Untitled Story

                “Hey!” Mumbled Kacey, her mouth full. “Want some?” She pushed the basket of fried onions under my nose. I turned my head away from the smell of grease and onions as my stomach did a back flip.
“Nah, thanks. I’m okay.”
                Kacey shrugged and walked away, cramming another ring into her mouth and allowing the grease to dribble down her chin and stain the front of her turtleneck sweater.
                I propped my feet up on the already dirty table littered with crumbled up napkins and leftover French-fries. My eyes scanned the gravy splatters and found refuge on my Physics book. Perhaps I should crack it open and actually take a look at this week’s chapter, but for now the thick text book is making a pretty good coaster for my tea. So instead, I turned my head towards the cafeteria entrance and eyed every girl who walks in, attempting to analyze her from afar.
                Straight.. Definitely straight, I think to myself as a short girl with shoulder length blond hair swallows the tongue of a guy who’s pants are practically belted around his knees. She wraps her arms around his thick neck and he doesn’t even seem to notice that his navy blue Bart Simpson boxers are exposed. The dating pool is dry. I’m stuck in a place with too many trees and too few girls. Maybe I should just date a tree, there’s no shortage of those around here; Pine, Oak, Maple.. I could take my pick. Last week I had the displeasure of attending a frat party after much prodding from Kelly. You know the type of party -- a bunch of drunk shirtless idiots pounding beer cans against their foreheads hoping it will get them laid.
                “Wanna beer?” Asked a drunk guy with ridiculous bleach blond hair. He leaned in towards me, his eyes bloodshot. He burped casually and stuck out his hand. “I’m Mark,” the air around him smelled of acrid stomach acid and vodka shots.
               “Paryse,” I shot back, quickly shaking his hand and hoping he would walk away, or at least pass out.
                “So, you got a boyfriend?”
                “No.”
                “A pretty girl like you don’t got a boyfriend?” He rested his colossal hand on my hip, attempting to steady himself as he rocked forward. Too close for comfort. I noticed he had random patches of acne scattered around his face, I’m sure they created some secret message in brail. At that moment I knew that even if I had been straight, I would have found this guy repulsive.
                “No. But I’m looking for a girlfriend, if you know any.” I blurted out sarcastically, backing away from him a bit. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, not he’s probably going to set me up with a chain wearing, beer pounding girl who has a buzz cut. Just what I want, a frat boy with tits.
                “You’re a lez!?” He shrieked as if he had just realized that the stripper he fondled last night was a dude. “That’s so hot!”
                Afterwards, a few girls avoided me as if I had the plague, I’m surprised they didn’t pelt me with bibles. However, for the most part I spent the night fending off trashed girls who felt the need to talk about their “one lesbian experience with their roommate that time they were drunk.” After spilling their guts and realizing what they just did their eyes would grow wide as they quickly said, “But I’m not gay. Its okay if you are. But I’m not.”
                As I left that night, Mark reached up from the puke stained sofa he was passing out on. “Hey…if you ever find a girl, invite me.”
                I wanted to connect the acne dots on his face and see if they made a picture. So I took one last shot of Malibu rum and took off while holding up Kacey’s limp body, stopping every few feet so she could stick her finger down her throat in a vain attempt at vomiting.
**          
                I looked at my watch, 2:30, time for French class. I got up, steadying myself. One foot in front of the other. My mind chanted as I sauntered through the cafeteria, attempting not to fall flat on my face in these heels. I pushed myself through the hordes of gathering students and into the hallway, where my shoulder just so happened to smash into the chest of the last person on earth I ever wanted to see.
“Invite me,” he mouthed, pointing at me before high fiving the closest guy next to him. Kacey swooped in next to me from the girls bathroom, finally having finished off the last of her onion rings. Her arm linked tightly with mine as we walked slowly to our next class, wasting as much time as possible before entering the classroom which is always either overheated or too cold, never comfortable.
                Kacey sat down, pulling out a tube of pink lip gloss and coated her lips with a thick layer. She screwed the cap on tightly and pointed the tube at my face, almost hitting me in the process;
“Your lips look chapped” the tube was jabbed at my cheek. “Take some.”
                I yanked it from her hand and applied a thin coat, the scent of strawberries and vanilla wafted up into my nose. It smelled sickly sweet, and almost made me wretch; my stomach still sensitive from a night of heavy drinking. The heated sensation of alcohol as it travels down my throat and floods my senses has become my only escape from what I believe to be a mundane existence. Vodka is my safe and warm refuge, like the arms of a lover. However, Tequila; Tequila is a temptress, like a blond in a clingy red dress with her cleavage exposed. It beckons to me. It gives me a taste of excitement and danger. I carry on a passionate love affair with Tequila while Vodka offers me familiar security.
                Dr. Ellis waddled into the room, his rolls spilling over the hem of the pants that he insisted on wearing two sizes too small. He stood in front of the class as his pudgy pink fingers pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.
“The Metamorphosis” he squealed, “is the first story by Franz Kafka we will read. I suggest you take good notes.”
                I whipped out my pen and notebook while he prattled on about the symbolism used throughout the story, how the main character morphing into a cockroach was symbolic for something bigger. Right now, I wish I could morph myself into a cockroach and crawl out of here. I must have read this story three times already. So instead of taking notes I concentrated all of my efforts into creating various swirls on my lined paper. Hearts with daggers through them, smiley faces, the naked torso of a woman…I suck at art. I would rather create a masterpiece with words.
“Paryse, you going home this weekend?” Kacey said, perhaps a little too loudly.
“I think so, want to come with me?”
“hah” she laughed while tossing back a lock of hair. “No, thanks, I’d rather enjoy my vacation.”
                Truth be told, I would rather go play in oncoming traffic than go home for vacation. A whole week alone with mom and her incessant “Amen’s” and “alleluias” may be too much to bear. Ever since dad left mom when I was 8 for a skinny waitress with plastic boobs and lips mom has turned to religion for solace. For years I watched as she alternated her time between attending church and doing Pilates in front of the blaring television set. The entire house itself was decorated with wooden crosses and tacky signs that said “What would Jesus do?”

Well.. I’m pretty sure Jesus wouldn’t be doing Pilates in hot pink spandex shorts on the living room floor.

                The house itself however was picturesque. Dad had built the house himself when him and mom had first married, it was sturdy and quaint. Surrounded by scented pine trees and small patches of dandelions scattered across the front lawn. It was the closest thing I could think of to the perfect family home. In the back yard stood mom’s prized rose garden which she fawned and cooed over more than her own two children, the proud pink and red buds stood erect from the moist soil. As a young child I would always try to see how many petals I could pluck from each rose, sniffing them and rubbing them in-between my fingers;  before mom found out. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I realized why I held such a fascination for mom’s rose garden; the roses reminded me of a certain female body part I liked perhaps a bit too much.
                Growing up in a small rural area meant that most of my days as a child were occupied by various outdoor activities. My mother, having always wanted a daughter was determined to dress me up like a porcelain doll. She would have been perfectly content if I had behaved like a ventriloquist dummy, crossing my legs and keeping my elbows off the table, obeying her every time she pulled my strings. I was subject to a barrage of grooming rituals each morning as I woke up. My mother would wash and curl my hair, taking the time to carefully tie up the golden locks with a delicate pink ribbon. She would then dress me in my Sunday best, an expensive frilly dress with lace gloves.
“Ladies should behave like ladies!” she would scold whenever I came home, dress splattered with mud and God knows what else. “What am I going to do with you?”
                My knobby legs would carry me up the stairs as fast as they could. Slamming the bedroom door with gusto, I would then rip off the dress and pull on a pair of used gym shorts. Climbing up onto the roof from my second story bedroom window, I would gaze up into the blue sky, pretending that I was floating amongst the clouds, where frilly dresses and overbearing mothers didn’t exist.  However that was the past, this is the present; a small college atmosphere and a disorganized dorm room where a full bottle of tequila is nestled in a pile of dirty clothing underneath my bed.

                And here I am, completely hung over with dark circles underneath my eyes that just scream “I went on a bender last night!” I haven’t accomplished anything besides scribbling a few abstract poems on the lines of my notebook, which I proceeded to crumple up and throw to the ground in defeat. Third year of college, and my inspiration has completely vanished from existence. I believe I to am disappearing slowly, my limbs and organs become dust, becoming stars. I am forever stuck in an endless existence of frat boys who want to grope me, a mother who believes I am headed straight for the bowels of hell, and a vast array of straight girls who wouldn’t know how to find a g-spot even if they had a GPS to tell them where it was. Sorry mom, but I’m pretty sure I am already in hell.