Walking In.

I’m standing outside, several strangers and I huddled around this white door and no one’s ringing the doorbell and I need to go inside but I don’t want to go inside because I don’t like the guy inside somewhere, the one I’m here to, ahem, visit. My arm is stretched and my finger pointing but before it makes contact with the doorbell button some girl with bleach blonde hair and a drunken slur opens the door, scaring everyone on the porch who want to go in but don’t really want to go in. There are things I could tell her but I know she wouldn’t listen.

I hesitate but someone behind me pushes someone else who forces me forward. I go in and pass a collage of faces, many of which are interchangeable in my mind for the walking clichés people expect at parties like this: the E-tripping raver without the rave, the drunk blonde wearing her clothes painfully small, some guy smashing beer cans into his friend’s forehead in front of a television playing Wizard of Oz, probably because someone hours ago wanted to see if it could sync up to Dark Side of the Moon even though Pink Floyd swears it’s unintentional. At least I hope I don’t personally know anyone here, but I’m not stopping to find out. I’m moving through shadows and ignoring everything in them. Someone suddenly blocks my way and tries to hand me a bowl of something. I throw my arms up like I’m being mugged but keep walking, leaving them in the sea behind me.

I’m crossing the kitchen floor and it click clicks under my shoes, reminding me of junior high school hallways and the awkwardness of bathroom breaks in the middle of class. There’s a bedroom in the back and I can smell it before I can find the door. The guy I came here to see is standing in the doorway, watching two girls twenty years his junior take turns snorting lines on a futon turned bed. He’s sweating profusely and the sour stench coming off him makes me want to gag.

“You want a dime?” He’s asking me without taking his eyes off the pair who could be his daughters. It’s about the drug I’m here to collect and for a second I don’t hear him because I’m too busy wondering how I ended up here in the first place. I didn’t even get a chance to ring the doorbell on my own. Where, again, was my choice?