All About Lulu by Jonathan Evison

than I liked to watch other people do it.
    What about Formula One, didn’t I like Formula One?
    Yeah, I lied. It was okay.
    NASCAR, that was the shit, he said. Dale Earnhardt was his boy.
    Cale Yarborough was a pussy. So was Elliot. Didn’t I think?
    I concurred that anyone with a name like Cale Yarborough was probably a pussy. He added Foyt to the list of pussies, and Waltrip.
    Other than that, the only thing Chett seemed to want to impart to me in the way of information was that he was Chett with two Ts , not one.
    “It sounds the same, but it ain’t.”
    Chett kept offering me a bong rip, and I kept saying no, and he kept reminding me about the T distinction at the end of his name.
    “Remember—two Ts,” he’d say, and offer me another bong toke.
    “That’s how you can remember me, two Ts.”
    “Got it,” I’d say.
    I fi nally relented and took a toke from his green bong, which smelled more than a little like Doug’s ass.
    “Clear the carb, bro. Clear the freakin’ carb.”
    I cleared the carb, and I could feel the dumbness washing over me even before I exhaled.
    After that, it seemed like a bad idea to keep talking to Chett-with-two-Ts. In fact, I was ready to effect my retreat altogether, ready to go walking somewhere dark, when Troy showed up in full costume, wringing his hands like Pontius Pilate.
     
     

 

     
     

    After Dark
     

    She’d been acting weird for weeks, Troy explained as we tore down Santa Monica in Troy’s dad’s convertible. The top was up. Troy was a little freaked out, and a little drunk, but more freaked out than drunk. Moreover, his concern was very genuine. I was beginning to think Troy might take the world more personally than I ever gave him credit for. But that didn’t mean I had to cut him any slack. He was still a sworn enemy, so the air I projected as we hurtled toward the Bender blowout was put-upon and a little annoyed at being torn away from … well, Chett. But inwardly I was terri fi ed that something might happen to Lulu, and that I would be to blame.
    According to Troy, the night had gotten off to a bad start. Lulu was nasty right off the bat.
    “She was doing vodka and cranberry machines. And some bumps with Chad and Kathleen in the bathroom. Things started getting pretty wild. She and Kathleen started making out—just as a joke, for Chad’s sake—but Kathleen wanted to stop and Lulu wouldn’t let her.
    Kathleen kept trying to pull herself away, and Lulu had her by the hair. Chad got between them and tried to separate them, and Kathleen fi nally had to scratch Lulu’s face so Lulu would let her go.”
    “So?”
    “That’s just the beginning. I spent the next hour alone in the bathroom with her, and dude, she went completely Chernobyl on my ass! You should have heard her. She told me I was a phony and a poser and I made her want to puke.”
    “You have that effect.”
    “You’re a riot.” The car lighter popped and Troy fi shed a cigarette off the dash. “You have no idea,” he said. “It was like she was possessed. She just kept yelling horrible stuff at me.”
    “Like what?”
    “I don’t even want to get into it.”
    “C’mon, like what?”
    “She told me I had no poetry in me. What does that mean, no poetry in me? She wants me to write poetry? What is that all about?
    I hate poetry.”
    “Beats me,” I lied.
    “She told me she could never love me, not in a million years. She says the best she could do was not hate me.” Troy puffed his cigarette and sighed as he exhaled. “Your sister’s a psycho.”
    “She’s not my sister.”
    “Then she started going off on Kathleen and Shannon and Chad and Morgan, and Santa Monica and California and Ronald Reagan and everybody you could possibly think of. Who’s Ed Meese?”
    “Beats me.”
    “Well, she went off on him, too. And then, fi nally, she started to settle down a little, and I got her to sit down on the toilet. She started to cry, and I tried to comfort her and all that, and