“Shit Face”: Everyone Out of the Pool
Unsplash December 2018, Two Men Jumping into Swimming Pool, Katherine Auguste, accessed 23 January 2022
Story: “Shit Face”
“Shit Face” by Amy Lynne McKenzie, and published online at The Kenyon Review, is a maximalist dervish hellbent on whirling you towards it’s clever emotional twist through the hurly of high school footballers crammed into a pool on Halloween with the internal burly of the protagonist Caroline’s anxious and frustrated thoughts. What remains after the dust settles is a story that gobsmacks and wounds, leaving you blindsided by the unexpected but well-earned turn of events.
The boys torpedoed, jackknifed, belly flopped, summersaulted, cannonballed into the Holiday Inn pool. Football gear and Halloween costumes bobbed in the water: cleats, Dracula capes, sweaty tube socks, bloody foam axes, shoulder pads, and scream masks. Green face paint clouded the chlorine. The boys blew fart bubbles to rival the hot-tub jets. They made gunshots by popping the surface of the pool with empty bottles of Mountain Dew and trick-or-treat jack-o’-lantern buckets. They screamed “Devil’s night!” and their cries ricocheted off tile, concrete, glass, their glistening hard chests and pudge bellies, in a shrill forever loop.
“Don’t drown Ern!” the mothers yelled. “Give him some air.” They glanced up briefly from their Kroger sale bills and clicking iPhones, then drew back into their tight, mother circle. They sucked nicotine inhalers and munched chili cheese Fritos and the reject Halloween candy their boys would not eat but reminded them of girlhood: Dots, Sixlets, Now and Later.
— ”Shit Face”
Amy Lynne McKenzie
Kenyon Review online, Nov/Dec, 2021
The thick of it is where the story begins, the team and their mothers in a hotel pool after an away football game in which Caroline’s son, Chance, had “scored ruthless touchdown after touchdown so that it was excruciating to watch and they started the mercy clock for the other team”. Here, the boys roughhouse like only high school footballers can, and the moms roughhouse like only high school football mothers can, with gossip and drinks, all of which began well before Caroline could get down to the pool. This exacerbates the frustration and anxiety she generally feels regarding the other mothers and her role as nothing more than the team’s all-star’s mother. Juxtaposed by the other mothers, who are cocksure and apathetic, living vicariously through their sons, Caroline is seen as diffident and naïve and a little more than useless. As an example, when the mother of the team’s runt, Ernie, is preaching the gospel that is Shout Prewash to the other mothers regarding bloodstains, Caroline sheepishly interrupts to say lemons, lemons can help remove the stain, which is shrugged off and almost immediately forgotten.
This is the tip of the thing beneath the surface of this story which is not unlike Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge” in that there is a pompous son and a wallflower (ish) mother who is ignored or patronized. But, in the end, the son receives his comeuppance through an unforeseeable tragedy, and the story hits you like a knee to the gut.
The differences between “Shit Face” and “Everything” are manifold, and though the bones have a similar design, the story’s shape and texture is different entirely. We cleave closely to Caroline who sees her teenage son as terrifying and monstrous, “this strange thirteen-year-old man with square pectoral muscles, like flesh-colored armor ….[and] too much hair, black and jutting from every crevice.” It’s through her eyes, her thoughts, that we see a juxtaposing image of the alpha-male captain of the high school football team that is just a boy, her son, even if everyone else in the story opposes and rejects that anti-alpha idea, and because Caroline can’t buy-in to her son’s own hype she stands as an outsider not only to the other moms but to her son, as well.
That morning in the hotel room, while she was dressing Harvey in his cowboy costume, Chance had sat on the king bed wearing only his underwear. To embarrass her. He was too old for that and he knew it. “Hey, Mom! Hey, Mom! Look!” He had flicked the [cowboy costume’s] braided plastic whip with a tiny movement of his wrist, and the whip cracked and whistled. The tip had burned a red mark on her shoulder. ….
Caroline coiled the whip in her hand and walked back to the deck chair.
Harvey was still sleeping, and Ernie’s mother had gone for the Daily’s.
“What’s that on your lip, dear?” Mica’s mother asked.
Caroline touched the bristle of hair she’d plucked a week ago. It had grown back infected. “Oh, I don’t know. Mosquito bite?”
“Looks like a pimple,” Mica’s mother said. She crossed her legs. “Or a cold sore,” she added ominously.
The mothers looked at each other.
— ”Shit Face”
Amy Lynne McKenzie
Kenyon Review online, Nov/Dec, 2021
This alienation of Caroline is what, in part, sets up the expectation and pressure for something to happen, for something to rise up from her being poorly treated and pushed to the social boundaries of the group. And when the football team led by her son crashes back into the pool with a bag full of melted chocolate we stand for a moment in the eye of the storm, the very raucous center of the dervish we’ve been party to since the story first “torpedoed, jackknifed, belly flopped, summersaulted, [and] cannonballed” into action. What happens from there, and what destruction is on display once the dervish has whirled through, is both unsettling and satisfying. It’s here, in this pure moment of unbridled privilege and entitlement that Chance earns his comeuppance and Caroline her moment.
I can’t elaborate beyond that without pulling the teeth from this story’s toothy end, but I can praise it and McKenzie more for the craft that went into it. Chockablock full of vivid scenery, wild and somehow authentic characters despite the story’s almost absurdist tone, “Shit Face” is a story teaming with enough oomph to pull you through the story in a real ugly hurry, and it delivers an ending that will leave you with a grin of the shit eating kind.
Cocktail:
Devil’s Night
Instead, the team went for Ernie.
Chance lifted him out of the pool by his hair. Ernie’s glasses—which had managed by some miracle so far to stay on his face—gave up and plunked in the water. The team chanted, “Devil’s night! Devil’s night! Devil’s night!”
“Yum yum.” Chance sat on Ernie’s stomach and ripped the paper bag down the side. “Hungry, shit face? Hungry for yum yum shit?”
Ernie struggled and screamed, but the team held down his arms and legs and Chance dug his knees into Ernie’s soft belly.
Ernie gave up and lay still on the wet concrete, like a child after making a snow angel.
Chance smeared the gooey brown contents of the bag across Ernie’s open lips. He stood up. “I tricked your treat, beotch.”
“Shit face!” The boys laughed. “Shit face!”
— ”Shit Face”
Amy Lynne McKenzie
Kenyon Review online, Nov/Dec, 2021
Devil’s Night is a hurried, thrown-together by thirsty football moms pool-side sort of drink. Or it would be if there wasn’t some thought behind it, some planning, and not a little trial and error. A Daiquiri of sorts, the cocktail uses a blend of rums with lime and a compound syrup made from a Daily’s Strawberry Daiquiri. A Habanero Tincture brings some sweet heat to mix, a little something to remind you you’re alive with purpose while Ern lays there covered in chocolate.
Devil’s Night
1oz Rum, Blended, Lightly Aged*
1oz Rum, Column Still Aged**
1oz Daily’s Daiquiri Syrup (below)
1oz Lime Juice
1 bar spoon of Habanero Tincture (below)
Add all of the ingredients together in a shaker with ice and shake vigorously for 10-15 seconds.
Strain into a coupe or martini glass, or just drink it with a straw from the shaker tin. Who cares? The team’s going to States! Right, Ern?…Ern?
*Blended, Lightly Aged Rum Suggestions: Plantation 3 Star, El Dorado 3 Year, or Appleton Estate Signature, or any “white” rum like Myer’s or Captain Morgan (unflavored, not spiced).
**Column Still Aged Rum Suggestions: Cana Brava 7 Year, El Dorado 8 Year, or Appleton Estate 12 Year, or any “dark” not spiced rum like Myer’s will do.
Daily’s Daiquiri Syrup
20g Lime Peel (about two limes)
15g Lemon Peel (about one lime)
4oz Daily’s Strawberry Daiquiri Drink (1/2c)
2oz Pineapple Juice
2oz Rich Simple Syrup (2:1 Sugar to Water)
1 drop of red food coloring (optional)
Put everything in a sealable jar and place the sealed jar into a Tupperware. Fill the Tupperware with hot tap water until covered; replace hot water every 15 minutes for 90 minutes, shaking the jar when you replace the water. OR sous vide at 140F for 60 minutes.
Strain and refrigerate. Should keep for up to two months (or longer) because of the low alcohol content.
Habanero Tincture
1 Habanero, rough chopped
2oz 151 proof neutral grain alcohol
Place chopped habanero into a non-reactive, sealable container (seeds and all) then cover with the 151. Let infuse for at least 24 hours. If you want it hotter, strain out the old habanero and add another; repeat until desired heat is reached.
This is a great addition to margaritas, mai tais, and anything citrus-y and sweet.