Blue Dog and Golden Gate

A topless beefcake in yellow firefighting pants walked by holding hands with either a Native American or a Village person. Either way, the feathers weren't particularly authentic and neither was the braid of hair, which dangled haphazardly from the forehead of the fireman's companion. The pseudo-native walked with a drunken wobble, and Marley Jones was forced to step aside. There was a good crowd at The Cafe but it wasn't quite yet packed. The reason Marley Jones made room for the couple was because of their alcoholic stench, which was just one reason on top of many that Marley was pretty pissed off at the moment. He didn't even want to be there in the first place. It was all Wynn's fault. She always wanted to go out dancing, or have a group dinner, or some other reason to paint the town red. With Wynn, it was always about painting the town red, and Marley was ill from the fumes.

"Is it time to leave yet?" Marley asked over the music. He wanted to childishly scream, "Can we go home now?" but he figured that even the thumping beat of a Madonna remix wouldn't effectively camouflage his discomfort.

But Wynn was too busy fraternizing with two wispy twinks whose eyes were trained on her fluffy pink sweater. As Madonna sung about hanging up, the twinks fawned over Wynn's sweater, which was one of her most recent discoveries at Crossroads.

The dance floor was just several steps away across a narrow but relatively uncrowded railed walkway. A rainbow spectrum of overhead spotlights cast a deliberate halo over Wynn and her new buddies. "Are you sure you didn't get it at Old Navy?" said one of the twinks. The other cackled sharply and retorted, "Honey, the day they get funky is the day I grow out my pubes."

Of course, Marley didn't hear any of this. There was an honest part of himself that was actually starting to fall into the beat of the music, which in turn was very gradually fending off the urge to flee the club. But he was scared of getting comfortable, of getting a Long Island that would lead to another Long Island and then, finally, the kind of fun that Wynn was used to having. It wasn't that Marley was a shut-in. He and Wynn had, in fact, gone through their share of, well, good times.

"Good times," Marley thought, then laughed in spite of himself. He pictured Wynn making out with a swivel chair during one of their many drunken moments together.

At the same time, Madonna turned into Beyonce. Marley wasn't surprised when Wynn came racing down the railed walkway. Due to some instinct that may have been fear or general listlessness, Marley tightened his grip around the edge of the pool table that he had been standing against. The presence of the table seemed inexplicable at the moment, but The Cafe was also just a regular dive during Happy Hour. When it was time for clubbing, no one used the table to actually play billiards. Currently, the gathering crowd was using it to leave behind their Coronas and glasses of cosmos or appletinis. Later in the night, it would morph into a makeshift stage for the go-go boys.

"Uh oh, uh oh!" Wynn sung with Beyonce.

Wynn, like Marley, lacked basic dancing ability. But Wynn was much more cheerful about her stilted movements, her arms orbiting above her head in a way that reminded Marley of his mother. Also helping was the fact that Wynn had finished off the rest of Marley's appletini.

"What's wrong?" Wynn asked. Her head was already dripping with sweat. She turned away from Marley, presumably to remove her sweater. But as she did so, her hips swayed to the music and Marley found himself transfixed on her flat, bony ass. Marley was amused at how someone who appeared so thin and harmless was actually very fiesty. In her daytime life, Wynn was an opinionated intellect who nursed dreams of owning Green Apple books on Clement Street. On more than one occasion, she had railed against the politics of the current mayor while simultaneously promising "to bed him someday". By night, Wynn was a party animal, pure and simple. Marley often found himself feeling sorry for the men who tried to pick up Wynn under the impression that she was a tamable Asian girly girl.

In fact, she was always pressing Marley to do the hooking up, as if she was going to live vicariously through him.

"Wait a minute," Wynn said, even though Marley hadn't said anything.

Wynn wrapped the sweater around her waist, and Marley found himself feeling sad for the sweater's fabric, which was now being flattened and generally ruined by Wynn's lackadaisical handling. "Wow, I'm so gay," Marley amusedly thought to himself.

"OK," Wynn said triumphantly, after she'd tied the sweater in a knot around her waist. Her pale face beaming with energy and sweat, she cheerily glanced at Marley. "I know what the problem is. You haven't had enough to drink."

"Says the one who polished off my appletini!"

"You were about to throw it away!"

Even in anger, Wynn appeared relatively harmless. Her features were childlike: tiny, dark eyes that glimmered when moist and manicured eyebrows that were pointed upward in a sort of perpetual haplessness. The guys that Wynn attracted mostly thought her a typically docile Asian, but her youthful appearance betrayed an earnestness that she exhibited most of the time --- in other words, not at the moment. Marley, for his part, had spent about 17 of his 25 years on this planet trying to come up with reasons for why he was slapped with a white person's name. He had inherited none of the features of his paternal great-grandfather. Brown, Marley often mused, was not the color of a Jones. And Marley was never able to accept the reasoning that his mother was a Dickens fan, mainly because Marley himself despised Dickens.

At the club, he suddenly said to Wynn, "Please sir, I want some more!"

Wynn instantly lit up, promptly latching onto his hand as she led him to the bar. The urge to flee was sticking around less and less, but Marley was still feeling anti-social. "Maybe I'll just sit at the bar," he thought, but then quickly said to himself, "Fat chance." Wynn had never been one for just sitting around when drinking and dancing were involved.

"Long Island!" Wynn practically cheered to the bartender, a butch woman whose stoney face was out of sync with the colorful spotlights.


"You just haven't had enough to drink," Wynn sagely informed Marley. "Hopefully the drink comes before our song ends."

"Crazy In Love" had been a kind of default theme for the two friends. The song always seemed to play whenever they were out on the town, and they didn't necessarily have to be dancing. Once, on an off-night when they were on a study break but in no mood to hit a club, the song had suddenly and inexplicably played while they were dining on square pizza slices at Marcello's.

"It's not that," Marley said, but quickly added, "Well, that's not the ONLY reason."

Marley shushed the part of himself that was fearful that he might be a borderline alcoholic because of how much he relied on drinks to loosen up. As much as he disagreed with his mother about Dickens, there was no denying that he had inherited her bookworminess. Marley liked going out, but he hardly considered himself a party animal.

The bartender slid over a glass of Long Island as Wynn traded in six bucks plus tip. In the few moments it took for this transaction to happen, Roderick Tran sauntered up to Marley.

"You!" Marley yelled at him. "You're the reason why I don't wanna be here!"

Drops of Long Island sloshed into the humid air as Wynn whirled around and found herself facing her two friends. "Here," she said, shoving the drink at Marley. Then, "Where have YOU been all night?"

"Dancing with my man!" Marley said, answering the question intended for Roderick, a friend whose first name Marley often thought unfortunate.

"You're always doing that, Rod!" Marley went on angrily.

But Rod Tran was oblivious. Even as the temperature melted his gelled mane, he smiled giddily and proceeded to pat Marley's shoulder.

"What? I couldn't help it," Rod said with a laugh. "He wanted a dance."

"He wants to fuck you!" Marley countered.

"Mar, relax," Rod said, soothingly lowering his voice. "I told him I'm straight."

"So?" Marley bellowed. He took a long gulp of Long Island. "You're such a cockblocker, Rod! Men always go for you and your stupid size 29 waist!"

Even as Marley railed against his friend, he was overcome with a sweeping self-consciousness that forced him to suck in his gut.

Marley spun around to face Wynn. "It hasn't been the easiest month for me, Wynn. I'm 25 and I'm going nowhere with my life. NOWHERE."


"Which is exactly why we're out tonight," Wynn said protestingly. "So you can forget about that for a while!"

"And then do what, Wynn? Have a hangover the next morning so I can go back to my miserable life? Things were supposed to have happened for me by now!"

Wynn rolled her girly eyes. She turned away from Marley and exasperatingly swung her right arm about.

"That's the problem with you, Wynn," Marley said just as "Crazy In Love" was coming to an end. "You never wanna talk about stuff. You just wanna read books and go dancing all the time!"

"Not a bad life to lead," Rod said, leaning his body between them, and pointing his forefinger. But Marley was in no mood for Rod's corny sense of humor.

Marley was about to hurl the most bitter retort he could muster when, as his body tensed in anticipation for a battle of wits, he inadvertantly swung the drink at himself, splashing the strongly alcoholic concoction all over his sweatshirt.

"Great, just great!" Marley said. "Now look. I wasn't even dressed for this night to begin with!"

Which was, indeed, a sad but true fact. For while Wynn had managed to don a frilly pink sweater, and Rod had managed to dig out his attractive leather motorcycle jacket from the trunk of his car --- Rod didn't actually have a motorcycle, nor was he able to operate one, as far as anyone knew anyway --- Marley had had to be dragged out of his apartment that night. When he grudgingly agreed to go to The Cafe, he stubbornly clung to his faded blue workout pants and gray SFSU sweatshirt. It was a perfect outfit for the gym, or a rainy day, or grocery shopping. But he was ridiculously out of place at The Cafe.

"You might have been able to pick up someone by now if you didn't come out of the house looking like someone who just lost on 'The Biggest Loser'," Wynn said.

Marley's jaw hung.

"Oooh," Rod hummed ominously.

"So you DO admit that I've gotten fat!" Marley howled to the point that his voice teetered on sobbing.

"That's what happens when you stay home all the time eating nothing but tortilla chips and sour cream!"

"I'd rather eat sour cream than have to stare at your pale face all the time!"

"Guys, guys," Rod said, raising his hands between them. Marley attempted to slap them away, but Rod possessed a modicum of strength that Marley often forgot about because, well, Rod simply did appear that capable.

"Oh...!" Marley said, fumbling for words. "What is WITH you, anyway? Have you been going to the gym and not telling anyone?"

grinning all this time. Nothing ever seemed to faze Rod. In the moment, that fact only made Marley even more bitter.

"Jesus," Marley said, tugging at his sweatshirt. "Look at this."

By now, his speech and breathing had become deflated, exhausted by grief and self-pity.

Wynn spun around, her feet bounding ahead in a way that she intended to just storm past Marley. But then she found herself staring at his sweatshirt, which was now a mess of darkened blotches.

"Alcohol abuse!" she said.

Marley narrowed his eyes at her. Their gazes hung in a heated gazing match that Rod peered at with amusement on the sidelines. Then Marley lowered his head toward his sweatshirt.

"No, actually..." he began.

Suddenly, he licked the fabric and found himself enjoying the taste.

"THAT'S alcohol abuse," he said. He glanced up at Wynn with a thoughtful look. "Not too bad."

"Really?" Wynn said, and proceeded to demonstrate an answer to her own question. When she nodded in approval, Rod said, "But can we get drunk from it?"

"What the hell are you people doing?" the bartender demanded. In the rainbow lights, her spiked white hair and the scowl on her face were a glittery cocktail.

The trio glanced at each other, wordless and without much of a reason. Then Marley shrugged.

"Having a drink," he said.