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Tom from Texas
My best friend’s name is Zegy, or at least that’s how we call him. He doesn’t feel comfortable when we address him by his real name, which is sort of weird if you ask me. He’s an all right guy: cheerful, childish, colorful, and above all, always ready with some sarcastic comment for any kind of situation. I guess he is like that because he likes messing up with people a bit too much, but once you get to know him for some time you kind of get used to it.
I had always thought of him as a chill-out dude who’d stay away from trouble, but our graduation trip with friends to the beach led me to believe that he had, to some degree, a different personality disorder. Throughout the day, he would be his normal annoying self, but by the time we arrived to the nightclubs, he’d suddenly change into a totally new individual. He would act and say things as if he was someone else we didn’t know anything about. Every time he met someone new at the place, he’d share with them his background story, which would be different for every day. One day he’d be Marcus from California, the other Joao du Brazil, and some other Andrés from Guadalajara.
He was a pretty unpredictable guy. One night he’d be all laughs, while approaching random people and meowing in their ears, and the other he would actively look for trouble, prompting people into a fight by throwing them pieces of ice. Funny thing is that no matter what he did, he wasn’t able to recall much of it the day after.
After the ice incident, Zegy asked me to look out for him if he was to keep going out the rest of the week, just so things wouldn’t get out of control. This night he was going to be known as Tom, Tom from Texas. That night we arrived to the club at 11. It was a bit empty, so we settled in our table next to the dance floor and had a few drinks there. Tom and I met some college girls from California, whom he talked to with his makeshift, stereotypical, Texan accent. To my surprise, the girls liked Tom a lot and even believed everything he had to say about his invented past as a country boy who would start studying music as a freshman at UT Austin next semester.
I excused myself to go to the restroom, and when I was back, Tom was nowhere to be found. I asked my friends and the girls that we were talking to earlier, but no one had a clue. He’d just vanished. I tried to call him, but no one answered. It wasn’t even 12:30, and I’d lost him. My buddies told me to not worry too much, that he’d eventually come back, but he didn’t.
Some of us went back to the hotel at around 4, expecting to find Zegy in our room, but he wasn’t there either. “What are we to do?” we all asked ourselves. “Should we look for him outside? At the beach? Should we go to the police? Should we call his parents?”
A call then came on the phone, it was the other guys. They’d found Zegy. He was unconscious, sleeping on a patch of grass in the middle of a roundabout that was about a quarter-mile from our hotel.
This time, unlike the other ones, he remembered everything that had happened with extreme detail. While I was at the restroom, he left the group of girls we were talking to and met some other ones, also from California. He and some other girl named Laura started throwing ice to a performer who was breathing fire and were kicked out of the club in a flash, which is why he left without telling anyone. He had no key to his room and felt kind of guilty for her being kicked out as well, so he walked Laura to her hotel. They talked at the beach until she fell asleep, woke her up, left, lost his wallet, was almost arrested, and laid on some grass on his way back, where he finally fell asleep.
Zegy doesn’t want to remember any of the events that happened during that night, but I still like calling him Tom every now and then though, just to bother him. Guess I also like messing around with people after all.
