#those 40 minutes before the…horrors occurred were peaceful and beautiful

[haltandcatch]

i’ll actually never forget going into yellowjackets knowing that there’s some gay people but not knowing who and seeing the pilot and jackie hating sex with her boyfriend and then walking towards shauna’s car in slo-mo looking at her like That and immediately being like oh yeah there they are…literally whiplash like i’ve never experienced

[letsmarkwilliams-blog]

The Social Club Intro/Chapter I

I’ve decided to release a few of my chapters on my mostly mute Tumblr account. Enjoy reading them as I release them for free. The full book is available on  amazon, but over time I’ll release chapters on here for free.

The Social Club By: Mark Williams

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Dedicated to

My Loving and Supportive Mother

My Junior Year Creative Writing Teacher

An Old Friend Named Joe

My Sisters and their Boyfriends

My Advisory Teacher and Chemistry Teacher

Joe Strummer

Finally, The Group of Brotherhood I grew up with, The Social Club

Prologue: Adderall and Japan

        I remember it was the Thursday before spring break started. It was the end of the quarter and also an end to a part of my life I’d rather forget. It was close to 8:20 in the morning, I had already stopped abusing prescription pills, for the most part, and  stopped drinking in the mornings before school about a week ago. I was regular again I guess you could say, nothing extremely bad or good was occurring in my day to day life. My grades were overall good and everything became more or less normal.

           At 8:22, I had been sleeping on my backpack before school started and I had to walk down to the science hall to take a Anatomy and Physiology test. I had been awoken from my morning sleep by my friend, Manuela, telling me that “She” was back. “Look Mark, she’s back”. I didn’t believe it primarily because of the fact she had been gone for the last 8-10 weeks, and I didn’t think she’d just show up on a Thursday before a week long break.

           But I was wrong, I opened my eyes and began to sit up when I heard her laugh from down the hall. I thought to myself “That’s not her, it can’t be”. In the end I finally looked down and saw her looking for her locker. At that point I honestly didn’t know what to do, maybe I was supposed to say “Hi.” and walk down the hallway or try to engage in a conversation. I was fully dumbfounded until Manuela shouted at me in a gentle tone that was meant in a way to encourage me. “Mark, slap yourself to wake up”. I wasn’t thinking and it honestly seemed like the best idea at the time because I had no idea what to do.

           So several times I stood there and slapped myself like I was stupid or something and then stopped finally after the third time. I turned to Manuela and said “Do I go say hi now?” she looked at me like I had just broken every single commandment that existed. “Just do something Mark”. I turned around and started to walk down the hallway, naturally I became overly nervous and walked by her towards the water fountain, I thought to myself “Wow that was an easy situation to avoid, now I just have to walk down the hallway and not do anything stupid.” On my way back from the hallway, as I walked past her I stopped and walked towards her and said “Hi, nice to see you back.” I paused for a moment and she looked back at me and said “Thanks.” I kept walking back and considered to myself that I didn’t do anything stupid there and I was fine.

           Sadly I proved myself wrong again as I walked past her again to my science class, and once more said “Hi!” and walked by not knowing if she heard me. During the test, a good amount of the ADD meds I took that morning as extra to help me on the test kicked in. That’s when the worrying began to kick in. “Did she hear me? If she did does she think I said it weirdly? Maybe she thought it was a joke or something.” All the way through the test of labeling diagrams of hearts and stuff I kept worrying about it.

           I didn’t build up the courage to full on talk to her until the next day which being the Friday before spring break, was my last chance. I can’t remember the conversation that much talking to her that day on the way to my physics class. It was just small talk and it’s honestly one of the most pleasant times I talked with her before the break.

        Japan for a trip was great. Not the flight though, it’s a straight flight from Houston to Tokyo and it’s not a fun one. Once we were there, we finally met with my sister and her korean boyfriend whose name was Tae, I have no idea how to actually spell the name so I hope that’s right. I guess the most memorable experience from it wasn’t the temples or any of the pathways. It was this one night in Kyoto.

        We’re in the city of temples in Japan and it’s around 10 P.M. and I’m walking the streets of this city with my brother, and my sister’s step dad who is only around his mid 30s. The beautiful part of Japan is that you can basically buy beer, or any other liquor in any store without an ID. So it’s 12P.M. and all three of us have finished off several 40 ounce cans and are on our way back to the hotel. We went up one floor too many to the snack machine, leaving my brother and my sister’s step dad eddy for only a minute when they run past me saying “We gotta go now.”. I didn’t know until later that night, but they went over to a room door and started banging on it asking to be let in, and mind you this is the complete wrong floor to start with. As we run down the emergency staircase to our own floor I can hear a string of Japanese curse words follow us as an elderly lady started throwing stuff at us.

Chapter 1: The Social Club

It’s April 1st now. I’m sitting in a Whataburger booth, high off my ass in between my brother and a Vietnamese kid named Minh waiting for the arrival of a burger, that if I can recall the name correctly was something like “The Heart attack and cardiac arrest”. To put it frankly, it was a chili burger with extra meat. We were waiting crammed in this booth only to have the food disappear faster than we saw it come.

        Now we piled back into a couple of cars and headed back to one of our houses. Our friend Richard had a basement with a couple of couches that we would always go to and melt while watching a movie or a sports game. That night we sat around and watched some football game as we got high out of oranges. Yes, oranges. We had no other way of getting high other than carving oranges, it’s just one of those things for when you first see it you kind of say to yourself “Why the fuck would anyone do this.” That you eventually just accept it and it happens, kind of like drinking excessively.

        That night’s also the night I rediscovered vaping. Vaping is most possibly the most douchey looking thing you can do in public. Mainly because you just see assholes in Tito’s vodka sunglasses doing it, and then breathing the fog out onto people’s faces. Either way, it’s a fast smokeless way to get nicotine in your body, which is what would usually make me able to drive again from a long high, or for me at least.

        Now that night was also the first night I had driven home under the influence of several hits out of an orange bong. Driving while high or for the first time at least is the most grace filled fear adventure I’ve ever had. It’s peaceful because of the music you pick and it’s scary because of the nature of just fearing cops catching you  and finding you high and you’re only response will be some muttered garbage. Once I got home, the hardest and most scary thing is hiding it from your parents, easiest way is eye drops, but if you don’t have them, what I have to do is mutter some comprehensive garbage and leave. I’ve also found that if I can convince my dad to drink with me one night I can avoid being high, and being drunk so it’s all kosher.

        There was one time early on in what  we called our “Weed-ventures” that we had a set of school days off to visit colleges, so with that time in hand we watched our first movie stoned. It was Interstellar, a movie I had started several times and never had finished. It was about 9P.M. when we started the movie that wednesday, and I was already baked and tired. When I came back to around 11P.M., I could only remember one part of the movie which was the bookshelf scene. That’s all I could think of when it came to that movie is the scene replaying for 2 hours. It was probably the worst high to watch a movie like interstellar, slow motion and disorientation. It was a horror show watching the rocket launch as the maximum volume slammed you back, it was a roller coaster.

Then that morning I drove to the second college I had on my mind to visit, Baylor. I had a sister who went there who was a very big stoner and I had planned on smoking with her. After the first 4 hours of visiting around the campus and various talks and all, we headed over to her house around 12:30 in the afternoon. We learned very quickly the divide between Baylor and Waco. We had walked about 500 feet towards her house and away from the college when we realized there were no more green fields or polished brick building. It a wasn’t college housing area, it was Waco. Cracked streets, sketchy gas stations and broken concrete littered our way, the grey sky didn’t do much to make  it seem better.

When we finally got to their house, we realized just how much weed they had. To us, a small bag was a lot, but they had mason jars just full of it. They also had a volcano, which we had no clue what that was until we saw it. It’s some machine that turns it into breathable air or something, I still have no clue how it works but it was amazing to see nonetheless. We were like kids walking into the candy shop in Willy Wonka, just so much for free use and all.