First one out in a game called 'the max' only because I'm sitting next to a 'magister ludi.' Inhale my beer as punishment, and help the guy next to me with his strategy - Joe, a set of eyes and a nose sticking out of black bristle beard and hair. He was Richie Tenenbaum for Halloween last year, and for that he is always a welcome temp friend at parties. It's Sean's going away party. I tell Joe he's on his own and go to refill my beer at the keg. Heather enters and sees me before anyone. I'm in a hug before I know it, and thinking that she even hugs like a man - rough, but warm in it's casual nonchalance. She's scratching my head as she always does, and I scratch hers back in return. She's all bones, and I'm not at all surprised later to find out she loves to rock climb. I'm scratching heads with the kind of girl that would've protected me on the playground back in the day and there is some feeling I can't place.
A pipe is passed, and I'm proud I don't cough as I never do. Heather, Sean and I are letting a shot of cherry whiskey burn it's way to our stomachs. My phone rings and it's Gianna. Only after Seannyboy sings some verses of Space Oddity and makes her promise to visit him in New York do I get to talk to her. And even through a cherry whiskey blur and purple smoke haze, I have a feeling I can't shake lately. I can't place the feeling as it is like forty at once. I'm depressed, frustrated, strangely contented, wanting, nostalgic, uneasy, insecure, and in love with her all at once, and I know she can hear it. Her relationships are strange and at points I start to feel like simply one of them. I'm leaving soon, and can't place the feelings I have over leaving her. Revelations small and insignificant keep creeping up to nag at me. And on top of this, I can't get over how amazing of a person she is to me. And like this paragraph it's all too analyzed and thought over, and I'm telling her that she should decide if I should visit or not, but either way I'm going back to the party. It's abrupt and she doesn't like it, but I'm at a loss to compensate for it, and so I leave it.
And I'm back to the pipe, and the temp friends and drinking games. Upstairs Sean teaches me how to smoke from a bong, and there is some feeling I can't place. We're out on the porch again, Heather, Sean, and I. I tell Sean I'll miss the guy and that he was my only madison friend. He tells me I was his only friend as well. When I disagree he simply waves me off with a 'well, the best of them anyway.' And that feeling creeps up, and I'm still at a loss. It isn't until leavingm, when Sean, 6'8" frame and all, envelops me in two tree branch arms in a mannish goodbye, that I make some partial sort of realization. He's all bones, and has always protected me on a more adult playground to be sure. And like the last piece of the puzzle clicking in, I see that I'm only a child in all this. Drunk and high on love and admiration, everyone is looking at me with their old soul eyes, as I beam a crooked toothy grin and continue playing in some child's fantasy of what it's like to belong to an exclusive adult world. My feelings confused, and my actions done with a child's unknowing innocence, everyone here sees the kid that has snuck into their midst. One which they corrupt and protect with an older sibling kind of love. One that has no grasp of this world, as he is just trying to figure out his own.