CEX SUB CON

I’m at a party, it’s really late, and I don’t actually think I drink anything, or see myself drinking anything, but I’m completely wasted. It’s really late. The people at this house party are all strangers to me, and I feel outside of all of them, alien—alien enough that they don’t think anything about me, they just look, don’t have an immediate instinct as to where to put it, then they move on, it gets no more thought. For some reason, though, I am here and I am trying to go to sleep. There aren’t many people and most of them seem to be trying to go to sleep, too, everyone sleeping on beds in different rooms and all of us lying down in our clothes. I lie down with this girl but I can’t fall asleep, so I go into the hallway and lean against her sister. Her sister is a little younger. I wonder if anyone thinks it is sketchy that I was in bed with the first girl and then leaning on her sister, I wonder if anybody thought that “something happened” in the bed. I am pretty sure nothing happened but I begin to doubt myself. Nobody talks to me but nobody seems weirded out that I’m there—like I said, there’s no reason to think about it, everyone has plenty of other things to occupy their brain. Somebody decides that we should all go to the movies.

It’s a really fancy theater lobby. I’m still wasted. I approach the concession stand and space out looking at the menu, which I cannot read, and space out when the overweight girl working the register asks me for what I want. The person in line in front of me, who is waiting to receive the food she has ordered and paid for, says something about my spacing out but I don’t catch the gist of it—whether it was a little harsh or light-hearted, I don’t know, and I find myself talking in that voice I usually use when I’m around a lot of people I don’t know and trying to act totally unafraid—a little extra-friendly, wordy version of my best impression of Richie Molyneux’s party-speech. As I start talking, I find I can’t really maintain my balance, and as I start tilting forward, I lose control of my mouth and all these words keep coming out of me, ending with, “There’s not a problem, is there? Everything’s cool, right?” in a tone that is way more confrontational than I want. Internally, I panic—I am not used to losing control of my mouth like that. The girl behind the counter couldn’t care less, though, and my panic, at least for the moment, seems unnecessary. I try to order some food by basically guessing and agreeing with the girl behind the counter, but I don’t pay any attention to the exchange because I’m too busy in my own head trying to figure out why my brain is unable to do multiple things at once anymore.

I think I order a small bag of popcorn and some kind of orange drink. I move to the left to wait for these things. There is a guy on a barstool sitting with a drink at that end of the concession counter, I didn’t notice him before. I start talking to him but I have no control over what I’m saying. I start rambling on and on in a drunk-guy-on-the-train type of way and I am sure that I have never been this guy before. All the kids from the party who I came with are out of the lobby now, either in one of the theaters or gone. I can’t stop the words that are coming out to this guy who clearly doesn’t care. I can tell he’s getting annoyed. My words and voice make me sound completely oblivious to the fact that he’s annoyed but inside my head, I know exactly what is going on. I don’t understand why it is going on. I feel tired and wish I hadn’t come to the movies, wishing I was in a bed somewhere.