Sauce Crew.
Every group of friends needs a name. We were Sauce Crew.
Sophomore year. Close enough to the end of the school year that we’re in a perpetual state of giddiness. It’s a Friday night and we’ve just attended Nashville Arts’s production of Rent. It was great. But on a Friday night in spring—each of us surrounded by our three best friends—it could have been the worst train wreck of a steaming turd (work with me on the mixed metaphor) imaginable and we’d still have been euphoric.
So we’re at McDonald’s stuffing our faces.
“Okay,” Mars says through a mouthful of hamburger, apropos of nothing: “What if you had to classify every animal as either a dog or a cat?”
Eli spews soda out his nose. We were already laughing at the question, and now we’re laughing at Eli mopping Mountain Dew off the Wolves in the Throne Room T-shirt he wore as if it were grafted to his chest.
Blake is gasping for air. “What are you even talking about?”
Mars reaches over to dip a french fry in my ketchup. “No, no, all right. Check it out. Raccoons are dogs. Possums are cats. Squirrels are—”
“Hang on, hang on,” Eli says.
“Dude, Mars,” Blake says, “raccoons are clearly cats. Possums are dogs.”
“No, hang on,” Eli says. “Any animal you can’t train is a cat. You can’t train a raccoon. Cat. You can’t train a possum. Cat.”
“Wait, how do you know you can’t train a possum?” Mars asks.
“You can train a cat,” I say. “I’ve seen YouTube videos of cats using a toilet.”
Now all three are howling, struggling to breathe. Blake is doubled over. “Please tell me when you ditch out on us to write, you’re sitting at home watching cats piss and shit into human toilets and pumping your fist—Yeah! Cat using human toilet!”
“No, but I just come across them. Through life.”
Tears stream down Mars’s face. “ ‘Through life.’ Blade said ‘through life.’ Oh my God. Oh my God.”
Get it? Carver? Blade? Blake had come up with the nickname. It’s funny because I dress like a guy who wants to be a writer and whose older sister works at Anthropologie and helps dress him. Guys who meet this description don’t generally go by “Blade.”
“Okay, guys. Ferrets. Ferrets are long cats,” Eli says.
“I’ve seen a trained ferret, so you can definitely train a ferret,” Blake says.
“To use a human toilet?” Mars asks.
“I didn’t know there were ferret toilets,” Blake says.
“If it’s true that you can train a ferret, then I take back what I said, because ferrets are definitely cats,” Eli says.
“Okay, seals,” I say.
“Mmmmm, cat,” Mars says, staring off thoughtfully.
Eli looks incredulous. “Wait, what?”
“You can for sure train a seal, bro,” Blake says.
“No, hang on,” Eli says. “I think Mars is implicitly saying seals look like cats to him.”
Mars pounds the table, rattling our trays. “They do. They have catfaces. Also they love fish. Cats love fish. Seals are watercats.”
We’re getting dirty looks from other diners. We couldn’t care less. Remember? Young. Alive. Friday night in spring. A feast of junk food spread before us. Best friends. We feel like lords. Everything seems limitless.
Blake stands and finishes his drink with a rattling slurp. “Gentlemen, I need to”—he makes air quotes—“urinate, as it were. If y’all will excuse me. When I return, I expect to have some resolution of the seal-cat issue.”
Mars slaps me on the back. “Better go with him so you can film it.”
“You don’t understand, man,” I say. “I’m only into cats that way.” Peals of laughter from Mars and Eli.
We’re well into our discussion of whether grasshoppers, jellyfish, and snakes are dogs or cats when we realize it’s been a while since we’ve seen Blake.
“Yo, fam, check it out.” Mars points at the children’s playground adjacent to the McDonald’s. Blake is pitching back and forth on one of those rocking horses mounted on a thick spring. He’s waving furiously at us, like a little kid, and whooping.
“Look at that asshole,” Eli murmurs.
“He shame,” Mars says.
“Wait, what?” I ask. “He shame? That’s not a thing people say. You’re missing like three words in that sentence, including a linking verb.”
“I’m making it a thing. Someone does something stupid? He shame. You do something stupid? You shame.”
I shake my head. “That will never be a thing.”
Eli gathers unopened packets of Blake’s chicken nugget sauce and hands a couple to Mars. “Come on, we gotta blast him.”
I hurry to keep up as they dash outside.
“Blade, you film,” Eli says. I also throw like a guy who wants to be a writer.
Blake rocks, whooping, laughing maniacally, whipping around an invisible cowboy hat and waving at us.
We grin and wave—Eli and Mars waving with one hand, handfuls of sauce packets behind their backs—watching him for a second while I film on my phone.
“Okay,” Mars says under his breath, still grinning and waving furiously. “Count of three. One. Two. Three.”
He and Eli stop waving and lunge forward, hurling sauce packets. Mars has a good arm. His dad used to force him to do all kinds of sports. Eli has this rangy athleticism. He’d have probably been a decent basketball player if he could put down his guitar long enough and if he weren’t so allergic to keeping his long, curly black hair out of his face. A teriyaki and a BBQ each score a direct hit on the horse’s head, causing them to burst open and spray Blake. His joyous whoops turn to cries of indignation. “Awwwww, no way, you assholes! Gross!”
Mars and Eli high-five each other and then awkwardly high-five me. I suck at high fives. They collapse on the ground in hysterics, rolling around.
Blake walks up, arms outstretched, dripping with sauce. Mars and Eli hurry to their feet. Blake starts chasing them in turn, trying to wipe sauce on them. He’s much too slow, even with them breathless from laughter. Finally he gives up and goes to the restroom. He returns, dabbing his shirt with a wet paper towel.
“Y’all are so damn funny. The damn Sauce Crew.”
“We should call ourselves that. Sauce Crew,” Eli says.
“Sauce Crew,” I say somberly, extending my hand, palm down.
“Sauce Crew,” Mars says in his terrible English accent and puts his hand on mine.
“Ssssssssssssauce Crewwwwwwwww,” Eli says, in a boxing announcer voice, and puts his hand on Mars’s.
“Sauce—” Blake starts to put his hand on Eli’s but then playfully slaps him on the cheek and goes for Mars. They both giggle and dodge while trying to keep their hands together. “Sauce Crew,” Blake says, and puts his hand on top of Eli’s.
“Saaaaaaaaaaaaauce Crew!” we shout in unison.
“Did one of you donkey dicks film it at least? I want to put it on my YouTube,” Blake says.
I watch them lower the third member of Sauce Crew into the ground.
I am Sauce Crew now.