“I call shotgun!”
“Aww, come on. I don’t want to sit in the middle again. I had to sit there on the way here. How come I always have to be in the middle?”
It was almost 4:00am and we were piling into Farnsworth’s van after a long evening of celebrating our friend Marcy’s 33rd birthday. Our night began with spicy soups and cheap wines, tasty bread and Cornish hens. Marcy is my friend Dee-Dee’s little sister, and she, Dee-Dee and Natasha lived together in college, which is when I met them all. As we dipped chicken empanadas in spicy tomatillo sauce, we recalled the first time I met Marcy.
It was Dee-Dee’s birthday – over a decade ago – and by the time I arrived at her apartment, the party was already in full swing. Dee and four of her friends were doing shots of Jägermeister, the kitchen floor was slick from beer, and Marcy was dancing around the apartment playing a tambourine with such passion that her hand had an enormous blister on it the next day.
“I can’t believe you let those guys con you into matching them shot for shot, Dee-Dee. No wonder you were sick. Then all your creepy stalkers seemed to crawl out of the woodwork. Funny how being nearly unconscious always made you seem so much more approachable.”
Dee shook her head and laughed, “Yeah, but didn’t you make out with your little hippie poet that night, too?”
“Oh, god – yeah. Yeah, I did. And mid-kiss, he stopped just in time to run and vomit off your third floor balcony. I shudder to think what might have happened if his timing had been off. So then I held his hair.”
“You held everyone’s hair that night. Jenny always holds people’s hair. That’s why you’re such a good friend.”
It’s true, I do. People can always count on me to hold their hair. Although as I’ve grown older and wiser, I’ve found that a well placed scrunchy does the job quite well, with far less effort required on my end.
After dinner, we moved on to another bar where six of us crammed into a booth meant for two. We’ve long since traded in the Jägermeister for Pinot Noir, but Marcy still had it in her to drink a shot of tequila, no lime. I gave the DJ a $20 tip and asked him to play Chaka Khan, but we left the bar before it came on. It’s okay, though. It was Marcy’s birthday, I was feeling generous, and he had already played nearly every great dance song recorded from 1984 to the present.
We picked up a companion along the way – a friend of a friend. An energetic young twenty-something who matched Marcy drink for drink, and then passed her up a few times over. It was somewhere around the second lap that we realized he might be one of those drunks. The kind who starts out really funny and adorable, but who might end up crying and hunched over a dumpster in the alley behind a McDonald’s. Fortunately for me, he had very short hair, so I knew my services would not be required that evening.
At our final destination that night, we witnessed him reach the tipping point after a shot of Bushmill’s. Dee-Dee and I were talking to a man we had just met, who saved us from tripping over a broken glass on the floor. Our tipsy friend of a friend wandered over and squeezed in between the man and me, then poked at the man’s arm.
“You’re very… what? Rambunctious! You know… you-,” he swayed back on his heels a bit, and then continued, “You’re really tall. And hairy. What the fuck is your…”
When he said fuck, he accidentally spit all over the tall hairy man’s face. Dee-Dee and I looked at each other, ready to duck from the blows that were bound to follow. As we edged back a bit, I tried to apologize for this friend of a friend, “He’s had a few shots…”
Fortunately, the tall hairy man decided that punching someone on the verge of alcohol poisoning was not necessary, so he just wiped off his face, thanked us for the conversation, and went off to join his friends. This was our sign that it was time to make a getaway. Farnsworth was already outside warming up his van, so Dee and I grabbed the rest of our group and ran outside.
“I’m getting smushed in the middle,” I said, as I squirmed back and forth between Marcy and Natasha to make more room for myself.
Nat held her ground and said, “But you’re in the best spot. It’s the warmest place to be. You’re like the special monkey.”
“Huh?”
“The special monkey. I saw this nature show once that said that when monkeys are in trees, they keep their most precious monkey in the middle. To keep her warm and safe and protected.”
“They do? And then does the precious monkey groom them?” I asked, picking an imaginary nit from Natasha’s hair.
“No! They groom her. Because she’s the most precious.”
“So you’re saying that I’m the most precious monkey? I’m the one you’re keeping safe and warm?”
“Yes, Jenny. You’re the most precious monkey of all.”
I smiled as I settled back into the tight embrace of winter jackets, listening to tales of astronauts and garden snakes. These random pieces that build stories that become memories – it was ages ago, it was just yesterday, she still looks 21, occasionally I feel it. These stories carried us through our 4:00am fatigue and ultimately led me to my front door, where I returned, contented in the realization that the basis of love, happiness, and friendship really just comes down to being someone’s most precious monkey, even if only for the van ride home.

Filed under: General on February 13th, 2007