Party Time

There were a dozen of us crowded into Jimmy’s dorm room and surrounding his bed. It was late afternoon, Saturday, and three hours before kickoff. Jimmy opened the fruit jar and poured out the capsules and pills onto the bed.

Jimmy suffered from narcolepsy and required a constant flow of amphetamines in his system to keep him from falling down asleep. His doctors gave him an unlimited supply of rainbow colored pills. Little white ones, red and blue ones, pink ones, and black ones. Some acted immediately and some were time release. They formed a multicolored circle in the center of Jimmy’s bed.

He didn’t play on our football team, but was the team’s medicine man. At least, he was to those of us who were friends with him. My roommate, a tackle named Jackson, was a transfer from Arkansas University. He liked the red and blue time release and the little white ones that would kick in just before the game stared if he took it ten minutes before kickoff. He reached in and picked out two red and blue capsules and one of the little white pills. I picked up a big, pink time release.

Timing was the key. Take the Dexedrine too early, and you would run out of steam in the fourth quarter. Take too much or too late, and you would be up all night. If a guy timed it right and got the right dose, he would be like a raging bull for the whole game, and afterward, he’d be as docile as a little lamb. Of course, none of us ever got our doses exactly right. Most times, we took too much.

Before the game, the coach had us all in the locker room for a pep talk. We were lolling around dressed in our green and white uniforms.  A team from some Podunk U was down from Kansas. We listen to him drone on and on over the sound of us breathing like freight trains with the amphetamines surging through our veins; all of us itching to hit someone. We had to be careful in the pre-game warm up not to get carried away with each other.

Once the game started, and we were loosed upon our opponents, we could hit to our hearts content. It didn’t matter much to my roommate whether he hit or got hit. He liked the contact. We all did. The whole game nobody ever said much of anything. The play was called, and we fired out. We kept firing out on each play until we scored, or until someone made a mistake, and we lost control of the ball.

My roommate’s nose was broken on the first play of the game against the team from Kansas by a linebacker. Jackson knocked him on his butt, but he got that one lick in with his forearm. Only lick he got. The linebacker spent the rest of the game sitting on his ass after each play, but my roommate’s nose was busted. The trainer stuffed two rolled up sticks of cotton in his nose to stop him bleeding all over us. At half time, I saw him swallow the second blue and red capsule.

With the Dexedrine singing in his ears the whole second half, every chance he got, my teammate tried to kill that linebacker who had busted his nose. The pink beauty that I had taken before the game was still talking to me when I showered and was getting dressed after the game. Jackson stood in front of a mirror and pushed his nose straight with the heel of the palm of his right hand.

“Mother fucker,” he screamed at the mirror.

“Mother fucker,” he repeated and applied a piece of adhesive tape across the bridge of his nose. His eyes were turning black and the pain made them water, but the bleeding had stopped, and he didn’t stuff cotton up his nose.

Me and Jackson were the last ones left in the locker room, and we were both still breathing hard when we were finally dressed and ready to leave. The Dexedrine kept pumping and pumping its magic. Jackson had a date with his girlfriend who was the daughter of a redneck deputy sheriff. She was a half breed Cherokee Indian, as tall as we were when she wore heels, and probably tougher than both of us put together.

We all told Jackson her daddy would kill him if he found out what they were doing. We also told him he was a retard for messing around with her, but he didn’t care about what anybody thought. I didn’t either if you want to know. We had us a party to go to, and we were going to have a good time. We were going a dance all night long.

The team had rented an old, beat up farm house out in the country for the weekend. We had two or three kegs of beer that medicine man Jimmy was in charge of setting up on ice. He had the music. A lot of girls would show up to help us celebrate our victory. We would get high, and the beer would be ice cold.

I was ready to party. Jackson looked beat up, but more than ready.  We were mean fucking machines. Lookout, here we come. Jackson hit the front of a metal locker on the way out as hard as he could with his fist and then kicked the front of it in for good measure. Jackson’s girlfriend was waiting for us outside the locker room.

“Oh baby. Look at you,” she said when she saw Jackson’s face. “You are seriously messed up, baby.

He grabbed her and pulled her with him to his red Chevy convertible. He opened the passenger side door and pushed her in. She looked pissed. He went around and got in behind the wheel. The motor started right up. He tuned the radio to a rock station and turned it up. I stood with my hand on the open passenger door but didn’t get in.

His girlfriend slid over close to him and put her hand on his thigh. She reached out and twisted the radio’s dial and turned the volume down.

“You need to go to a doctor,” she said. “You look fucked up.”

“No, I’m alright. I fixed it. The guys have the party set up,” he said.

“I’m not going to any more of those parties,” she said. “You need to get fixed.”

“I am not going to get fixed. We’re going to the party. We’re going to celebrate.”

“I’m not going to watch you and your buds get drunk and stupid. You’re all pilled up. You’re going to get out of control. I don’t want to be trapped out in the country with you drunk and crazy. You need to get to a doctor.

“Fuck that,” he said.

“Well, I don’t need this shit,” she said, slid over, quickly pushed past me to step out of the car. I slipped into the seat, and she slammed the passenger door shut behind me.

Jackson reached and tuned up the volume of the radio up as loud it would go, put the car in gear, stomped the accelerator to the floor, and the Chevy roared away from the curb. I turned and looked back at his girlfriend standing at the curb. She raised her hand high in the air and gave us the finger.

Jackson didn’t care. Pain was drumming and thumping his head, and the red and blues were pumping and fucking the blood in his veins to the beat of the music blasting out of the front of the dash. He rolled down the window and screamed out into the cold night wind, “Fuck Me!”