american badlands

up state

We park our car and get out, and begin walking around some quintessentially upperclass Bergen county town (see endnote I). We talk about how our mothers were both shunned from houses like these for not having sufficiently pretty front yard gardens. We scoff at the yards with roses up the walkways, and wonder how much was paid for them, and if the families who walk up said walkways even give a fuck anymore. We pass a young man in a V-Neck from j. crew taking pictures of a bush, and we make fun of how many paychecks it took him to buy this lens and how dope it will be when he develops these pictures for his private show in Williamsburg. After a while we get tired and we see a house for sale. We talk about how the family who used to live there probably lost their shit when the bubble burst, or had a horrible split when wife discovered husband was a chronic masturbatory furry. The house has aged brick walls and a tall wooden fence around the yard.

She asks me if we can break in, and pretend that we live there. I weigh the options, the likelihood that these people have some sort of alarm system. We hop the fence. I cuff up my pants and we sit and let our legs dangle into the half empty covered pool. The yard overlooks a steep drop off, revealing the gooey haze of the New York City skyline. We discuss what composes this haze: exhaust from thousands of large lane blocking cars trying to make left turns, the phlegm of Goldman Sachs CEOs, the evaporating sweat of white collar workers pouring out doors on the PATH, her friends who have moved to be closer to school and job and protest, their voices, the heat of homeless stomachs drinking blue raspberry MD 20/20, farts. We watch it shimmer and expand; the great quivering miasma of the city.

She looks over at me, but what about you, what is it like where you live?

I think about this question. There are a lot of farms. And medium sized houses. And up impenetrably small and winding roads, there are grotesquely large houses like this one. Houses where kids you knew in high school do coke, then drive their father’s Beemers to pick their 16 year old girl friends up from behind the metal shop room before going to 7/11 to get a pack of Newport Lights, Parliaments, Camels. Houses where you stand outside with old friends taking puffs off a one hitter with weed bought from a kid who used to swim the 500 with you senior year. You listen to stories about anal sex and concussions and laugh politely, high fiving the proper people at the proper times (see endnote II). Houses you drive to for awkward parties held by old classmates who’ve returned from basic training, and tell their girlfriends to “shut the fuck up cunt” before taking a swig of Red Dog and throwing a dirty ping pong ball into poorly organized cups. Houses that you drive by and are surrounded by cops and limos, before you remember that it is prom night.

We sit with our legs slightly above the tarp of the pool, that has been collecting brown looking rain water for what appears to have been months. She looks at me; I have always wanted to go to a farm.

ENDNOTES

I: Bergen County has the 20th highest per capita income of all the counties in the United States. The richest towns include: Saddle River, Alpine, Ho-Ho-Kus, Franklin Lakes, Englewood Cliffs, Upper Saddle River, Woodcliff Lake, Tenafly, and Ridgewood.

II: As told by [ ] —

“So me and [ ] wanted to make some jungle juice right, so we poured like a handle, a twelver, and some Hawaiian punch into a bowl ad started just pounding that shit. We finished it before everyone else even got there (high five). Yeah, so like, these two girls, my ex [ ] was eying up my buddy and her friend was like all up in me the whole night. So I took my friend aside and I was like ‘Dude, we gotta get that. I don’t know if it’s because we’re hot or [ ] is creepy as fuck, but let’s hit that shit’. And so it worked out (high five). I took her up to my room cause my parents were out for the week, and we started just fucking right, and we’re doing it, and I pull out, and I go to put it back in, and I miss, and the whole girth of [ ] goes right in her ass (narrator makes fisting motion). Right, and so we’re both so fucking hammered, and she screams and gets up and starts running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off, and then runs into my parents room, and falls and hits her head on their dresser! Yeah, but later she came back in and cuddled with me (high five). But it’s not even over yet!

So in the morning, we all go to IHOP, and she doesn’t know that EVERYONE there knows cause [ ] and I called like fucking everyone and told them, and she has no fucking idea. I know right!! And so we go out to the parking lot and we start making jokes about it and she finally goes ‘do you all know?’ like all concerned and shit, and we go ‘yup’ and she goes ‘about the sex or about the butt?’

How fucking funny is that shit??? She couldn’t even walk out of IHOP right”

WHEN MY FRIEND AND I EACH DRINK A BOTTLE OF WINE

howdoiputthisgently:

WE’RE LIKE: