Jim - Five

Jim

 

We were all completely pumped up from our adventure and, given that we had just come into possession of a half-year supply of booze and cigarettes, there was no way in hell we were going to sleep.

We dumped our new stash out in the middle of the room and settled into our spots. I leaned against Hersch’s bed with my elbows on my knees, Hersch sat backwards in the desk chair, Gabe flopped over on his bunk and Erich sat next to him, pulled over the chest and put his feet up on it. “Right, then,” said Gabe as he tucked a pack into his front pocket, “anyone have a light?”

Erich grunted as he pulled the cork out of his bottle with his teeth. “I might.” He patted his pockets and produced a pack of matches. Then he grabbed the cigarette out of Gabe’s mouth, lit both of theirs together, and tossed the matches to Hersch without missing a beat.

Gabe looked almost excessively awed as Erich handed the cig back. “Impressive,” he commented.

“Yeah, well,” Erich looked smugly at the ground as he put the match out with a flick of his wrist, “you learn a thing or two where I come from.”

Hersch exhaled smoke and passed a match to me. “Like what?” he asked skeptically. “How to f**k a dame in under a minute before the building gets bombed?”

I tensed, waiting to see what Erich’s reaction would be to that, but he laughed. “Not exactly, but I guess that’s what you should be learning back in the ghetto, from what I hear.”

We all laughed at that, even Hersch. “Sounds about right!” he laughed, “But I got myself a girl back home, which is more than I’ll bet any of you can say.”

“Yeah right, all you’ve got is a sister and your right hand,” I joked. I didn’t believe that a guy as quiet as Hersch could hold on to a real girl.

“Hey there, I do have a sister,” Hersch interjected, “so you’d better watch it.”
            “Ooh!” We all crowed. He should never have let us in on that, “a sister, huh? That should be fun. Never fucked a Jew before, not many around where I come from.”

Hersch glowered at me and Erich snorted. “I could loan you a few. Too many where I come from.”

“And where’s that?” Gabe asked Erich, obviously trying to step away from the subject before it got out of hand.

Erich took the bottle from him. “Berlin,” he answered.

“You’re kidding,” Hersch said, obviously surprised, shaking off the jokes about his sister pretty quickly. “It’s got to be rough over there. What the hell are you learning?”

Erich took a long swig of the whiskey and winced at the taste. “Well, we do learn how to f**k our dames faster than anything, but we know what corner to buy them on and how to get them to bend over!”

We all hooted at that until we started to choke on the smoke from laughing so hard and had to try and stop. “Oh boy,” Hersch laughed, “Then what the hell are you doing here?”

Erich took a drag on his cigarette and blew smoke in Hersch’s direction before answering. “Damned if I know,” he said. “For one thing, it hasn’t been completely blown up yet. Other than that, my mum basically tossed me out the door once I…” he stopped like he knew he had said too much. “I got some stupid dame in trouble. Guess it was the last straw.” The harshness in his eyes made us hesitant to ask questions, at the risk of

“Well, then,” I said, wanting to change the subject, “maybe that’s where I should have gone, then.” I coughed. God, it had been too long since I’d had a good smoke. “I thought I’d be able to grab some broads here, but the girls in London were just as buttoned up as the ones back in Beaver Brook.”

They all gave me a funny look. “What the hell is Beaver Brook?” Erich asked brusquely.

I grimaced, knowing how stupid I’d sounded; I should have lied about where I was from. Compared to Erich’s apparently immense experience, I was about to make an a*s of myself.

“It’s the goddamn town I’ve been stuck in for my whole f*****g life,” I said, hoping the extra cursing would count for something. “You got to go all the way to f*****g Barron County to find a dame worth screwing.”

Hersch blew a low whistle through his teeth. “That’s rough, kolega,” he said, like he honestly felt sorry for me.

“I guess,” I mumbled over the cigarette. I had to get the focus off of me. I had the sudden, uncontrollable need to impress them. “Well, then, what about you, Gabe?” He looked up with a start. He was the only one who hadn’t been targeted yet. “You get your hands on enough broads down in… wherever you’re from?” I was trying to lose the attention, but I also wanted to know if there was any truth behind what the Wankers had said about him earlier.

Gabe’s eyes got huge for a second before he smoothed out his face and started into a rushed ramble. “It’s Italy, actually, though only for the last couple of years, I guess. I got shipped over there when I was… whoa! Hey!”

Erich had smacked him in the arm at the same second Hersch chucked a book at his head, which narrowly missed and hit the wall behind us. “Quit stalling and get to the broads, man!”

Gabe bit his lip and talked even faster. “Right, the broads, they’re all over in Italy. Really you can’t walk down the street without… there’s the girls… it’s like… and then…” he trailed off and looked unconvincingly around at us. “You know?”

We all turned a skeptical eye to him. Hersch raised an incredulous eyebrow and Erich stared him down.

“You liar!” Erich exclaimed after a second. “You’ve never touched a girl in your life!”

“Well… but…” Gabe spluttered helplessly as we fought to keep straight faces.

“Oh my God, are you a fairy?” Hersch asked, wide-eyed.

“What? I…” Gabe was getting more desperate by the second.

“Holy s**t! You’re a goddamn virgin, aren’t you?”  Erich asked before Gabe could answer the first question (which was the one I actually wanted to know the answer to), smiling like he knew he had it right.

Gabe’s face got beet red and he sputtered some more while gesturing hopelessly with his hands. “I… well… you know… it’s… but…” he sighed, “yeah, I guess I am.”

It got really quiet for a second. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep a straight face while I tried to figure out which accusation he was confirming. Then Hersch let go of a honking, stifled laugh and it pushed us all over the edge. We all cracked up like we were never going to get to laugh again, even Gabe, who we were technically laughing at. Whenever it felt like we were going to be able to stop, someone start it up again. I decided that we must have been laughing at his inexperience, since there probably would have been a different reaction if we realized we were rooming with a queer.

Eventually, we all took another long drink and managed to relax. “Well it’s not all my fault,” Gabe said, his face turning redder than the wall next to him as he continued to defend himself, “It’s not like I wanted to go to Italy. I barely spoke the bloody language. How was I supposed to get a girl into bed if I didn’t know how to ask?”

“Like this!” And with that, Erich was on him, pinning his arms down and crushing his ribs between his legs. If Erich hadn’t been the toughest guy I had ever met, it would have seemed like the fruitiest thing ever. Erich was clearly the hardest drinker of the four of us. His face was flushed from finishing a bottle and a half in less than thirty minutes. I somehow doubted that he would have leaped like that on to guy sober.

“What the… get the hell off me!” Gabe got over his shock in a split second and tried to wrestle Erich off the bed. Eventually Erich gave up and slid onto the floor, laughing has he lit another cigarette. Gabe laughed along. If he was uncomfortable, he hid it well.

“Great job, Amery,” I joked, smacking him in the arm, “you just tainted the virgin!”

Gabe practically spit out his cigarette from laughing. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Erich sniggered, “no need to thank me.”

That sent us into another uncontrollable laughing fit. Finally, we all took a long drag on our cigs and a longer swig of whiskey and calmed ourselves down. I had tears streaming down my cheeks, Gabe’s hair was sticking straight up, Hersch had slid out of his chair, and Erich was choking on the thick smoke that filled the room.

“S**t, man,” I said once we had regained the ability to breathe. “I thought I had it bad.”

“Well it’s not that…”

“Don’t you say ‘it’s not that bad,’” Erich cut him off. “It is that goddamn bad. You just can’t possibly imagine.”

“It’s true,” I added. My experience was probably pretty sparse compared to the other guys, but at least I had something to go on.

Hersch leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “S**t,” he muttered, “well we’ve got to do something about that.”

“The Jew’s right!” said Erich excitedly. “If we were any kind of friends, we’d drive off and get this guy a girl right now!”

“Big talk,” Hersch muttered, “look at us, we’re all loaded! We couldn’t even drive a bike straight!”

They laughed. “I guess,” said Erich, “but as soon as we get off this damn campus, we’re buying him a broad!”

“We’ll all buy broads!” I threw my hands in the air in toppled over backwards, finding that I liked the plan more and more. Gabe didn’t say anything about the prospect of losing it to a hooker but leaned back and smirked.

I shook my head and smiled. “Damn. This is going to be the best f*****g term ever,” I said. “We’re going to have the time of our f*****g lives!”

“You got that right,” Erich said, suddenly enthusiastic. He clapped me on the shoulder with enough force that I would have been pounded into the floor if I hadn’t braced myself.

“I’ll drink to that,” said Gabe.

I shrugged and raised my bottle to the center of our ring. “To the best f*****g time of our lives,” we said, taking our bottles back and drinking like it was the last drink on earth.

Gabe looked into his bottle and clicked his tongue. “All right,” he mumbled. “I’m fried enough for tonight. I’m going to bed. He rolled over and buried his face in the pillow without another word.

“All right,” Hersch slurred as he made his way over to the bunk.

“Sorry to get you all worked up before bed,” Erich said teasingly, giving Gabe’s back a smack before climbing up to his own bunk.

Gabe muttered something into his pillow that sounded like: “Apology accepted.”

I yawned, put out the light, and crawled into bed. “Good night,” I mumbled.

            “Gute nacht.”

            “Buona note.”

            “Dobranoc”

            We were all snoring in seconds.

Author's Note

At this point, I would really like to get feedback on the male relationships. I'm a girl (duh) so I'm basicall taking a shot in the dark here and hoping I hit the mark. I would love thoughts on whether this is seeming realistic!

Reviews

[Dakota]

Sounds like a typical male drunk session to me. They've all been scared to open up and now this is the common bond (Gabe excluded) they need.

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[Coyote Poetry]

A very good chapter. When men or boys gather. Stories of conquests are many. I like the good conversation and the good liquor opening up a good stories. Thank you for the excellent chapter.
Coyote