And then this huge hand settles on my shoulder, and I look down and see the middle school graduation ring he’s worn on his pinkie ever since eighth grade and know immediately that it’s Tiny. And to think, some idiots claim that the g*ys have fashion sense.
I turn around and Tiny Cooper is crying huge tears. One of Tiny Cooper’s tears could drown a kitten. And I mouth WHAT’S WRONG because Ashland Avenue is sucking too loudly for him to hear me, and Tiny Cooper just hands me his phone and walks away. It’s showing me Tiny’s Facebook feed, zoomed in on a status update.
Zach is like the more i think about it the more i think y ruin a gr8 frendship? i still think tiny’s awesum tho.
I push my way through a couple people to Tiny, and I pull down his shoulder and scream into his ear, “THAT’S PRETTY FUCKING BAD,” and Tiny shouts back, “I GOT DUMPED BY STATUS UPDATE,” and I answer, “YEAH, I NOTICED. I MEAN, HE COULD HAVE AT LEAST TEXTED. OR E-MAILED. OR SENT A PASSENGER PIGEON.”
“WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?” Tiny shouts in my ear, and I want to say, “Hopefully, go find a guy who knows there is no u in awesome,” but I just shrug my shoulders and pat him firmly on the back, and guide him away from Ashland Avenue and toward the bar.
Which, as it turns out, is something of a mistake. Just before we get to the bar, I see Possibly Gay Jane hovering by a tall table. She tells me Gary has left in disgust. “It was a publicity ploy by Ashland Avenue, apparently,” she says.
I say, “But no NMH fan would ever listen to this drivel.”
Then Jane looks up at me all pouty and big-eyed and says, “My brother is the guitarist.”
I feel like a total ass**le and say, “Oh, sorry, dude.”
And she says, “Christ, I’m kidding. If he were, I’d disown him.” At some point during our four-second conversation I have managed to completely lose Tiny, which is no easy task, so I tell Jane about Tiny’s great Facebook wall of dumpage, and she is still laughing when Tiny appears at our table with a round tray holding six shot glasses full of a greenish liquid. “I don’t really drink,” I remind Tiny, and he nods. He pushes a shot toward Jane, and Jane just shakes her head.
Tiny takes a shot, grimaces, and exhales. “Tastes like Satan’s fire cock,” Tiny says, and then pushes another shot in my direction. “Sounds delightful,” I say, “but I’ll pass.”
“How can he just,” Tiny yells, and then he takes a shot, “dump me,” and another shot, “on his STATUS after I say I LOVE him,” and another. “What is the goddamned world coming to?” Another. “I really do, Grayson. I know you think I’m full of shit, but I knew I loved him the moment we kissed. Goddamn it. What am I going to do?” And then he stifles a sob with the last shot.
Jane tugs on my shirtsleeve and leans in to me. I can feel her breath warm against my neck, and she says, “We’re going to have a big frickin’ problem when he starts feeling those shots,” and I decide that Jane is right, and anyway, Ashland Avenue is terrible, so we need to leave the Hideout posthaste.
I turn to tell Tiny it’s time to go, but he has disappeared. I glance back at Jane, who’s looking toward the bar with a look of profound concern on her face. Shortly thereafter, Tiny Cooper returns. Only two shots this time, thank God.
“Drink with me,” he says, and I shake my head, but then Jane pokes me in the back, and I realize that I have to take a bullet for Tiny. I dig into my pocket and hand Jane my car keys. The only sure way to prevent him from drinking the rest of the plutonium-green booze is to down one myself. So I grab the shot glass and Tiny says, “Aw, f**k him, anyway, Grayson. Fuck everybody,” and I say, “I’ll drink to that,” and I do, and then it hits my tongue and it’s like a burning Molotov cocktail—glass and all. I involuntarily spit the entire shot out onto Tiny Cooper’s shirt.
“A monochrome Jackson Pollock,” Jane says, and then tells Tiny, “We gotta bolt. This band is like a root canal sans painkiller.”
Jane and I walk out together, figuring (correctly, as it turns out) that Tiny, wearing my shot of nuclear fallout, will follow us. Since I’ve failed at drinking both the alcoholic beverages Tiny bought me, Jane tosses the keys back to me in a high arc. I grab them and get behind the wheel after Jane climbs into the back. Tiny tumbles into the passenger seat. I start the car, and my date with massive aural disappointment comes to an end. But I hardly think about it on the way home because Tiny keeps going on about Zach. That’s the thing about Tiny: his problems are so huge that yours can hide behind them.
“How can you just be so wrong about something?” Tiny is asking over the noisy screechiness of Jane’s favorite (and my least favorite) NMH song. I’m cruising up Lake Shore and can hear Jane singing along in the back, a little off-key but closer than I’d be if I sang in front of people, which I don’t, due to the Shutting Up Rule. And Tiny is saying, “If you can’t trust your gut then what can you trust?” And I say, “You can trust that caring, as a rule, ends poorly,” which is true. Caring doesn’t sometimes lead to misery. It always does.
“My heart is broken,” Tiny says, as if the thing has never happened before to him, as if it has never happened before to anyone. And maybe that’s the problem: maybe each new breakup feels so radically new to Tiny that, in some way, it hasn’t happened before. “And Yaw naht helping,” he adds, which is when I notice he’s slurring his words. Ten minutes from his house if we don’t catch traffic, and then straight to bed.
But I can’t drive as fast as Tiny can deteriorate. By the time I exit Lake Shore—six minutes to go—he’s slurring his words and bawling, going on and on about Facebook and the death of polite society and whatever. Jane’s got her hands, with fingernails painted black, kneading Tiny’s elephantine shoulders, but he can’t seem to stop crying, and I’m missing all the lights as Sheridan slowly unwinds before us, and the snot and tears mix until Tiny’s T-shirt is just a wet mess. “How far?” Jane asks, and I say, “He lives off Central,” and she says, “Jesus. Stay calm, Tiny. You just need to go to sleep, baby. Tomorrow makes everything a little better.”
Finally, I turn into the alley and steer around the pot-holes until we get behind Tiny’s coach house. I jump out of the car and push my seat forward so Jane can get out behind me. Then we walk around to the passenger seat. Jane opens the door, reaches across Tiny, manages through a miracle of dexterity to unfasten his seat belt, and then says, “All right, Tiny. Time for bed,” and Tiny says, “I’m a fool,” and then unleashes a sob that probably registers on the Richter scale in Kansas. But he gets up and weaves toward his back door. I follow, just to make sure he gets to bed all right, which turns out to be a good idea, because he doesn’t get to bed all right.