Driving With Tom and Virginia  I'm driving a car with my friend Virginia Green's house. With me are Virginia and my classmate Tom Dement. I talk to Tom about college, saying he must be leaving pretty soon. He says he leaves tomorrow. I ask him if he is packed yet. He says no. We are going down the street near my dad's old little house, parallel to the railroad tracks. We are going east, towards Friends Avenue. Near the trucking barns, there is a reddish or pink car. It looks like it was assembled by hand using parts from different cars. It is made of steel. I turn right onto a road and go down towards Virginia's house. I park the vehicle, which is a red Volkswagen Bus, on the sidewalk in front of her house. We get out. It is cold and raining. Virginia's father is standing out in the yard. He is clean-shaven and his short, dark hair is combed. Her sister is in the hot tub in the back yard. I think of how I got sick from being in a hot tub in the back yard. I walk from the front of the house to the side door, going by the bushes and shrubs. I think of asking Virginia when her birthday is. Then I remember it is during the school year, in the spring. Now, it is summer. I walk into the side door of the house and go through the kitchen. In the living room are my friend Emily Zates and her younger sister Audrey. Emily hopefully asks me if I brought any board games. I didn't. There is another girl with them. She has five beers. I find a rubber gun that shoots ping-pong balls. The girl I don't know and I shoot balls at each other, flirtingly. I say to her that five beers are enough for her because she is so small.  There is a party at Virginia's house. There are mostly guys there: jocks from high school. My friend Lyle Zeffman is there. Another kid is there who looks younger. He weighs a lot. Lyle has taken this kid's shirt and is teasing him. The kid is embarrassed. He has a diaper-like white cloth or bag tucked into the side/rear of his pants, which are pulled up really high. The kid has butt-white skin; pale. There is a phone call. It is my friend Jimmy Youngman in Colorado calling. I talk to him a little bit. I talk like he is my friend Jack Miller, and I recall the time when Jack caught a big rainbow trout when we were fishing. I tell him that my friend Kevin Simpson and I went out this year a few times fishing for trout and didn't catch any. I finally say, "Jimmy, I don't know what to say."  Virginia is upset because her party isn't turning out well. So far, it is a bunch of jocks making fun of each other. I go out to the porch. The porch gives me the feeling that I am in Clarence Bahe's house, which is where I used to deliver papers. There are people in the back yard. My friend Kathy Branch is on the porch with me. She is smoking a cigarette. I say to her, "Looks like you picked up a nasty habit at school." She says that she doesn't like the taste of it. Her cigarette is huge. When the outside of it burns away, there is an inside "core" to it. My friend Stephen Ramos and his work friend Izzy drive by in Stephen's brown car. I run out onto the street yelling and jumping up and down. They turn around and come back. A turquoise station wagon pulls up. In it are my friends Kevin Simpson, Stephen, and Sam Kingsley. I greet them with some funky hand slapping, like on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. There is a guy there with long dark hair dressed in clothes from the 1970's. Kevin has a big wooden cross, which is a horse or a boat to him. He also has an oar. He is pretending to be an adventurer and he puts on a show, jumping over a car and speaking lines from movies with a Scottish accent. My friend Persia Miko is outside with other people and they watch. I laugh. It's good to be with the guys again.