Well, the trash is still glowing. Raquel Calgieri across the hall had this massive lightstick party over the weekend, with about six hundred little three-inch snappers in seven different colors and various other luminate paraphernalia -- nunchucks, cat's-eye glasses, I don't know what all. There was more alcohol than anyone could even process, and a pretty exemplary lineup of house artists on the shelf speakers, and most of the furniture had been backed up and was hugging the walls like schoolkids in an air raid. I won't claim to remember most of the night; I ended up drinking way too much, trying to match pace at least with Ellen Power, who is four foot eleven and one-sixteenth Cherokee or something. You know, I can't believe it took me this long to figure out, but I really pass through my comfort zone quickly with respect to alcohol. Somewhere over the course of Saturday night I was in the right place, quick with jokes, tossing out bold claims, able even to work a little pop-and-lock routine with my arms (yeah, when I was twelve everything was Kool Herc and Afrika, what were you doing). But then I reach the tipping point without even knowing it, and suddenly it's Sunday and I'm waking up to a carpet full of ground-in peanuts and eight text messages from people asking whether I got lost on the way across the courtyard. It's not all that bad really, it's not like I get belligerent or maudlin when I'm drunk, but I would like to retain a little grace. That's all. I would like to minimize the number of remembered stumbles across the room that pounce on me in Economic History and cause me to ground a fist into one eye.
Anyway, Raquel I guess ordered her party supplies from some aggressive upstart retailer in New York, and they were pretty much nuclear the night of. I know this because at some point the party spilled over into two nearby rooms, including mine, leaving behind clumps of trash to sweep up and tweeze out from divisions in the carpet. That was my afternoon. That evening, though, I dressed down and killed the lights for a quick Wire episode (that show is kind of comical sometimes, but there's usually at least one scene per hour when they get Baltimore absolutely right), and the garbage lit up like aliens at Chernobyl. I tied the bag shut, but the light kept pulsing out; I had to double-hood it and sit with my back completely to the can. What the hell is in those sticks? At least they're easy to find with the lights off. I didn't realize how many I'd missed, and a few were in places that made absolutely no sense. Someone -- I know it wasn't me -- had laid one across the sprinkler head in my ceiling, which would have been fun had it triggered. I had to knock that off with the skylight pole while exhaling about four molecules of carbon dioxide per minute. I am definitely calling it earlier on the drinks next time.
There is some business with a girl I could report here, but it seems too early to say anything. I'm not sure why I'm even bringing it up. Maybe it's the song. "Ellen and Ben," Dismemberment Plan, man. What would it have even been to see them in a club around here. Oh well -- tomorrow looks good. I have to check out a few Richard Avedon volumes for this class but that's totally not work I mind doing. That one Sly and the Family album is all you need, I think, to be reminded that the world is a pretty cool place.
