It was the end of October. That time when the sun starts setting sooner and the days slip away much earlier than they should. The trees sense this change more than most and utterly give up on life, and there's an abundance of leaves once green, now littering the ground and cracked and brown and dry like old paper snow in autumn. To the old Christians, it was a day before a celebration of saints, a hallowed eve, a somber night when ghosts and spirits and demons flew free.
But now, presently, to us collegiate folk of the coastal woods, it was to be a day and night of make-up and costumes and debauchery.
[stop]
The day was tinted with a mild, sleepy excitement that grew through the morning. After a Team Western breakfast of toasty-toast and scrambled eggy-wegs, we mixed up a batch of mimosas. And then it was time to get into that ole' ultra-violence. We threw a Clockwork Orange DVD in and were all smiles and English croons and champagne flutes up and down through the house finding our white pants and white shirts and suspenders and top hats and bowler hats. And chains and canes and butt-beads and BB was doing the make-up. She did us up proper.
To the bicycles then, and we flew in V-formation down Western hill; canes raised, laughing Kubrick laughs, all with our droog-ish attire clapping in the wind. And licking my sides. The sun hit just so that the skin wasn't cold and the air, crisp in the lungs. Autumn are perfect there. It was a wonderful feeling, that perfect autumn day by bicycle, poised for all the mayhem and n'ere do-ery to be offered by such a hallowed eve.
They were ready for us at King St. Our arrival was met with the house spewing out Pan and Hook and Tink and Wendy and Rufio and a band of Lost Boys. Conor was already there as curious bottle of Siracha. They were ready for us and the clash was epic and riotous and beautiful, full of pirate 'yarr's and droog terror. Then those wicked, lost boys got to brewwin'. The concoction was deplorable and altogether brilliant. Pink Panty Droppers they were called, and they consisted of (by the tub-full): a 30-pack of beer (cheap beer), a liter of vodka (Vodka Of The Gods), a cyclinder full of Welch's Pink Lemonade concentrate, and three pink Crystal Lite packets. That was it, but it was candy to the lips. Sweet and tangy and like drinking long island iced teas by the red college-party-cupful. The sun hadn't even peaked in the sky yet. Grant Hook and Matty Pan were sword-fighting in the backyard as Cricket looked on, and Minh Tink fluttered about telling them to stop. Mike as Rufio and Lost Boy Max were playing PPD-pong in the garage with two droogs as the rest of our lash-eyed deviant ensemble cheered and boozed and cried curses in English accents.
There was pizza in the fridge from Pizza My Heart (Matt delievered pizzas for them). There was a tub of pink drunk liquid in the living room, and there were cases of beer scattered throughout the property. With our two houses and company, we were thirty people, maybe more, and sunset snuck up on our booze-faced eyes of laughter. It was the best of times. And in the night the girls' house came, then everyone came. And that house at 310 King Street turned into a right-wretched vessel of depravity as the PPD tub was filled for a fourth time, and every nature of villain and hero and contemporary misfit flowed in and out of those doors. The tub was filled a fifth time before I lost count and the memory went hazy. I do remember this; there was an Indian squaw with red lipstick, and a colored leather band with a feather held down her soft blonde hair. But what boded most clearly in that mist for me were her eyes. Pretty eyes that she closed slowly when she blinked to make them look prettier as she smiled at me. The rest was a dream. The kind of dream that's slipped away, but one never stops trying to remember.
