Early Sunsets over Monroeville

I had four shots of a bottle of vodka before I got out of Mikey’s car in the car park outside the Iero’s apartment building. I was going to bring it to the party along with a tin of Ray’s unbelievably good chocolate puddings. I still have the tin now in the elevator but Mikey told me vodka really is low class. I mean I was going to bring tequila and thought that the vodka was a massive upgrade.
Then Mikey reminded me that champagne exists and you can buy Scotch that’s as old as I am and suddenly vodka looks like white-trash froot shoots.
The elevator stops finally at the top floor. The light sound of Coldplay burning my ears through the walls. I knock on the door and straighten my slacks and shirt. I wore this to a wedding and I still feel underdressed when Frank opens the door. “Hi Mr Iero,” I say.
“Whoa, you can call me Frank you know,” he smiles. “Come on in.”
The music is actually much quieter than I anticipated and it’s graciously drowned out by the loud chatter. The women are all dressed for a cocktail party, I guess because it is one, but I’ve never been to one so I’m only guessing. As I awkwardly follow Frank to the back of the room where the drinks are laid out I over hear a woman call her purse a steal at seven hundred dollars. Automatically I think that meant she stole it but if you’re of this high a class I doubt you’d ever need to steal anything.
“Want a cocktail?” Frank says when we reach the table.
“Uh yes please.”
“What type?”
“Um… What do you recommend?”
Frank smiles at me. I can’t tell if he’s smiling in pity or amusement at the fact the only thing on the table I recognise is Bacardi. I’m a bartender I should know this shit.
“Heavy or light weight?” he whispers.
“Heavy, but I may have taken shots already today.”
He grins, “okay I’d say have a mojito. They’re fucking delicious and you can control how much rum you put in. So I’m starting you off with a shot.” I look offended and he grins again. “When my wife gets tipsier you can have more, deal?”
I grin back, this guy is infectious, “deal.”
He expertly mixes the ice and mint and sugar with a kind shot of rum hands me the drink. When we turn around Katelyn is standing behind us. Lips pursed, she’s measuring me carefully, staring down my outfit. I stiffen under such fucking scrutiny.
“Hello Gerard.”
“Hi Mrs Iero.” I try a smile but it’s not returned. Okay maybe I’m not fucking high class enough for her. I try then returning her look of contemplation and over pursed lips look her black dress up and down. Something tells me it costs more than my flat. I guess for all the money it obviously cost it’s not that nice. Actually it’s just a plain piece of black cloth. I smile up at her again.
She then snaps around to address the room. “Ehem, excuse me,” she says in a brief lawyer voice. “It gives me great joy to be able to present the artist of the evening, Gerard Way!” She then lifts a hand and claps against her martini glass, rings clinking. The rest of the room follows suit.
After that Frank says he wants to introduce me to some people. “Is this what an exhibition opening feels like?” he asks as we step down amongst the crowd.
“I dunno, I’ve never had one.”
“What? Really?” he asks. “Where do you show your art then?”
“I don’t,” I laugh, “not really. I’m on a lot of websites and yea a few galleries have one or two of my pieces but they’re all, like, terrible.”
“Hardly,” he smiles warmly and I blush. Why, why do I blush? He turns toward a group of people. “Anyway, Mikey?! Hey Mikey, this is the artist, Gerard. Gerard this is my friend Mikey Chapman.”
“Hello,” I say awkwardly.
“Hey,” he smiles, “you’re a fucking talented artist!”
“Oh, thanks!”
“You’re welcome. Hey Frankie, when can we choose the music?” Frankie.
“Just let the others drink a little more and then we can quietly introduce it into the background. What kind of music do you like Gerard?” That is the question that can get me condemned as a Satanist.
“Uh, lots of different stuff. Like, from Bowie to Iron Maiden,” I hope that’s an okay answer.
“Do you like the misfits?” Frank asks. I nod and his expression softens incredibly.
“Good.” Mikey smiles.
“Wait, you’re not planning on jumping straight into misfits are you?” I ask.
“Yea, why?” Frank says. Both of the guys stare at me questioningly.
“Um… Like start with maybe the Smiths and move to Bowie and gradually get heavier then no one will notice.”
They both seem to consider this. After a few seconds Frank says, “Actually yes. I’ll start now. The smiths, yea?”
“Yea.”
Beautifully Frank and Mikey create a scale of heaviness. They start with the Smiths, Queen, Bowie, the Smashing Pumpkins, and beyond.
When the rich get drunk it’s just the same as the bar at two am. Except slightly more heterosexual. The girls spill their multi coloured cocktails on their expensive shoes. The guys get angry and argue constantly over things like whether or not black is a colour and whether or not Blink-182 are actually punk or the subgenre of pop punk (something I feverishly discuss with Mikey Chapman as I drink more and more mixed drinks).
By the time I decide I should go home I’ve received a million compliments on my “Late Dawns and Early Sunsets over Monroeville” and have been introduced to the whole room. The woman who was looking to buy a gold frame in Ray’s was there with her equally annoying husband. Frank admits that he doesn’t like either of them but they’re his wife’s boss and her husband. After a while the woman, Miranda Carter, calls me rude and uncivilised and I called her a flat chested prat. Thankfully only Frank heard. He just burst out laughing and refused to tell Mrs Carter “what was so damn funny.”
The Misfits are playing proudly in the background as I call a taxi from Frank’s phone. They play it just quietly enough that the rest of the room doesn’t throw a bitch fit but Mikey, Frank and I can feel successful in our mission.
I take the elevator down with two girls called Veronica and Jung. Friends of Katelyn I’m told. The only girls who didn’t cast dirty looks at me the entire time I was there or tell me that their manicure cost as much as my entire outfit (thanks to Frank’s co-worker Janet) or that their shoes cost more than I made in a year (thanks to some Hannah girl).
“Do you have a lift waiting?” Jung asks as we step out of the elevator.
“Uh yea, I called a taxi.” This rich few streets are the only place in the state you don’t walk out the door and into a taxi. Literally everywhere else is lined with yellow cars whereas here is lined with BMWs and Lamborghinis.
“Oh okay. Nice to meet you artist Gerard,” Jung says. She and Veronica smile airily at me before stumbling off toward a Mercedes. I make my way to the yellow taxi sitting on the curb.
All the way back I try push through the fuzzy feeling in my brain to try and process my thoughts. Why do I have an urge to talk to Frank again? And Mikey, but mainly Frank. And why do I have an urge to ask him about the scorpion on his neck, and how he got a law job. Or how come he works in law because he seems so… punk? And how he ever got with Katelyn. And why do I have this weird fucking urge to call him Frankie.
I rub my eyes but it doesn’t help focus my vision. I rub my stomach but I still feel sick but I couldn’t be that drunk…
When I get home I lie on the now clear main room floor. I keep wondering if it would be weird to make a comic book character that is cream and gold trimmed and had the power to change the stock markets and create inflation.
I believe that it is weird but I get up and walk over to my desk and design it anyway. I think it should be a girl and she should definitely not look like Katelyn Iero.
The finished character looks remarkably like who it shouldn’t.

Notes

Dia Dhuit (hello in irish sorry I'm in the middle of homework)... So here is yet another chapter. This may or may not have taken a turn for the very weird but whatever. The speed with which i'm writing this on a FRiday night really shows a lot about my social life... anyway thank you very much for reading and pretty please let me know how you fin