Part 2 of a 3-part adventure. Rated NC-17 for language, sexuality, and adult themes.

Continued from "Belmar: The Boys are Back in Town"

 

Backyard of the group's rented shore house in Belmar, NJ. I’m barbequing burgers for the gang. Griffin and Kyle have returned.

Griffin: I don’t want to talk about it.

Griffin: I don’t want to talk about it.

David: From what you told me, it sounds like the cops around here are assholes.

Griffin: I don’t want to talk about it.

Griffin: Don’t tell him.

Smiley: Some hot babe picked Griffin up from that sports bar you were both at and brought him to a party her friend’s friend was throwing. While they were at the party, the girl found someone she liked better than Griffin and left the party with that guy. Griffin got depressed and kept drinking, even though his link to the party was gone. He got a little rowdy and the owners of the house realized he didn’t belong there. In fact, with that girl gone, nobody knew who he was, and they thought he was an intruder. A weird guy off the street. Instead of asking him to leave, they called the police. So he was arrested. And spent the night in jail. It took him ‘til dawn to remember my cell phone number, and I was his one phone call.

Me: Griffin, you were arrested? For what?

Griffin: (pointing to himself) This is me, not talking about it. By the way, Smiley, you suck for telling Marc the whole thing when I just asked you not to.

Smiley: What was it? Trespassing? Causing a disturbance? Drunken and disorderly?

Kyle: The police out here are monsters. The townies hate it when Belmar is overrun with New York tourists in summertime, so they pressure the cops. The cops, in turn, go on the warpath and ticket and arrest everyone in sight.

Me: Yeah, but would you want to live in this town in the summer time? Look at the swarm of locusts that descends upon this place.

He points to a nubile teenage girl who is standing on the backyard porch of the house next door.

Holly: (mouthing) Not now … my parents are back from vacation.

Holly disappeared into her home rapidly and slammed the door behind her.

Smiley: (grinning) While you guys were in Staten Island jerking off all week, I was here in Belmar. And her parents were away all week.

Smiley: Yep. Every day, eight times a day, all week.

Smiley: Sixteen? Fourteen? I dunno. Eighteen?   I think well into jailbait territory, but sometimes prison is worth it. You know what I mean?

Griffin: Could you imagine being her parent? Having your daughter defiled by Smiley like that?

I drop a burger onto my plate, and then distribute the remaining burgers to David, Griffin, and Kyle.

Smiley: Wait, where’s my burger? DiPaolo, didn’t you make one for me? 

Me: What? You wanted a burger?

Smiley: Good, God, man! Pull yourself together. You’re a menace to society, here!

Kyle: (Taking a bite into his burger) Marc, this burger is heaven.

David: (Doing the same) This burger is the best burger I’ve ever had.

Griffin: Finger lickin’ good.

Smiley: I’m not an animal. You’re just repressed. And jealous.

Kyle: Don’t worry, Marc. It’s not the quantity. It’s the quality. And, for all his talk about asses you can bounce quarters off of, all his women were desperate elephants he’d pick up at closing time after they’d thrown up over themselves. If you used his method, you’d have picked up twice as many women as Smiley in the same amount of time. But you’re picky.

Kyle: Don’t let this degenerate get to you, Marc. Don’t start thinking chasing underage women is the way to go.

Smiley: He’s not moral, he’s a fuckin’ pillow-biter. And you’re on my list now, too, Mr. Ahern. You’re on my list.

Griffin: What are you, are high school gym teacher with a list of bad students?

Smiley: That’s kicking ass and taking names, jackass. First you kick the ass, then you take the names of the people whose ass you kicked. Not the other way around. 

Me: (attempting to make a recovery from the error and failing) People who are really tough take the names first…

Kyle: Shut the fuck up, Smiley. Marc, give this man a hamburger before his bellyaching ruins my appetite. 

Smiley: Buncha butt-pirates here. I’m surrounded. Fudge packers and toilet traitors. The fairy queen himself … Mr. Brit-Lit … also known as Marc “I’m Gay” DiPaolo.

Me: High school’s long over, Demosthenes. When are you gonna cut out this immature, “Smiley” personality? 

Kyle: You do act a bit low-class sometimes. You curse more than all of us put together. And the sexism is carried to the extreme. It’s working class. Don’t you want to climb the social ladder? Be a real upper-class guy? Make something of yourself?

Kyle: You don’t talk like this at work, do you? I can’t believe the New Jersey Democratic Party appreciates up-and-coming politicians who talk like you do.

Smiley: Everyone at work talks like this. I’m a Democrat so I can talk like this. I’m not in the quote-unquote Family Values party.

Me: (to Griffin) New Jersey Democrats are all crass, just like Smiley. There’s a shock.

Smiley: What are you talking about? Deep down, you’re a Democrat, too, but the Republicans have you fooled with all their Dan Quayle family-first line of bullshit. As soon as you realize they can’t stand the average American family, you’ll be voting Democrat in about four seconds.

Smiley: Great. You don’t like me personally, so you vote for evil in an Armani suit over distasteful in a track suit.

Me: How can you talk like you do about women? You’re in the party of feminists for Christ’s sake!

Smiley: I’m a union man. Fuck the feminists. And you can keep the blacks and the gays, too. They’re ruining my party. I wish they’d go over the Nader and leave the rest of us Democrats in peace so we can start winning elections again. We need to make blue-collar white guys realize that the Republicans have them so scared of women and minorities that they’ve been voting against their own economic interests and for McDonald’s and Exxon Mobile’s for twenty years now.

Griffin: I can’t believe you’re trying to make your being an asshole somehow about differences between Democrats and Republicans. You’re throwing up this big smokescreen. I don’t even know what it is you’re trying to say. How does all this political ranting go back to proving you’re somehow morally superior to Marc, even when he’s nice and you’re a degenerate?

Kyle: You’ve got no class, Smiley. No class at all. If a stranger heard you, they’d think you were white trash. Trailer trash. You don’t want to talk like people who walk around dressed in wife-beaters and smoking six packs of cigarettes a day, do you?

Smiley: You think the New York Republicans don’t have filthy mouths? You’re in for a rude awakening, if you think they’re gentlemen. And I’ll bet all those high and mighty Bushes who looked down their noses at Clinton for being trailer trash curse up a storm when they’re playing polo and going yachting.

Griffin: You hear this? Now Smiley is soul-mates with Clinton. They’re both members of the great unwashed, the salt of the earth, tilting at windmills and cursing nice, educated people like Marc and William Buckley Jr.

Smiley: That’s right. You say you don’t know what I’m talking about but you got it. Buckley sucks. And Marc is a Democrat and doesn’t even know it. I’m gonna save his soul from that fucking political party he’s wandered into by mistake. Griffin, you and Kyle are the hardcore Republicans who are always reading the NY Post, newspaper of the illiterate. Marc here reads. He’s literate. He’ll find out the truth soon enough.  I’ll just bide my time ‘til he comes to his senses.

Smiley: (clearly confused) Now I don’t know what you’re talking about.

The gang has assembled at Bar “A” (a.k.a. Bar Anticipation). It is a mammoth bar, with a disco, bar, and several rooms indoors, and a self-contained mini-beach, complete with volleyball net, and bar station in a courtyard outdoors. The place is jumping and filled with literally hundreds of sexy patrons in their twenties. The music is so loud it is hard to hear the person next to you unless you scream directly into their ear. On the dance floor, a strobe light is going, women in tank tops and sports bras are grinding against one another, and a midget on stage is throwing stuffed animals, T-shirts, and various other prizes to various dancers as they gyrate to a song by Ace of Base.   

Smiley: (in as conciliatory a tone as he can assume while shouting in my ear) Look, Marc, this place intimidates me, too! I’m scared! I’m scared to talk to women! I’m scared of rejection! That’s why I drink myself into oblivion before I talk to the women! So if they reject me, it doesn’t hurt as bad, and half the time I don’t remember getting slapped! You’re always stone cold sober when you go up to women, so you have no emotional shield up when they drop napalm on your self-esteem. Drunk men can’t be insulted as easily! We just go, “Whatever, dyke” and go on to the next chick! So do yourself a favor and get smashed first, and then go up to the women!

Me: Women hate it when a drunk guy comes up to them and slobbers on them! They like sober men!

Smiley: No, they like drunk men!  And they need to be drunk, too! People never choose to have sex when they’re sober! Without beer, we’d all be virgins! Not just you.

Me: I don’t trust myself to get drunk! I’m so sexually frustrated right now, if I get drunk I’ll start randomly groping and dry humping women on the dance floor until I’m arrested for sexual assault! 

Me: Now whose worldview is too rosy? Put six beers in me and watch me become a sex offender!

The music lowers slightly as a Spice Girls standard kicks in, but it is still hard to hear Smiley. I remember that the bars in Geneseo played better music, like "Come on, Eileen" by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, "Oh What a Night," and songs by ABBA.

Me: Look, man, would you please stop giving me advice!  It’s terrible, terrible advice! I listen to you and two of us will have been in the clink by the end of the weekend!

Me: No. Never heard of it. Must be twentieth-century American literature. I don’t usually like the worldview presented in those books. Too nihilistic. Why? What’s it about? 

While I go to the bar to buy a drink with Smiley’s money, he scans the crowd. Finding a strikingly beautiful redhead wearing reading glasses, Smiley holds up a fifty dollar bill and beckons her over.

            Hey, Scully! Come here!

Smiley: Nah. But my friend Marc will dig you. You look a lot like that Gillian Anderson chick from X-Files. 

Smiley: (points to me, but my back is to him while I’m waiting for my drink, so I don’t see him talking to Colleen) I’ll give you fifty bucks if you get my friend over there drunk. I’ve known him for ten years and never seen him smashed. Get him, like, five shots of Jaegermeister, two Jack and Cokes, and three white Russians.

Smiley: Good. Talk to him about that and ply him with booze.

Colleen: (taking the money) Okay. But he’s not my type, so don’t expect me to kiss him or anything.

Smiley: Whatever. Just get him loaded. And have a few yourself … on me. 

Smiley offered up another sixty dollars to pay for the drinks. Colleen took it and moved off in my direction.

(To see what happens next, read the next post: “Bill Murray is a Close Personal Friend of Mine.”)