Frank Hinton

Noel: No, it’s just that my girl­friend reads your site and she always looks for my name in sto­ries and stuff. Don’t record us.

Frank: Really? Wow. You’ve only been in like one story I think. She didn’t like the swearing?

Noel: I don’t swear in front of my girlfriend.

Frank: Why?

Noel: I just always tell girls upfront that I don’t swear. It makes them think I’m pure.

Frank: But you do swear. You swear a lot actually.

Noel: They don’t know that though. I had to churn out a lot of bull­shit to cover up your swearing story. But still, the no swear­ing trick works. It really gets you points. You should try it with a girl sometime.

Frank: I don’t know. I’m not good at keep­ing secrets. I started dat­ing this girl once and I found out about two weeks into the rela­tion­ship that I had mono. I knew if she found out she would dump me so I just pre­tended that I didn’t have it.

Noel: And it was a disaster.

Frank: Oh yeah, a mas­sive dis­as­ter. I just kept get­ting weaker and weaker. She thought I’d com­pletely lost inter­est in the rela­tion­ship and started threat­en­ing to break up. I just pleaded and drank a lot of cof­fee. Then she ended up catch­ing mono her­self and I was forced to lie and tell her it couldn’t be me that gave it to her. It was really a ter­ri­ble start to a rela­tion­ship. Filled with dis­ease and mistrust.

(A lot of laughter).

Noel: She never found out?

Frank: I never admit­ted it. We dated for three years. The whole time we were together it was awful. Really a toxic rela­tion­ship. We hated each other. But I never broke up with her because I always felt I owed her some­thing for secretly giv­ing her mono.

Noel: That is fuck­ing ridiculous.

(More laugh-ter).

Noel and I decided to meet for a few drinks. As usual I asked him if I could record the con­ver­sa­tion on my dig­i­tal recorder. He said no. We sat in his clean and sim­ple one bed­room apart­ment lis­ten­ing to Ani­mal Collective.

Frank: Any­ways, if you don’t want to be taped you don’t have to. I just thought I could tran­scribe it and turn it into a story for the website.

Noel: No. Just, let’s just hang out nor­mally for once.

Noel and I decided to fin­ish our wine and take a stroll around the city. We were both crav­ing beer and shawarma. Noel said he knew a good Lebanese place down­town so we zipped up our coats, put on our Con-verse and started the forty-minute walk.

The city was a wet mess of melt­ing snow and exhaust col­ored slush. On Sat­ur­day night the streets are full of drunken harbor-town folk; eyes vacant as they stag­ger through the streets look­ing for some nook to piss in or some place to buy a slice of pizza.

A pack of Kore­ans stum­bled by us as we headed to the Leba­nese restaurant. All of them were mum­bling ner­vously in Hangul while try­ing to prop up a drunken friend. I ask if they need any help as we passed buy and short­est of the Kore­ans snarled at me. Snarled and hissed, I think. I told Noel that I was fright­ened and he reminded me that I should never help anybody.

Noel: Here is why you don’t help peo­ple. My mom called me the other night over Skype and was ask­ing me how to tag pho­tos on Facebook.

Frank: Oh yeah.

Noel: Any­ways, my step dad, the guy that works for that huge oil com­pany was on his cell phone in the back­ground. I was watch­ing him over Skype while talk­ing to my mom and he was on his Black­berry yelling at his daughter.

Frank: Is he a yelly guy?

Noel: Extremely. He started freak­ing out while I was show­ing my mom how to use Face­book. He was talk­ing to his daugh­ter and scream­ing, ‘More money?! More money?! How about I gave you 5000 dol­lars in Decem­ber! Where they hell did that go, Mag­gie? Coke or Coco Chanel?!.…What about the car and the trip to Ire­land? I think you’ve had enough personal-exploration funds!’ …and then he kicked some­thing on the floor.

(Laughs)

Noel: He just was giv­ing it to her. Yelling at my step-sister with every­thing he had in him.

Frank: Jeeze, that must have been awkward.

Noel: Yeah. My mom was like, ‘I’ll have to call you back.’ So any­ways when she called back she was just sit­ting on Skype talk­ing to me and Kent, my step-dad was sit­ting right next to her. His face was just red, like radish col­ored. He was look­ing right at the com­puter screen and he wasn’t say­ing any­thing. He was like a lit­tle red statue sit­ting next to my mother with the most angry look on his face.

Frank: Wow.

Noel: I was like, ‘Is every­thing okay?’ and I was get­ting really freaked out at how Kent was just star­ing at the screen over Skype. And my mom said, ‘Oh yeah, Kent is just trans­fer­ring some money online.’

(Laugh­ter)

Noel and I arrived at Shawarma King on Got­ti­gen Street and the lineup almost went to the door. Every­one was drunk and hun­gry. It was a weary crowd of well dressed club­bers. I could smell the Escada per­fume on the girls right away.

One girl looked at me as best she could as we stepped into the restau­rant. I always won­der what women think of me while in a drunken state. Am I a bet­ter look­ing man? Does intox­i­ca­tion make my double-chin seem less pro­nounced? Does it make my man­boobs look more like well-defined pec­torals? It was very hard to gauge this drunk woman’s reac­tion to my body.

We moved up in line, closer and closer to the guy that takes the orders when the two peo­ple ahead of us started to pet each other. They were say­ing things about each oth­ers asses and mak­ing plans for after Shawarma king. The guy just kept rub­bing the girl’s hips like she was pot­tery. The guy behind the counter kept shout­ing to them to go next, but they weren’t lis­ten­ing. It was too loud and busy. Noel stepped ahead of the two peo­ple and started to order. The man he butted in front of noticed right away and began to protest.

Big Guy: Hey what the fuck? You see the line? We’re in it.

Noel: Sorry.

Big Guy: Well get back.

Noel: Yeah, it’s just the guy was yelling to you and you were mak­ing out.

Girl: Excuse me? We weren’t mak­ing out.

Noel: Sort of.

Girl: Umm…I have a bf.

Noel: A what?

Then the guy pushed Noel. I real­ized that Noel had just shat­tered all the foun­da­tions this guy had been lay­ing at the bar. He had cock-blocked. Noel fell back a bit from the push and every­one in Shawarma King took notice. Peo­ple stopped talk­ing. I could feel my heart pound­ing and the heat of the machine that keeps the Shawarma meats warm.

Big Guy: You think you can fuck­ing butt in front of me like that man?

Noel: No. I don’t. I’ll just go back to my spot there.

Big Guy: Maybe.

Noel bent his head and walked back to me. He did his best not to look up. He was pray­ing he wouldn’t get punched. The big guy turned back to the girl and tried to sal­vage his hookup but she just rolled her eyes. Peo­ple started talk­ing again and the guy behind the counter con­tin­ued stuff­ing pitas.

Noel: Let’s get out of here.

We left Shawarma King with­out beer or food and walked back to Noel’s apart­ment. He said he had some left­over rum and a pack of men­thols some­where in his room. When we got home we didn’t feel like rum or smok­ing. We just sat down and watched PBS.

Noel: I hope you liked your bach­e­lor party.

Frank: Yeah. But this town really needs a strip club.

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