Not Soon Forgot (memoir)

This is a little memoir piece that I wrote for a class once. Thought I'd post it and see what you all think. Sorry bout the lack of indents, but copy/paste sux. Does anyone know of a better method for posting so that the formatting comes through, without actually retyping it in the post?

Not Soon Forgot

I’ve always found it odd that at the beginning of Robert Burns’ famous poem, Auld Lang Syne, he poses the question, “Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?” After all, we sing this on New Year’s Eve when everyone is sentimental about the past and hopeful for what the next year will bring. We raise our glasses and sing like drunken sailors. We toast our friends and spout off in semi-inebriated cheer about how we’re going to quit smoking, exercise more and well, any countless other empty promises we make to ourselves. The rest of the poem goes on celebrating a remembrance of the days of yore, but why would we want to forget the people of our past? I used to find the timing of this question ironic. Then, I decided to spend New Year’s Eve in Chicago with some friends that year when everyone thought the world’s computers were going to blow up and we were going to revert back to caveman times. After that weekend, I started to appreciate where Burns may have been coming from.
Every time my old roommate’s dad would come to visit his son at college, he would walk into our apartment and ask, “So, how’s life in the ashtray?” That was his clever way of poking fun at the squalor Brian and I were living in at the time.
The smell of a half-full beer can stuffed with a pack of stale cigarette butts comes to mind, but that’s probably not quite right.
Before my friends and I left to go home for Christmas break, we had made plans to go Chicago for New Year’s. Our friend Sachin had told us months before that his cousin was going to have a party and that he could bring friends if he wanted.
If you’ve seen any of the Harold and Kumar movies, then you know Sachin. We would often joke that whoever wrote that movie must have originally called it Harold and Sachin, because the similarities are that scary. They are both Indian and look eerily alike. They both did extraordinarily well in high school and then started smoking pot, at which time they lost all interest in college. They both had parents who were doctors and wanted to see their son go to medical school, but were patiently waiting out what they considered youthful indiscretions. And they both were undoubtedly born about thirty years too late. Sachin’s head was stuck in the sixties, even if he was stuck in the nineties.
We had decided the year before that we needed to do something big for this New Year’s since it was going to be the last one we would spend together before graduation. Originally, the plan was to go to New York, but that fell through when we realized that everyone was broke.
“It may be New York’s ugly step-sister,” Sachin said, “but at least we’ve got a free place to stay in Chicago.” We agreed, and the plan was set. Since Sachin lived about an hour away, he was going to come and stay with us the night before, and then the three of us and our friend Noah would set out on the three-hour drive the morning of the thirty-first.
The night before we left, we ended up having a small party at our apartment. It didn’t start out that way, but slowly more and more people kept calling and stopping by and soon enough, the New Year’s festivities began a day early. We sat around The Ashtray breathing stale smoke and drinking cheap beer, adding to the collection of empty cans that were stacked like Leggos on the kitchen counter. At one point, Noah came over and asked if it would be alright if one of his fraternity brothers came by with his girlfriend. Noah had just recently become a frat-boy, although I still don’t know why he made that decision. It was clear to everyone at the time that he was not going to stick with it, but I think he saw an opportunity to meet easy women, or at least meet women easily. Either one would make Noah happy.
I had never met this guy Tom before, but Noah said he was cool so I told him to invite him over. His girlfriend’s name was Karen and she was cute, but you could almost see the dysfunction emanating from them like stink-lines on a comic strip. They were both, dare I say, a little white-trashy. But they fit in well enough and by the end of the night we were all sitting around laughing and joking.
At one point, Tom asked Noah what he was doing for New Years and he told him about our plans to go to Chicago. Tom said he didn’t have any plans and was wondering if he and his girlfriend could come with us.
Now, I don’t know which one is more ridiculous. The fact that someone who barely knows any of us would ask to come along on a trip to Chicago for New Years Eve the night before we’re going to leave, or the fact that we all actually agreed to it. Not only did we agree, but I remember us actually being excited and saying, “Yeah man, you guys should totally come along. It’s gonna be awesome.” Sometimes I think meeting new people when you’re drunk is more dangerous than driving.
The next morning, after lamenting about staying up so late the night before, we packed up the car and got ready to leave. I think we all half-expected that Tom and Karen were not going to show, but were surprised to see their car pull up a few minutes later. The four of us were going to ride in Brian’s car and Tom and his girlfriend would follow us.
As Sachin and Noah slept in the back seat most of the way, Brian practiced one of his more annoying habits, reading every billboard aloud as they passed. I had discovered this the year before when we drove to Florida together for spring break. As I sat in the front seat working on the USA Today crossword puzzle, every two-minutes Brian would say to nobody in particular, “Beef – It’s what’s for dinner,” or “Got Milk?” By the time we got to Chicago, I was ready to put one between the eyes of whatever advertising executive invented the billboard.
Although Noah slept most of the way, he would wake up every ten minutes hacking and sniffling. Turns out he had come down with a cold a few days before and was still trying to get rid of it.
“Dude, if you infect me with your malaria, I’m gonna be pissed,” Brian joked. “Take some ****in’ Nyquil or something.”
“I’ve been taking this stuff for three days and it’s not helping,” Noah said, holding out a blue box that said COLD MEDICINE in big white letters.
“Where the hell did you get that?” I asked.
“The dollar store.”
“Are you ****ing kidding me?” I replied over Brian’s outburst of laughter.
Noah was the kind of person that would spend forty dollars on a black T-shirt because it had a tiny label on the sleeve that proved it was from Abercrombie & Fitch, but wouldn’t spend six bucks on cold medicine.
“Jesus Christ man, at least cover your ****in’ mouth when you cough then!”
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, “I was saving my money for the trip.”
“Whatever man, just go back go back to sleep. We’ll wake you up when we get there.”

Sachin’s cousin Aida lived with her husband Ameer. They had just moved to Chicago and bought a house when Ameer finished up med school and got a job at one of the local hospitals. Apparently this was going to be a combined New Years and housewarming party. They were both in their late twenties and had been married for about a year.
They lived in a newly renovated house, one of those brick homes that look like they’re about ten feet wide from the street, but then open up for a mile in the back. You could barely fit a car between their house and the neighbor’s. When you walked in, you were punched in the face by a curry fist and asked to leave your shoes at the door. The walls were sparsely decorated with a few pictures of various Hindu gods. It was extremely clean, with nothing left out that wasn’t of immediate use. The remote controls for the television and stereo were sealed in plastic sandwich bags and the carpet had perfectly straight vacuum tracks that looked like the outfield of a baseball diamond.
A cross between the Taj Mahal and Wrigley field comes to mind, but that’s probably not quite right.
As Aida worked on hors d’oeuvres for the party, Ameer sat down with us in the living room and made small talk with Sachin. The rest of us were a little thrown back. We thought his cousins were going to be throwing a New Year’s bash and it was shaping up to be more of a party that our parents would throw. But as we talked with his cousins more and more, we realized that they were very nice and started to get a little more comfortable with the situation.
After a tour of the house, a couple hours of talking, and putting our things away in the spare bedrooms, we all sat down on the couch and started nibbling on some of the food that was set out.
“What time is the party starting?” Sachin asked his cousin. “People should start coming over in about a half-hour,” Ameer replied. “Did you and your friends want to get changed before it starts?”
“Changed,” Sachin asked, “What do you mean?”
“I thought you guys might want to get out of your jeans and into something more appropriate for the party?”
We all looked at each other with wide eyes.
“Uh, we didn’t really know it was going to be that kind of party. I don’t think any of us brought nice clothes.”
“Oh,” Ameer said shrugging his shoulders, “That’s alright I guess. I just assumed…”
And just like that, the discomfort starting creeping back into all of us.
Brian and I went outside for a smoke. “Do you think they’re gonna be pissed? I guess this is gonna be like an adult party,” he said motioning quotation marks with his fingers around the word adult.
“I know,” I agreed, “but I guess there’s not much we can do about it now.”

Once the party started, the room was full of black dresses, high heels and pleated slacks that made our jeans and t-shirts look even more out of place. There was one couple who looked like they were going to the prom. She wore a light blue dress with puffy sleeves and he was wearing a gray and blue suit and tie. This made me and Brian laugh, as one of our favorite past-times was making fun of strangers behind their backs.
Although we were all uncomfortable in the beginning, the closer it got to midnight and the more alcohol everyone consumed, the more things loosened up. People were dancing in the basement and standing in the backyard smoking and laughing. It turned out to be pretty fun.
Tom and Karen had spent most of the night hanging around with Noah. For all the discomfort we had felt in the beginning, they must have felt it ten-fold. After all, they didn’t even know any of us that well. But by the time the big ball dropped, they were both drunk and having a good time. We weren’t sure about bringing two people who were basically strangers with us to Chicago, but it seemed to be working out just fine. Just fine, up until about four o’clock in the morning.
By this time, all the guests had left and the hosts were in bed. The party consisted of the six of us in the basement, listening to the radio much too loudly as none of us wanted to get up to turn it down, and slowly passing out. Tom and Karen were sitting in the corner, her on his lap, talking about something that none of us could hear.
As my eyes started to close, I saw Karen get up off of Tom’s lap with an angry look on her face. As she jumped up and started to walk away, he grabbed a handful of her ponytail and threw her back into the wall. She flew back violently, like a puppy running past its leash. Karen got up off the ground with tears in her eyes and ran up the stairs. Tom just stood there steaming as we tried to make sense of what we just saw.
“What the hell are you doing?” Noah demanded.
“That dumb *****,” Tom said slurring through his words, “I’m ****in’ through with her!”
“You stupid-****,” Noah said, grabbing a handful of his collar, “you’d better calm down and keep your hands off her.”
“DUMB *****! THAT DUMB ****ING *****!” he started yelling over the music.
“If you don’t shut-the-****-up, I’m gonna knock you out,” Noah said square in the face of Tom. “Now calm the-****-down!”
“I’m out of here,” Tom said, pulling his keys out and running up the stairs and out the front door.
By this time, Ameer had woken up from the noise and come down to see what was going on. Noah had gone out to get Tom, as he was in no condition to drive anywhere. Just as they came walking back in, Ameer poked his head down the basement and asked, “Is everything okay? Karen’s crying and locked herself in the upstairs bathroom.”
“I’m sorry,” said Sachin, “they got into a fight but we’re gonna take care of it.”
Upon hearing this, Tom ran upstairs to the bathroom and started yelling and pounding on the bathroom door. Just as Aida poked her head out of the bedroom to see what was going on, Tom stepped back and delivered a flying drop-kick, leaving a huge foot-shaped hole in the bathroom door.
As I stood there watching this soap opera commence before my eyes, something like Jerry Springer came to mind, although that’s probably not quite right.
Finally, after about thirty minutes of coaxing Tom into the basement and making it clear that he needed to leave first-thing in the morning, Aida was able to convince Karen to come out of the bathroom. She spent the night in an upstairs bedroom and was gone, presumably with Tom, before any of us woke up.
After spending the afternoon repeatedly apologizing to Aida and Ameer, we took a trip to Home Depot and bought them a new bathroom door. They said it wasn’t necessary, but we thought it was the least we could do after everything that happened. I actually have to hand it to them. They handled it better and more calmly than I ever would have if it was my house. We spent the car ride home recounting how crazy that night had been and wondering what we were thinking when we agreed to let them come with us.
Tom and Karen officially broke up shortly after that, as I later learned through Noah. He said that Tom wanted to apologize to us and to Sachin’s cousins, but none of us were all that interested. We had said that we wanted a memorable New Year’s for our last one together. I’m pretty sure that this qualifies, as this is not the first time I have retold this story. Memories like this are important, and it still comes up the few times a year that we see each other. But as far as old acquaintances go, maybe Robert Burns had something there.