Twilight begins to cover North St. Louis county. Soon the dark will take over as the night unfolds across the city. The headlights dim on the car as another parking space is filled. Rows of metal automobiles fill the lot in a dance of mechanical beauty. Here a nineteen eighty-nine Chevy Camero in winter-sky blue. There is a safety orange Volkswagen minibus decorated with the stereo-typical hippie flowers of the seventies. An angry avacado-green El Camino is nestled between an old Caddy and a brand new Geo Metro. Even in the fading light phantom heat ghosts can be seen wavering above the pavement. The Taco Bell is receiving fewer and fewer patrons. I sit watching all of this in anticipation of what the evening will surely bring for me.
A normal Saturday night at the house. A few of the most dedicated members mill about preparing the many rooms. The smell of cigarette smoke is already heavy, hanging in the humid air of summer. Street lamps go on outside as the darkness reaches their automatic sensors. I wander out to the back porch to check on the volleyball court. A young man with sandy-brown hair and darkly tanned body is finishing raking the sand into neat herringbone rows. I wave to him and he smiles back. Inside again I hear a familiar voice calling my name, mingled with music from the stere in the basement. Airbrushed flames haunt the walls and a sign above the doorway reads 'Hell: This way'. The staircase is darkly lit, if really lit at all. The risers are covered with green indoor/outdoor carpeting. As I reach the foot of the stairs a musty smell crinkles my nose. The blacklights on the ceiling illuminate my white shirt making it appear to glow with unearthly swamplight. I reach the crumbling D.J. booth with its bare bulb lamp and snaking electrical cords to find the owner of the voice. He laughs when he sees me, grabs me in a hug of pure love and the first stages of drunkeness, and asks if I wil dance this evening. I nod and my usual selection is added to the play list. Compact discs line the walls and lay higglety-pigglety on an old card table near the player. Cassette tapes sleep huddled together in organizer boxes, gathering the dust of neglect. A surrealistic painting, begun years ago and never completed, covers the rough, unfinished basement walls of the booth. Cracked and ageless bar stools stand like sentries around the dance floor. The dart room lies off the the left of the stairs with its purple and grey carpet, its worn and ragged cork dart targets, its dusty tally boards. Two of my comrads are playing a quick game of Cricket, using razor sharp darts that whizz through the air. There is slight nervous tension surrounding this room as a player knocks off a bull, much to the dismay of his opponent.
I hear footfalls on the floor above and go to greet the first guests. Four young women enter the front door loaded down with boxes of Natural Light beer and bags of Doritos. They are the regular party trash with their short shorts and tight, cut-off tee-shirts. One blond coed wears a teeny black leather skirt with thigh high stockings. Her white peasant blouse plunges severely at the neck to show off her heavily endowed chest. The harlequin makeup on her face seems too rough, too brash for her hidden age of eighteen. The other girls wear similiar glamour designed to make boys stare at and desire them. More party-goers enter the house and greet one another with hugs and kisses as if they've been friends for years. Out on the front porch again, I spot a pal of mine taking money and giving change. He checks identification cards and refuses to allow the rabble inside. The trickle of people swells to a babbling, giggling, raucous river. People move to the basement to fill the waiting icebox with drinks. Frightening concoctions are mixed on the sticky bar and served, sloshing nearly out of control, to thirsty mouths. Chosen vises are drunk, smoked, and smoked some more in the dense crowd of dancers. Three young men hurl themselves into one another in a frenzied dance of the entire body. Bodies gyrate against bodies as lovers move together in their secret, impassioned beds. Volleyball games are picked up at random. Party crashers are removed quietly and professionally. Punch is made in a twenty-gallon tub on the living room floor. Someone is vomiting in the upstairs bathroom while others waiting in the hall cover their ears to the guttural sound. I am picked up and whirled around by my dance partner, laughing, singing, happy to be there with all my joys around me.
The party has begun.
Well, maybe it's really more of a vignette than a short story.
Either way, it paints a picture of the perfect night at the Sigma Pi fraternity house, Delta Zeta chapter.
(~*
