Small Town Saturday Night

I'm the only one of my friends that can drink whiskey without making a face. It's very impressive at parties, but then, when you're 18 and living in a small town, that doesn't take much. "Do for me," Jessie says in my ear, and as I slam back my fifth shot of Jack Daniels, I know I'm doing it for her. "That's my Whiskey Jack." She gives me a kiss for me troubles. I kiss her back, deep but gentle. She loves her Whiskey Jack.

We leave the kitchen and my circle of fans to find Linda. Linda is what city folk and other rude people would call a Lipstick Lesbian. Pretty, pale, and hair as red as a Target employee uniform, she was homecoming queen and president of the student council, and the only girl in the world to claim that she slept her way through the cheerleading squad. Boys crawl over her like bees on a summer barbeque. Jessie and I find her on the second floor, in one of the bedrooms by herself in the dark, watching the stars turn in the night. Normally, she'd be cracking jokes at our expense, telling us to keep away lest we infect her with our breeder germs. But tonight she lets us sit on either side of her without a peep.

Jessie puts a hand on Linda's shoulder and asks, "Alright, what girl's ass do we have to kick? Just name the little heartbreaker, and I'll take care of it." Jessie cracks her knuckles for effect. Four years ago, Jessie was the arm wrestling champion over the entire eighth grade class. She's no longer the strongest person our age, but she still can and will kick almost any redneck's ass at whim, and for real big boys she has a shotgun. She's my little country girl.

Linda laughs at Jessie, but I can tell it is forced. "There's no one. Well, you can kick Denise's ass, but for being a bitch, not a heartbreaker." Denise narrowly lost out the homecoming queen vote, and has held a grudge ever since.

"Seriously, what's wrong?" I ask. "Come on! High school's over. We've escaped, we survived! Celebrate." She does not even smile, and what little humor she faked is gone.

"You mean you escaped. Or, will escape. Me, I'm stuck here for life," Linda says.

I get confused easily by pretty women, even sober. "What?"

"Whiskey Jack, you're going to leave us pretty soon, and never come back," Linda says. To my surprise, Jessie nods in agreement.

"That's true," she says. "Two months from now you'll be across the country, living a whole new life. And we'll be here, doing the same things we've always done."

"Hey, don't be sad," I say, reaching to touch Jessie's face. "I'll visit, as often as I can. I love you, don't I tell you that enough? We'll work something out."

"What exactly do you think there is to work out?" Jessie says, like an adult would explain to a very small child. "You know, you know, as soon as people escape this town, they never come back to it, not to stay. Maybe you do love me, but baby you're going to leave me for good, come September." She finishes her drink when she says that. Linda does too.

I try to talk to them for a couple of minutes, but both girls just stare off into space. I walk back downstairs. By then, the JD has truly hit me, and the walls leap into my way as I make my way to the living room. I look around, and can just make out that someone I am very happy to see is sitting on a couch. I collapse on top of him, thumping him good for showing up two hours after he said he would. "Hiya Jack," he says, "Jessie finally dump your ass?"

"No, so you can't have it yet." Ben makes a disappointed cluck with his tongue, and everyone laughs. I snuggle up to him, and let him pet my hair as I lay in his lap. Ben is my best male friend, who trusted me enough to tell me first that he was gay. I was supportive enough that I took him to a gay bar in the city for his 18th birthday last month, where we competed to see who could get more phone numbers (he won). He's had a crush on me since forever, but it's more a joke now than anything else.

Now, people may think that a small town wouldn't stand for people like Ben and Linda, but folk adapted real quick a few years ago, and since then no one has really cared about anyone's sexuality. That might change next year, when that Jessie isn't there to physically threaten every person that so much as thinks the word "fag," but for now the truce holds. As long as they get their jollies in the city, or with anyone else willing, no one says a word. Ben's had it easier than a lot of the people he's met.

"So where is Jessie?" he asks me, walking me from my partial doze.

I blink a couple of times at him, and then his words penetrate. "Upstairs with Linda, being a downer."

"Really? Well, let's go talk to them. Maybe I can cheer them up."

We stumble back up the stairs. Okay, I stumble, leaning hard on Ben's slight frame. A couple people give him thumbs up as he leads me into the bedroom, which if I was sober might have bothered me. But the whiskey is grinning for me.

The girls are still there, talking low. They look at us as we walk in, and then turned back to their conversation. "Let's just do it," I hear Jessie whisper.

"Do what?" I ask, but I don't get answered. I tell Ben, "Ben, tell them I'll come back. They're going on about some nonsense that once I leave town, I won't come back again."

He tilts his head, a sign he's thinking. "It's true."

"Not you too!"

"You might come back, for a little while. But Jack," Ben says. He's the only to not call me Whiskey, "Once you experience what's out there," he gestures to the outside, and I guess the out of town, "how the hell are you going be able to live here again."

"Stent isn't that bad," I say.

All three say as one, "YES IT IS!"

"No one ever comes back here to stay, they can't take it," Jessie says. "Look at my brother."

"The army can affect anyone like that."

"And my cousins Chris and Robyn," Ben adds.

I shrug, far too buzzed to think of an easy answer. "Hell, just think about Jake," Jessie says. "He's been gone all year, really." Jake Dire, salutatorian, didn't even wait for the graduation ceremony before he had moved back to Santa Barbara. If anyone ever had a hard-on to leave Stent, it was him. 'They are starting to make sense,' I realize.

"Face it Whiskey," Linda says, "People just leave here. And the ones that stay, well, you've met my sister." She shudders, no doubt imagining Chastity's trailer and the three kids she already has at 22, and the boyfriend that tries to make ends meet by selling drugs to the high school kids, but is too much of a user himself to succeed. "I don't want to end up like that."

"Me neither," Ben says. "I can't take staying here. Not without you Jack," the naked honesty in his eyes startles me, and for the first time I realize he loves me. Not like I love him, but how Jessie and I love each other. I wonder when that happened, and then I also realize it's been that way all along. The thought that I missed something so obvious scares me sober, just a little. "You're the only thing that kept me going these last few years. If you're gone, Stent has nothing for me."

"Not all of us got into a four year college, Jack." This time it's Jessie. "Honestly, I'm not the brightest crayon in the box. Jake and you were the only one's smart enough to escape that way. I'm supposed to start community college in the fall, but I don't know if I can take Stent for that long. I can't be trapped here, not like that."

Linda and Ben nod their agreement. "So what are we going to do about it?" He asks.



It turned out to be a good thing Ben came late to the party, and was still sober. It didn't take the three two hours to pack up everything of value. Nothing that couldn't be carried was taken, and Ben's truck was loaded up quickly. Like the song said, they drove 90 miles an hour towards the city limit sign, and Ben pressed the pedal to the metal before they could change their minds. The three laughed now, excited and feeling insane. They left notes for their parents to find the next morning, along with empty blankets and closets and bedrooms. They also left me, at the party, too drunk to make it on my own, and too drunk to stop them from doing something stupid. I drank to them every night that summer, happy that they were happy. I hope they'll call me before I leave for New York next week. I'd like to hear their voices, just to know that they're alive.

Just to know they escaped.