It ends with you sitting on a dilapidated Chinatown Bus at a random exit off the Jersey Turnpike waiting for some bitch to return from the bathroom where she is most likely glassy-eyed on her back with a needle dangling. That part is easy to pinpoint. Its the moment where you are suddenly outside of yourself just long enough to wonder how in the fuck the last few days went down and how you ever ended up sardined on a creaking deathtrap amidst dozens of foul-smelling strangers plotting to coup the driver that's giving this girl more leeway than her $20 fare should allow. Yes, that moment is concrete. Its where this particular spiral began its marvelous plummet that is the puzzler.
I suppose it began with a random Facebook message. Doesn't it all? It was September and I'd just returned to New York from a self-imposed exile following the last time my days had run drunkenly together and ended rather, um, interestingly. A friend on tour with Of Montreal was passing through the following night. Did I want tickets to the show? Sure, why not. My father was in town but, by that point, his dry drunk mood swings were wearing a bit thin. I needed out. The show itself was as fantastical as one would expect and I got rather sloshed between the requisite train beer, the bottles backstage and a stop off at some tiki bar in midtown. By the time I made it back to Brooklyn I was definitely well beyond the point of no return and not in any hurry to make it home to Father. I Twitter requested an after and it was @replied in short order. I made my way to a random door on Grand Street, played Spades and accidentally cheated, then totally blew it when I thought I'd left the cell phone that I found moments later in my coat pocket. And, somehow in the midst of all this, I gained a follower of the Ginger variety. We split a pack of Winstons and argued excessively before I finally resigned myself to the fact that I would be returning home to my father (and roommate's father and middle-aged brother) at 8am with a random dude in tow.
We made it home just in time for coffee. It all felt very The View on testosterone. Three men on a couch volleying jokey asides our way in their discussion of whatever. I have a tendency to slip into this hyper-awareness when I'm drunk that makes me believe I am starring in a television show or, at the very least, being webcammed. This was definitely happening and I honestly think it went down very much outside of my imagination. Ginger, naturally, sat down and launched into real estate conversations with my father. The bullshit exchanged between these two was legendary and I was hanging in there until I got a text from JFK. My girl from San Francisco, E, had landed and was en route via public transit. Fuck. I excused my self to take a quick "nap."
Several hours later I awoke to the beginnings of dusk. E was cleaning my house, Ginger was long gone and we were having a barbecue. Um, okay? The barbecue went the way most barbecues do -- beer, food, talk, more beer. I think it was the "more beer" part that got us in trouble. Some idiot poured beer onto people's heads from the roof before getting an open container ticket from the 83rd precinct. Ok, it was me. At least I didn't chuck a bottle at the Puerto Rican Puberty Posse on the stoop across the street and ignite a war of broken bottles and Spanglish threats that ended in shirts torn off Superman-style and heads ducking low to avoid open windows. We all survived...barely.
The next few days were spent pulling my father from beneath the wagon wheels. Holes were punched in the walls of Roberta's, there was some hungover puking on the A train and there was lots of getting locked out of my own home/car. I had a slight side adventure at a job interview-cum-after party-cum-rooftop rendezvous in Hell's Kitchen but that was something else entirely. I got a nasty corneal infection and copped an eye patch to match my ankle brace. Hectic week.
Then it was time for the Virgin FreeFest in Baltimore. I was just this side of dead by the time we loaded into my Jeep and hit the road but sometimes you just have to push through. I'm a trooper like that, unfortunately. We arrived just before dark, applied make-up in the visor mirror and got dropped off at the Virgin Records Pre-party. I ate lots of sliders supplied by cater-waiters and tried to not drink. That lasted, oh, two hours? Eventually I succumbed to open bar Diet Tropical Homos and pretty much fell in love with the shirtless, wisp of a lead singer for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. Of course I lost everyone in the post-party tumult and was in the process of securing a seat on the Artist Bolt Bus when I was discovered and returned to my shitty hotel room for a few hours of sleep.
In my hungover hurry, I'd only packed two t-shirts to choose from for FreeFest Day, one bearing a pirate and the other a Oakland Raiders jersey hybrid. All well and good except now I was really depending on that eye patch and, um, this wasn't Halloween. I proceeded to the Baltimore fairgrounds pretty much blind. You know how everything kind of gets blurry, traces and sways just before you blackout? That's pretty much my level of vision without corrective lenses. And the pain was searing. This day could not end well.
I'd like to say I saw lots of amazing bands and totally discovered some new music but, yeah, I didn't really leave backstage. There were hammocks surrounding a serenely green pond, lots of free alcohol, outlets to charge my Blackberry, a bounce house and a midday Low Country Boil poured onto table upon newspaper-covered table for everyone to devour. I've really got to develop some musical talent. I did wander the wooded golf cart trails a few times to check the scenes (okay, the variety in bars and bottles) but I stumbled upon nothing more than a few super random conversations and my Jamaican Arch-Nemesis. Eventually the headliners were finishing their encores, fireworks were bursting overhead and I discovered that some of the New York Twitterati was in attendance. Dare I make that final leap down the rabbit hole? Or, more appropriately put, after 12-odd hours of drinking pretty much everything intoxicating known to man, could I possibly go back to the hotel and shack up with a couple? You know that 90s beer slogan, "Know when to say when?" Well, I don't.
I joined the crew, motley though they were. They'd just finished painting a wall and were popping ecstasy like TicTacs. I had a conveniently empty backpack and a surprising lack of paranoia. Concession stands were raided and we made it back to the Rape Van with all the makings of a side street bodega slung over my shoulders. After that it gets a little dark. Like dimly-lit-van-on-dark-highways-with-way-too-many-heads-smashed-in dark. Finally we stopped at some random party. I had, like, one beer then got cut off. All good. The Intern couldn't get in so I had company in the fenced in alley. I'm the queen of lurking outside spots usually because I'm chain smoking and definitely because you catch way more strange character conversations that way. In the end that's what its all about anyway -- encounters with the most interesting of nightcrawlers. Sometime around here The Intern and I got entrepreneurial and found a calculator with which we were going to negotiate the market value of the remaining alcohol stash in my backpack. That little plastic calculator -- now Sharpie'd #PPP -- still serves me well to this day. Ahh, souvenirs.
Eventually S emerged and was down for adventure so he and I traversed the tree-lined streets -- it was quite quaint there -- listening for the tell-tell signs of a house party. Found! S let himself into a cookie cutter bungalow playing loud music while I stood on the porch smoking. We were very quickly ejected. I think there were, like, 10 people inside. Would love to hear their take on the situation...very curious. I should post a Missed Connection.
Finally everyone was ready to go and we loaded into the Rape Van once again. This time joined by Jamaican Arch-Nemesis and two broads that I want to call dumb but actually can't remember so well so I'll hold off in case its you. Obviously I wasn't happy about our new additions and remember being quite the bitch about the whole situation. Hate that dude. All I wanted to do was crawl back into that narrow little trunk space between the third seat and the back door with P. But, by this point, he was screaming and flipping out in a way that made me want a needle of whatever it is they use in movies to chill people out when they don't have straight jackets at the ready. I vaguely recall blue lights, everyone trying to bail at one point or another, and someone encouraging seat belts (yeah, right). Super surprised I'm even remotely alive.
Perhaps the sharpest memory I have of that entire night is arriving back at the hotel. It was like a sailor reaching dry ground...immense relief. I've only felt this way once before and that was after accidentally driving while I was tripping. Obviously some kind of memory suppression concerning that fateful ride. Yeah. Walked to get cigarettes and more alcohol (really?) then went out on this cute little pier overlooking an expanse of glassy water. Why did I think this was the Delaware? Would they put a pre-fab Sheraton/Hilton/Chain Lux-ish Hotel on the same river Washington pioneered? Blame it on the alcohol.
So, I'm hot, dusty, happy to be alive. Of course, I jump in with P and O. Swimming seemed so sublime. Too bad it was a waist-deep swamp and I immediately sank into oily black drudge. I'm talking muck to the knees, shiny spots floating on the surface and weeds clinging. P was all about it and seeing him flit about yards from us like some naked man porpoise made me stick it out for longer than I should have. Looked so fun! I even took a few hits from the bottle of $4 whiskey he'd been frolicking about with. Yes, I drank the water. But, once he started catapulting old Dell monitors at us from the depths, I figured it was time to make it to safe ground. Everyone else was in varying stages of fade, some more pronounced than others. Time to seek shelter. Then P pops out screaming and streaking across the manicured turf that all industrial complexes have. Maybe it was just me, but I think everyone was just too shocked/stoned to really stop him. I think we were paralyzed in laughter that was both appropriate and utterly irresponsible. Que Sera.
Showered with that cheap hotel soap that totally didn't remove the streaks of crude oil all over my body. Slept in a wet clothes in a King-sized bed with too many bodies. It all felt very Hardy Boys Gansevoort circa WMC 2009. Woke up to dozens of missed calls from the people that were going to leave me. Borrowed a shirt from M and caught a cab to the D.C. Metro. Met my crew, took my seat and realized people were snapping cell phone pics. What the fuck? Looked down to realize my newly acquired t-shirt read, "Get Loose." Add that to the crazy bedhead I had from sleeping with wet hair, my still-dripping shorts and my swollen shut eye and it becomes totally apparent why I'm fodder for Worker Bees early on a whatever-day-it-was morning. Ate some dumplings then ascended the bus stairs. Three or so hours later I found myself at that fateful rest stop awaiting the return of some girl that would never show, realizing that almost two weeks had passed without my knowing.
So, you see, the beginning is always more complicated than the end. This should have been a short story about a night but one night always turns into two, then three. Before you know it you have thousands of words to tell a tale that is remembered as nothing more than an eternal thread of events that never really ends, only breaks in deep hibernation once and again. I'm still undecided as to whether this is a happy life or a sad one. Either way, I have stories to tell.
(If you made it this far, you should totally give Dostoevsky or Faulker a go. You got the chops for it. I feel like I owe you a cookie or something.)
Photos jacked from @slutlust. Read his version of FreeFest Night Here: http://tinyurl.com/3dtvmkx
