Party Favors Amber D. Dodd

Party Favors

Amber D. Dodd

Attending a socially starved STEM school brewed thick social awkwardness. At first, I was all work, no play, perfecting the ideology of the exceptional scholar. A novel genius married to AP Lang essays, blowing past Maryland High School Assessments. Then parties became curriculum.

I was determined to be triumphant in booze, boys and books. How to ace this much fun, failing all those classes? How to synchronize your ego with soft grace, staring lustfully into cinnamon eyes, sneaking hookups home past the 2:00 a.m. Critz Hall dorm curfew?

The true wild bitch inside emerged like a caterpillar cracking her cocoon at Mississippi State University.

Keisha, Nikki and Kayla were my first college girl group. We all met in a chat for incoming freshmen, before school started. Keisha lived down the hall from me by chance. We binged movies, helped unscrew nipple piercings and stood outside community showers while each other bathed.

Keisha explained her Memphis party life.

“Bitch, I snuck out the house for a party once and, biiiitch, they shot the whole fucking club UP,” she said, over gurgling shower heads. “Then they said they was coming BACK to shoot that bitch up AGAIN. Starkville ain’t got shit on Memphis.”

Nikki ended up moving in with me mid-October, after she fought her old roommate’s boyfriend and won. She questioned my life as a Marylander, said I marauded through the South after educational opportunities. The angst disintegrated as we caught each other’s tears over family issues and exam stress.

Kayla was Nikki’s best friend. We weren’t particularly close, though we were in the Black student organizations together, friends by way of frequent functions. We climbed into board

member chairs and we kept up with Black campus life. Eventually, I became secretary of the campus’ NAACP chapter and she became vice president of the Black Student Association.

These women were my teachers of femininity—another unknown covenant. I came from two brothers and sheltering parents. Heels, makeup and other symbols of striking young girlhood were new experiences. My first party, the girls talked me into a striped, candy-colored crop top that wrapped around my bony torso. Classic, dark-wash daisy dukes tightened with a hot pink belt. Nikki recommended comfier shoes, so I sported gray Converse I purchased in New York City during the freshman year history trip. I didn’t have any makeup. My long, chocolate legs kept eyes off the bulging whiteheads on my deep brown skin. Eyeshadow would have hid behind my square glasses anyway. I looked at myself in the mirror overwhelmingly unrecognizable, yet enticing. Femininity oozed out of me. A new identity had begun emerging, becoming, no matter the prior ignorance or approaching mistakes.

Two shots of Everclear, some vodka, and a smidgen of unbearable, efficient moonshine and there I was: an unfavorable party. Crowds weren’t a bother. Puddles of sweat didn’t weigh me down. Preying upperclassmen didn’t hover over me. Parties became where I unlearned stiffness and learned how to jig.

My biggest night, Dreams and Nightmares played at the midnight bash our new cafeteria hosted during Finals week. I went ballistic, dropping to the ground, rocking side-to-side, cooking drugs in an imaginary pot to a Baltimore dance called The Avenue. Camera screens and flashlights illuminated all the dazzling eyes upon me, everyone hyping me up and naming me a dancing machine not stuck on the cogs of social cues. Even with the cultural split between Black Northerners and Southerners, I was finally one of them, an Us. Gyrating my dark body on pitch black dance floors made me feel light, passing a freshmen intro course with flying colors into what my social life could become.

Pride – HTX Rusy Singh By

The Passage By Stephanie Gonzalez

But, as STEM kids know best: logistics can only serve so far in human experience.

“You babysitting.” Jaquarius and Will, track runners and my fav upperclassmen, observed my warm, nearly untouched pint of green apple vodka at Nikki’s cousin’s birthday party at the start of sophomore year.

“Don’t be no pussy now.” They pop-quizzed me to see if the knowledge had stuck.

Chugging the bottle, I completed the exam. Encouraging chants were my cheat sheet yet the noise made me miss the bonus question of consequences. My boyfriend of three days—he had dangled his new prize out of his best friend’s truck passenger window, allowing the sour, chunky swirl of cherry cupcakes and campus Chik-fil-A to purge out of me as I promised him some great head later. I still passed with flying colors, but what would it cost me as I matriculated further beyond the gates of social acceptance?

Me and the girls weren’t as close by junior year. Saturday nights were for cuddling with my boyfriend. Keisha did the same with hers too, retiring from the partygoing altogether. A pallor professional personality strengthened my mysterious reputation, allowing me to glide into a budding sports journalism career and campus leadership life. Pulling my weight in my relationship, friendships, and classes to align my future, bright spots of free time only occurred during our breezy syllabus week. Nikki and Kayla, who now lived together off campus, invited me to party with them like “old times.”

“Eh, sure. I’ll go tonight since Black Reign is next week,” I remembered it as the Sigma bash that kicked off spring semester. “I know I’m not going to that.”

The night of the get-together, we squeezed into Nikki’s room like we used to when we shared one. We had a new pregaming ritual, smoking or taking shots without a hovering RA.

“Big T invited me,” Nikki said.

An infamous outside linebacker, Big T was known for his skills on and off the turf. He threw the best functions. He kept the best women. “I know it’s finna be some fine ass football players there. It’s a kickback.”

Kickbacks were the poetry slams of college link-ups. Thriving in low lighting with a few friends you personally knew, acquaintances you knew of. You relaxed. You sat or smoked with whoever sat next to you. Deep secrets were spilled...

“Kickback or party?” I asked, looking in the mirror, uneasy with my outfit. I had to be sure—these were vastly different social settings.

Kickbacks were the poetry slams of college link-ups. Thriving in low lighting with a few friends you personally knew, acquaintances you knew of. You relaxed. You sat or smoked with whoever sat next to you. Deep secrets were spilled in Never Have I Ever, or you just—talked. Songs you pretended not to like were slipped into the shuffle. Junior year I remember walking up into an empty bedroom, glocks in the corner from loud ass niggas caught up in their dice game camaraderie. I couldn’t judge. It was Black happiness, freedom away from our chaotic curriculums.

Parties meant a wilder environment. Screaming. Jumping around like a mosh pit in someone’s kitchen. Dancing or sing-screaming away our college problems.

One girl got her ass beat at one party, outside going to the afterparty, and even at the afterparty. I was pissed that she broke our utopia. It could’ve spiraled out of control. Fear—or any other similar emotions, like shame, and guilt, for the 38 on an exam I needed to pass—wasn’t supposed to exist here. The guy I left my boyfriend for, a day after he expressed his love for me, stood right next to me. Out of party civility, he didn’t bark a word.

I went to a true kickback earlier that night. People playing Uno and Spades, games on their 56-inch TVs. My milder, clean cut friends. I didn’t have to worry about putting on clothes or looking and acting cute. Everything in the name of “squad:” posting corny photos together at our community service events; singing white pop songs freely. Instagram hype comments and shares were our favorite past times, all in the name of leadership image and negro respectability politics at a PWI.

I liked me when I was with them. I was morphing into a prestigious member of my organization. Rebranding my confident, presidential image. These friends never knew the stench of the wilder, young Amb. Their disguises were just as deceiving as mine.

I sported a constricting jean jacket with a canary colored cami. An old, black bodycon dress as a headscarf. My black, faded joggers—tight, but comfy.

“Girl, it’s another kickback,” Nikki said. “Calm down.”

“Eh, you look fine,” Kayla said. She wiggled her heels on, matching her baby blue strapless top. She adorned her neck with a gold choker. “You’re lowkey anyway! Nobody would even recognize you.”

Nostalgia resurrected the possibility of pure girlhood, a reminder of how fun it was to squish seven of us in a car for Super Bulldog Weekend.We laughed just like we did before going to the Kappa pool party sophomore year where someone’s random toddler lounged around the pool. I could smell the smoke from their neighbor’s apartment like the night we won our SEC opener against LSU. Football players blasted their music like past spring scrimmage games.

Rides always set the scene. Nikki blared her usual music — Three Six Mafia, from her childhood, or pre-Versace Migos, as we sped on invisible Mississippi midnight backroads. Athletes stayed in the new maroon townhouses where those Walmart MSU Bulldog flags signified their location. Clumps of people stood around the patchy, mustard lawn. In the cold, January air, plenty of conversation carried.

My leadership acquaintances showed up too. I walked past John, who I tutored in English freshman year, with his friend group as they passed a big bottle of dark liquor around.

“Glad to see you out, sis!” a friend of his joked to me.

Kayla made sure her makeup was perfect, reapplying her dark lipstick.

Nikki looked comfortable in her pink and white plastic Jordan’s, her hair in a puff from work earlier. She was quiet and calm, saving her high for being social inside.

I retucked my cami, straightened out my jacket and blinked to make sure I wasn’t too stoned. I had to sound like I ate Caesar salads for fun. It was 45 degrees outside that night but, like the Marylander they always said I was, cold weather wasn’t a bother. “Dude, we used to stand on the bus stops in three degree weather,” I’d boast, laughing at how miserable we were, waiting in soaked, knockoff Ugg boots. “This is nothing.”

“Bitch, there he go. Say hey,” Nikki whispered to Kayla. She waved faintly at one of the finer, funnier football players, trying not to try.

“He sooooo fine,” Kayla schmoozed. “Damn, wish he didn’t have kids.”

“Plural?” I asked, examining his well nourished baby face.

I never saw anything spectacular about athletes. It wouldn’t be a good look to have sex flashbacks during pre-game press conferences. However, college social barriers dissolved at athletic functions—they became a makeshift recess for grownup kids.

Dope boys flashed money every chance they could. There were two groups of them: one stayed in the house by the kitchen island, stealthily scoping out The Opps™ or girls they lusted after; the others outside entertaining girls they were already fucking, presenting their pretty, pampered chargers and mustangs. They shimmered under streetlights at 1:00 a.m., blasting their best friend’s mumble rap inside their bass-quivering cars.

Shy, quiet guys were human wallflowers, still in motion like decorations. They claimed responsibility as permanent DDs. They made their own, one-man, mental kickbacks in the middle of parties, wondering what time they’d get home for church in the morning as others fell into rap-a-longs. They were as fine as they were quiet, though. It made us wonder, because they didn’t fuck anyone at our school. Community college girls with low follower counts on social media were their go-to type. Stonedfaced and blank, with just one emotion, quiet men are the Swiss army knives of their groups. They are the saving grace—the voice of reason. They keep their wasted friends out of ass whippings. They are elite escape artists. If anything pops off, they camp out closest to the door. At these parties, the cute girl from Calculus could stand next to them and talk while they held the wall. Possibilities were endless.

Clueless, “green” girls always looked lost. Never been nowhere. Never been around nobody, not even they own people. The only songs they knew were ones on the radio, no matter how many times friends scolded them for not practicing while getting ready. They skidded over iconic music. We looked at them crooked for pronouncing every single, slicing syllable of “it’s get-ting hot in here,” here instead of hurr. Green girls were onlookers, unable to submerge themselves into the memories being made around them.

The bad bitches. Oh, yes. A homegrown kind of fine. The ones with juicy lips, who only needed moisturizer and some lip gloss. Lashes were optional, but in this economy? Baddies just looked like they tasted of cherries and honey. Earlier that night, a few of them at this party posted a bathroom selfie with a little bit showing, landing just right on the pick-me and misogyny scale. They walked in cliqued up, eerily similar to cinematic hot chicks, Dirty Little Secret during Spring Break montages.

Lesbians watched too. They—I—begged silently for a piece, while Baddies took their stares as problematic, instead of samesex mating calls.

Artists made their way to functions too, when not hypnotized by their craft. When, while blowing off steam with like minded students, they realized an element was missing. An element they couldn’t put their finger on. They gazed off at parties like this one, frozen in their dilemma.

Pro-Blacks. Hoteps. Bible-thumping Christians or other conceited theology snobs, Jesus Christ, are y’all annoying as fuck at the function. They always spewed their divisive shit, about eating

The bad bitches. Oh, yes. A homegrown kind of fine. The ones with juicy lips, who only needed moisturizer and some lip gloss. Lashes were optional, but in this economy? Baddies just looked like they tasted of cherries and honey.

If They Leave Let Them By Stephanie Gonzalez

He stood atop the kitchen counter. His baby blue boxers showed as his pants sloppily draped under his ass. Red lights on the kitchen island shined against his gilded, diamond pinky ring.

computerized carrots, or the Wrath coming, or how we didn’t vote, yet there they were, right next to me at a sinful shindig. Their presence was always contradictory at its finest. They were oh so unique, so righteous, but somehow, some way, we all met up at the same location, shook ass to the same beats and knew the same lyrics that were viciously tearing apart Black communities, rapping about guns that shot them in their precious third eye.

I knew most cliques like the back of my brown hands, so I always knew there was no particular group for me to lock into. An artistic STEM kid with a bright, enthusiastic but dry, sarcastic personality, climbing the sports journalism ladder and still tiptoeing over Boosie and Young Dolph? Solidifying one part of my identity would’ve always meant losing out on another. Mass get-togethers would become a hodgepodge of gatekeepers and classmates wondering why I was there, not observing some stupid journalism case study, and college had to be fun somehow. The same cliques showed up to the same functions. This one was no different.

Loud chatter erupted as we approached the door. Porch lights exposed how faded my joggers were, comparatively. Another woman’s bright pink lace corset covered her brown arms to combat the upcoming cold as she left whatever we were entering. I walked out of the dark hallway into the cramped living room. Music that had just stopped blasting still echoed on the walls. The host changed their kitchen lights to ultraviolet, a color that exposed every moving spec through the smoke-filled air. It smelled like sweat, salty ham and ass. Pure, hot ass.

“This better not be a party.” I whispered to myself.

“AYE NAH, THIS A PARTY,” I knew it. A drunk host confirmed my social nightmare yelling through the DJ speaker. “IF YA’ AIN’T SHAKING ASS, MINUSWELL GO HOME!”

As soon as he gave out the ultimatum, the DJ dropped the classic of it all: Juvenile’s Back That Azz Up “CASH MONEY RECORDS TAKING OVER FOR THE 99s AND THE 2000s!”

I. Knew. It.

I disobeyed party commandments. I went to stand with onlookers and didn’t shake shit.

“Whatta kickback huh?” I yelled over to Nikki. She shrugged, smiled.

My eyes were drawn to a shirtless, skinny, light skinned man. He was covered in chest tattoos of dead niggas’ names, Bible verses and faded angel wings. He stood atop the kitchen counter. His baby blue boxers showed as his pants sloppily draped under his ass. Red lights on the kitchen island shined against his gilded, diamond pinky ring. He gripped a defrosting Hennessy bottle while rapping to his friends below him. His gold grill shined with each word, thick spit riding his tongue like

ocean waves. Around him, people swarmed into their Saturday night plans: a pair of party promoters cheered; Baddies entered in their cutest clothes, ready to go; green girls danced stiffly, mesmerized by the majestic, chiseled athletes walking past; quiet men doubled as nannies, surveilling friends. Some guy in a faded dashiki held a woman by the waist beads.

The ultimate party song darkened into NBA Young Boy song. I’m tryna t-shirt the bitch. I could feel Young Boy spitting all over me. One scary bitch that I ain’t get and I ain’t stopping til he get stretched…

The songs switched over again. NBA’s War with Us began.

Nigga all I know is murder, swear to GOD that I’m with it and everything I talk up in my song you know I live it.

Fuck.

I’d stayed out of the game too long. None of these songs were the soundtracks I knew when I defended myself from summer’s floods, or 12-foot ice storms. They weren’t what I panicked to while searching for my crimson “special event” tie, when Maryland senators visited our poor charter school to perform normalcy with us. These weren’t from wild nights during Senior Week. I wanted to hear songs that mirrored memories of sharing summers with other ex-military kids. I couldn’t find myself playing in the sand of Arcadia Shores, or staring off into the long, winding Brigadier Road I marched on. The discomfort of not fitting folded my excitement in half, but a familiar voice called my name behind me.

I called back over the music. “Hey Marc!”

He was known as the “lowkey cool gay” from Memphis. He respected me for leaving, for being so far from home. He saw I was pretty cool past my Valley Girl accent. He looked at me with a curious smile and before I could open my mouth we died laughing at my party displacement, instead of a quiet library room. Having had a few impromptu, hour-long talks outside our student union, I was sure Marc’s quipping humor would soothe me into the party vibe.

“Well, who you with?” he asked.

I searched for Nikki and Kayla, but my eyes snagged on Blue Boxers, concentrating, pouring his full drink on a girl. He flicked his red Solo cup at her then shrugged, and onlookers gasped like some sitcom studio audience. Music cut. A guy wearing a mustard shirt swooped in. Instantly, Blue Boxers and Mustard Shirt Man started an inebriated, incoherent argument. They shared a pillow-soft nose kiss while they threatened to cut each other’s lives short. The girl walked away screeching in pain, wiping alcohol from her sizzling pink eyes that glowed under ultraviolet lights.

“Mane bet I won’t bust my shit!” Blue Boxers screamed, pull-

Sketches for Still Life 9779 By David McClain

ing a platinum pistol from his waistband, baiting Mustard Shirt Man.

“Aww, shit,” Marc said.

We all jetted toward the front exit. One party host, a guy in all black, maybe a defensive linebacker, bulldozed over one of those human wallflowers to slam and lock the door.

He shouted at us. “And who the fuck said the party was over?!”

We turned back around, rushing for the back exit, but it was blocked by the DJ booth. The argument grew louder.

“Shit!” I whispered.

Mustard Shirt Man pushed Blue Boxers. Ironically, he gave him enough space to shoot. Adrenaline fueled our panicking bodies, setting the cramped living room ablaze. We prepared to die.

“Sunset…January 20, 2018…” said a boy behind me, joking, mocking the iconic vocal blend of Morgan Freedom’s slow deepness, Maya Angelou’s sultry, assuring vibrance.

The blinded girl meddled between the bickering men, backing Mustard Shirt Man into a dark corner. Blue Boxers vanished into the Dope Boy circle. Within seconds, chatter exploded, and tension ate itself.

I thought the DJ would rush to play a nice singalong jam to ice the altercation, but instead, he spun Webbie’s “U Bitch.” You know—the song that sprinkles the phrase “you bitch” into the chorus fourteen times. Screams of excitement jostled energy into the room like a karaoke screen was mounted to the ceiling. The DJ rang the alarm. Hatred rose like steam. Camera lights illuminated the room like a concert, and then the chorus returned.

“AND I DON’T NEED WITNESS AND I’M A SQUEEZE DIS MU’FUCKA TILL IT START CLICKIN’.” People screamed it.

The door reopened. The hallway was a rivulet. Nearly thirty partygoers squeezed into the living room, clueless about the shit that just went down. A group of boys settled in next to me while everyone continued to rap.

“What the entire fuck just happened?” I asked Marc.

“Aye, I don’t know, but aye,” one called to grasp my attention. “Can we use your phone light?” “We trying to roll this up,” another explained.

I pulled my phone out. The phone flashlight was on and it landed on his nose, revealing his captivating chocolate eyes. Music slowly blurred as I focused on his golden, honey skin. He carefully split a brown blunt with two fingers, concentrating on sprinkling the dope in. His tongue softly kissed the blunt like areolas of women he caressed. I knew exactly who it was.

Lance was from Jackson, the capital and “dangerous part” of Mississippi. Well-known, he had joined Black community service organizations on campus and became a summer Christian camp counselor. He connected with Black kids better than any white woman from Ridgeland ever could. That was his superpower: smooth, charming, charismatic. While Jackson natives respected him for making a name for himself, he still wore his upbringing in flashy tats that covered his chest. He sought skin-delicious souls through his black-blond, dip-dyed locs that grew past his thick eyebrows. His chiseled cheekbones, accompanied by a handful of scars from fights through adolescence, gave his soft demeanor an alluring, dark aura. His perfect smile and plump, bubblegum pink lips struck hearts. And the dimples?! He sported earthy-toned V-necks to compliment his clear, sandy skin. He paired them with athletic track pants daily, finishing off with the freshest pair of Jordan’s. Instagram baddies had first dibs on him. Quiet girls were interested in his cool demeanor. Green girls wouldn’t dare.

Three girls next to me slowly recognized his face through the lights too, joining in on the Let’s Fuck Lance Fan club. I looked around and chuckled at his minute fame that put us all in a trance. The bold girl from freshman parties blossomed within.

“Oh, you’re Lance, aren’t you?” I mindlessly asked.

He nodded.

“Oh, so you that nigga, huh?” I mocked the sincerity of googly-eyed women.

Lance looked around, then at me, up and down.

He crunched his pencil-thin eyebrows. He beamed at my outfit, and then my face. He walked away, lighting the blunt I helped construct. The embarrassment gut-punched me and confidence wilted quickly. I laid back on Marc again. Nikki and Kayla made their way toward me through party traffic.

“This DJ fucking trash!” Nikki complained. “I don’t want to hear this jigging shit.”

She dated situated kinds of men, the ones who didn’t go to our school and could afford her spiritually and financially. They were usually NFL top picks, still getting daily fixes from the future NBA stars at our college. Halloween 2016 was the last time I had seen her.

Funny enough, he abruptly dropped the cult classic of my generation. ‘Faneto,’ a banger from the Drill Music era. One of Chief Keef’s best. As a generational tribe, ‘Faneto’ was our cultural medley of ‘This is How We Do It’ doused in ‘Down for my Niggaz.’ My baby brother kept me in the loop on all the drill music. Hood culture was so cool to him. He never got a chance to experience police corruption or the opioid crisis poison Baltimore. We escaped to Anne Arundel County when he was three.

“Finally!” I shouted.

As Chief Keef glued us together, we jumped in unison, reciting lyrics that had carried us through high school and prepared us for these college moments.

“I’M A GORILLA IN A FUCKIN’ COUPE FINNA PULL UP TO THE ZOO NIGGA.” We harmonized. “BROKE NIGGA WHO THE FUCK IS YOU?! I DON’T KNOW NIGGA!” A wave of silence cut through the chorus. “GAS WHAT I SMOKE NIGGA!” We threw ourselves into the song. Look at me, a college student at a college party.

The DJ was on a roll. I had learned the next song a few months before winter break ended. “NBA Young Gang you heard me?” I rode my ‘Faneto’ high. I knew how “hard” the lyrics were. Assimilating to subcultural cliques was an archaic tactic, but in this case, since .38 Baby discussed disloyalty, it was time for me to rap my life lessons. An insecure STEM nerd turned into a Louisiana gangster for lyrical content.

“I HEAR THEY SAY THEY TURNT ME UP GET OFF A NIGGA DICK, DON’T LIKE THE FACT THAT NOW I’M BLOWING UP GET ON YO’ SHI- Oh God!”

The guy next to me rubbed a bright pink dent I’d left on his tan forehead. I looked at the victim of my playing make-believe. The bright screen exposed my headwrap, completely undone and nearly off my head. My black glasses frames faded to an ash white, shocking my camera lens with intense light. Black acne blotches shined from the front screen flash. The Snapchat video blasted on a loop. I could hear my phony diction as I cut hard k’s and q’s.

Though it sounded like the accent that comforted and welcomed me with open arms, it still wasn’t mine. I sat with Marc like a church child popped in the mouth, immediately dumping my NBA Young Boy persona. While dwelling, I watched Nikki and Kayla sharing another best friend moment, rapping songs word for word and stopping at favorite parts to hype each other up. The girl with the drink in her face from earlier stayed after

her friend convinced Mustard Shirt Man to leave. I smiled at her friends cheering her up after the incident earlier, as she rapped her favorite song. Cold winds of loneliness found me in a pocket of a packed hot house of misplacement. Someone bumped me, halting my train of thought, which created a domino effect. Two white girls were also bumped, sending a plastic red Solo cup flying. Tsunami waves of pink juice sprayed everywhere, splashing all over Nikki.

“Oh, I’ve been waiting to beat a bitch,” Nikki said, clenching her jaw and balling both her fists.

“No, no, no,” I cooed, alerted by the anger bubbling under Nikki’s collegiate growth. “Don’t do it. Take your jacket off before juice seeps through.”

Silence fell while the girl darted for toilet paper on the island counter.

“Sooooo sorry,” she slurred through a thick, rural Alabama or Tennessee accent. “Someth—. One. Someone bumped me and I—”

“Tissue.” Nikki cut in.

I carefully squeezed the liquor from Nikki’s puff. I waved my fingers dry and exhaled, another potential disaster dissolved. But then it felt as if someone had flicked me like an annoying fly, hovering over cookout food. I squinted into the dark corner to piece together faces and it was Jaelin with three of her close, on-guard friends.

She was the finest woman to me. Five foot nine, all legs. The baddest everywhere she went and she knew it. Her energy asked you, “Can you keep up?” and the answer was always absolutely fucking not. She dated situated kinds of men, the ones who didn’t go to our school and could afford her spiritually and financially. They were usually NFL top picks, still getting daily fixes from the future NBA stars at our college. Halloween 2016 was the last time I had seen her.

We heard a shutdown was fifteen minutes out. We decided to dip before we got caught in roadblocks that discovered we were 19 with Hennessy in the trunk. Jaelin was behind me while we trailed out of the house. I stopped moving, allowing the newly crossed frat brothers to take their drunk pictures.

“Uh, I don’t give a fuck about nothing, bitch,” she screamed, centimeters from my ear. “We can go back in this house party. I can and will fuck these bitches up. I’m not pulling fuckin’ hair

either, bitch. What you wanna do?”

I never knew if she was talking about my slow tipsy walking or someone inside that was competing with her, but I decided it was the time to find out. But, did I really want to fight at this terrible ass party? Did I really want to be a hard bitch? Did I even want to piece that version of myself together for a two-minute fight?

The front door flew open, ending internal interrogation. Three hunched-over football players motioned the crowd toward the hallway.

“Aye, we wanna thank y’all for pulling up and shit,” the tallest and buffest one said over lowered music, no way this was the ‘ole chiseled-chin, charismatic dude from my Mass Communications class freshman year. “But if you ain’t MSU football affiliated, one of my niggas, or some of my bitches, ga’night!”

I couldn’t find Nikki or Kayla until the biggest crowd moved outside. Nikki rubbed her eyes and popped her shoulder.

“I wonder if he still out,” she mumbled, looking through someone’s story. “Ready for this night to end.”

The juice spilling culprit loitered across from us. She laughed, revisiting embarrassing middle school memories with her best friend.

A football player approached her. “So, that chemistry homework?”

“Fuck that shit,” She looked confused at him. “I’m trying to be lit.”

Her boyfriend came behind her and wrapped her in his arms. Friends poured more into her cup and giggled.

I looked at Nikki, still scrolling, at Kayla, still eyeing the drunk girls, and then at my phone.

“You going home with us or—?” Nikki asked, awkwardly since I had no car.

A few months earlier, Homecoming night, at 1:00 a.m., they wanted me to walk through a dark trail back to my dorm.

“Home,” I answered, as I ripped off my sloppy scarf.

There was no Sonic stop where my friends decided for me as I seesawed between cherry and Tiger’s blood slushie. There weren’t any songs we heard that hyped us up on our way back. We didn’t chill at anyone’s kickback. Old times my ass.

Man, that party was trash, I tweeted when I got home, realizing I had wasted three hours at my first party in a year, a party I didn’t even enjoy. A party I just barely survived. So, what the fuck was I doing here?

In light of “old times,” there was nothing quirky or cool about falling from being too drunk to hold yourself up. Nothing cool about standing on top of slippery kitchen islands to get people to notice you. There was nothing cool about riding around in the car with people who whispered quiet threats about fighting me, all because I didn’t think we should’ve been fucking with other people’s men. Nothing cool about trading my friendships for memories that represent self-esteem issues and mediocre grades to shiver in the Cotton District. Announcing, This is my song! and rapping it while looking in people’s eyes for approval like America’s Got Talent, “hyping” me up. Those weren’t sexy, fun party times. Partying for the approval of the city locals, letting them hear my yankee accent click and twirl to Southern music was always an L. And yes, I was a fucking loser for it. It, meaning laughing with those who were laughing at me. It, meaning performing my Blackness, trying to fit by squeezing into social spaces that felt like everything to me yet had nothing for me. . It, meaning holding myself hostage at party scenes. I knew I was never going to get it. Not there. Not with them. Not ever.

Growth wasn’t insulting. Growth was fact. Growth became a turning point toward how well I knew myself and my new world. I refused to strip back the renewed, refined version of me for stale settings.

I refused to go back.

Not only was I out of place, I was out of time. Winter wind ripped my friendships and the epiphanic silence apart.

This time I ripped that “skin” off. No peeling. No room for me to re-emerge again.

Not a fucking inch.

In light of “old times,” there was nothing quirky or cool about falling from being too drunk to hold yourself up. Nothing cool about standing on top of slippery kitchen islands to get people to notice you.

Sketches for Still Life 3162 By David McClain

Sketches for Still Life 2582 By David McClain