Generation Why Bother

“I can’t. I can’t do this. I just can’t.”

I was sitting next to Tegan on the couch along with Chance and Mick, and she just kept staring ahead at her alien crush, who was staring out the window of the apartment at the falling snowflakes. Meanwhile, Tegan was stammering and blushing, trying to hush herself up yet failing due to shock.

Mick laughed and shook her shoulder, all the while taking another drink. “You know, I’ve been trying to get in contact with her for a while now, so you better appreciate what I’ve done for you. Or else I’m gonna shove you over there and stick some mistletoe over you girls.”

Tegan groaned, doing so with a smirk. “Ugh, thanks for doing this, dude.” Mick just nodded in acknowledgement and smiled right back at her. “I’m gonna do it…I gotta do it.”

She got up off the couch and smoothed out the sheer fabric of her light blue pinstriped dress, taking a deep breath. Then, she looked back at Mick and I and winked before shuffling over to her alien babe, and after she tapped her shoulder and said something I couldn’t hear, it began to look like they were enjoying each other’s company. Shira even appeared to be lighthearted and even smiled a few times from what I could see.

But it was their moment, so I looked away and twiddled my thumbs in my lap for a few minutes while Chance said absolutely nothing and Mick got another drink. Without Tegan, I was forced to interact with people who weren’t her, yet without Tegan, it gave me the chance to not be socially awkward and inept.

Mick came back with two more beer bottles, saying, “Want one, Oshie?”

“Uh, no thanks,” I said, not bothering to point out the fact that I was only 17 and my dad was a mere few feet away.

He just tossed it over to Chance, who popped the top off and immediately took a swig.

Mick sat back down next to me and leaned forward, looking me in the eye. “You know, I expect you to take care of Shira if she ever hurts Tegan, because I’ll be doing the same thing.”

“Oh don’t worry, I made that pact a long time ago with her,” I told him, “even though it was just in general and neither of us knew that we’d get tangled up in the universe.”

Chance grinned from across the coffee table. “Aww, big brother Oshie, makin’ threats and takin’ names.”

I laughed, but Mick asked a big question.

“Now, be honest here,” he started, “when you didn’t know she was lesbian, did you ever have a crush on her?”

“Yeah, but then I grew up,” I answered, telling the truth but leaving out the part where it took a few months to get over it and I never came clean about it.

“You’re a good man, Osh,” Mick said while touching my shoulder and smiling right at me.

After that, our little couch-party kind of lulled down, and then Mick started talking about how he discovered he can grow spices and stuff with his power, which had apparently really helped with his cooking and opened up a ton of new doors. He was so engaged in the one-sided conversation that I didn’t have the heart to just pretend I cared, because I genuinely did. He just looked so happy. I didn’t even know if it was the beer driving that happiness.

At around nine PM, though, Andy, drunk off his rocker, hooked up his SkyPod to their stereo and put it on shuffle, which of course led to a crap ton of random songs blasting throughout every inch of the apartment. Not even kidding. It would go from The Story So Far to Braid to Taylor Swift all in three songs, and he had no shame in his weird taste in music. He and Anthony would laugh whenever an old song from the early 2000s would start playing and they’d even dance a little bit.

There was one Spanish song that came on and for some reason they both just looked at each other and started laughing so hard that they literally fell over, right in front of the monitor, right near the couch I was sitting on.

I couldn’t understand Anthony’s slurred speech at first, though I did catch, “Do you remember the stupid music video we had to make to this song in Spanish class?!”

“That’s why I’m laughing, you fucknut!” Andy snorted right back at him, rolling around inches away.

To the rest of us, they were just a couple of drunk band guys laughing over something that made no sense, but to each other, I think they had finally reached a point where they looked at each other as friends. Probably the alcohol. Whatever, it still counted.

Andy stumbled to get up as the song went on, and he held out a hand to help Anthony up too, but he was so inebriated he could hardly get up without laughing himself into another fit that made him weak in the knees. Mocking the song, the Spanish lyrics that were spoken too fast for even my dad to understand, Andy started singing in gibberish along with the beat, and apparently that had triggered some other level of amusement for Anthony, who fell on his ass again and was curled into a fetal position from hooting so hard.

The song reached the chorus, where we could actually make out what the rapper was saying, and Andy took it as an opportunity to make an even bigger goofball out of himself. “Ella le junta la gasolina!” he sang, a little off-key; he was smashed so it didn’t matter.

His voice weak from laughing, Anthony whimpered, “Dame más gasolina!” from the floor to continue the wasted sing-along.

By that point it was pretty obvious that although the rest of the adults in the room were tipsy, Andy and Anthony definitely took home the award for The Most Humiliatingly Bubbly and Out-of-Character Drunks Ever.

Also, it really didn’t help that they were both dancing like idiots (after Anthony got up and stayed up, I mean) under mistletoe and didn’t even realize it until Chance had to point it out. I think all of us had noticed it. I know I did, but my reasoning behind not bringing it up was that I didn’t want to spark an inevitable argument between what seemed to be a happy pair of turbulent best friends.

“Dude, you guys,” Chance said, his words a little slurred. He pointed to the ceiling above where they stood and were then dancing to Third Eye Blind. “You dudes are underneath the mistletoe.”

Everybody in the room must’ve looked up at that moment, and sure enough, some bastard had planted the plant right above them, probably hoping to catch somebody – anybody – other than those two.

Andy kept staring at it, and Anthony looked back down after a few minutes, still with a drunken smile plastered to his face. “Yeah?” he said.

“Wanna make out?” Andy asked him, already snaking an arm around his waist and swaying from the inebriation. The dazed look on his face was clouded with booze, his cheeks a pale pink.

Anthony laughed again, the sound of his genuine happiness still a novelty to me, and then he said, “Hell yeah I do.”

I don’t think anybody was expecting Andy to kiss him in such an exaggerated way, dipping him almost to the floor, complete with smacking noises and giggles coming from Anthony, whose grin was still showing through despite Andy’s mouth being glued to his.

In fact, I think we all shared the same look of shock and amusement, since when I looked at Tegan, her mouth dropped to the floor and Mick was covering a big smile with his hand. My dad looked completely bewildered; Ms. Tracey even squealed a little bit but was smirking anyway. Chuck and Riley mirrored baseball-sized eyes from behind the couch. Even Shira looked totally shocked by humankind, more so than she already was. I even felt my jaw drop and didn’t remember my mouth was open for a good few seconds.

When it was over, both of them were red-faced and still giggly as hell, and Anthony let fly a huge burp.

“Oh, God. That might’ve been the gayest thing I’ve ever done – and I’ve dated two guys,” Anthony admitted, still hanging around Andy’s shoulders. “I might even have to do even more gay things if that’s what it’s like.”

A drunken mind speaks sober thoughts. Well, I wouldn’t have been surprised if that held true for Anthony, at least.

It was an oddball move, and in a way it was the highlight of the night – at least, the highlight that everybody saw. There were several that went on without being in the public eye, and one of them happened to me.

The party ended at around eleven at night when Anthony passed out in one of the barstools and it was declared that the mess needed to be cleaned up. Cups laid everywhere on the floor and the cheesy Christmas decorations were falling off the walls, and our parents were both halfway drunk and needed to be driven home, which I was gonna end up doing since we all just rode in one car. Holding his alcohol just a bit better than his bandmates, Chance said goodbye to us as we filed out of the apartment, telling us all to “dream of sugar plums and fairies and shit.”

I was bringing up the rear behind my dad, and right before I was about to leave, Andy shouted in a warbling slur, “MOSHIE OSHIE OSHIE OSHIEEE,” dragging out that last syllable of my name. God, he was drunk.

My dad patted my shoulder and told me to meet the rest of them by the car in a few minutes, so I turned around to face Andy, who was stumbling toward me with a big grin.

“Don’t go yet, lil’ dude,” he instructed, holding up a finger. “I got a little somethin’ for you. A little gift, you know what I’m talkin’ about.”

He motioned for me to come with him, so I did. He led me back into the hallway and when we reached one of the doors, he put his hand on my chest to tell me to stop. “Stay here.” He went in and came back a few seconds later with a snowman-decorated gift bag filled with tissue paper, handing it to me.

“What’s this?” I asked, just a bit confused.

“Okay, I know I’m a little drunk, but I meant to give this to you at the end of the party because I didn’t want no one else seeing it.” He blinked, his eyes closing at different times. “It’s sorta important, and I don’t mind if you share it with Tegan, but it’s for you and it’s special and stuff.”

I felt my heart swell in my chest, causing a smile to spring up. Even if it just ended up being air, it would still mean a lot to me. A gift from one of your heroes? That doesn’t come by often. “Thanks, man,” I beamed.

He looked at me expectantly. “Well, open it, dude.”

I couldn’t wipe the poop-eating grin off my face as I took out the tissue paper and dug in to find a comic book. If anybody knew me – and apparently Andy did, better than I thought – they knew that the comic book that I got just wasn’t any comic book. The familiar logo stood out on the cover, along with the depiction of its hero standing with his thunderbolt guitar and cat partner-in-justice, and from the slightly undeveloped art style and the iconic image, I knew it. It was the first issue of Johnny Cool and the Dudes! The first issue ever, before it had even become popular! Tegan and I had stumbled upon it right in the middle of the strips in the second issue, long after that one had been released, and for so many reasons, it meant so much to me. I couldn’t even formulate a grammatically correct sentence. There were too many things to say and so many questions to ask, and I just couldn’t load down a drunk Andy with them.

“That right there is the first ever print of the first ever issue,” he boasted. “Don’t ask me how I got my hands on that. I don’t even remember at this point. I don’t even know how it’s still kinda mint.”

I looked up at him with what I’m sure were shining eyes, and I breathed, “Thanks, Andy. This means…it means a lot.”

He took off my hat and mussed my hair. “I know you’re a big fan and I know you wanna make comics or cartoons someday, and I’m probably biased because I had the same dream when I was your age.”

I laughed a little, still holding the book delicately.

“And I don’t know if Anthony fed you that crap about not looking up to a fictional character, but if he did, he’s an asshole for it and you shouldn’t listen to him,” he went on, seemingly forgetful of that huge kiss. “Whatever helps you get through the day should be more than enough. Doesn’t matter if it’s real or not.”

Even though I could very easily tell that he was pretty close to becoming unconscious due to all the alcohol coursing through his veins, I still took it to heart. I never agreed with what Anthony said anyway, and it was good to know that Andy didn’t, either. I liked to think that we had a few things in common, but maybe that was wishful thinking, trying to make myself sound nearly as awesome as he was. I knew I couldn’t accomplish half the things he’d done in his life, yet right then I didn’t care. He wasn’t all there in his state of mind, and still, what he gave me took thought, and like his advice, I kept it locked in my mind.

I wasn’t expecting him to hug me, or for him to be as heavy as he was when he did hug me, but luckily I had done some weightlifting so I could at least somewhat support him. He draped his arms around my shoulders and I could smell a mix of beer and fabric softener in his soft black hoodie when I hugged him back.

Letting out a long burp that wafted behind us and thankfully didn’t hit my nose, he said in a low voice, “I wish I was as smart and collected as you are when I was your age.”