A Party With Sabine

A part of a long term project I've worked on focusing on narrative. It's written as some form of memoir but takes place in a futuristic world.

“Ja, and I’m decide bitter about it.”

     Honest to god you could hardly even hear him over the music. These musicians were playing like grand russians up in this side balcony thing over the big entry door. It looked like some kind of expensive theatre seat or something, yet again strictly russian and loud as scheiße, but the songs ranged good to decent, if you want to know the truth.

     The critic next to me was still laughing like crazed as Sabine started saying something else, probably something light and clarifying and russian, except again I wouldn’t know; I couldn’t hear. I mean it there weren’t five decent people in the building. All Sabine’s friends were godawful company, they really were. It took us about a billion years to get into some kind of actual conversation with any one of them, and once you did you almost wanted to go back to the nice-to-meet-you-scheiße. We were surrounded by jerks, honest to god we were, and about every kind of jerk and critic you could think of. Ganz beschissen.

    “Yes, but naturally. “ Thom said with a conclusive looking nod. Then he looked over his shoulder a bit like he was complete distracted or had just heard something from another direction that was about a thousand times more interesting than the conversation he was just in. He does that a lot to make up some kind of reason to go and do something else. Usually he does that and then says something like “if you will, nice to have been of/to acquaintance,” {we can never remember which preposition.} or “excuse me please, a moment,” and usually it works. He’s a real wizard conversationalist, you know, honest to god he is, except that this bunch couldn’t take the hint. They were a profoundly stupid bunch, they really were. Half of Sabine’s friends were and half weren’t, except that it was a little hard to tell where the stupid people ended and the decently begabt ones started up.  We talked to so many Doofs, honest. It got to be real damn depressing when you talked to them, right so.

     Thom opened his mouth about to excuse himself when the dame with the loud laugh to my left clapped her hands together. She was right stupid, and you could tell it, too.

“Oh, so, this will be your first authentical Russian wintertime festival, if I am right yes?”

     He turned to look her direction very quickly then asked real smooth, “Sorry?”

     The woman said real slow, “Your first time with the Russian festival, yes?”, like she thought he was just as stupid as she was or something. It made me want to barf or cry or bang my head on the table or something.  I mean it, she was straight unbearably stupid and all.

     “Ah, yes, that is it. Is there any special quality your, um…statement,”{he thought of the english word so fast I didn’t have to help him any.} “was leading to? About the Weihnachten in Russia?” He leaned a little forward and finished the last sip of his wine, and I had to throw myself half across the table to refill it, the table being one of those extreme tall ones and all. His fingers traced the rim of his glasses. He was wearing that kind of real dark ones  with the shiny, thick metally rims, on account of his blindness and all. See, he doesn’t always look in the right places, and some people, mostly the real russians and critical Typs, get all unnerved and what about it, except that thing is, Thom doesn’t like wearing them too much.

     The Grand Dumb kind of snorted and stared at the ceiling for a minute like she couldn’t think of an answer to the question. Honest to god, she was a real grand person, just quite the conversationalist, I’d have been happier talking to about anything and anyone but her. A fork, a wheel, a maid.- anyone was better for conversation.

    “Well, yes, but, it, like the party drinking games, don’t you know?” She nearly broke her neck leaning over the table to elbow Sabine.

    “Oh. Well that is-“

     “The one with the winter mint brandy and like, the un, it is only for the winter festival time, don’t you know? And do you know why?”

     “No. Why.” Only Thom didn’t sound too interested and what not. His finger slid a little and he got this terrific smudge right on the lense about so big. Sabine practically shouted for Tschenne to go get some winter brandy or whatever it was and some of the metal shotglasses. She had to shout because it was so damn loud and so. I mean it, the place was getting louder by the second.

     “It is because it only grows in the cold winter mint does. And the point of the drink is the cold!” She let out this awful loud laugh, shaking her head and frequently petting her fur scarf. She was always doing that, this dame, petting that creepy fox face scarf. I think her name was Kingaska Kimovna or something, but I’m not sure. I don’t think we ever addressed her by name more than once or so.

     Thom and her said a few words about the brandy-wine and all, and he would occasionally smile real polite, even though he really didn’t want to play any sort of a drinking game at all. See, the thing is, most drinking games aren’t all too fun anyways. The art of people that invite you to play are never the kind you want to be drunk around, and honest to god the only people who ever invite anybody to play a drinking game are always either drunks or critics. But there was no getting out of it now, scheiße, she was real into this stuff.

     The rules were that you had to find as many things that started with the letters of the word for Winter festival as you can, no repeats and all. The penalties were a shot to the person with the least Weihnachten words, a shot for the person with the most and two shots penalty if you accidentally repeated one.  Somebody’s Freund was supposed to keep track of what who said for each word on a piece of paper, and they didn’t have to do all too much, but everyone else’s Freund has to play also. Because Thom and I weren’t too good with Russian we amended it to englisch which lengthens the play time to a risky good bit.

     Most of the other players Sabine invited were all critics and pigs and russians. Not all of them were terribly stupid, but honest to god, they all looked like they would be jerks if you knew them, and they really made it obvious. They were terrible company, really they were, and it was almost like they were trying to be that way. Take for example this one guy, some Ivanovich guy or so I think I was supposed to call him, I think, who kept saying s**t about how “Sabya’s littlest brother” wasn’t “half delicate for a blind person.”, over and over again, every time Thom took a penalty, like he was broken or something. See, he was just about one of the biggest jerks at the party, but the whole time he acted like some big animal. We were surrounded by jerks, honest to god. It was awful.

    We were on the letter r or so when I started to sink, and see, the thing about drinking games is, that once you start to sink it’s a real run to try and stop. The trick’s that you got to try not to lose any in the first place, because when you do you’re as good as lost. Thom and I figured it out when he was like seventeen after some real biting loses, because when you start to lose you get a little more besoffen, and the more you drink the worse your losing streak gets. Honest to god it’s true, seeing as after my first penalty I got two more on the same letter and another on the next. By around the letter e Thom got a little worried looking. Thom’s real funny about drinking games, because he can get real concerned during them.  Very concerned. It’s funny, the way he gets when he’s nervous at parties. He starts sliding his shoes off a little, and everytime he didn’t have anything to say he would start humming all these real fast songs and what not. And he gets this smile, when he gets to really worrying about things, where he’s smiling except that his eyes are real frowny and his eyebrows are very serious and all, and then when he’s upset like so I usually start to get sort of jumpy too. I can actually be a real nervous guy if you really get to it like that, I really can.

     “Snickerdoodle cookie, ja?” I suggested kind of quiet. I usually talk pretty quiet, and my voice is actually quite deep for my age.

     “Oh, but I was to say that one! Very good- isn’t he a good one? You must be very proud, Thomas.” This guy Pan Tolstoy said. He was sitting at the other end of the table, and he was the kind of guy who you could almost like if he wasn’t so damn pretentious all the time, I mean like there wouldn’t be all that much wrong with him if he just wasn’t such a damn prick. You could tell he thought he was a real big animal, though, this Pavelovich guy. Maybe that was what I was supposed to call him, I don’t know. I’d written down this little list of all the ways Russian people call eachother and all but it had gotten lost pretty early in the evening when one of Sabine’s friends asked my to dance with his Freund in this real fast song and all. Russians are always asking you to do stupid stuff like that. But in any event, we’d probably half offended about everyone we talked to with the wrong title and s**t. People could be real critics about it. They really could. Usually Thom and I can pick up honorific systems pretty quick, except for with the Russian ones we hadn’t had all too much time to think about them or anything, and they were really pretty difficult ones.

      Thom was still humming as he nodded, pretending like what that Pavelovich guy has said was just a background noise, which wasn’t all so hard given that everybody around was about loud enough to shatter glass. The musicians had switched out now and there was this new set with a guy who played piano, a few guitarists and some critic of a singer who sang these god awful Weihnachten songs half in Russian and half in englisch. He was just really bad, but in an almost depressing sort of way, because it wasn’t like he didn’t know how to sing at all or anything. It was just that he was too good, if you know what I mean. Everytime he’d start doing some song that you thought you recognized he’d get all sticky on you and start adding all these drawn out, slidy crescendos. Honest to god, he could make you want to bang you head on something, hard. It was depressing, zum Teufel so.

     Right about the letter v everyone was secretly losing. People’d been taking penalty for a while, but now they were all knee deep in alcohol, and you could really tell, too. Some guy listen an obscene body part for v, and was subsequently penalized, and Sabine had to practically hold Tschenne up off the table. Even Thom was starting to sink, on account of the fact that there’s not really that much that starts with v in englisch anyways, much less s**t that’s got to do with the Weihnachten. I was real sunk by then after this almost unrelenting losing streak in the middle of the letter s.

     “Vanllekipferln?” Thom asked.

     Someone who was ganz Suff-sounding practically screamed about how that started with an f as Sabine said real smooth, “that’s not English.”, only it sounded more like a z in that. Everyone was fading real fast, honest to god. The game play was getting to the point of misery. It was just so damn depressing. You take a bunch of people who are jerks anyways, and then you get them acting competitive and drunk to the point of stupidity and it’s bound to get really depressing at some point. Some people are monsters when they get drinking, but it wasn’t even the monsters that made it so damn sad. I don’t know. Maybe it was even just the concept. Everyone all ambient and all.

     “Does anyone else want to give word for v?” That guy Ivanovich’s Freund was the score keeper, and honest to god he was the highest degree of sobriety. “Not? Okay. This makes low score of this round Tovarishch Neher, and high score Pan Tolstoy. “

     As I said before,  by this point I was real sunk, and Thom had to lean over and whisper that he thought I was the only Tovarishch Neher still playing, on account of the fact that Tschenne was too besoffen to play anymore. See, I get to being a real b*****d when I get drunk sometimes. I get real stupid and laugh annoying at all the wrong things and all. I mean it, I act real god awful, like I’d probably ask myself to please shut up and quit playing if I was stuck in some drinking game with myself. I mean it, I have no tolerance for alcohol, really, and definitely not the good kinds of the stuff.

     “Aha.” I said. I think I was laughing a bit; I was feeling  a little ironic and depressed and all. Like everything was kind of ironically bad, only I didn’t get why no one else saw it that way. I went to grab my shot glass and then tried to take the shot in one gulp, only I accidentally sloshed  some onto the table and ended up staring at it for about a year like it was the saddest and most confusing thing I’d ever seen. I was real drunk, horribly drunk and all. Honest to god.

     I was immediately penalized for saying “Lametta” on l, and I just about spilled an entire bottle of the mint wine on myself trying to pour it. I was starting to feel pretty depressed about then. The singer was starting on this version of some Russian Winterfest song translated to English when things really got bad. Now even Thom was almost entirely sunk too. Just about anything anyone said made him laugh, and he kept unbuttoning and rebuttoning my shirt at the bottom three or four buttons, only he always rebuttoned them wrong.

     “Thomych is in lowest score again, and top has Páni Neher to the penalty. “

     The Typ next to me poured me a glass, only I wasn’t paying attention too hot. See, this song the guy was singing was so damn depressing, honest to god, and it really got me, struck me wrong, I mean. That Typ next to me, Pan Tolstoy’s Freund or something elbowed me real hard and just about knocked me over, too, which made me pretty sour. I don’t know. I was just pretty besoffen, and I was getting tired, seeing as it was going on about half of five in the morning, so I was just getting real sour, and so I took my shot and then leaned down on the table real low. The Typ next to me said something about how the game was ending in good time, judging off of how bad Thom and I were farind, or something or other, but even that started to make me more sour. Only then I did something I really shouldn’t have.

     “Ja, aber isn’t this game russian enough without the profoundly stupid remarks, honest to god, einfach geh zum Teufel.”

Author's Note

This is from a bigger story I'm working on. Memoir styled futuristic world. Questions about that, just ask.
My biggest thing about it is that I want to know what people think about the narrative. I'm working a lot on the dialect of the narrator, blend of slang from American english in the twenties through forties and German idioms.
Ignore spelling, I think, unless anything strikes you funny.
Sorry if I'm using this wrong- I'm really quite new here.

Reviews

[Slim Pikkens]

It's rather interesting. I found the blend of these American phrases from different time periods, along with the German, made it difficult for me to understand. Perhaps I don't have enough background to base my opinion on, but if I may suggest... Perhaps if you honed in on one particular era, then blended the German background, have the rhythm of your characters' speech down, then leap from there, your dialog will run smoother for you as you write.
Overall, I think it's a rather interesting idea, combining all these factors in one story. Keep going!

[Matt "Mickey" Denney]

Welcome to Writer's Cafe. You should stay. We help each other out. :)