Spencer the Animal

I have been called four different names in the past eighteen hours. Five if you count "bald asshole" as a name, which I don't.

I like imagining other names I could have had and if having a different name would have made me a different person, or if it would have at least made me a different shade of the person I am, who is Lucas. I went to my friend EL's birthday party last night, which was fun, and there were lots of nice people who all knew each other. It was my job to pick up EL and blindfold her and drive her to the party. I held her hand as we crossed the street and she pointed out that we were holding hands awkwardly, which I took as an invitation to interlace fingers, which I did. And there were a lot of PHEs there at the party, a PHE being a Peer Health Educator, and a Peer Health Educator being the person every resident relies on for condoms. PHEs, I learned, like to Party.

Sexual tension is a funny thing, especially when it's one sided. There was this very nice girl named T who arrested my beer and told me we were going to dance. This I did. I don't remember much what she said because she kept pressing her breasts into my chest and gliding her lips along my ear, and I don't think she remembered any of what she said on account of the alcohol escaping her lungs. She must have tasted like fire. I did not check. T was aggressive with what she wanted, which I am certain was my mouth being on hers, and I was aggressive at trying to escape. Why? I was not into T. Nothing against her or her looks—excessively drunk girls turn me off. I escaped by getting into a big group hug with a circle of PHEs. The PHEs were everywhere, really. My new friend MD told me very seriously, I hope you're okay with orgies because PHE parties always turn into orgies.

I wish the party would have turned into an orgy because then I could cross Orgy off my Life List.

We paraded around campus. Six of us, including my female friend EL, marked a wide perimeter around a stretch of parking lot with our beer pee. I claimed a tall tree with wispy leaves and a double trunk, and I drunkenly apologized to it before I relieved myself. T had long since, I'm guessing, found another person into whom she could press her breasts. Anyway she was not there. And we hopped from place to place, and we ended up at The Knoll, which is the multimillion-dollar recording house on campus. It sits on top of a large hill and used to house the university president, and there are rooms everywhere which housed the president's servants.

EL said, I wonder if we can get inside. I used to work there, I said, maybe my keycard still works. I had not been to The Knoll in three years and I knew they had already deactivated my keycard, but EL and I still went up to check the front door far up the hill while the others waited far down below on the curb. No one was behind the tall glass doors at the front entrance, so I took out my keycard and waved it in front of the card reader. The light turned green and the lock snapped back, ready to be opened.

Holy shit, I said, it still works. EL said, I heard you can get up to the roof and watch the stars. Did you know that? No, I said. Don't tell them we can get in, EL said. Let's go up to the roof tomorrow. Okay, I said, and then is when I remembered that my friend K told me there had been an elaborate ruse. The ruse was: It was not an accident that I was the one that blindfolded EL. It was not an accident that I was in charge of bringing her to the surprise party. And it was not an accident that I would have to hold her hand.

My friends are cunning.

After a while we all said our goodbyes and EL and our friend LL and I headed back to our dorm together. EL got a text message from one of the RAs saying there was trouble. We all headed to a guy named Spencer's room.

Spencer was creating a Scene. I use Spencer's name because I do not give a shit about Spencer, which is something I try not to ever feel toward a person but with him I cannot help it.

He was like a crazed animal that had suddenly found his cage unlocked, after all these years. He was furious at everything. He was wearing a nice black suit and a skinny black tie and he was hitting things. His knuckles were bloody. EL and LL convinced him to let them bandage his bloodied hand. EL took out a band-aid. Can I fuck you? Spencer said. Not tonight, said EL. Can I fuck you in the asshole? Spencer begged. How about we worry about the band-aid, said EL.

Spencer was asking everyone if he could fuck them. He saw me leaning against the doorjamb with my arms crossed. I would imagine I looked disapproving. Who's this bald asshole? Spencer said of me. I'm Lucas, I said. Shut the fuck up! Spencer shouted, and he was coiled for hitting things. He started ripping the posters off people's doors and laughing like a person about to die. It was like crying but also like screaming, and it was all laughter, and it made my heart beat in a way that made me aware I was an animal, too.

He made a mess of the stairs and opened an emergency exit on his way to the lobby. There, he kicked in a metal trashcan with his nice black polished shoes and sent an armchair into the wall. He asked LL if he could fuck her too, and also in the butt, and then yelled again as if I'd been following him around his whole life, Who is this bald asshole?

He took off in his underwear. I did not see him take off his dress pants but he did in that mysterious drunken way that I sometimes confuse for gracefulness, and he laughed his way into the Papua New Guinea sculpture garden. When we found him he was on the phone with, coincidentally, my friend MR, and he asked her if he could fuck her. He was relentless, though I'm certain he did not fuck a soul that night.

By then we had dialed for the police.

Who is this bald asshole? Spencer was sitting down on the stone railing of a low-water bridge. I'm Lucas, remember? I bet he has a big dick, Spencer said into the phone. And then he peeled off with shrieking laughter. How big is your dick? Big, I said. He ventured a guess—About seven? he said. Yeah, about seven. He's seven, pushing eight, Spencer said into the girl in the phone. Tell MR I said hi, I said. I was trying to distract him. Who is this bald asshole? LL said, You know his name already. Josh? he said. I tried to help him out.

It starts with an L, I said. Luh-luh....

Loo?

Loo, loo.

Luh—Lucas!

Yes! I said. So now you know who the bald asshole is.

Spencer was warming up to me.

And then Spencer took off into the woods in his nice black polished shoes and his boxers and his coat and skinny black tie.

The police caught him in the end and I'm not sure what happened. I heard that Spencer has already been kicked out of housing. He's a senior, like me, but not like me at all. He asked everyone around if he could fuck them. He laughed in a way I never want to hear myself laugh.

Spencer reminded me that I'm an animal with adrenal glands and fists and that my body could be used as a weapon, if it had to be. I didn't like it, not exactly. But it reminded me that sometimes life comes down to confrontation and loud yells and asking everyone if you can fuck them. Spencer must be a lonely person. But there I go, projecting again, trying to make excuses for people, trying to be empathetic. Sometimes people are just assholes.

It was by then three in the morning. I walked back with EL to our hallway and said goodnight. I knew what I was supposed to do, because K had told me, he had said laughing—Don't forget your job tonight, meaning that I had to remember the elaborate ruse and why they had pulled it. But I was too tired, and I had been called Josh and Justin and a bald asshole all night, and I had had so much blood pumping in my head, and I had been reminded that I was an animal, and I know that animals are supposed to fuck, but all I wanted was sleep.



This morning a kid I know called me, on accident, Sam. Josh, Justin, now Sam. In a story I named a version of myself Danny. I am collecting names, holding them in my hands. I don't know why—but they were given to me. They were Gifts, and I will keep them.