Proving History Wrong

"Proving History Wrong"
done after a morning conversation by jake kilroy.

"Did you know that Meriwether Lewis always used to eat Pop Rocks before heading out in the morning and that Sacagawea was actually Filipino?" Marcel asked absently. He laid against the living room window and stared out at the bruised landscape of the city. He had been asking random non-sequiturs for the better part of an hour.

"I'm almost sure nothing that you just said is true," said Casey, holding up his magazine.

It was early evening and the two roommates waited out their night lazily. Marcel drummed his knuckles against the window and Casey had sunk so far into the couch that he looked like a mass of throw pillows dressed in flannel.

"But you can't prove it, can you?" Marcel said, looking over at Casey for the first time in twenty minutes.

"Can't prove what?" Casey said, still reading his magazine.

"You can't prove me wrong," Marcel said, leaning forward now.

"You want me to prove that Lewis didn't eat a candy that wasn't invented until 100 years after he died and that one of the most famous Native Americans was actually from another continent?" Casey asked, setting his magazine down.

"Yeah," Marcel said. "Prove it."

"If it wasn't so cold out, I'd tell you to get some fresh air," Casey said, lifting his magazine up back to his eyes. "You're getting cabin fever in your own apartment."

"The hell I am," Marcel said excitedly. "Well, ok, maybe I am. But still! I just realized that you can't prove me wrong."

Casey's eyes rolled in his head like barrels. "I can't believe you're turning this into a matter of discussion and debate. Are you really going to make me get my computer?"

Marcel stared emptily at Casey.

"Fine," Casey said, as he lumbered up, "I'll go get my computer."

Casey left the room and returned with his laptop. Marcel rubbed his hands together. Casey opened up the laptop and started tapping keys.

"I'm not getting the internet," Casey said finally.

"That's a sign that you can't prove history!" Marcel announced, standing up with arms above his head.

"No, it's a sign that we should stop stealing our internet," Casey replied tiredly.

"We can make up our own history!" Marcel said, as if science and mathematics were coming through him and forcing his mouth open. "Right now, we can't prove anything. You and I don't read history books. All we read are novels and novellas and short story collections!"

"So?" Casey said, appearing wary though intrigued where this was going.

"Lincoln survived the gunshot, Fred Astaire fought in the Revolutionary War and Vietnam came out with a peaceful resolution!" Marcel yelled. "You can't prove me wrong! I can write American history. No, wait. I'm already writing American history!"

"Jesus, dude, you need coffee or a tranquilizer," Casey said, unsure of his own humor.

"There's a first for everything!" Marcel screamed, almost chanting, almost preaching, almost ranting, almost anything.

And then it came.

There came the first snowflake.

It hit the window and fell. Neither roommate noticed the snowflake, but, with it, came a rushing sensation for everyone in the city. It was snowing. For the first time ever, it was snowing in the city.

Casey stood up when he saw the sky look like pale, sparkling confetti. He stood up slow and mesmerized. Marcel asked if he was alright and Casey simply pointed forward. Then Marcel's eyes widened and he drew in breath as if he were trying to suck the winter in through cracks of the windowpane.

There was a throbbing glory in Marcel's throat and a pulsating dance in Casey's heart. Both men turned to each other without words and ran towards the door, snatching jackets on their way out. Casey barely remembered to lock the door.

Marcel was leaping down steps and Casey was fully jumping from flight to flight. Marcel pushed the building's door open with the force of an escape into the wild and slid to the curb on gravel that would soon be coated in white. Casey followed up next to him. They stared upwards at a sky that seemed to hear them, maybe even feel them from the swarming cold and glee of the city, as the locals came out in droves. Time evaporated and soon there was a parade of people. Some were curious, some were laughing, some felt downright victorious, as if they had finally won the war that they were unsure had ever even started. Strangers talked to neighbors, acquaintances hugged friends and Marcel put his arm around Casey.

Casey shook his head, looked at the changing ground and said, "There's a first for everything." To which, Marcel just nodded and kept his eyes up.

Youth, by Amory Blaine

"Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over again. The matron doesn't want to repeat her girlhood - she wants to repeat her honeymoon. I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again."

- Amory Blaine (from F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side Of Paradise)

The Foxfire Mystery Finally Solved

I went to Foxfire on Saturday night.

Now, as you may or may not know, this answered a long-standing question I've had.

And the answer, as it turns out, is "yes."

The question, as it has always been, was "Is Foxfire really an outrageous cougar bar?"

Rex, Grant, John and I went to Foxfire in Anaheim on Saturday night to find out, laughing and giving each other odd looks for most of the evening. I dressed like some Newport Beach asshole in black jeans, a white dress shirt, dark blazer and dress shoes. Rex wore a blazer, John wore a dress shirt and Grant did a button up shirt and sweater combo.

For years, I've heard the rumors about Foxfire, how it's like some alternate universe where cougars hang. Within in ten seconds of paying the cover charge, I realized that not only was that true, but that generally older men and women go there. We were the youngest people in the bar by 10 or 15 years. This was unnerving, as I'm not entirely sure I've been somewhere with that radical of an age difference. Also, the bar was packed, so it was even stranger. As we slipped through the crowd (who were either watching the busy dance floor or the house band led by Shakira in 20/30 years), I noticed that we were getting looks. We were picking up some sex-hungry eyes from the older ladies and getting the why-the-fuck-are-you-here look from the older gents.

We didn't really have a plan to seduce older women. It was more of a "hey, let's finally do this" kind of attitude. But, damn...it was too overwhelming for me. It was weird as hell, seeing people my parents age acting like 21-year-olds. And, at times, it felt like four naive sheep in a pasture of slow-moving wolves. At one point, Rex and Grant headed into the dance floor chaos while John and I posted up against the wall. Rex and Grant looped through the dancers and right back to us with both of them saying, "It was too weird in there."

So, the four of us spent most of the night smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey on the back patio, which was only slightly more toned down. We people-watched and kind of didn't know what to do with ourselves except to converse like there wasn't awkward sexual anarchy going on around us. However, the initial plan of getting drunk to cope with the straight-up weirdness of the place was in full effect. By the time we decided to call it a hilarious and peculiar night, I was pleasantly sauced and sick to my stomach with cigarette smoke.

Heading out, in the parking lot, a car of young dudes pulled up and asked how it was inside. The four of us provided them with half-answers and shrugs, rather unsure of how to explain things in there. Once in the car, we started laughing and recapping the evening to each other, before heading home and going back to something more familiar: eating Del Taco and watching Grey's Anatomy.

Drunk and tired, I texted my mom, "Not coming home!"

She sent me a text back, reading, "So Cougar Town was a success?"

The next morning, I explained to my mother that I was just looking to crash on Grant's couch, as I figured I was too done for to get behind the wheel. Then, I paused and asked, "Wait, so you thought that I went home with some hot cougar?"

My mom replied, "Hey, I didn't know what you were doing and I wasn't really looking to find out."

Maybe next time, Mom. Maybe next time.