Everything Changes

band’s musical arsenal. Jesse climbs in and sits up against the wall. “Can you turn on the heat?” she says.
    The engine coughs twice before turning over with a loud backfire, and the air whines through the vents like a dying animal. “Put on some music,” she calls to me, shivering in the back. I fumble through the tapes scattered around the floor of the passenger seat. It’s mostly punk, not exactly mood music. The cold air has sobered me somewhat, and it seems preposterous that I’m really going to have sex with a college girl in the back of a van. I finally find a battered Pink Floyd album and slide it into the tape deck.
    In the back, Jesse’s seated Indian-style on the corrugated metal floor, lighting up a joint. She offers me the roach clip and I take a long drag. It’s been a few years since I smoked any weed, and it dries me out instantly. I feel a sting in my throat, a churning in my belly, and the rise of acid in the back of my mouth. I hand her back the joint and sit down across from her.
    I don’t want to cheat on Hope in the back of a van with some young stranger. I don’t know what’s going on with Tamara and me, but this feels like cheating on both Tamara and Hope, which makes no sense, again, but there it is. Also, no one’s had van sex since the seventies. It’s tacky. With the grandiose resolve of the inebriated, I decide that under no circumstances will I go through with this. Jesse carefully sets aside the roach and climbs onto my lap, straddling me as she starts to kiss me deeply. She tastes like strawberry lipstick, smoke, and tequila, and I celebrate my decision to not have sex with her by kissing her back. We do that for a little while, our tongues colliding in their sloppy explorations, and I guess the van’s heating has finally kicked in, because she pulls off her flimsy top with her bra in one practiced motion and I’m suddenly face-to-face with her astounding breasts. I feel my drunken resolve crumbling in the face of her impressive nakedness. The fact is, I don’t want to do this, but then again, I really, really do. Story of my life. Relief comes from my roiling stomach juices, which unite in revolt and rise up in a spastic convulsion. I manage to push Jesse off my lap just before I vomit prolifically all over the van.
    “Oh, shit,” Jesse shouts, throwing herself away from me and scrambling toward the back of the van on her ass. I open my mouth to apologize but instead just vomit some more. Jesse opens the rear door and scampers out of the van, only realizing afterward that she’s not wearing a shirt. “Are you okay?” she says, climbing back in but leaving the door open.
    I nod woozily and pass her shirt to her. She examines it hastily to make sure it’s clean and then throws it on. Her bra has not met with the same good fortune and she discards it in the gutter with a shrug. “Listen,” she says, stepping out of the van. “Do you need a hand?”
    “I’ll be okay,” I say, climbing out of the van and wiping my mouth in the bend of my elbow. “I’m really sorry about that.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” she says, but she’s already distracted, mildly repulsed, and looking to make a graceful exit.
    “So, I’m going to head back inside,” I say, to give her an out.
    “I think I’ll go home,” she says, relieved.
    I nod. “Well, it’s been fun.”
    “Same here,” she says with a wry smile. I have already faded into a one-dimensional memory, nothing more than a cautionary tale she’ll relate to girlfriends in the years to come during the exchange of drinking horror stories. Realizing this makes me feel sadly unsubstantial as I make my way back into the club, light-headed and heavyhearted.
    Jed is still in his seat, brooding over his kamikaze, and beside him is a new, equally fetching girl. The Gin Blossoms are being played too loudly over the amplifiers, and the houselights are still up, hurting my eyes. “What happened to you?” he says as I half slide, half fall into an empty seat.
    “I got sick,” I say.
    “So I smell.”
    The new girl, a brunette with a pixie haircut and pierced eyebrows, fishes into her pocket and hands me a Certs with a smile. I pop it gratefully.
    “And your friend?” Jed says.
    “We grew apart.”
    “It happens.” Then the girl’s got her tongue in his ear and I don’t exist, and she doesn’t know it but neither does she, so, with nothing else to do, I head unsteadily backstage to tell Matt that I’ll be