Dad's Party

I ventured out of my room and heard splashing and yelling in the backyard pool and a cacophony of laughter, and various groups of people each trying to outtalk the others. The stink of nasty menthol cigarettes hung in the air and there were strangers holding drinks or cans of beer and everyone seemed to be having the best time.

I wasn’t really into all the noise but as a somewhat atypical teen girl who had just learned how beneficial rebellion could be, I did find events like these at our home an opportunity to see what kind of trouble I could get into without getting caught. I wandered through the family room and observed strangers lounging on our wicker Florida style furniture and milling around from there all the way through the kitchen, and around to the formal carpeted living room where my little sister and I were not allowed to sit on the couches except on Christmas Day.

My extraverted Dad had a bunch of his work friends arrive at our house dressed in the latest styles: men in colorful polyester knit leisure suits and ladies in all sorts of interesting outfits including floral jumpsuits and lowrise bell bottoms and elephant pants and muu muus with shoulder length flipped hairstyles and thick dark fake eyelashes with black batwing eyeliner. Dad had his gigantic console stereo blasting with the Easy Rider soundtrack - his favorite. I’d grown up singing Don’t Bogart That Joint, having no idea what it meant until lately.

As I was standing there taking in the sights and sounds, a man about my father’s age approached me, smiling a toothy grin. He was slightly bald, only a little taller than me, and was wearing a rather old fashioned looking sport coat and button down striped shirt over a pair of straight legged jeans. I felt like looking over my shoulder to see if he hopefully was smiling at someone else but he walked right up to me.

“You’re Skeeter’s daughter, aren’t you?” he said.

“Yes, I am.” I had no idea where this was going but my intuition was telling me to just hang out and listen.

“Do you want to smoke a joint?” He skipped all the small talk, reached into his shirt pocket and drew out the hand rolled cigarette, offering it to me. I’m sure my eyes widened a bit because he laughed. “I guess you do!”

I nodded but didn’t say anything. Was this ok? I didn’t know and I decided I didn’t care.

“Here, go ahead and take this - but only have one or two hits. Don’t smoke it all, just one or two hits, ok?” He was holding it up between two fingers, punctuating his statement by pointing the joint at me in time with the rhythm of his speech. I thought he was being rather incautious wagging the weed cigarette around like a baton. Again, I looked over my shoulder to make sure this wasn’t some kind of trick. I didn’t seen anyone looking in our direction.

“OK,” I said. I reached over and slid the joint out of his fingers and tucked it into my pocket. Mr. Whatever his name was looked pleased that I had gone along with his offer. I didn’t bother going back to my room to get shoes; instead I went straight outside and crossed the street to my happy place in the palmettos.

It looked like it was about to rain and the ozone was already beginning to clean the air and I could hear thunder about 10 miles away if I had counted correctly. I squatted down between the foliage to hide and lit the joint. It tasted very good. The breeze was beginning to pick up, tickling the hairs on the back of my neck and caressing my bare arms. I was enjoying the joint and the weather so much I didn’t think about the man’s warning until I’d smoked about half of it. Oops. Oh well. As the first drops fell out of the sky, I stubbed it out, stuck it back into my front pocket, and walked back across the street.

By the time I reached the front door I felt like I was two feet off the ground. The people in the family room were shrinking and expanding right in front of my eyes and I was existing in some kind of alternative dimension I had never visited before.

“Hey, are you ok?” All of a sudden the man was right in front of me, scanning my visage, looking for what I didn’t know. “I told you to only take a hit or two!” The corners of his mouth drooped into a kind of open mouthed grimace and it made me laugh. I felt as though I was floating in a bubble and I didn’t care who knew it. “You’d better go lay down,” said the man, looking around the room as though he wanted to make sure my dad was nowhere around. “Go on, now,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulder and giving me a not so subtle nudge in the direction of the hallway leading to my bedroom. I lurched a little and then he grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back again. “Wait! Give me the joint back. You… do have some left, right?”

Dutifully I pulled the somewhat wrinkled reefer out of my pocket and held it out to him, lowering my gaze. “Here you go.”

“Holy shit, you smoked almost the whole thing!” He looked at me again like an eye doctor might, as though he were wondering how I was even able to stand in front of him, and I started to giggle again. He gingerly placed the remains of the joint back into his shirt pocket and practically shoved me down the hall.

I certainly didn’t need to be persuaded to go to my room. I wanted to lie down and figure out what I was feeling. There must have been something other than just marijuana in the joint that Dad’s friend shared with me. I closed the door behind me and turned on the stereo before stretching out on the twin bed against the wall. I stared at the popcorn ceiling, seeing all sorts of strange patterns and connections moving before I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when I was startled awake by Mom crashing into my room. She was half drenched, like she’d walked right out of the pool and straight to me. Her hair was in a sloppy wet ponytail and she was wearing an unattractive floral swimsuit. There was that look of rage I’d become so familiar with lately. I sat up quickly but remained silent, not sure what was about to happen although I thought it couldn’t be good.

“I tol’ shhhhyew not to close your fuckin’ door!” She slammed it open so hard the doorknob made a hole in the drywall.

“Mom, I just wanted to have some peace and quiet with all the party noise going on, come on.” I cringed. The party was obviously still going on, the music blaring even louder than before and I wondered if anyone could hear what was going on back here. I hadn’t given one moment of thought about breaking the rule regarding keeping my door open. I had been too high to care or remember, though I felt pretty sober at the moment. Mom had brought a screwdriver with her and began taking my door off the hinges.

“I don’ give a shit what you wanted, you’re not supposed to have the door closed.” She fumbled around with the screwdriver and managed to get the top hinge separated. I didn’t dare try to leave the room while she was blocking the doorway but I wanted to do something. I didn’t think it was fair that she was going to come back to my room all drunk and just take my door off.

I took a deep breath, and yelled as loudly as I could for Dad. “Mom’s trying to take my door off, Dad!” I kept calling for him as she continued to wrestle with the door, hoping that my voice would carry over the commotion. “Dad, help! Dad, I need you!”

Someone must have heard me and let him know because the next thing I knew, Dad came flying down the hallway like a linebacker and grabbed Mom from behind in a bear hug, locking his arms in front of her, dragging her back away from the door. She twisted and struggled against his clutches and our eyes met briefly. We both knew I’d won.