Alex

A1.

Alex didn’t know very many people at the party. Of course, he still didn’t know a ton of people in New York. That was part of the reason why Celeste had invited him to the party to begin with. It was nice of her. He knew Celeste because she was in the ultra-ultra-low-budget film adaptation of Woyzeck he’d been part of in the spring. Which was really the only thing he’d gotten in New York so far. In DC, once you did a couple of shows, you kind of knew everybody. All the actors went to the same parties, the same karaoke bar on Friday. Tight-knit. Sometimes he missed it. Sometimes.

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Because basically, there were two kinds of parties that Alex hated: parties without actors, and parties with actors. Parties without actors were like “Oh, what have I seen you in?” or “Have you thought about doing TV? There are so many shows these days!” Parties with actors were like “What have you been up to?” or “Oh my god how have you beeeen?” but both of those questions actually meant “How much acting work have you booked lately and how important is it and how does that relate to me and my career?”

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But Celeste promised that there might be some actors there but it mostly wouldn’t be actors, since it was for her boyfriend Theo’s birthday.

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As he sipped a beer, flipping through Theo and Celeste’s collection of LPs, Alex found that whatever percentage of actors this was, it was also awkward. Or maybe that was just not knowing anybody. Celeste had said that Stephen was also going to come, who had played Woyzeck in the film with them, but he wasn’t there yet.

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Or maybe it was being slightly high. Granted, that usually helped. That was why he had stopped to take a hit just outside, not knowing what the vibe would be at the party. It usually made him feel more integrated into his body, but at the moment, he just felt integrated with the bead of sweat inching down his spine. Maybe he’d just started to feel awkward when Celeste told him to take off his shoes, and he was like, Oh right, that’s what this huge pile of everyone’s shoes means, and she smiled but she didn’t laugh. And then he found he had a hole in one of his socks. He had tried to twist the sock around a little so that the hole was on the bottom, but he kept looking down at it, like: is the hole showing?

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Or maybe he was just, constitutionally, awkward. Alex found himself up against this possibility. Maybe he carried a Pigpen-from-Peanuts Cloud of Awkward around with him, and other people sometimes diffused it, but awkward was his default setting. So far, New York seemed like a game show where behind Door Number One was loneliness and behind Door Number Two was loneliness, just with other people around. Should he get medication, or therapy? It seemed like everyone had a therapist these days, but he didn’t know how he could afford it. For the third time that day, he thought, I should just go to betterhelp.com/podsaveamerica and see what the pricing is like.

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But when the girl came in, he immediately stopped thinking about it. He was looking down the shorter hallway from the living room to the front door, and there she was, hugging Theo with one arm, and holding a six-pack under the other. When Theo took the six-pack, she swung her backpack around and pulled a bottle of Bulleit out, like Ta-da! Like Mary Poppins with a lamp. Alex felt his whole body lift from the crown of his head. The girl’s features were fine and pointed, but her boyish haircut, short on the sides but long enough on top to allow it to curl, made her look slightly elven. Or like an old-fashioned shepherd boy. For a second, Alex didn’t know where that image came from, until he remembered the little porcelain figure at his grandmother’s house. It was in a case that always rattled when he walked by, no matter how softly he tried to walk.

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Like a porcelain shepherd boy. But with black horn-rimmed glasses.

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He’d always been attracted to girls with glasses. Was it because it framed their eyes nicely? Or was it because it made them look studious or arty, giving Alex the sense that they’d be more interesting, and, maybe, that he’d be more interesting to them? He wasn’t sure. He never thought he had a type, per se, until his buddy Jeremy from college pointed out that all of his girlfriends had glasses, except one. But, he argued with himself, his most recent ex, Cassidy, didn’t have glasses. It wasn’t a necessity. He was open to beauty looking any number of different ways.

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So, no: it wasn’t only the glasses. The girl was just really cute. Trying not to be creepy, he inched forward to the kitchen doorway. He wanted to see where she’d gone, and if she might be heading out to the living room. But the kitchen was packed. Shoulder-to-shoulder. Why did it always seem like the smaller a kitchen was, the larger number of people at a party tried to cram into it? But just as he caught the flash of her turning face by the counter—

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“Hey, sorry, hi?”

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Startled, he realized he’d almost run into the couch. A girl with eyebrows so blonde they almost disappeared was looking up at him.

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“Oh, hey, sorry about that,” he said. “I was thinking, like, why is it always that the smaller a kitchen is, the larger percentage of people at a party try to cram into it?”

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The girl laughed. Opposite her, a girl with an afro gave a placating smile.

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“Well, come sit with us! How do you know Theo?” the blonde girl said. He noticed that her top lip really pulled up when she talked or laughed, revealing not just teeth but an equal amount of gum.

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“Sure, thanks,” he heard himself saying.