize from college, and random party hoppers. Three kids form Brandeis are drinking wine out of coffee mugs, they laugh and shove each exaggeratedly, they seem like cartoonish drunks. I hug some people I haven\u2019t seen since the summer. The room seems to be divided by where people go to school. IU kids dressed in all black sip mojitos and make fun of Kyle while he is building a fire in the fireplace. \u201cYou\u2019re such a boy scout, build that fire,\u201d they say.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I feel my hands shake and sweat under my collar, I don\u2019t know what to do, Kyle is my best friend but I can\u2019t even look at him right now. Luckily Marge walks over to me and taps her dainty finger on my shoulder.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHey, Darren,\u201d Marge says, hugging me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She wears a tasteful blue dress and drinks a Bloody Mary. I am so happy to see her. There are few friends that stay in your life the way she has. I have always thought of her and Kyle as my most loyal friends but now everything has changed. I feel used. He won\u2019t even look in my direction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJust put your things on the table there,\u201d she says pointing to a long glass coffee table where a turkey sits surrounded by bowls of vegetables, chips, and fruit. I sit my booze on the island in the kitchen and make my rounds around the party.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I see many familiar faces. I start drinking a lot of wine and talking to some theater kids from Columbia in Chicago. One girl with short purple hair and a motorcycle jacket says, \u201cYou just have to try it. You will never know anything about yourself if you don\u2019t try LSD.\u201d I feel sick and don\u2019t want to talk to them so I walk away. Kyle is talking to Marge and her friends and I consider talking to them but instead get caught up in a conversation about Kierkegaard with a kid from Earlham who has a shaved head and swears he only owns one shirt. I try to have fun but I keep seeing that old lady waving her finger at me and muttering under her breath. And the sign that says \u201cUtopia Starts Here.\u201d I shudder and go outside to smoke.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When I come back inside everyone is at the table sitting cross-legged and passing out food. I start to smile. This is nice. I feel like I have some camaraderie here. I smile. The alcohol, the good food, and company all make me feel warm inside. I feel like we can hold onto this transient moment of time and be together. Together forever. We can avoid impending adulthood and stay youth forever. And then I see her, blonde hair curled and at her shoulders, and a small black dress. Kelsey is standing by the fire talking with Kyle, she is laughing with hands moving wildly above her head, they move back and forth to the music both sharing words I cannot hear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what to do. I start to freak out. I don\u2019t think the wine helped. I start to get a spinning feeling. I stand up and the feeling becomes worse. I look down and everyone seated at the table is looking up at me. What has Kyle been telling people? What do they know?<\/span><\/p>\n

I stand up and walk across the party. The music has split the party into tiny groups of people. I push past the Chicago kids and mumble some obscenities. I find Kyle and Kelsey arm in arm laughing and smiling at me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the fuck is your problem Kyle?\u201d I shout.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

His face is blank, complete shock; he takes his arm off of Kelsey and opens his mouth. Then I knock his drink out of his hand.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the hell is you\u2019re problem Darren?\u201d Kelsey says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWait Kelsey.\u201d I say\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She runs outside of the party through the back French door. I follow her to the back porch, outside it is dark, quiet, and the sky is full of stars. I see her slim figure and want to cry out her name, but my heart beats anxiously, I grab her in a hugging embrace. We don\u2019t saw anything for several moments. Finally, she looks at me with her beautiful green eyes and I am feeling like she can see right through me. I have lost her already and now she is judging me, I hate everything right now, just wait until I get my hands-on Kyle. Then she pulled me close.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI miss you Darren.\u201d She says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Her words become my mantra. All the stars and constellations seemed to shine for us. I held onto her hoping she would never leave. The party seemed to fade behind us and only our future lay ahead of us, a twisted road of unforeseen futures. Then she walks away from me into the night.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Luke Allison I hear his footsteps, confident feet, climbing the stairs. I am in bed listening to The Magnetic Fields \u201c69 Love Songs\u201d on vinyl. All the words remind me of her. I can still smell her; all perfume and post-workout sweat.\u00a0 I can still hear her words, \u201cIt\u2019s over; I\u2019m falling out of Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":24,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-left-sidebar.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-502","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/502\/revisions\/533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}