he doesn’t even like get us man

We all know what Charlie is like when he likes someone, he becomes obsessed. He probably imagined growing old together the very first time he met you. He’s got an imagination like no other so it wasn’t long before he was dreaming about a future with you. And Charlie is a weird guy. We all know this. But you’d appease his weirdness in certain ways, like asking your dentist if you could keep your wisdom teeth after having them removed. You knew Charlie would at the very least find them cool for five minutes or so. And he did.

You certainly didn’t expect to have to feel so touched by him adding them to his family tooth jar.

• • •

Charlie’s palette isn’t very broad when it comes to food, I mean the man hadn’t had a pear before Mac bought him one at the Italian market. So when you ever ate exotic or uncommon foods, it fascinated him even more. One time at the bar you were snacking on a packet of Philippino dried mango and he found it bizarre they could ‘make beef jerky out of fruit’ — and insisted on eating it non stop for a week.

• • •

You didn’t stay at his place very often, in fact you’d only ever spent the night three times. The first, was a shock to the system as Charlie begged Frank to stay the night at Artemis’ house so you’d be able to fit in the bed. The fact two grown men slept together in general was concerning but with all of the lifestyle choices Charlie had made, sleeping with Frank wasn’t the most jarring. The second time was when you were too drunk to get home alone and Charlie gave you a piggyback from the bar, all the way to his place, and the third was when you had all done heavy drugs together and passed out on the floor.

You woke up with several infected bug bites that you ended up needing antibiotics for, so you firmly avoided staying at Charlie’s after that.

• • •

Charlie loved sleepovers at your place though. Loved them. He loved the food you made, he loved your comfy sofa that you both cuddled on to watch movies and he loved that you didn’t quote Borat in every film like Mac did. He didn’t really like how you told him he had to take a shower every time he stayed but he enjoyed them a lot more when you suggested joining him.

He loved all the yummy smelling products you had, even though he didn’t really get why you had so many things. How could one person need so many? He especially liked using your shampoo though. It made him feel like you were always with him whenever he the faint residue of the shampoo scent followed him around for a day or two after spending the night.

The first time he stayed the night he stole your perfume, taking it home with him and spraying it on his pillow each night. He thought that it would make him dream about you if he could smell your perfume in his sleep.

“What the hell are you doin’ Charlie?” Frank scoffed, confused as he smelt the pleasant scent wafting over. “Damn, that actually smells pretty good! Like one of those expensive whores… Cheap whores smell like shit.”

“I’m just seeing if I get high from it, I dunno. Don’t touch it though, it’s mine.”

“Where’d you get it from?”

“Don’t worry about where I got it from or why or like, who else we know that might also smell the same… Just- Goodnight Frank.”

• • •

He would be the one to ask the typical ‘would you still love me if I was a worm’ question just to fantasise an alternate universe with you. He’d ask what type of worm-job you think you would have and what your future worm-house would look like, loving the ridiculous hypothetical scenario simply because it reinforced that you’d love with him no matter what. It eased his anxieties of ever losing you. He’d ask the same question in a million different ways, asking if you’d still love him if he lost all of his teeth, or if he was dying of cancer.

Of course you’d assure him that no matter what animal or inanimate object you may or may not be in an alternate universe, you’d always love him.

• • •

One night Charlie had found a litter of stray kittens outside in the alley behind Paddy’s, sheltering themselves from the rain behind a nearby dumpster. He came back into the pub with a newfound determination to rescue the cats. You offered to help and grabbed your coat. Charlie explained his ultimate cat-catching technique and explained that he would be the wrangler, and you would be the captor — which basically meant he would catch the cats and you’d stand under the umbrella with a big cardboard box to put them in.

You smile softly and look over to Charlie, “Would you still love me if we were both turned into cats?”

His eyes light up and his smile is from ear to ear.

Dennis had visited his old college fraternity a week ago hoping to recruit for a flip cup tournament that the gang had been banned from participating in since 1998 — Flipadelphia. Expecting a warm welcome as a fellow alumni and legendary Delta Omega Lambda brother, Dennis was only met with disappointment and disrespect. The little fucking savages…

In the foyer he saw his old class photo graffitied, a speech bubble drawn from his mouth saying ‘I chug dick’. Then after he had tried to be cordial and polite with the little savages, they shocked him with a taser until he left. Frank — after realising that the frat boys were laughing at him, rather than with him — also got tasered out of the house. They were all idiots. Idiots! And mark his words, Dennis was going to make sure every last one of them paid the price for disrespecting a god.

The gang still needed a player for the flip cup team though, so the gang figured they could recruit new players at one of your many graduation parties. Obviously they made a drinking game out of the graduation ceremony but the likelihood of it being followed by an epic party was almost certain. It was the perfect place to scout fresh young flip cup talent.

Look, Dennis was annoyed before the short car trip had even started. He was pissed off a week ago after being tasered and he was pissed off now just thinking about it again whilst packing the car. Charlie and Mac both came out carrying a case of beer each, passing them to Dennis who loaded them in the trunk.

Mac called shotgun for the passenger seat like he always did, running to swing the door open and sit down before anyone else could take it. Charlie sat in the middle seat in the back as they waited for Dennis to finish ‘packing’. He muttered to himself as he maniacally rummaged around the trunk, debating to himself which tools were best suited for such an occasion. It was a boring graduation ceremony followed by an inevitably epic frat party but Dennis wanted to be prepared for those taser wielding fuckers if he saw them again.

Tape was a must. Those little savages were loud. Zip ties were also a necessity because he couldn’t let them get away. And as any idiot would know, gloves are crucial to not leave behind any fingerprints. In essence he took the basics. Just in case.

Frank and Dee finally made their way to the car and swung the back doors open to sit in the back of the Range Rover with Charlie. They hadn’t invited Frank on purpose because they were going to a frat party afterwards but Dee (like always) had ruined the plan by telling Frank.

Now he’d invited himself along.

“I had to pack my meats. My bad.” Frank apologises.

Mac twists around in his seat to look at Frank, “Which meats?”

“None of your god damn business,” he responded smugly, pulling a cooked sausage out of his pocket and chomping into it.

“So is this like, a tailgate party sorta’ vibe?” Charlie asked once Dennis got in the drivers seat and started to drive to the ceremony.

“It’s at Franklin Stadium but not the car park, we’ll be in the stands. Nobody else will be drinking as much as us. Students maybe.” Dennis explained.

It wasn’t a long drive but by the time they had found a car spot, then walked to the front entrances, the ceremony had started. But they hadn’t even started to call students’ names up on stage yet, which meant Dennis had more than enough time to light up a cigarette. Even if the stadium grounds were all no smoking areas.

There was one obstacle that the gang had to conquer before they could sit down and get drunk and that was getting through the security checks. Mac squinted his eyes at the various security guards to sus out which were more lenient with their checks over others. Dennis didn’t have time for Mac’s bullshit so he too gave them all a quick glance and turned to speak to the group.

Mac quickly cut him off by raising his hand, “Wait- I haven’t finished my ocular pat downs.”

“Ugh fine,” Dennis groaned. “Well how ‘bout I say my thoughts first, then when you’re done you can say yours and we can compare notes,” he suggested in a blatant lie.

As Mac turned back around to resume his ocular pat downs, Dennis told the group which queue to line up in based on the leniency of the security guard and what type of contraband each of them had. By the time Mac had ‘cleared’ the last guard and turned around, Frank was already walking to his respective line.

Frank (who according to the plan was in charge of nothing) was sent to the gate furthest away from them, which he complained about almost instantly.

“I’m the oldest one here, I ain’t walkin’ that far!” He protested.

“He does have pretty short legs Dennis… Is it going to slow us down on the other side? I don’t wanna have to wait for him…” Dee whinged.

“If you don’t have a gun on you then by all means Frank… Go ahead!” Dennis said to his non-father father, waving his arm towards the closest queue mockingly.

Frank sighed in resignation and started walking towards the security guard furthest away; grumpy, defeated, and evidently armed.

There were hardly any people in his line and the guard was obviously nearing the end of his shift, so he didn’t give a shit about checking properly. Dennis sent him there because he knew Frank rarely left the house without his gun. And if he got refused entry, then who cared? They didn’t want him there in the first place.

After finishing his cigarette, Dennis tossed the butt on the ground and went to walk to one of the lines but Dee grabbed her brother’s arm before he could walk away. “Uh… Hello?”

“What- Oh calm down, Al Gore.” He sighed before stepping on it and twisting his foot a few times to make a point, “I’m not killing the planet single-handedly.”

Dee rolled her eyes at her brother’s little performative act before he walked off. For the record, Dee also left the cigarette butt on the ground but in her mind it wasn’t her trash to pick up. It’s wasn’t like she had community service or something so why would she go around touching other people’s dirty trash?

The plan was for them to buy enough food and soda for the entire ceremony and then pour their smuggled alcohol to the cans at their seats. The five of them smugly walked to the back row of seats with cup trays in both hands and their food balanced on top like Jenga.

Mac, Charlie and Dennis had little bottles of spirits shoved in whatever places they could muster; in their pockets, down their pants, in their shoes — anywhere. Dee, the token female with quite a large handbag, pulled out the two bottles of vodka she’d smuggled in.

She boasted proudly that the dumb security guard was foiled by her ‘genius’ acting. Except it wasn’t her acting that got her past the gates, it was the fact the family behind her had gotten into an argument with the guard and she was waved through as a courtesy.

In their plan, they told Dee to bring the vodka but they didn’t specify how, so she pushed the boundaries by packing two bottles and covering them up with a scarf. Dennis wanted to debate that it wasn’t genius because normal people didn’t wear wool scarves in May but he didn’t have the energy to argue with her. He just wanted to get drunk.

Like a conveyor belt, each of men passed their cup trays up to Dee for her to pour vodka into all of their soda’s and then pass them back down. Frank, picking his feet up on the empty seat in front of him, pulled out his various pocket meats and made a point to let everyone know that he wouldn’t be sharing.

They continued drinking on and off for majority of the ceremony and the gang had gotten fairly drunk before they got remotely close to calling your name on stage. Luckily, they were sitting far enough away from the rest of everyone else’s friends and family, which is why they specifically chose the back row.

About three quarters of the way through the ceremony, Mac suddenly chokes on his drink, spluttering and coughing. “What the fuck did he just say!?”

Frank looks towards the stage, his speech slurred and eyes half shut, “What did who say?”

Mac shushed everyone so that he could listen again. It was the first time all night that any of them had paid attention to the ceremony whatsoever. You’d texted Dee about an hour ago to let her know you’d text her when they were calling students names a dozen or so ahead of yours, but you’d gotten drunken nonsense in return:

DEE

yay shuld e b load

YOU

huh?

DEE

ok we wrl

Mac gasped, “He just said it again! He just called that guy a- a cum lord!”

Frank screws his face up at him, “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”

“Cum Laude… It’s latin.” Dennis corrects, sighing and thinking of a way to dumb it down for everyone. “Think of it like a bronze medal at the nerd olympics. Then silver is called Magna Cum Laude and gold is Summa Cum Laude… Which I was.”

Dennis was always a straight C student throughout high school, excelling in the subjects he enjoyed yet barely scraping by in the ones he hated. It wasn’t like he struggled with History or found Geography difficult per se, he just didn’t care enough about them to study. He knew that his near perfect scores in other subjects would balance his final grades out to about a C. Deandra was the opposite, a bright all-rounder who didn’t care about any subjects enough to study. She got C’s for all of her classes with very little effort.

When it came to college however, Dennis excelled in all of his classes with an unbelievable amount of ease. By graduation Dennis had earnt himself a Summa Cum Laude title with a GPA of 3.97 — which meant he almost maintained straight A’s for four years straight. How? Well, he’d been reading psychology theories as a fun weekend hobby since middle school and he had started psychoanalysing Dee during second grade. Learning the basics of Freudian thinking and using Maslow’s hierarchy of dumb fucking needs was a breeze by college.

Charlie giggled to himself, “Dennis the summer cum lord...”

Dee, unaware of how loud she was being, leant closer to Charlie, shouting in his ear and resting her hand on his thigh for balance. “And Dennis-” She slurs before hiccuping. “Dennis got his cum lord title taken away from him.”

He sighed and glared at his sister, his eyes semi glazed over from being so intoxicated. “It wasn’t taken off me, I graduated with a 3.97. But due to a clerical error it wasn’t printed on my diploma.”

Penn had a strict policy against awarding latin honours to any student that had breached serious policies on campus including harrassment, stalking and sexual violence. All of which Dennis had been caught doing, so no, it was definitely not a clerical error.

Dee felt her Nokia vibrate and saw your ‘get ready’ text on the screen. She made sure to get the gangs attention and they grabbed each other excitedly in anticipation, waiting until your name blasted through the speakers. When they did hear it, they cheered as loud as humanly possible. As you started to make your way to the stage the Dean awarded you with Magna Cum Laude honors, the gang screaming and jumping up on the seats like drunken white trash at an Eagles game.

Even though they were all the way in the back row, you heard the chaos from on stage and tried to hold back your laughter to shake the Dean’s hand. Once they moved onto the next student’s name, the gang abruptly stopped their cheering, sat down quietly and continued their drinking.

Instead of going back to your seat for the remainder of the ceremony, you asked one of the faculty members if you could quickly run to the bathroom. You told her you were scared to miss all the celebrating and memory making if you waited until afterwards, and the old bitch bought it hook, line and sinker. The ceremony only had fifteen minutes until it finished so you had limited time to execute Phase 2 of the plan.

Nobody knew about this second phase except for you but you silently wanted to prove to the gang that you could scheme just as well as they could. Quickly walking off the field you started running to the rental locker you hired before the ceremony started. You grabbed the duffle bag from inside, slammed the door shut and continued running sprinting. You even left the key hanging in the lock and the door bounced back open but you couldn’t care less. The slower you went, the less time you had.

“Ayyyy! It’s the mega cum lord!” Mac cheered, raising his drink along with the others.

“Magna Cum Laude,” You corrected through your laughter, tossing the duffle bag onto his lap. “Quick, put these on, follow me and don’t ask questions.”

Charlie unzipped the bag excitedly and pulled out four sets of graduation regalia, handing gowns and caps to Dee, Mac and Dennis. You told Mac and Dennis to swap theirs and to also not ask questions about that either. Frank then obviously complained that he was being unfairly excluded but you legitimately had no idea he was coming and apologised quickly.

“We really gotta go now though so chop chop.”

You led the way back inside excitedly and walked backwards so you could face them, “Okay so you know how none of you graduated from college?”

Dennis frowned and started defending himself, “Just because I didn’t attend the ceremony, doesn’t mean I didn’t graduate.”

“Whatever, this isn’t really for you.” You shrugged, looking towards Dee, Mac and Charlie. “I did this for them mostly.”

Dee, already forgetting what the conversation was even about, shoved her hand out towards Dennis, “Boom! In your face!

“Oh shut the fuck up, Dee. You didn’t even graduate.” He huffed back, pushing her hand away from his face.

“Yeah? Well my three quarters of a psych major is still better than your minor.”

“No. It isn’t. You want to know why? Because I have a baccalaureate degree and you have nothing because you’re a college drop out.”

Dee had a slight mishap with an old college roommate that led to an arson charge, expulsion from Penn and a brief stint in a local rehab. Though she still maintained her view that she wasn’t in the wrong. Her roommate was the one who stole her clothes and tried to copy her. Bitch.

“Wait a second… Are you graduating us from college?!” Mac asked, excitedly shaking Charlie by the shoulders to rile him up too.

Neither of them had ever imagined that they’d achieve something like this in their lives. Both of them were about to be first generation college graduates! Kind of. Mac was bursting at the seams with excitement and called his Mom to tell her the good news.

“Mom! What? No. It’s me, Mac. Mac your son, Mac. Who else would be calling you named Mac? Whatever, I wanted to tell you how proud you’re going to be- Oh, the line died… Must be shitty cell reception in here.”

Charlie looked at Mac’s graduation regalia and frowned as he looked down at his own. Then he looked back up and sulked at you, “Why does Mac’s cloak have blue stripes but mine is green? I wanna be a blue wizard as well.”

“Different colours mean you studied different degrees. So yours is medicine and Mac’s is education.”

“Ooh! What am I?” Dee chirped. “Am I something good? Am I smarter than these douchebags?”

“I think yours is dental medicine?”

“Ha! Lame,” Dennis retorted. “Dentists are barely doctors.”

You told them all to follow your lead and walk across the field to join the other students when they stand for the final celebration. You know, to just act natural and blend in. Easy. Mac and Dee walked ahead first looking like cartoon spies with their heads down, scratching their faces to try and conceal them. Charlie assured you and Dennis that he was a better actor than Dee and that you could both leave it with him to save the day.

The least inconspicuous of all, he decided to crip walk across the field with his hand grabbing his crotch and his head tilted back. You and Dennis walked behind the three and watched how ridiculous each of them looked walking towards the student cohort. Dennis shook his head in disbelief, dumbfounded at how any of them thought they were blending in.

The graduation ceremony was now coming to a close and the thousand strong Class of 2008 crowd were asked to move the tassels on their hat from right to left to symbolise the start of a new chapter.

You slowly stepped closer and reached your hand up to move the tassel on Dennis’ hat to the other side. You gently ran your fingers along the collar and straighten the hood of his gown, “You know what Penn calls this colour?”

Dennis knew that you had gotten this particular colour specifically to represent his Bachelor of Science graduates and appreciated the effort. But he also knew that you and him had never talked about his Neuroscience major before.

Hm, you’d been doing your research.

Good. So had he.

Dennis had kind of, not really, sometimes, definitely been stalking you for the past few weeks but you didn’t know. After you turned 21 and hadn’t turned up at his doorstep begging for sex, Dennis grew suspicious. Why weren’t you trying to fuck him yet? Had you become a lesbian all of a sudden?

So he took matters into his own hands. Trying to find out if there was a reason as to why you weren’t desperate for his cock, he came to a dead end scrolling through your Facebook page. Why weren’t you updating? What are you doing?

Your friends though, they were frequently updating their statuses on their social whereabouts. Through their profiles, he learnt that you’d been studying for your final exams. Made sense, he thought. You weren’t gifted like he was, you actually had to study for your psychology exams.

But finals finished two weeks ago and you still hadn’t turned up to Paddy’s. You’d come into the bar at least once a week since turning the legal drinking age so where were you? One thing led to another and Dennis had discovered that you had were dating someone. How had he not realised sooner? Dennis frantically went back through your Facebook, and then his, seeing several matching posts and similar timelines.

Was his computer screen spinning or was he just getting dizzy? Jesus, he couldn’t think straight. How could he not have noticed this before? God, no wonder you didn’t fuck him the second you turned 21, he thought. But now, you were graduating college and choosing to be with him. Not your new boy toy.

“What do they call it? I dunno, yellow?” He said naively, now moving your tassel from one side to the other.