Oh, we’re raging tonight. Raging with Stephii and Marcia, two Swiss lovelies that had crashed on Mike’s couch for two or so months last summer. They’re rad chicks. Stephii’s lives in a little mountain town, Flims, in the Alps by Luzern. But she drove into Zurich tonight to rage with Marcia, who lives here, and to take us away to the Alps in the morning.
But first things first. We make Sara and her brother dinner, the usual, pasta with chicken and veggies in tomato sauce. It’s so simple and still, it never gets old. And we just keep getting better at making it. Grant grills and spices the chicken, and Max and I chop away at the onions and garlic and zucchini and whatever other crunchy clues (green peppers, maybe?) there are to be strewn in. Mike boils the pasta. Daunting, I know, but hey, he just got here. Give him a break. It turns out delectable, as always, and the six of us can barely shove it all in our tummies. Better to cook a lot than a little, I think, especially on the road. Just in case though, we got a bunch of wine and whiskey at the market to wash it all down. Properly though, with drinking games. We teach them Fuck the Dealer and King’s Cup and a hippy-bohemian game with a penny and a lighter that Corinna taught us back in Berlin. It’s a good one. There’s a bowl, and on top of that bowl there’s a piece of newspaper pulled taught over it by a rubber band. The penny goes in the middle, and the objective of the game is to burn a hole in the paper without the penny falling in (to the bowl, that is; pay attention). It’s a wild game, one that keeps you on the edge of your seat as the flame burns fast or slow, or you don’t blow it out hard enough. And whoever loses has to drink from a cup in which everyone’s put a little of their own. Or a lot of their own. Regardless, it’s a bottoms up affair, and by the time we’re all out of booze, there’s shreds of burnt newspaper everywhere, burnt precisely so that Sara’s living room and the table look like a pyro’s studio space. And Max smokes one (three, really) more cigarettes on that balcony over Idaplatz before we leave the siblings to a quiet night of recovery (Sara has work in the morning) from the alcoholic hell we just put them through. Off gallivanting towards the bus that will take us to Marcia’s with a whiskey warmth in our soul and at the back of my mouth, and a silly, stutter swing in our step. It’s Mike’s first proper drunk in the Old World so we go, and we go hard.
From the metro stop that Marcia tell us, it takes a little while for us to find our way to her flat. No surprise there. And really no hurry. Just traipsing down quiet Swiss streets with the streetlights burning clean white. The streets turn to green-grassed walk-paths between three- or four-story (American stories) apartment buildings and sprawling lawns. It’s a late weeknight, so when we catch the slightest wind of loud music, it must be Marcia so we follow it, that muffled bass, and before long there’s laughter and shouting as well. Haha! Her neighbors must hate her.
Lord knows she doesn’t care though. Stephii the mountain fairy loves to snowboard. It’s her passion, and she kills it. Marcia kills it at raging. We knock on the door and she drags us in and I don’t think thirty seconds pass then she’s shotguning a beer with us in the kitchen and grabbing us all another. In the living room, there’s kids playing beer pong (we taught them how to play that summer last). Stephii gets us all to drink tall cans of this god-awful concoction called Desperado. It’s a beer-tequila mix with a hint of sugary lime, not something I’m particularly keen on trifling with, but what the hell, why not. The night’s getting dirty. And sloppy. And after we finish our Desperados with a cringe, it’s back to the bus with Marica and Stephii and their fun Swiss friends that love because we’re from California and we surf and they think we invented beer pong. We don’t bother correcting them. Why would we? We just ride, standing, trying not to fall about at each stop, hooting big teary-eyed laughs from all the forgettable hilarity of drunk night metro musings.
I don’t remember getting to the club. That’s not true. I remember being in front of that office-looking building and bulky Swiss bouncers in sharp suits shooing us with Swiss-French (or Swiss-German?) onto a snazzy, glass elevator going up the side, six stories, I just don’t remember getting off that caterpillar bus we took back into the city. Spotted recollection. But the good stuff sticks. When we walk into the club, it’s this monstrous ballroom sized thing, just a huge dance floor, a bar, and a DJ. It’s dark with lights strobbing our slowed retinas. And the girls are beautiful and full of dance, and we move with everything we’ve got. Grant and Max and Mike are still getting drinks at the bar, but I only swing back to it for some water when my swaying starts swaying too hard, and my knees start tickling. We’re there forever because when your drunk, dancing never gets old, just more difficult, like a mind’s challenge to the body, and I don’t think any of us are the type to shy away from that. Until the music stops that is. And the lights come on, the bright squinting ones that push you out and down the elevator. Out on the street at who knows what time, but everything’s closed. And we’re drunk and rowdy and talking loud, American English so that some of the club-goers littering the sidewalk shoot us funny looks, and turn back to their friends to laugh.
Mike sees it, makes eye contact, and nods up in their direction, “What’s up, bitch. Yeah, you Swiss motha fuckers, laugh it up.” It’s probably the whiskey. Or maybe the Desperados, but Mike and Max are set on fightin’ words. Boisterous, drunk English words of daring and hot blood, like outside some douche club on Sunset, and there’s four of the Swiss button-downs, so Grant and I know we’re in if anything goes down. Except we’re in Zurich and there’s a divide, a language barrier. One-sided though, because more likely than not, they understand most of what Mike’s yelling and Max behind him, and just taunt them with Swiss in a jeering tone, as Grant and I roll eyes and hold back.
Nothing comes of it though, and Stephii grabs the first cab she can, and we pile all in and I question, “Hey, honey, d’ya think KFC’s still open?” Sometimes when you’re wasted (check), you gotta play the stereotype, I guess. No big.
Nothing comes of it though, and Stephii grabs the first cab she can, and we pile all in and I question, “Hey, honey, d’ya think KFC’s still open?” Sometimes when you’re wasted (check), you gotta play the stereotype, I guess. No big.
