I was in Ithaca, New York, visiting Chris, my former boyfriend. He was going home for the summer, and I had planned on going on the plane with him from Ithaca to Providence. There were a few feet of snow on the ground, however. He talked a guy outside his dorm about the status of his flight, and it seemed that he wouldn't be flying out of Ithaca for a couple days. He started cussing out the guy. I finally pulled him away.
"Well, I guess we're walking," Chris said.
"Walking? To Providence?" I said.
"Oh, I don't know," Chris said. "Let's just start walking."
I wasn't wearing a coat. I tried to walk for a little while without anything over my sweater, but I couldn't stand the cold after a few minutes. We had to trudge back through the snow to Chris's dorm.
"I don't think I brought a heavy coat," I said to Chris.
"That's okay," Chris said. "You can wear my New York Times coat."
I wasn't exactly sure what this was at first, but Chris presented me with a thick blue coat that came down to my knees. He said it had come with his subscription to the Times. It was also made of recycled newspapers. He said it should keep me warm.
So we started walking again. Snow was blowing into our faces and we could barely see a thing. We eventually ran into another Ithaca College student, someone Chris knew. His name was Charlie, I think, and he and Chris started reminiscing about things they'd done that year.
"Wasn't it funny when you'd had all those beers but decided to drive around town anyway?" Charlie said.
Chris started laughing.
"Wait a minute," I said, stopping my slow trudge through the snow. "You drove drunk, Chris?"
"Well, I was at this theater and I'd had a bunch of beers, and I decided I wanted to go to a party afterwards, so I kind of had to," Chris said.
"You didn't have to!" I said. "You could have killed somebody, or yourself. You used to be responsible. You used to tell me that drunk driving was stupid, you know."
He rolled his eyes at me.
The next thing I knew, I was at Chris's trial for DUI. I had turned him in and gotten him arrested for drunk driving. The Ithaca court system was too screwy to follow national regulations for local courts: the jury was composed of me and a bunch of elderly men. We were supposed to stand up one by one and speak our minds about what Chris had done. There were no lawyers or witnesses. The judge was supposed to take all of the jury's "testimony" into consideration and decide whether Chris was to be punished or not.
I stood up first. "Chris wouldn't have done this a year ago," I said. "But it was stupid of him to do, and I doubt this is the only time he's done it. From what I hear, he's drunk pretty often."
Then the elderly men began standing up and talking about some agriculture tax they wanted to be passed. Apparently they had only volunteered to be on the jury so they could show their support for the agriculture tax. They cared nothing about Chris's fate.
"Okay, look," I said loudly, standing up again. "Chris and I used to date. A number of months ago. The relationship ended badly. After we broke up, he completely changed. He was against drinking during high school. Now it seems like he'll do pretty much anything that seems rebellious, even if it does endanger others' lives. I think he needs to learn a lesson from this."
The judge handed down a "guilty" verdict, but he chose the least severe sentence available. There were different labels given to drunk drivers. Chris got the "drinker" label. It meant that he could only have three beers a week, and that he had to wear a long pink skirt while drinking them. A computer in the courtroom created a picture of Chris wearing a pink floral skirt. The old men started laughing.
Because the trial took so long, we were able to get a ride home right after it had ended. Strangely enough, Chris didn't seem mad at me for getting him arrested. Actually, he seemed pretty oblivious to the whole thing.
Our ride to Providence was in a very large submarine. On the inside, it looked like a plane. We were sitting in the front of the coach section, and at the front of the first-class section, a heavy metal concert and strip show were going on simultaneously on a large stage. The performers were throwing Jello shooters, shot glasses, and one-shot bottles of vodka and rum. I caught a shot glass, and suddenly a waitress came over and asked what kind of liquor I wanted. I asked for blue curacao. I took one sip and then put the glass down. It tasted really cheap. Chris finished off my shot. I noticed he wasn't wearing his pink skirt, yet he was already fairly drunk.
There was a problem at the back of the submarine. The sharks had caught up to us and had bitten off some of the metal exterior. Now they were gobbling up many of the passengers sitting in the back. Amazingly, enough water wasn't coming in to sink our submarine. No one in the front seemed concerned about the carnage going on in the back. To the passengers who were still alive, the waitresses distributed lists of strip clubs around the country. Most of them were in Florida.
I don't remember ever reaching Providence. Instead, I had a flashback to being in Ithaca with Chris, to the part of my visit that came before I turned him on for drunk driving. We were in his dorm room, and he was writing an online journal entry called "Something Different" about how much he had changed since dumping me. I suggested that he look back at some of his old journal entries for contrast and inspiration. "Something Different" consisted of nothing more than a title, date, and a large picture of a very drunk Chris. He looked in his "My Documents" folder and eventually found a file titled "Old Journal." He had hidden the file pretty well, and he hadn't accessed it in over a year. I was about to tell him which journal entries I thought he should look at, but we were interrupted by the police. They came in and handcuffed Chris.
"Wait a minute!" Chris shouted. "I have to send an e-mail!"
Somehow, he was able to quickly e-mail one of his friends to tell him that I tried to criticize his punctuation and capitalization in his journal entries. They'd had a bet going.
Then the police took him away.
I had another flashback. This one went back to earlier in the week. Chris and I were at a McDonald's. Sun poured in through the windows. It looked like a warm spring day outside. I was ordering fries, a Sprite, and a McSalad Shaker. Chris was sitting at a table, waiting to share my fries. I was talking to the lady at the counter. She said that when she worked the drive-through, people were always trying to steal food from her. That's why she liked working the counter better. I paid her for the fries, and she asked me how old I was. I told her I was almost twenty-one. She started laughing and told me she thought I was probably sixteen.
I took my food and joined Chris at the table. I tried to hold a conversation with him, but he wouldn't stop talking about all the parties he went to and how great his drinking buddies were.
I said, "They weren't your friends until after you dumped me."
He didn't say anything.
I said, "Well, I hope you haven't been having sex with a bunch of random girls."
He still didn't say anything.
I stood up. "You have! You've been sleeping with girls when you've been drunk, haven't you?"
He said, "Just two."
I said, "How could you do that? I thought sex meant something to you. I thought we both thought it was about love and closeness."
He said, "Come on, Laurie. I was drunk."
I walked out of the restaurant.
The next thing I knew, I was on a school bus on the same sunny day, and Chris was with me. He was asking if we could get back together.
I said, "You were the one who broke up with me, and now you want to get back together?"
He nodded.
"I don't even know who you are anymore," I said. "I really don't know if I can speak to you after all I've learned about you, much less get back together with you."
Suddenly, he opened the back doors of the bus and jumped out of them while the bus was still moving. He began running beside the bus, waving his arms. I wasn't sure what he was doing. I don't think he was, either.
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