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Hangout Review
Party at Gayle’s House
West Hollywood, CA
October 7, 2004
Gayle (not her real name) used to live in the same apartment complex as my friend Alex (not his real name) from high school. Gayle and I aren’t super close-ass friends, but we’ve been hanging out quite a bit lately because all our friends are friends, and we work near each other, so we go to lunch sometimes. I’m never really psyched about going out in West Hollywood (although the apartments are all pretty nice with their porches and overgrown, Paleolithic potted plants cum full-sized trees) because there’re bound to be greasy-haired cheesedicks with starched cowboy-esque, black collared shirts everywhere, talking about some glorified AV Club video they’ve just appeared in. But, well, I guess it’s a trade from the greasy-haired cheesedicks with wrinkled cowboy-esque, brown and blue collared shirts that lick ass (play in bands) on the Eastside.
At any rate, after kicking around the evening’s possibilities, my girlfriend and I decided to go. We ran into Alex right away and tried to hide our beers in the fridge. I introduced Suze (not her real name) around. Most of the people said they’d already met her, and she pretended to remember. Next we saw Megan (not her real name). We’d all been in some strange fight with a bunch of wasted jocko gymnasts before, when Suze and Megan first met, and they’d bonded a little then.
Alex had always told me that he didn’t like Megan. He told me she was obnoxious and was forever trying to avoid her. They’d lived in the same complex together, too. Whenever Megan came up, I always pressed Alex to find out what he didn’t like about her. She was a bit talkative, sure, but she seemed fine to me—like a tolerable cheerleader. But then, I’d never really talked with her much before.
After three minutes on the patio, Megan had Suze and me cornered into the clump of trees. We were literally underneath the huge, fan-ish leaves—just an inch or so above our heads, as she’d forced us there with her quick crazed monologues and our general interest in space between us. I started to learn what Alex had been talking about and excused myself for another beer. Suze followed directly. We shared a glance out the door that said plainly and clearly, “Holy Fuck! Bitch is crazy!” Megan was less than a minute behind, and she cornered us again (into the kitchen counter this time) talking about how perfectly the shelves in the other room fit CDs. (“Do you think they’re made for CDs!?”) We left again, this time for a cigarette, and she followed again.
She was halfway through a speech to Suze about how they’re best friends now and are gonna do everything together and living with her aunt’s going alright and Suze has the best! sense of fashion and look how short she is, she can totally fit below that one leaf and do you think I’m nice? and they totally should’ve hung out when they used to work near each other, when I snuck away, silently to let Alex know that I now understood just how nuts Megan really was. “She brought me a birthday present today,” Alex said. “My birthday was three months ago. I refused it. I’ve tried to be nice, but I need to let her know now, that it’s not okay. We cannot be friends. I’ve had enough.” I agreed that that was probably a good idea. I looked over and Suze looked like an LSD baby, scared shitless. “Did I ever tell you what she did that one night?” Alex asked “She was over with a couple friends, Dan (Alex’s roommate) was there. I got tired and went to bed. Dan went to bed shortly thereafter. And then he realized that he’d forgotten to give them blankets for the couch. So he opened his door to walk out there, and Megan was standing in front of my bedroom door. Just staring! So Dan’s like, ‘Hey…Megan…What are you doing?’ ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to make sure that Alex and I are still friends.’”
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