Classic Stories - The Muffin Story

ChuckJerry agreed to try my "Great Stories" idea for a website (http://greatonesnj.blogspot.com). We each linked to it from our blogs. Needless to say, I don't think it's taken off too well. So, I am going to dismantle what there is of it and start to transfer the content to here.

What follows is "The Muffin Story". Enjoy.

The year was 199x (5 < x < 9). We were all in that 18 - 23 age, the age of prolonged adolescence, the age of the search for the hook-up and the unnecessary getting high / drunk.

Our gang of guys from Teaneck were routinely co-mingling with gangs of kids (usually girls) from other local North Jersey towns, and on those fun summer nights, we'd all meet up and party at someone's suburban North Jersey house - usually a place with parents who were either (a) not there or (b) were relatively cool with the scene that would develop.

So one evening we found ourselves at this girl's house. For the sake of anonymity, we'll call her Gila. Gila had parents who were out of town, liquor at her house, and friends who were female. She also had a male friend at her house... I don't remember his name, we'll call him Eli. If memory serves, Eli was a socially and physically awkward, ambiguously gay skinny kid with glasses who was there just to hang out with the gang of girls. The entire evening, regardless of what else was happening, Eli was in his own world, creating a techno/house beat with his mouth that can best be approximated phonetically: "oontz-tss-oontz-tss-uh-uh-oontz-oontz-oontz-tss..." and "dancing" in much the way that one would dance at a club with that kind of music.

At some point in the night, I found myself passing out on the couch, due to a mixture of chemicals. After some time passed, I woke up extremely disoriented. It was quiet, the lights in the house were dim and there was nobody in my immediate vicinity. It was hard to focus on (a) when it was and (b) where I was. I woke up, knowing at the very least that I wasn't home. I realized that we'd been partying at somebody's house, and this house was not familiar to me.

Half awake, I found myself extremely thirsty and hungry, which sometimes happens when you wake up from a chemically-induced passing-out episode. I oriented myself enough to locate the kitchen of this house. I made my way over to the refrigerator and opened it. The light blinded me temporarily as I tried to find something to eat and/or drink. Still disoriented, I sifted through this stranger's refrigerator. In a catcher's squat, I looked through the bottom of the refrigerator when I suddenly realized that somebody was behind me.

I whirled around and looked up to see Gila and Eli right behind me, towering over me. Still trying to adjust my eyes to make sense of the situation, my vision comes into focus to see Gila holding out a huge, Costco-style muffin, her mouth chewing a big bite of it. Behind her, Eli was dancing, accompanied by his own "oontz-oontz" beat. The sight was very surreal. As I tried to stand up, Gila asked me "Want a muffin?" but with her mouth full it came out more like "Wanuh muffah?"

In a normal situation, I would've responded either "Yes" or "No". However, the stimulus of them sneaking up on me somehow left me incapacitated to give any kind of response. I staggered back a couple of steps, trying to look at them and make sense of what was happening. Eli continued to dance, though not as demonstratively as he had been. I reeled back towards the couch, still not responding to the question. Gila looked at me with a puzzled look on her face. Not answering the question still, I left the room trying to find my buddies or to make sense of where I was and what was happening.

The story is not much, out of context, but for some inexplicable reason it is a widely appreciated story in the Teaneck story collection.