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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Family & Friends
- Subject: Biography / Autobiography
- Published: 06/13/2012
MASON'S WORLD
M, from Baltimore, Maryland, United StatesMASON'S WORLD
When I first noticed Mason
he was loitering behind the school
in the designated smoking pit.
He stood apart and brooding over his Camel.
I didn't smoke because I was too cheap
to spring for the quarter it cost to buy a pack.
Evan smoked and that's how he came to approach Mason first,
he readily recognized a kindred spirit and introduced me to Mason
with his limp handshake and a stare stockpiled with anger and grief.
Mason spoke very little and appeared painfully shy.
He hated his father and had run away from home
and migrated south to our town where he initially stayed
with an older brother, a married graduate student.
Mason's personality changed when he drank
and he drank like a fish...inebriated he seemed
more normal, less tense, and down right animated in his opinions,
the primary of which was that he dug black chicks.
as our friendship jelled we formed a class cutting troika
especially fond of the burger joints we'd raid every lunch hour.
Mason thought up and designed a board game he called "quaff."
It was modeled sort of after Monopoly, but in the middle of the board
instead of money, he placed a full glass of beer.
When you landed on the quaff square, and there were many,
you had to guzzle the whole glass in one breath.
We played with a circle of friends and dates
who often looked worried wondering what they were getting into.
You rolled the dice and moved your token
and you might land on the aforementioned quaff square
or a square instructing you strip off one piece of clothing
or a square telling you to kiss the other guy's girl
or the gonzo square instructing you to take
the other guy's girl in the bedroom for ten minutes.
Oh and you couldn't go to the bathroom
until you landed on one of the corner squares marked "go take a piss."
One night a blizzard blew in and we got so hung up playing
that we didn't realize through all the fun
we were getting seriously stranded and in an unheated cabin.
We were at the game so long we were all down to our undies
and I so worried about having to strip naked that when luckily I landed
on the box saying take the other girl back to the bedroom
that without her noticing I stealthily rifled a chest drawer and found
and put on four pairs of underpants and it was a smart move
because on my next turn I landed on one piece of garment removal
and so I faked a frantic act like no way I'll be the first in the buff.
Evan, Teddy, and Mason ganged up on me and tickled me
into submission and so I relented and dropped my drawers.
The boys and Angie and Doris and Jen and one other girl who I can't remember
were stunned and raised a hue and cry about me cheating
when they saw another pair of Haines on my butt.
At 3AM with the snowstorm raging and the cars buried
we decided to extricate just Evan's car since he lived closest.
We hand dug through three foot drifts and then piled into his Corvair
with the girls on our laps and we drove about a mile before we got hopelessly stuck,
marooned in the middle of a deserted highway...we were underdressed,
freezing, with no access to a phone, when a couple of cops in a snow chained car drove up and just looked and laughed at us and rolled on past.
They had a point, we did ignore the weather warnings before we ventured out
and now we were paying the price. Angie got so desperate
she stomped bare legged through knee deep snow
knocking on doors, but at that ungodly hour no one was answering.
Finally we hitched a ride on a wagon pulled by a jeep.
Practically frostbitten we all crashed at Evan's parents house.
the next morning we rose to crisp sunshine and we hiked with shovels
back to where we abandoned the car, but it was gone, towed to a pound
where Evan's dad had to pay big money to release it.
In the summer time Mason introduced us to pool crashing.
After hours we'd sneak into hotel, apartment, or private club pools,
scaling the fences, and skinny dip till the tenants called the cops.
One night Teddy went home naked after I threw all his clothes
onto a cabana roof...he had no time to climb with the fuzz coming.
Angie pretended to cover her eyes when
Teddy posed like an ancient Greek statue.
Mason was the first friend I ever had
who lived in his own place away from his folks.
He moved out of his brother's apartment
and took a walkup with three university students.
We could party and hang out there any time.
One time I plopped in hungry, broke, and stoned
and Mason was out of sight in the can
so I rooted around in his fridge and in my famished straits
I couldn't resist stealing a homemade cherry pie
his mother had delivered the day before.
I spirited the dish out to the parking lot
where I devoured it all
crust and fruit
with my fingers.
I was seventeen.
by L DOUGLAS ST OURS
August 2010
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