There's Always Room for Jell-O

(Author's Note: I'm still working on this, but here's my most recent version of this story.)

Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe we should go back to the beginning, all good stories start there of course.

My name is Jeremiah. Jeremiah Bedlam to be specific. I’m twenty-nine, possess both a Bachelor’s and Master’s in English, and I am unemployed. Well, not unemployed, but I’m not doing anything with my degree. My parents are very proud.

I’ve tried any number of jobs: retail, construction, door to door sales, freelance journalism, and, most recently, restaurant work. None of these are a career, and because of that, I currently have $300 to my name.

I live in a one-bedroom loft apartment. I have a bed, a fold-out card table that doubles as my kitchen table, a bookshelf full of obscure authors, and a home theater system worth $5000. My rent is $750. My rent is due tomorrow.

My parents don’t approve of my lifestyle. My mother is a lawyer and my father a doctor. They wanted me to be a medical malpractice lawyer. Best of both worlds, right? I wanted to be an author.

The problem with being an author is that unless you’re published you’re a struggling author, and that means that you’re not really an author at all. It’s like being a musician that doesn’t play an instrument.

While my parents don’t approve of my life, my sister, Sabrina, does. Of course, that could be because my parents don’t approve of her life either. She’s a doctor, a neurosurgeon no less, she’s successful, she’s pretty, she’s intelligent, and she’s gay. That’s the kicker for my parents. I love it.

Our parents had always tried to raise us to be good, upstanding members of Christian society. Mom and Dad had been thrilled to find out that Sabrina was dating an intelligent, attractive person by the name of “Dani.” When Dani had turned into Danielle...shit hitting the fan didn’t begin to cover it.

Sabrina is older than me, she’s thirty-four, and while she followed the professional path my parents wanted, when she brought home Danielle, her partner and a great person, right before she graduated from medical school, my parents nearly had twin strokes.

Sabrina wasn’t exactly disowned, Mom and Dad had too many morals to completely cut off their only daughter, but I did jump from the least favorite child to the much more favored of my parents two offspring. I was directly followed by my cousin Andrew, a lawyer, and then Sabrina. Being the favorite child didn’t do much for me when I started coming up short for my rent. Mom and Dad don’t believe in helping their children. They also don’t believe in hugging, compliments, or charity.

But I’m getting off topic. Now, as I said, my rent is due tomorrow, or rather, it was due yesterday, but it was tomorrow from the date these events take place. I promise, it’s not as confusing as it sounds. Now, as I mentioned, I’m not using my degree, and the job that I do have is not going to get me the $400 I need by tomorrow(yesterday). Enter Jarod.

Jarod Kincaid. I’ve known him for as long as I can remember, and while he’s certainly gotten me into my fair share of trouble through the years, he’s also gotten me out of it too. That’s the mark of a good friend. Not listening to you tell what happened, sitting next to you laughing about the whole thing. Jarod was always with me laughing about it.

Knowing that Sabrina and Danielle wouldn’t be willing to help me pay my rent for a third month straight I dialed Jarod, hoping he’d get me out of trouble instead of into it. Sometimes you have to split the difference and call it a day.

Jarod picked up the phone, loud noises of the seemingly perpetual party that was going on at his house blaring in the background. I tried to explain to him that I needed some help, but he was either drunk or deaf, or some combination of the two, and could’t wrap his head around what I was saying. Slamming the phone down in annoyance I decided to head over there.

The drive across town took longer then it should have, the constant traffic of the small suburban town just outside the college causing a vein in my temple to throb and expletives that would have made a sailor blush three different shades of red to leave my mouth. I have road rage and I’m ok with that.

The line of cars that greeted me outside of Jarod’s house, coupled with thumping bass that resembled nothing so much as an irregular heartbeat, confirmed my fear of a drunk Jarod. Making my way up to the mid-sized house involved a quarter mile hike and jumping over numerous prone bodies in various stages of undress.

Opening the door to the house, I stepped in, expecting to have to fight my way through a sea of people. The music was still blaring, the bass thumping, but the only person in the living room was Ashleigh, dancing with a mop.

Ashleigh Vincent. His father had wanted a girl, and when his mother gave birth to a boy he decided to use the name anyways. Ashleigh had tried many variations on his name through the years: Ash, Leigh, Vincent, Sasha (his middle name), and even Mike (his father’s name), but he always ended up going back to Ashleigh.

“Jeremiah!” Ashleigh turned in his dance, a drunken, lopsided grin plastered on his dark, Italian face. “Come here, I want you to meet someone.”

Walking over I couldn’t help but laugh. Ashleigh was about to introduce me to his dancing partner…the mop.

“Jeremiah, this is Molly. She’s an excellent dancer.”

“She’s a mop and you’re drunk. Where’s Jarod?” Ashleigh frowned, not sure how to respond, then pointed towards the basement door. Not bothering to wonder how Ashleigh and “Molly” would be found tomorrow, I made my way through the door, down the stairs, and into the crowd that I had been expecting upstairs.

Fighting my way through a number of people, I almost gave up on finding Jarod when Jarod found me.

“Jeremiah, you made it!” Jarod appeared out of nowhere, giving me a drunken hug and pulling me towards a table sagging with the weight of too much booze.

“Jarod, I need your help. My rent’s due tomorrow and I don’t have the cash. Is there any chance you can spot me like $500?” I practically had to shout my predicament because of the noise the crowd was generating. Jarod turned quickly, putting on his best sober face.

“I don’t know that I can ‘give’ you $500, but I’m sure that I can help you earn it.”

“How?” Jarod didn’t respond, simply turned towards the crowd and moved towards a small opening in the mass of milling people. Standing where everybody could see him and motioning for the music to be turned off, Jarod raised his voice and spelled out my doom.

“Ladies and Gentlemen! You having a good time tonight?” His question was met with roaring applause. “Good. Now, my friend Jeremiah here has a problem. His rent is due tomorrow and he doesn’t have it. Now, I could ‘give’ him the money he needs, but where’s the fun in that?” People started booing and shouting profanities. I had the sudden impression I was going to be lynched.

“Fortunately, I think we can help him. Jeremiah, come up here.” I reluctantly joined him in front of the crowd.

“This is my best friend, Jeremiah Bedlam. So, who wants to play Twister with him?” a few whistles and cat-calls came from the crowd. “Shall we start the bidding at $20?”

Maybe I should explain something here. Dating has never been an issue for me. I’m going to claim to be this amazing looking guy, but I do stand around six-two, weigh in at just under 200 pounds, and while Mom and Dad didn’t give me much in the way of affection while growing up, they did manage to bless me with high cheek bones, blue eyes, and blonde hair to make Hitler jealous.

Dollar amounts started being shouted, women and men bidding on the right to play Twister with me, and soon Jarod had raised enough money to help me pay my rent. Unfortunately, or fortunately, he wasn’t done yet.

“Is that all? What if I add Jell-O to the mix?” The dollar amounts rose exponentially. Soon we were in a bidding war between a stunning blonde and a brunette. The blonde was tall, thin, curvy in all the right places, the kind of girl that Victoria’s Secret makes their taunting lingerie for, essentially everything a man could want. The brunette had been on the wrestling team. The men’s wrestling team. He was taller then me, more heavily muscled then most football players, and was known for making people scream on the wrestling mat. I did not want to play Twister against him.

The price to play Twister with me kept going up, neither one of them willing to back down. While I was flattered that both wanted to play Twister against me in Jell-O, the thought of playing with a man known as the “Breaker of Souls”started to make my stomach quesie.

I quietly begged Jarod to declare the blonde the winner, offering him up my first born child, my immortal soul, whatever I didn’t need to pay my rent…anything so that I wouldn’t have to play with the wrestler. Either Jarod sensed my distress or God himself wanted me to play against the blonde, because soon he gave in, declaring the blonde the winner. The Jell-O was quickly produced, the Twister board and the Jell-O placed inside a small plastic pool. The blonde, I would later learn that her name was Sarah, and I both stepped into the game area, eyeing each other up and down.

“Right hand green!” Jarod shouted out the first color, both of us reaching down to place a hand on a green circle, finding our balance within the Jell-O. Bending at the waist and putting most of my weight on one spot amongst Jell-O was already proving to be tricky.

“Left foot yellow!” We both assumed a squat position.

“Right foot yellow!” A much easier squat position.

“Left hand red!” We both had to arch our backs to reach back and touch the red circles, still keeping our right hands on the green. I was already struggling to keep my balance, while Sarah’s lithe body seemed to easily assume the position.

“Right foot blue!” This took us back to more of a squat position. The crowd was beginning to get a bit anxious, wanting to see something more in the Jell-O. Never one to disappoint a crowd, Jarod decided to make the game more interesting.

“Right hand red!” This took us back to an arched position. I looked up and saw that Jarod was taking money from a handful of people, most of them girls, but the wrestler was back in the mix.

“Left foot green!” As Sarah and I moved to achieve the position necessary, we were quickly joined by five new players. This changed the game from kinda tricky with the Jell-O to nearly impossible. I could feel my body beginning to slip.

“Left hand yellow!” Two of the players slipped in the Jell-O, crashing to the mat. Cheers erupted from the crowd, people clapping as the two girls that had quickly fallen into the Jell-O stood and gingerly made their way back out of the pool.

“Right foot red!” The wrestler quickly found himself on the mat, his bulk and strength proving no match for the Jell-O. He grumbled as he stepped out of the pool, obviously not happy at losing so quickly.

“Left hand blue!” I reached for a blue circle with my left hand, but the stretch was too much and I soon found myself falling to the mat, along with Sarah and the two remaining girls that had joined the game. We rolled around, trying to regain our balance, but we only succeeded in falling all over each other.

I’m not really sure who won the game, only that I had the money I needed to pay my rent and a date with Sarah for the following week. It was the greatest game of Twister that I had ever played.