Gutter
It’s 8 AM and I am drunk again and I am in a stranger’s house and it’s my mother’s birthday and her name is Amanda and my girlfriend’s name is also Amanda.
I’m not wearing pants. My socks are white and have holes along the ankle and they are still there. My shirt is also white and it looks like there is blood on it. My mouth hurts. My boxers are blue.
There is one other person in the room with me: a guy about my age with a clean-shaven face and drool dripping from his mouth. He’s fast asleep and keeps snoring, making guttural sounds and squinting hard.
I need to get out of here, find a pair of pants and a present for my mom, and get to my parents’ house before noon. Quickly scanning the room, I don’t see any sign of them. I don’t remember if I was wearing jeans or khakis. It doesn’t matter; there’s no time for it to.
We’re in a bedroom and there is a black dresser only feet away, so whoever’s black jeans I’m pulling out of it belong to me now. They’re a little tight, but I am small. I leave and in the living room about ten more people are asleep in there, too. I don’t need to remember the night to know who had a good one. The guys with girls wrapped around their bodies are obviously smiling more than the boys at their feet or alone under the windowsill.
I still don’t have my shoes and I feel like it is a futile quest to try to find them. I see a bottle of Svedka vodka standing by itself on the kitchen counter with some still in it, so I swig it down as a quiet goodbye to the party and I leave. I don’t care about my shoes as much anymore. The rays of the sun outside hit me like a heart attack and I put my eyes to the ground. I take out my phone. 8:11 AM. I call my girlfriend.
“Hey,” I say. “Look, I’m at some stranger’s house. Is there any way you could pick me up?”
“Babe, what the fuck?” she says. “I’m at work. What are you doing calling me now?”
“It’s only eight.”
“Uh, no. It’s eleven.”
“No, it’s fucking not.” I say. “Look at your phone.”
“Look at your fucking phone. I’ve been at work since nine.”
I take the phone from my ear and look at the screen and apparently she’s right. It’s 11:08. I guess I read it backwards.
“Well, fuck!” I shout back into the receiver. “Can you please pick me up? It’s my mom’s birthday today.”
“You think I don’t know that?” she says. “I was the one reminding you about it all week and the one to tell you not to hang out with your fucking friends last night. Are you drunk?”
“Well, apparently I am!” My voice is getting way too loud for being on the front porch still. A woman, an attractive woman, walking her dog stares at me as she passes. “Look, can you please just pick me up right now? I’m on Mast and Chelsea. I’ll owe you big time, baby.”
She says “goddamnit” very quietly on the other end.
“I think...” she sighs. “That we shouldn’t see each other for a while.” She continues, saying more things. “I know this hurts, but I know this is right.”
“Honestly?” I ask, shaken and slightly offended.
“Honestly.”
“Well, fuck you!”
I hang up and start running. My feet hurt after a few blocks and I can feel the fabric of the socks tearing on the sidewalk. I see a 7-11 not too far and run in there. I look around, scanning the store for anything I could buy and pass of as something with thought. There’s nothing, but bags of chips and cigarettes. I’m already here, so I buy a two-dollar can of Pabst and drink it down in the parking, lot. It’s okay. I have forty dollars.
I start running again. By bus it takes about an hour to get to my parents’ house so I am thinking that I’m pretty well fucked. It doesn’t matter. What kind of man am I if I don’t try?
I stumble and trip, scraping my hand as I catch myself. A man passes by and looks down at me on the sidewalk and asks “Are you alright, son?”
“Fine.” I say. I don’t look at him.
I stare at the pavement for a moment, at the cracks in the sidewalk, detached. My hands are bleeding a bit over the concrete. I’m breaking more than my mother’s back.
Then I see something in the gutter next to me. Something is shimmering. I dip my hand into the brown gutter water, sift away the clump of twigs, and pick up the object. It’s golden. It’s a necklace and there is a blue jewel at the end of it. I can’t help but smile. I think that God likes fucking with people. He puts on shows for himself because it must be lonely being him.
Today will end up fine.














