The Haters (26 page)

WES:

COREY:

WES:

COREY: the shins, man

WES:

COREY: i'm 90 percent sure

WES:

COREY:

WES: i mean i really think kool & the gang was first

COREY: maybe like 80 percent

WES: but now i'm thinking about it and i guess i can't be totally sure

COREY:
fuck

WES: i guess there's a chance because i'm going through my memories and i guess i don't know for sure what the order was, like i can tell you what it feels like but maybe i've always been remembering it wrong, or maybe now i'm remembering it wrong

COREY:
oh my god. why do we have to be stoned right now

[
james mercer hits that one plaintive note on “heard” the third time through the chorus that is the first moment in the song where he allows himself to feel true painful emotion and it takes the song to a completely different place somehow
]

WES: maybe we need to just drop it for the time being

COREY: yeah. we need to drop this immediately. because trying to remember shit stoned feels like it's destroying my memories forever

Yeah. That was how it felt for me, too. It felt like my memories were old crumbly photographs and the act of pulling them out was smudging and blurring and breaking them, and the closer I tried to examine them, the tighter I gripped them, and the worse it got.

WES: well, hey

COREY:

WES: i'm sorry. i've b

COREY: don't worry about it

And by this point his voice was back to normal. It was back to being Corey's dry cool kind of surprisingly deep voice, and it
told me we were exiting the raw hot gooey place we had been in, of crying and being vulnerable and saying unspeakably honest things to each other.

WES: no but just let m

COREY: seriously, don't worry about it, because if you start apologizing, then i'll start, and we've both got like a million things to apologize for, and it's just too much shit for right now, so don't worry about it

WES: all right

[
track three starts with that suspended chord from the guitar that then breaks off into that bouncy little mountain-goat descent with the stamping bass-drum into the cymbals and the big minor strum and james mercer triumphantly yelling
]

Part of me was definitely sad to be leaving the raw hot gooey place. But maybe a bigger part was relieved. And then a third part was thinking,
If you and Corey were girls, you would probably be in that raw hot gooey place all the time. You would constantly be telling each other brutally honest truths about your relationship, and it would cement your bond but also provide you with constant pain. You would probably be a gibbering lunatic by now
.

WES: there's kind of a good hot tub outside if that interests you

COREY: oh yeah?

WES: yeah it's pretty big and people seem to like it

COREY: are some of those people girls

I'm just saying, you can only be in that place for so long.

WES: i don't want to oversell it but it's a hundred percent girls and all of them are softly moaning in ecstasy a hundred percent of the time

COREY: oh
tight

WES: yeah. it's super tight

COREY: my dick is trying to gnaw itself free from my torso just thinking about this

WES: yeah i wasn't even in that hot tub for ten minutes before i caught my dick drawing elaborate escape plans on a rag

We headed downstairs and left the Shins playing for someone else to find.

COREY: hey is one of those girls the girl you were chasing around the lawn like a lunatic rapist viking

WES: you saw that, huh

COREY: i'll never be able to unsee it

WES: look. she wanted me to chase her

COREY: well all right but now let me ask you something

WES: sure

COREY: do you think that last thing you said made you sound like less of a rapist

29.
MAYBE IT WASN'T A HUNDRED PERCENT BUT THERE WAS A GOODLY NUMBER OF GIRLS IN THERE

One of them was ShaeAnne still. It was a younger crowd at this point. Big Pritch had left. So had Ash and Cookie. I tried not to think too hard about where they had gone or what they were doing.

Initially, ShaeAnne seemed to be ignoring me. But soon I realized it was part of an elaborate Courtship Initiation Sequence.

C
OURTSHIP INITIATION SEQUENCE CHECKLIST

Give long smoky look to Object of Courtship (OoC) as he approaches hot tub and slowly raise leg out of water until big toe is pointing more or less at him

Abruptly drop leg back into water and ignore OoC for about ten minutes

Glance sort of half-eyeliddedly back at OoC, and if he is not looking, which he's probably not, then I guess just keep making identical half-lidded glances over there every few seconds until he happens to be looking back

Once brief eye contact has been made, giggle mysteriously

Immediately submerge head and entire body underwater

Drift slowly over to OoC's foot area

Give his shin a brief but painful bite with a lot of your teeth

Drift back across the hot tub and emerge nonchalantly from surface of water as though nothing fucked up has happened

Continue to ignore OoC and instead strike up conversation with Friend of Object of Courtship (FoOoC) despite the fact that FoOoC is clearly in the middle of flinging some big-league woo at a different girl, the girl being that candombe-drum-playing girl from earlier and the woo being it's hard to tell but based on the angles probably fondling her butt