City of my Life: Stories About Maiami – Dan Brat

June 12, 2012

They stop in front of the fridge with the beers and Mikey asks “Should we grab a twelve, or just six?” Twelve, it’s a long ride. They pay up front and set off towards northeast second, around sixty-first, sixty-second street. In the cobalt blue turbo hatchback Justin blasts an mp3 mix titled “killed by fags” as he juggles between his four loko, cigarette, and shifting gears, with the occasional text to his girl about where he is going tonight and who is going to be there.

Mikey sits in the passenger seat with blunt wrap in hand and a piece of paper with ground marijuana on it resting on his lap. He finishes rolling by the time they hit I-95 and sparks it. “Fuck, I love this highway. No speed limits.”
They take exit four b and then two b and stop at a red light. The silver four-wheel drive SUV to the right of them is “packed with girls” and Justin starts honking the horn while Mikey rolls down the window and beckons the girls to do the same. The driver faces forward and refuses to acknowledge them, while the other girls in the car laugh. The driver pulls the car up a foot and the rear window lowers. A chunky girl asks them “What do you want?” She breaks from chewing her gum to take drags of her cigarette. “Psh, never mind” says Mikey and rolls the limo-tinted window back up. Justin cuts his car in front of the SUV and makes a right turn.
They park the car on a grass median between two houses and walk towards a warehouse. “By the way, I hope you got grits because I just ran out!” says Mikey to Justin, who moans a long dang. They say hello to mass amounts of people on their way in, and head directly towards a table with plastic liquor bottles and red cups, next to wrapped garbage cans filled with ice and cans of high-gravity beer.
Here is where they split off and re-encounter each other about two and a half hours later in the bathroom of a backroom closed off to the party inside the warehouse. In between that time, Justin shotguns two twenty-four ounces of beer and guzzles down five twelve ounce cans. Mikey has two whiskies with coke and then dumps the coke and takes four shots with beer chaser. Justin takes two girls, Sara and Tina (affectionately Saratina) to his car to snort some blow. “We got it from Eric, he runs the warehouse basically.” Mikey’s approach is less subtle, a variation of “hey you have any snow/booch/dat white” and so forth. A bag of white ice, but to most people there that doesn’t make any sense.
Mikey runs into Eric who takes him and three girls he’s known for a long time but who’s names he never learned into the backroom. Two leather couches are crowded up by private parties of three or less, hands on thighs, lips on necks. Eric hands one of the girls a bag and tells them to go ahead, do it in there so everyone doesn’t come asking me for it. Then he turns to Mikey and asks him to help him move a canoe. “A canoe, what the fuck, are you going somewhere bro? Whatever.” The canoe is lengthy and heavy, made out of wood. They decide to avoid the hassle of moving it through the party and push it out through one of the backroom windows. Justin spots this on his way back to the warehouse from his car and yells “Yo what the fuck!?” Chill out man, I just texted you, check your phone bro. “Oh, my bad.”
Justin makes his way to the backroom and in the bathroom they take turns with Eric’s car keys. “I need you guys to help me take it to Harvey’s by the bay.” You mean the American Legion? They finish off the forty bag and Eric says not to worry, he has an eightball in the car. On the way over he explains to them that his car has no handles or anything, so he’s gonna open the moonroof and they’re gonna hang onto it with their hands. Justin sits in the front and Mikey in the back and hold onto to the heavy piece of wood above the victory red sedan. Eric cruises at around thirty-five, Justin doing most of the holding. They approach the canoe’s destination and Eric says “when I say go you let go” and speeds up towards a side-entrance to a patchy grass backyard. He turns the wheel sharp and says “go” and Justin lets go and Mikey would have gone flying off if he hadn’t been barely gripping the thing.
Eric gets pulled over on the way back to the warehouse, and when the cops ask him if he’s been drinking he says “No sir, I’m the designated driver, and I have to pick up my girl from work later.” The officer of the law ignores the squashed empty cans of PBR lying behind the backseat underneath the rear windshield and drives off. Fuck, that was close, let’s do a fat line.
Mikey and Justin continue until the bag is empty, and fall asleep around eleven a.m. in Eric’s living room floor, with the sliding glass doors open to a panoramic view of the Ocean.