Burning Seventeen

I’m seventeen. Young dumb and full of… everything. I move into the only smoking dorm room in the whole college. Dope. I light a cigarette and turn on my free cable. This is the first time I have had cable in my whole life. I lay around all day smoking pot and cigarettes. Glazed eyes. Staring. Nature programs and sports. I was a deprived child. I sell pot to my RA. Insurance. I give her a big bag. She doesn’t bother me for the rest of the semester. Bribing the faculty at this school is way to easy.

I’m dating a sixteen year old. Scandalous. My friends think I should be in jail. I agree with them. Shut up Ronald Reagan. She is crazy. Beautiful. Young. And crazy. She skips school. Sprawled on my bed in nothing but her lace panties. Black. Heaven. She is swigging from a bottle of gin I stole from a house party. I laugh as I watch her chugging it down. Hot.

“Easy now, Gin has a way of creeping up on you.”

“Fuck that I’m Irish.” She mumbles as she takes another long pull. It’s 2PM. We make out. I bite her lip. She screams at me in French. I thought you were Irish. She is now babbling at me in Frenchy speak. Crying now. This is ridiculous. Why are you crying? I want to kiss girls that have tear marks. I try. She punches me in the stomach and then laughs hysterically. Jesus this chick is crazy. Again hot.

Her phone rings. She answers and utters the two scariest word combinations I have heard to date.

“Hello father.” Fuck.

She listens for a moment rolling her big beautiful eyes at me. Teenagers. Suddenly she hands me the phone and says something to me in drunken French. I can’t understand you.

“Hello” I answer the phone. What am I doing?

“Who is this please?” he sounds gruff and scary. His “please” sounds more like an evil demand. I go into cop mode. Yes sir. No sir. Heart thumping.

“Bapu.”

“Where is my daughter?”

“She is in my dorm room. She stole my gin and now she is speaking French and I can’t understand a single word she says.” Way too much information Bapu. I’m so fucked.

“She should be in school.”

“Yes sir, I agree completely.” Swallow. Gulp. Is he going to buy this?

“She needs to go back to school.” Tracy (all my girlfriends have stripper names) wages her finger in the air. I gather she doesn’t want to go anywhere.

“I guess I could drop her off.” I say, having no intention of actually doing it. Drop a drunk sixteen year old off at school? Jailbait Popsicles.

“I’m going to come get her.” Shit that’s fucking worse.

“Um are you sure? School is pretty much over anyway, she’s probably better off just staying here.” Look at me telling this guy what’s best for his daughter. I have big feet and big nuts. I gear up for a shit storm. He takes a deep breath.

“Young man I’m going to tell you something, you don’t have the faintest idea what’s best for my daughter.” OMG. Your fucked dude.

“No of course not... I didn’t mean to…”

“Listen to me. Don’t speak. I am going to assume that you are a decent young man because I have heard good things about you. I heard about everything you did for Katie. “ (Katie is Tracy’s cousin who was recently the victim of a violent sex crime, I helped her handle the cops and later “took” care of the people involved. But that’s a whole other story.)

Father continues:

“So I am going to assume that you are not trying to molest my daughter.” I had up until that moment been absent-mindedly staring at her ass. Look up. Out the window.

“Of course not sir.”

“Exactly how drunk is my daughter at this point in time?” this guy talks funny. I glance down at Tracy. She is half way off of my bed with her head on the dirty tile floor. Mumbling. Jesus she is wasted.

“Not very.”

“Then I will pick her up at five, I hope she will be presentable by that time.”

“Yes sir. Thank you sir. I’m very sorry about all this.”

“Good. You should be.” He hangs up the phone.

Tracy throws up all over my floor. Great. Welcome to college sweetheart. I carry her to the showers. (Co-ed). See my RA as I walk down the hall. Fuck. Gulp. Be brave. Act normal. I smile and nod. Ignoring the fact that I am carrying a half conscious, half naked girl into the showers. She waves. Jesus I am so lucky I know how to get good drugs. You should have been kicked out of school on the spot. Fuck off. Tracy sobers up in the cold water. Slowly her French becomes English again. Thank god. She apologizes profusely. I make her brush her teeth and then we make out. Her dad picks her up two hours later. He shakes my hand. I stare at his mouth. He has no teeth. What the F?

I’m glad to see her go. Miss her panties. Back inside. Hit the pipe. Drink the rest of my gin. Clean my floor and my sheets. More gin. Need to get wasted. First smart thing you’ve said all day. My heart is still thumping from all the excitement. This room needs to air out. I open the window. Take out the screen. Climb out (I’m on the bottom floor) and begin wandering around the campus. Looking for strange. Staring up at the sky I spot an orange glow from across campus. Fire. Yes!

Running now. Excited. I love fires. Maybe my science building is burning down. No tests on Monday. Fantasy. When I get there the blaze is about ten feet in the air and about thirty feet long. There is a little knoll next to one of the buildings. The brush is on fire. Small bushes. Lit up and blazing. I look around. There is no one to be seen. I wonder if the building will catch on fire. It might. Where is the FD? Fuck it. Get in there.

I take of my sweatshirt and roll it up. Heading to the edge of the small inferno I begin beating at the flames. The brush is dry and breaks easily under the crushing blows of my jacket. The fire goes out quickly. Success. One bush is no longer burning. Should I keep going? Fuck it. I attack the bushes. Before I know it I am in the middle of it. Having fun. Laughing. Drunk. Dancing. I swing left and right. Turning. Spinning.

“Get some!” take that and that. Fire got nothing on me.” Jesus your ridiculous. I don’t care. This is fun. I give no thought to being surrounded by burning bushes. No thought to the inherit danger I’ve put myself in. No thought to burning skin. I’m drunk. I feel no fear; Just the exalting feeling of fighting something anything. I beat the last bush to submission. The fire is out. I’m covered from head to toe in black soot. My clothes are ruined. Smiling. I haven’t been this happy in years. The Fire department shows up. I hop down off of the small hill. Suddenly wondering if I am the prime suspect in starting this fire. Shit. Going to jail after all.

The firemen give me dirty looks as they spray the charred bushes. I guess they were looking for some hot action. You snooze you lose suckers. A cop takes my statement. I tell him what happened. He looks at me like I am fucking nuts. At the end of everything he tells me next time to wait for the FD. Whatever.

I head to my buddy’s dorm room. Drinking. Smoking. Covered in soot from head to head. The best of times.

The next day there are two rumors circulating around campus. Rumor one: involves me and multiple naked drunk girls in the showers. Sex is implied. Awesome. Rumor two: A girl who witnessed the fire swears there was some guy dancing in the middle of it all. There is brief moment of panic as teachers check the charred grassy knoll for any remains. Haha.

Legends.