Dirty Black Summer


written by Marc Rollins

No summer in the Winter time
Will keep you warm like a funeral pyre
And there’s nothing like an August night
Drenched in your loving
I’ve got a dirty black Summer
And nothing in the coolest light
Can stop the walking out across the line
No holding back the Summer night
I got a feeling
It’s just a dirty black summer



An unseasonably brutal sun wanes on a beach house overlooking the ocean, just North of Lincoln, City Oregon. The lights in the house turn on and we can see the silhouettes of six or seven different people. They’re moving around, maybe cleaning or making some other type of preparations. A party, say?


Julias, Gloria, Frederick and Tina started renting this particular beach house nearly a year ago, and just about every single night has been a “special occasion”.


Freddie has been dating Tina for five years while Julias and Gloria aren’t dating at all; they’ve been friends since high school, and have an attraction to each other, but neither has mustered up the courage to make any confessions to the other.


What happens if they try it and it doesn’t work out? They always asked themselves. Their living situations could be jeopardized by sucking and fucking, no matter how innocent it may be. If you don’t intend on calling your fuck buddy from the night before make sure they don’t live with you.


The sun moves toward the horizon and then disappears and leaves several poofs of golden, wispy clouds and a string or two of light; which eventually fades to a bluer darkness.


************************************************


Around ten or eleven PM the night time becomes truly black before the moon moves above the horizon and gives the sandy beaches a pale glow. Everyone in the house might have noticed if they weren’t pre-occupied cleaning up after last nights party, and preparing for tonight’s.


Gloria and Julias finish cleaning the kitchen, then they get into Julias’ 1963 Mustang convertible and head toward the highway. The top has been down for the last three days and Julias lights a half of a cigarette from the ashtray that has been there even longer.


They arrive at a gas station not fifteen minutes later, they put out their cigarettes and go inside. They walk around the aisles, cash in hand; looking for a lot of cheap beer, cigarettes, rolling papers, grape cigarillos, and a few pints of something stiffer.


They pile their purchases up onto the counter and the Clerk, and older man who is missing a bit of his right hand, eyeballs them in an annoyed fashion. They pay him no mind whenever he starts ringing their items up; they turn to each other and Julias says “Okie dokie,” in an exaggerated tone. Then he asks Gloria “Is this it?”


Gloria looks over at the cashier, who isn’t even half way done totaling their items, and she’s counts over the stuff on the counter and goes over a checklist in her head, twisting her face and her nose up while she does it. “Yeah.” she tells him, flipping her short, black bobby cut around, “This is it.”





The clerk mumbles under his breath as he swipes the last package of cigarillos in front of his scanner; he does this with a look on his face which might have been mistaken for joy, though it wasn’t. So Julias rattles off a few things they need from behind the counter, like a few cartons of cigarettes, and then they pay the clerk.





They toss groceries into the trunk of the Mustang and get on the road again.





************************************************





They get back to their beach house about fifteen minutes later to find that Frank-O, Jimmmy D. and Autumn have already arrived. Julias gets a few text messages from Courtney, Bill and Hannah –they’re on their way.





Julias and Gloria carry the bags from the car inside and put them in the kitchen where Julias and Freddie start grinding up a few bags of weed they have. Tina sits beside Freddie at the kitchen table with a small plastic rolling machine, rolling joint after joint.





Then Julius rolls a few blunts up and grabs a bud light out of the fridge; it’s ice cold. He carries a few extra beers out to Frank-O and Courtney who are having a good time on the back patio, smoking and chatting. Julias goes back into the kitchen and grabs a joint from Tina, he lights it up and takes a few more beers to the living room for Jimmmy and Autumn; smoking while he does so.





They thank him and Autumn, who has already been drinking reaches up and grabs ahold of Julias’ crotch and says “Hey there big boy!” She starts laughing hysterically and keeps her hand on Julias’ groin, but he moves away from her gingerly and moves back into the kitchen where he sits with Freddie and Tina and Gloria, saying “There’s more beer in the fridge, have at it.”





Everyone who hears Julias say this does so, and before too long there are several happy drunks roaming around the house.





Within the next half hour many joints are smoked and many brews are siphoned, also the rest of the guests arrive, and even a few people no one had ever met before show up.