Do You Drink, Keiffer?

 

Javaun-Crane Bonnell

 

 

 

I had been curious when I saw that Ned was in a relationship with Martha Keiffer. Ned wasn’t the type to be married at this age. Further investigation of Ned Keiffer’s marital status on Facebook concluded that he was in a relationship with his car. He had named her Martha Keiffer.

 

Martha was a piece of shit: a maroon 2003 Subaru Outback with more blemishes than a proactive commercial. Ned rarely wore a seatbelt. He didn’t care; he laughed at the thought of dying. His erratic driving had destroyed his wheel bearings along with his rear axle. The inside reeked of cigarettes; Ned only smoked them when he was stressed. Red paint was scratched off both passenger doors and an alarm would sound if you unlocked the door without the key.

Martha’s right headlight looked like a wrecking ball had pecked it on the cheek. The red side panel was coated with silver scratches and the light was smashed. A bulb dangled like a cartoon eye. The accident was a product of a hit and run in Brookline in February. “I am really sad… Martha got into a crash,” Ned told me as he stared at the ground. We were walking down Boylston during a gloomy sub-zero day. The weather matched Ned’s mood completely. It was the saddest I had seen Ned in a while which was a big deal because Ned was always sad.

 

Ned Keiffer’s natural habitat was the film set, and if he wasn’t on set than he was talking shit about set. It was March, 2015, and I was on my third set with Ned. Ned likes to hire his friends. I was supposed to be on a different set but Ned told me the food would be better on his set, so with little hesitation I quit the other set. Anything to make Ned a little happier, plus he was always fun to make fun of.

 

This set was causing Ned more anxiety than usual. His ambition and Hindenburg-sized ego had caused him to be not only the producer on the set, but also the assistant director. His face looked like a glazed donut, pale and stretched and cracking where there weren’t seams. Being tired was Ned’s normal condition, but today Ned looked like he would have to do a line of coke every ten minutes to stay awake. Ned’s work ethic could probably get him a job really fast after school if he didn’t fail out.

 

“Come stand here so I don’t get hit,” Ned yelled over. I could only see Ned’s beat Adidas dangling from beneath the car. Martha’s exhaust pipe had ripped in half. The car sounded like a crotch rocket. Martha continued to die so Ned was now on the ground using gaff tape to fix the problem. I was surprised that Ned was having me spot him. I could picture one of Ned’s Adidas Sambas getting plowed by a car. His foot would probably roll sideways, the car would jerk upward for a second, and the elderly woman driving the beat-up Oldsmobile would be startled for a second. She would probably screech to a halt, look in her rear view mirror and not be able to see what she hit. The old woman would look around, adjust her glasses, and then continue onward.  Ned would probably curse, slam his head on the underside of the car, proceed to drink the pain away, and then brag about the event to every form of life at Emerson. The only reason Ned was having me spot him was because he was absolutely useless without his car.  

 

Martha was by far Ned’s fucked up alter ego. Being in Boston, I saw a lot of Subaru’s but I could always tell Martha from the rest based on the fucked up bumper stickers. One read: Suck my nuts and was placed near the Pennsylvania license plate. If you were driving behind Ned, the sticker was placed directly with the passenger’s eye line. It alluded to the amount of fucks Ned gave. The other sticker was You got to have balls to golf like I do. This was the only reference to the fact that Ned enjoyed golfing. He was too busy talking shit to ever bring it up in conversation.

 

Ned’s shit talk came in many different moods and annoyances. Most of the time Ned was sober and recounting some fucked up thing he said over the weekend. Some of the time Ned was intoxicated and concocted even more vulgar things to say. Ned was definitely one of Emerson’s most hated individuals. One of Ned’s proudest accomplishments was getting subtweeted for his damage at a party.

 

It was spring break and I needed to give people an excuse to get drunk. I called the event the Bacon Hill Blackout and had invited far too many people. The party had been fairly respectable, but that was when Ned burst through the door. Armed with two plastic forties, Ned ran into my small Beacon Hill apartment and slammed the alcohol onto the marble countertop. “Forty hands, I am doing it!” Ned screamed to the other guests. A few people stopped and commented but most didn’t give a shit. His hands were promptly tied with green gaff tape. It reminded me of an alien. The two Colt 45s were soon clutched in his hands like a baby grabs a bottle of milk. I had agreed to help him pee if it came down to that point. I don’t think I would have helped him though; the amount of piss that would have dumped out of his bladder would have been unfathomable.

 

At one point in the night Ned was about to throw up. He used his mind to stop him from yacking all over the sink and continued drinking until he finished both of the bottles. Shortly after finishing, our friend made the unfortunate decision to question Ned’s night. “Are you drunk,” Emily asked. “I just drankkkkkkk two forty ounce containers of malt liquor, what do you think? Of course I am fucking drunk!” Ned screamed in one of the most drawn out and condescending voices. Despite how incredibly terrible Ned’s behavior was that night, I learned something new and shocking. Ned had a job at a local golf course. How could this drunk and ignorant producer be a caddy at one of the most famous golf courses in the United States?

 

Knowing him, I would have assumed that he would have complained about his job along with everything else that he complained about. Thinking about it, his work was the only thing that he never complained about. Ned was so quiet about his job, it didn’t even occur that he worked. When Ned told me about where he worked, I was astonished. My greasy bike shop gig didn’t have shit on his suave and professional job at The Country Club.

 

The golf course was a fucked up comparison to Ned’s bleak and miserable everyday appearance. The clash between his usual blue sweatshirt, jeans, and Adidas was laughable compared to the course’s beauty. Willows dotted the grass and forests surrounded the outskirts of the course. Majestic blue ponds dotted the course and the sand in all the traps was as crisp as a foot in the freezing Atlantic. A giant yellow manor sat at the top of the course— it stretched for at least one hundred feet. There was an enormous porch that ran around the entire house. When I saw the manor, it reminded me of the South; specifically of a slave owner’s sprawling mansion looking over rows of cotton fields. Surprisingly, this Brookline golf course had been attracting the attention of professional golfers for years on end. In fact, The Country Club boasted an impressive amount of statistics. It was founded in 1882 and since then has hosted the 1913 US Open, been one of the founding golf courses for the United States Golf Association, and is one of the first one hundred golf courses in the US. Although this was all relevant information, a goon like Ned was interested in the fun of the sport and, more importantly, the money. Since I had known Ned, he had always had a thing for money.

 

It was November 2014 and coincidentally my first time I had been in Brighton. As a new Emerson student, I had thought he was an asshole. I had decided to hang out with him anyway for the sake of hanging out with my other friend, Louis.  

 

The house looked like every other house on the street. Old with corroding siding, and a garage door that was wide open like it was asking you to come into its belly and disappear. The inside wasn’t much different. Christmas lights gave the college basement a glow. There was a bed crammed in one corner along and a couch crushed in another. A desk with three monitors took up most of the room. I was in the Ned Keiffer Household.

“You know who I think is really hot… Madison Murph!” I yelled excitedly.

“Did someone tell you to say that?” Ned looked at me confused. I realized I must have crossed a fine line. The attention in the basement had been devoted to small talk about music, but my recent comment about Madison stole the show. “Yeah I screwed her… and there is another guy coming here who also screwed her. He doesn’t know that I screwed her, so don’t say anything,” he stated. Ned was wearing what I had seen him wearing everyday on campus; the only thing missing was a distinct army green Cabelas jacket that I later learned his mom had given to him. How did this fucking goon named Ned have sex with Maddie? My drunken mind was officially blown.

 

Maddie was rich; when asked about a XXL COCO sweater she was wearing; she simply replied that her brother, who was a rap producer, got it for her. Among all the people that Ned interacted with, I can see how dealing with rich fucks all day on the golf course had helped him secure Maddie. Talking to rich people in a polite manner was certainly not my forte, and Maddie was a goddess. It seemed like Ned had done something that made him happy.

 

“She screws people that have problems… she likes to try and solve them. Don’t tell Ned that I told you this,” Louis told me. It had been three months since I had hung out with Ned and Louis in their dilapidated basement, and now I was crammed into a U-Haul truck on the way to set, sitting with Ned’s roommate. Ned’s suaveness with Maddie had come to a screeching halt. It seemed that his suicidal attitudes, instead of professional interactions with the rich, had gotten him the booty call.

 

“It was GREAT at the time, but now it is the worst thing that I have done,” Ned explained. It was four months since I had met Ned and we were still talking about the same thing since the day I had met him. Apparently the snake was out of the cage and slithering around. Struck by venom, Ned had been paralyzed by Maddie’s sex appeal and she had gone onto poison several more men. It was obvious that Ned was hurt by the heartbreak, but he didn’t want to say it. We were both in Martha driving down Storrow, and Ned was staring blankly out of the window. His Phillies hat was casting a shadow over his eyes, which helped to hide how tired he was. “I keep talking to her… she hates Aiden too, so I can always complain to her about him,” Ned explained. I simply told Ned that he should stop talking to her. “I am already sad, it doesn’t matter. I couldn’t get much sadder than this,” Ned moped. Martha continued down the road, her usual rattles amplified by the cold air. Even though Martha was a piece of shit, she would never stop. No matter how many times Ned would suck on his snake wound, I doubt he would be able to get the taste of Maddie out. “Have you ever thought about how many sets wouldn’t go on this weekend if I get in a car crash driving Martha and die?” Ned grinned like a fucking psycho. It wouldn’t be the last time I would hear that statement.

 

A bit about Javaun 

 

 

Javaun Crane-Bonnell would rather be bike riding. Settling for a safer future, Javaun attended school at the University of Rhode Island for film production until 2013. He decided to transfer schools and finish his film degree at Emerson College in 2014. Javaun currently works as a grip and key grip on film sets and hopes to become a director of photography and work for Red Bull or Brainfarm upon graduating.