I am a coward, a brute, a friend, and an animal. Liam has known all of this since childhood. Our lives were ruled by my pre-adolescent brutality; when we would play with light-sabers, I would get worked up and smack him over the head with the hard plastic shaft, his parents would become enraged and swear never to let me come over again. Since neither of us had any other friends, Liam was left to retreat into his room where he would read away the days until I was allowed to come back over and hit him with the light saber again. This is why he has done better than I have: he was always reading, and I was always hitting.

We were each other's only friends because we were the obvious targets for our hick colleagues to bully, myself a Jew, and Liam half Korean. Bouquet Valley Central School District was a prison, and looked the part too, fluorescent lights and linoleum floors, hallways that echoed like a ravine and classrooms stained a pale toothpaste blue with the same twelve kids who stared at us as if we were feeble prey awaiting death and digestion. They all smelled like wet lunch meat. Liam and I faced similar oppressions; water balloon bombings in the schoolyard on winter mornings and thumb-tacks placed strategically on our chairs. Swastikas graffitied on unattended notebooks, and slurs shouted across the lunchroom. From the middle grades onward we struggled. He showed me how to survive. He put me onto books. In our teenage years we read everything together; Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Mann. I showed him how to booze: We shoplifted Four Lokos from the sole grocer in town. Smoked cigarettes in parking lots behind shuttered churches. Made music with smashed porcelain plates on cold black asphalt. Walked in endless circles around the town dreaming up ways to get out of New Russia. Together we waited for life to begin. When I finally left for college, I never intended to come back. Same goes for Liam. But when I got kicked out of Bennington for choking the kid from my Modernist poetry class who laughed at my Ezra Pound mimetic, I had no other option but to seek asylum back in my parent’s basement— back in New Russia.

I didn’t expect to get kicked out of school. I was an almost stellar student; I had straight -A’s across the board, mainly because I was too lazy and afraid to do anything like skip my homework. I just went along with the current, did whatever I was told to do. I didn’t have it in me to rebel. Because really, I never do anything wrong. Except hit people. Violence is the only act I ever have the courage to undertake. Everything else gets suppressed, stifled, choked out and silenced. I am a tried and true coward, an asshole, and once again—a brute.

Liam refuses to speak to me now. Because, for once, I took action. Non-violent-action. Well, a series of actions, actually, the first of which was to invite him out for drinks when he came home for winter break.

I sent him a text that said “Yo, you home for break? We should link. Get trashed at The Pony.” To which I received a prompt “forsure bro. Been way too long—how bout Friday—” He em dashed like Emily Dickinson. This endeared him to me, it was part of his character, part of our idiolect. Reminded me that it had in fact been way too long. Liam hasn’t been back to New Russia since leaving for Dartmouth. He had summer internships at big 5 publishing houses and winter residencies in foreign countries where he would get paid to go somewhere and write. He would eat cassolettes, broiled duck, pommes frites avec huile de truffe. Rice dishes seasoned with saffron and breads baked with malab derived from dead cherries. He lived in a different world. Far away from the one we had built as children. One I wanted more than anything to know.

I got dressed as if I as well attended an Ivy League institution —and one of the good ones too, none of that Dartmouth shit. Not that I had any grounds for feeling snobby: I was a degenerate who’d been kicked out of a middle-tier liberal arts school that was being kept on life support by wealthy students from abroad. I realized as I buttoned my Jade tone J Crew Oxford that at some point, I would have to reveal to Liam I had been expelled for entirely predictable reasons.

I stared at myself in the mirror and ensured the structural stability of my collar by snapping the pearlescent oxford buttons into the eye-like slits of my collar. My hair was too long. I could feel its grease slick my fingertips. I should’ve gotten a cut before this, I thought; now Liam will probably think I am a fucking bum. And it also looks like I am on the precipice of beginning to gray, and go bald. My hairline was no longer compared to Jude Law’s or singled out for the architecture of its widow's peak—it was now avoided altogether in casual conversation, a precursor for male pattern baldness. My blonde had begun to gray, and my skin to wrinkle. My twenty-one years had caught up with me frighteningly, in an instant. All that glimmers ‘youth’ is subject to change—such is growing up.

 

I collected my things; wallet, keys, cigs, phone. I texted Liam, “Hey, I’m on my way to come get you, be there in 10ish.” I closed my door and made my way quietly up the stairs so as to not excite my dog. He gets anxious when I show signs of departure. My parents do not; they show excitement at the prospect of my willingness to interface with the world. I called out to them, “Hey guys, I’m headed out, going to get a drink with Liam—I’ll be back.” My mother looked up from her overflowing goblet of cheap red, shot me a curious set of eyes and said “Oh, okay. good honey, happy to hear you guys are hanging out, just be responsible, don’t get wasted …” She reached her purse on the side table and sunk both her hands into it, prying deeper until she reeled up a twenty, held it out to me with a kind glimmer of hope that I would have a good time. I thought to myself for a moment “How depressed must she think I am if she’s giving me money to go out and drink?”—Extremely, she would have to think I am extremely depressed. I took the bill from her fingers and said “Thanks, mom, love you.” My step dad stared at the TV and said nothing. My mother said “Have fun.” I felt guilty for being alive, guilty for being their son— I mean, I can’t imagine what it’s like to spend all that time being pregnant, all that time nurturing a child and helping him grow only to have him turn out sad. I mean, watching your own flesh and blood go from being somewhat of a jubilant child running around in the grass to being some stuck up malcontent with little promise. Taking the twenty from my mom to go drink on the Sabbath felt debaucherous in a way few things can. It would be easier to go to a brothel in good conscience, I think.

Outside I was faced with the music of circumstance, the pudgy profile of my 2002 Toyota Corolla. The air was tight and stung the esophagus like early inhalations of smoke. My strip- mall kind of side street was empty save for a few kids playing basketball outside the Lamberts’ house on the corner. Their laughs were audible from a distance. They were engoldened by sunset, red like blush, yellowed like seriously neglected teeth. Beautiful. We were encased by  mountains. New Russia was the bottom-feeder at the basin of the Adirondacks. Soaking up all the Quebecois tourists over the summer who trickled down from the Great White to come pillage the high peaks, Yapping cracker-jack French to every local in the pursuit of their next conquest. New Russia was nothing but an ersatz imperialism practiced by the descendants of all those quixotic assholes that fucked America in the first place. But now the mountains were empty, they stood tall around us, crowning all vinyl cul-de-sacs king of Upstate nothing. This is my life, I thought, as I slumped myself into the driver's seat of the Corolla and started the car.

I turned the radio on, a distant FM station played, surprisingly, classical music. My car was too old for bluetooth, so I carried on down the street to the sounds of a violin indecisively dancing up and down a harmonic minor scale giving the piece a really Baroque kind of feel. I drove slowly past the kids in the street. I thought of hitting them. Or I thought of getting out to join in the game. I needed something like that, some kind of excitement. I craved it, in a sense. I cranked the heat and ran my palms over the weakling vents as they choked to spit up any hot air. I steered with my knees as I dumped into county route 6. The road looked like a tongue sticking out of the mouth of oblivion. I followed it dutifully.

Liam's driveway was a relic; all the summertime upkeep of shrubbery, flora and gravel (now dead) left one with an eerily hauntological anxiety when ascending to the glass façade of his parents A-Frame. They had probably the most up to date household in the entirety of New Russia: Electric cars, solar panels, and a hot tub in the back. I honked my horn and texted him “Je suis ici” as I always had in highschool when picking him up to “study french,” our excuse to go do whippets in my basement and watch Korean soap operas. Although sometimes Liam did demand a conversation or two in French in order to prepare for whatever upcoming test we had in our advanced French course. I would entertain, as per usual, Ca Va? Ca va.

My attention was caught by the slamming of a door, I looked up at a tall young man with a smile on his face striding towards my car. He looked beautiful, quarter parted hair black like coal and wire frame glasses. He donned a white shetland looking sweater and pleated khakis. His large black pea coat blew behind him like a cape as he opened the passenger side portal and said “long time no see brother.” “Long time no see indeed,” I said as I stuck out my hand and slid my fingers through the crest of his thumb knuckle and laid them beside his wrist. We shook firmly, sat down, looked at the dashboard and said “Damn, are we really this old?” I looked at him confusedly and said, “What? Because we’re going to a bar or whatever?” He laughed and said, “No, asshole, the music. Who's got you on grandpa music now? Classical? On the way to the bar? Or is this just how you all roll at Bennington, pregaming to classical as though that’s normal …” Him bringing up Bennington made me break a sweat. I just laughed it off and said whatever-whatever-whatever a few times. He knew me well enough to know I was nervous, but not enough to know why.

 

On the drive to the bar the sunset nestled itself into the frosted tips of the lowest peaks available. Dusk fell kindly, the evening was beautiful. As he fucked with my radio, searching for a station that played something suitable (landing on pop country, to be listned to with the utmost irony), he asked me about school, about what I was reading, about girls. The only thing I had actual answers to was the question about what I’d been reading, so I told him about Saul Bellow’s Herzog, which he apparently had already read, keeping in excellent tradition of our entire past lives of him being either one step, or one book, ahead of me. All that time he spent reading in his room, or that I spent grounded, he was putting himself forward. And afterwards, when reunited for our next hangout, prior to me hitting him, he would lend me a book. This went from all the way from our comic-book years up to The Brothers Karamazov. I skirted around all his following questions. He sat in soliloquy for the majority of the drive. I sat wondering how to respond.

Upon arrival the sun had fully receded below the mountain line, and the parking lot was lit by shoddy lanterns that glowed like lame fireflies. They flickered reflecting globular masses of fatty light off the windshields of the surrounding cars. I parked beside another Corolla, and slammed the door upon exiting. Liam got out a second later and said “Remember where we parked, in case you get too trashed.” “I’m really not tryna sleep outside tonight.”  I nodded and said “Yeah yeah yeah I won’t, I can’t drive too drunk or else I’ll get in trouble.” He laughed for a second, responded “Get in trouble? That’s kind of an understatement, no? Killing someone or yourself is getting in trouble?” I took a second and sighed, “No Liam, I meant with god. Or fucking Murphy’s Law or whatever.” He shook his head, said “Jesus, man we gotta get some drinks in you, you're starting to tweak out, come on.”

As we walked into The Pony we were met with an entourage of salt stubble beards and John-Dear trucker caps; the smell of piss beer flooded the entryway with the stale scent of fermented garbage that leaks onto you when taking out the trash. The whole joint smelled like shit. We got looks as we made our way over to the bar and posted up on the corner beneath the slight shadow of an elk's head.

Liam flagged down the bar-keep with an impressively unaggressive wave. He had a charm like that. I felt angry already, even a bit envious. Or maybe it was just the bitter aftertaste of our previous conversation regarding Herzog that left me feeling so anal. Either way I can’t say I was particularly pleased with his constant up-showing me, handing me a whiskey and saying “This ones on me, brother.” He brought the tumbler to his lips and took a baby sip before speaking, “Oh shit that’s good—yeah?” I took a sizable larger gulp. I had to beat him at something. Breathed out fire and said, “Yeah man, thank you, cheers,” and clicked my glass against his as I took in the shallows of whiskey as though it were milk.

            “So be real with me, Ash. How has your year been? You haven’t wanted to talk about anything other than Bellow this whole time. I wanna know how you’re actually doing man.”

            This was the first time he’s said my name all night. I snapped back., “We can talk about Roth too if you want.”

“Fuck off man, be real with me—what’s good?”

            I laughed a bit as I wiped the fragrant whiskey spit from my lips, and said, “What’s good? What’s good is I got kicked out of Bennington and have been fucking slumming it in New Russia for the better part of the year.”

            He raised eyebrows and said carefully, “Are you serious—for what?” He smirked
“Wait let me guess… hitting people?”

            “Boom. Bingo. Ivy league Liam uses his Dartmouth deduction skills to put together the pieces as to why I’ve been booted from school—even banned from campus.”

            “Jesus, Asher— trying to make light of it, alright? Nothing serious.”

            “Alright, yeah, sure. Nothing serious.”

I swung my arm up to capture the keep’s attention, he side eyed me and continued wiping down the counter. I yelled at him “Hey can we get another two of whatever this was?” He nodded and reached for some mid shelf whiskey and popped it open and refreshed our tumblers. He slid them back over, and Liam chirped a princely, “Thank you.” I smiled and raised my glass to Liam ,“Cheers to you, to you not fucking up your life the way I have.” And we clicked glasses and killed a finger of drink in that first go.

            “I don’t understand why you say this all with such bitterness, or like I have something you don’t.” Liam exhaled heavily. I could tell his chest burned from the drink. Amateur. I killed my glass, slammed it down and said, “Because you do, idiot— you always have.” I signed for another with urgency, the bartender complied. I am getting trashed—I am going to get trashed, I thought to myself as I lustfully watched him pour me up again.

            “And what is it exactly that I have that you want so badly? Seriously? What?”

            “You have the chance to get somewhere better than where you started. ”

            “What does that mean to you, Asher.”

            “It means that from the onset, you always had a way out of here, you’ve always had drive. You had parents that believed in you, believed in you enough to see what was good and what was bad— I mean, there’s a reason they hated me so much.”

            “Is this why you invited me out? To berate me about my fucking helicopter parents? Stop kvetching about the ways that you’ve chosen to cook your own life. You’re being pitiful.”

            I paused with relief, thought about what he said—I chose to fuck up my own life? It made me think, am I actually able to make choices? Even if they are bad? There was immediate solace in the realization that beyond attacking people, I have done plenty of other things to fuck up my life. I have done them, chosen them all myself. I can choose. And I choose to start picking a fight on behalf of him calling me pitiful. I smiled, and began.

            “No I invited you out because we haven’t seen eachother in a million years asshole, but apparently forgot what a fucking brat you can be—I mean pitiful? Pitiful? You pity me? That’s what this is now?”

            He shook his head like a dog out of water, said “yes, you’re being pitiful, and you’re being a brute, and kind of a bitch. You’re pissed because you thought you never had the chance to change, and that I did. You’re pissed cause you squander everything.”

            “Precisely—excellent work— you’re sharp as always. pin-prick-dickhead.”

“But it seems like neither of us have changed all too much— you’re still a brute and I‘m still your punching bag. Jesus—Look around you— look at how these people look at us, we are the same, they are the same, this fucking place is still the same, it’s sad to say but nothing ever really changes Asher, artifice aside, I am weak, and you are too.”

            And I looked around at our redneck compatriots in drink, and as I scanned the room they glared back at me as if even my glance was offensive. He was right. Nothing had changed. Our shared twenty one years were wasted from lack of progress, they stagnated, whether at Dartmouth or Bennington, in a basement or Icelandic writing retreat, we are the same— we are weak. And I knew in that instance I had to do something, because as Liam had said, or least implied, I could. I could do something. Turn the table.

            So I apologized, I said “I’m sorry—you’re right. I’ve been jealous of you my whole life Liam. I thought you were on the flipside of shit— the better end of the stick, I’ve always been under the impression you had a better chance of getting out than I did, and for reasons that felt unfair. It’s just been hard always being right beside you, at your hip I guess, watching you take all these wins while I stayed fucking up my own life. Honestly, I thought you’d rub off on me at some point. Now it’s like you’re too far ahead to even know you anymore. I want to know you again— be even like that.”

            “I get that.” he said as he finished his drink, “but I always wondered why you wasted all this time acting like a wounded animal instead of getting a life of your own. You should’ve used your energy for something else other than attacking people and following me around. it seemed like you had the verve to leave, at some point I guess, or at least some purpose. But now I can’t even tell if you have that in you anymore. All those years we spent walking around town, yapping it up trying to plot out a better life. Just wasted now. This place has its claws in you, and they’re starting to show. Do something Asher, don’t just sit here and bitch at me about it. I say this cause I care. I’m trying to be honest. ” He waved for more drinks.  They arrived promptly.

            Something sank in me. I spoke with a rock in my throat. “I’ve felt paralyzed all these years, I felt incapable of doing anything, so I guess I never really did. All I've done is think, never do. We would go on those damn walks every day and just dream about moving to The City or going to college somewhere different. It was all rumination in a way, cope. And when I do actually do something, it’s always without thinking, which is why I’m always caving to violence, even earlier, I was only a second off from decking you.”

            “Huh, well that’s good to know.” He said with a slight chuckle.

            “Yeah, I mean, well I didn’t so that’s all that matters.”

            “See Asher, you can do things, you choose not to hit me, that’s a choice.”

            “A choice to not do something— It’s different.”

Liam took a second to think, staring down at his third, maybe fourth whiskey, and said “I think you are just making excuses for the choices you make being poor ones, I don’t buy this idea that you never do anything, this is something you’ve talked yourself into, not your reality.”

I snorted in a way that turned my offense into condescension, and rebutted “I think you just don’t get it, it might just not be your world Liam, you are too used to taking blows to actually get why it’s bad to dish ‘em—because you’re weak, weak in the other way.”

And he froze, well, for a second everything froze. The world hinted at a stillness that seemed rareform to the ambience of a backroad dive bar. Conversations about football ceased. Modicums of onion rings could be seen arrested in free fall in an attempt to move from lips to floor. Droplets of beer remained stagnant at the lip of the glass, arguing the set destiny of condensation. The TVs silenced. The camouflaged bodies packing the room sardine style sat still as statues. Each bearded face and trucker capped head was paused in action. Or maybe it was just me, frozen in shock as I came to the slow realization that Liam's hand was moving towards more than just his drink.

 

And then it was like waking up. Waking up on the bar-room floor being hovered over by a crowd of people asking if I was okay. My face throbbed, and my back hurt too, but nonetheless, I felt a sense of belonging down on The Pony’s floor. I was helped up by a hefty woman, likely twice my age. I heard a voice yelling at me, saying get out, She ushered back to the bar where the keep handed me my coat and said “your friend is outside, you’re out of here— now.”, I slid on my jacket and said “fair enough” as I fished through my pocket’s for my wallet and was interrupted as I began pulling out crumpled dollar bills by him saying, “The puncher already paid the tab, now scram before I call the cops on him.” And I stumbled to the door, just then realizing exactly how drunk I was (absolutely smashed), and dumping myself into the cool hands of winter as I threw open the door, and fell into the frigid lot where Liam sat with his hands in his face on the curb. I lit up a cigarette, inhaled deeply, with no intention of letting go and thought to myself, this is good, I’d die this way I think. Liam flinched at the sound of my lighter, looked up at me and said “I’m sorry, I’m fucking wasted.” The snow was trickling down, decorating his scalp with a type of angelic dandruff that only he could pull off. He looked like a kid sitting there, red eyes from crying with beads of melted snow posted all over his black hair like dew. He was beautiful in a way I’d always hated to admit— kinder than myself. I exhaled in preparation for response, and said “it’s okay, I know what it’s like.” I took him up and hugged him, he hugged back hard. I stubbed out my cigarette and “ready to get the fuck out?” he said yes, and stumbled back to the Corolla, sitting like a duck all bloated and awkward in the parking lot. It looked dumber than ever. I hastily followed, dropped myself into the driver's seat, smacked around the dashboard center console and side door for the keys, and came up with them like treasure from the abyss. I jammed the key into the ignition and turned the engine over. I felt the rumble of the machine beneath me as if I’d harnessed the growl of an earthquake. I felt powerful. I was far too drunk to be driving. I turned to Liam and said, “you ready to go, for real this time.”, he groaned drunkenly in the affirmative. So I backed out, hit a curb and floored it the moment we stumbled onto Main Street. The single strip of civilization that composed New Russia glimmered by streetlight. Colonial Brownstones bombed out and dilapidated. Queen Ann Victorians shed paint flake skin onto overgrown lawns. We burned rubber like tobacco on the way out of town. My car reeked of cigs, my tongue tasted bitter from the absence of liquor. The sky was unusually clear. A violent midnight blue. Liam was nearly slumped over, smoking against my window, bathed in the slight penumbra of street lights that flickered through the window as I blasted towards County Route 30, the way out of town. Headed down towards the rest of the world.

As I hit the that vast county route highway, Liam came to, and said “Jesus dude where the fuck are we.”

 I said “go back to sleep, we’re on our way out.”

He snapped upright and barked “out?”

“Out of town Liam, we’re leaving, we’re getting the fuck out of here.”

“That’s not fucking funny dude, take me home, I want to go to sleep.”

“You said it yourself Liam, how hard it is to exist in this place. we’re leaving, we’re getting out.”

“And going where? Jesus asher you’re fucking INSANE, you have no clue what you’re doing.”

“A favor. I’m doing the both of us a favor.” and I sped up, disregarding all implications of my desultory action and letting go, going forward. I choose to go faster. I choose to leave. I felt the hum of the engine and the song of the road singing low beneath me, I started to laugh until Liam grabbed the wheel.

He said “SLOW THE FUCK DOWN OR I STEER US INTO A DITCH.”

I screamed “AND I’M THE FUCKING CRAZY ONE? NAH FUCK OFF. WE’RE GOING FORWARD.” The sign that signaled the end of town stood tall in the near distance.

He lunged over me and took the wheel. I tighten my grip as much as humanly possible. The car began to swerve, Correcting and uncorrecting we thrashed around the road slipping slightly on fallen snow. For a moment I felt our grip on life give— a slight failure on behalf of weak Front-wheel drive, we slipped to the shoulder.  He yelled out once more “ASHER STOP THE FUCKING CAR.”

And then they appeared. Flashing lights dancing in the crawlspace of my periphery like a fallen eyelash or cumulation of rheum. The sirens blared like a marching band, and were on our ass within seconds. I didn’t have time to regret, only to choose, choose to slow down, and pull over.

On the side of the road Liam yelled at me, I didn't listen. I got the jist, that I had fucked everything up to an unbelievable degree. The main thing he was focused on was that he told me to stop. He gave me the choice. I realized this now as we sat waiting in the bath of red and blue lights awaiting fate, treating it like the crowded queue of a grocery store sunday. It meant almost nothing to me at all. I waved it off like a fly.

So when the officer came by, and asked why we were swerving I choked my urge to cowardice, and said “because I’m as shit tipsy sir.” Liam laughed a bit. The cop shone the flashlight in my eyes and said “yeah you’ve been drinking tonight?”, and in this moment I felt an opportunity for mild redemption through what might’ve just been the most distasteful instance of comedy known throughout my entire life.

I Looked at him and said “Sir— it should be illegal to drive this drunk.”

Liam cracked up for one solid second. Even the officer let out a puff of disbelief at my joke. I laughed too— we all synchronized for a half a second. I felt for a moment, as if I’d healed my wrongs. As if my cruelty had been quelled by this willingness to laugh. And following that, the officer flailed his arms and screamed “GET OUT OF THE FUKING CAR NOW.”

I got out of the car, and he threw me on the hood and cuffed me, said “STAY THERE.”

Liam sat in the passenger seat, stared  at me through the windshield with the voyeuristic glare of a zoo-going child. I picked my head up and shot Liam a smile, he furrowed his brow and looked at me as if insane, laughed just enough to show the slight points of his overgrown canine teeth. The smile said it was all going to be okay, just in a little while from now. The officer said, “you stay there, I’m calling a tow truck, and back up, and then you are getting booked.” And as he walked back to the cruiser I felt the world cold and cruel against my cheek, as the hood of the car collected the frigidity of winter, but still there was an unavoidable warmth shared between me and my friend as we sat separately awaiting my first ever arrest. His smile reassured me that something was different. That something had happened. And as I thought about what had just conspired I understood that he and I had almost inhabited one another’s worlds. He hit me, I took action. We went forward. Together. I understood that I did not want to be him, that he and I really were the same in all these ways, And despite the foreknowledge of how hard the night would be here after, I stood up to look at the mountains. And damn, they looked beautiful. The ski slopes refracted empyrean rows of light that singled home in a way that now felt familiar, comfortable. And in an instance of pure gratitude I thought to myself “Shit, I want to be home.” as I pondered the prospect of the cell that awaited me in county that night. As if the world warmed up by the heat of my engine had just now begun to cool, all the violence of my life seemed to cease.

I stared out into the distance where the tall sign that separated me from the world announced its shibboleth, anthemic and clear. “Leaving New Russia” scrawled in white curled cursive lettering, slowly colored red and blue by the approaching of another siren, here to take me away smiling. And as the lights came up behind me like the steady sun, I looked forward to being home in bed. I looked forward to going back. To put myself in the keep of another chance. A brand new future.