#5 Raving
#5 Raving
"Tigers and mermaids and winged sultry fairies and rabbits and tie-dyed bears danced."
(Last time, the guys snuck into the MTV Beach House.)
“It’s so dark out here,” I said a few hours later. We had pulled away from the highway and were following a service road before Ralph instructed us to take a turn. A train shrieked in the distance.
“You’re sure—down here?” Danny asked. “I don’t see a sign.”
“That’s what Fernando said—that’s the point.”
We were somewhere in the industrial shadows of New Jersey. The moon hadn’t fully risen, so I couldn’t quite tell what was around us. We drove past a shroud of trees.
The station wagon went over a large bump in the road and bucked like a bull. I jumped.
“Hey, be careful,” Pat yelped. “I’m trying to recuperate here from a terrible case of private-security brutality.”
“They didn’t yank your arm that hard,” Danny said.
“They didn’t want to unleash the fury of the McCanns,” he conceded.
“I see something,” Ralph said, with the sodden hope of a sailor thinking he sees land.
A distant glamour dyed the horizon like a fluorescent fog. A guy in a neon yellow vest approached the car. “You can park over there.”
We drove past anonymous rows to park the car. Against a red-tinged sky, vast shadows towered over us. The beams of more cars advanced in the distance like the vanguard of an alien army.
“It feels like we’re on the surface of the moon,” I said.
As we walked closer to that pleasure dome of fantasy, a hum suffused my blood. It grew louder and louder as I walked closer to the entrance. A guy with dreadlocks charged us admission and put neon green paper bracelets around our wrists.
We walked into a cataclysm of sound and light. Techno foamed as fluorescent flashes swung through the darkness. The beams raked like claws across my eyes. The tiny shards of whirling disco balls reflected the thousand pulses of light.
The dance floor was a crawling mass of bodies writhing together in one great erotic organism. So many bodies pressed together—grinding, groping, grasping—a crush like a honey-bee hive. Neon-tipped hands waved in the air to the frenetic thunder of the bass. This was youth, mad in a summer frenzy. The thronged bodies jumped like the floor was a trampoline. Creatures of fantasy sported before us. Tigers and mermaids and winged sultry fairies and rabbits and tie-dyed bears danced. Bare skin glittered with sweat and tiny sparkling dust.
Ralph had his cellular phone out. “Hello....I’m here....I can’t quite hear you....where? where?” He wandered off into the noise.
“Let’s get a drink,” Pat said, “to start the night off.”
“No thanks,” Danny said, waving us on.
The rave’s heat massaged my body like countless fingers. Cloying, clutching, clinging everywhere. I staggered through the grinding crowd and somehow made it to the bar. A wild smile on his lips, Pat’s teeth flashed blue and green and red. A thousand scents—perfumes and colognes and pheromones—tangled around me. His eyebrows bent in perpetual irony and his arm slung around a woman with flowing dark hair, a late-night comic with a new cable show walked by.
I felt a flutter of eyes upon me as we sat at the makeshift bar.
“Now this is the place to be, Charlie,” Pat declared, as he shot me an elbow-nudge.
“I guess so,” I said. All those eyes were like the instantaneous flash of a predator—weighing, measuring, calculating. Was I famous? Was I cute? Was I rich? Was I worth knowing, or an insignificant distraction?
Pat seemed oblivious to the stares. He waved two fingers at the bartender. “Two shots of tequila—for me and my friend.” He slapped me on the back as the skinny guy with barbed-wire tattooed around his left bicep poured the drinks. “Just go with the flow.”
We raised our glasses in a neon salute and downed them. Like a comet, the tequila etched a burning trail down my throat.
Through the crowd, two nymphs approached us. The taller one’s wavy blonde hair fell across her shoulders like a golden train, and the shorter one had smoldering dark eyes and a rhinestone headband that held back her raven hair. Both wore spandex bikinis—the blonde in bronze and the brunette in pink. A sheen washed over their toned stomachs, all the way down to the waistbands of their bikini bottoms. Fabric fairy wings peeked over the blonde’s back. They both had elaborate, glittering facepaint, adorned by beads of sweat. Lilac streaks reached out from the brunette’s eyes, and a silvery band reached like a blindfold across the blonde’s face.
“That is so intense out there,” the shorter one said.
“I know. I just get so exhausted,” the taller one replied.
“Don’t you need just like a recharge?” the brunette said.
Pat pounced at their invitation. “What would you ladies like?”
“How about some powershots?” the blonde asked.
“Ah...” Pat looked at me. I had no idea.
The brunette said, “They’re really good. They’re like an instant refill of energy. They might even be an aphrodisiac or whatever.”
Pat ordered the shots.
They leaned on either side of us—the blonde near Pat and the brunette near me. “I don’t know if I’ve seen you guys here before,” the blonde said.
“First time,” Pat replied.
“You’re lucky guys, then,” the girl next to me said. Her perfume, from whatever its scent had been extracted, had a sultry, tempestuous flair. Her face was smooth—not a hint of freckles. “It’s like anything can happen here.”
“Really?” That word almost sounded like a purr in Pat’s mouth.
“Yeah, you know Johnny Depp was here last week?”
The four gleaming shots came forward, filling with the music’s momentary pulses, like blinking lights—a warning, an announcement, some emblem of indecipherable meaning.
“To new opportunities,” Pat said as he hoisted his glass.
The pounding noise absorbed any echo of glass upon glass before I felt that swift, sweet fire pour down my throat. By the time that drink had bolted down to my belly, I so longed to breathe.
“What is this?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” the blonde said. “I know it has some fruit juice and a lot of Vitamin C and some amino acids or something.”
“It makes me feel all bubbly inside,” the girl with the headband confided to me. Maybe it was those bubbles that made her seem on the verge of giggling. “So you from around here?”
“No.” I swallowed and tried to be bold—just like Pat would be. “We’re adventurers. From the Northeast. Massachusetts.”
“Oh really—wow. That’s so far.” She made that distance sound like an accomplishment. “We’re, like, real Jersey girls.”
“Oh, cool.”
“So what brought you here?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “A car.”
I immediately wanted to pucker after I said those words. A car. Was that bold? No, it was awkward.
But she just smiled. “You know, there are people who come from all over to go here. This is bigger than some raves in the city, and, because it’s out there, not just anyone can come.”
“Why do you think we all came here?”
She shrugged. “It’s a rave. We’re all looking to escape. We’re all looking for a good time.”
I kneaded my forehead with my fingertips. My face tingled. “We’re all looking for something good,” I said, and I could not tell if it sounded like resignation. “And what are you looking for?”
“Something. Anything,” she said and laughed.
“We should dance,” the blonde suddenly declared.
“Let’s!” Pat sprung to his feet.
The girl with the headband pulled my hand and dragged me like a limp fish toward the dancing mob. “Come on, let’s dance,” she said, her voice a sultry invitation in the noise.
Na ah ah ah ah ah
Ain’t gonna stop it
Na ah ah ah ah ah
Just gotta hold on to it
Na ah ah ah ah ah
Just keep on stepping
Na ah ah ah ah ah
The brunette pulled me into the thicket of cavorting zombies. Around me, shimmering bodies jumped with wheeling arms. Pacifiers swung around necks and pumped in mouths. Some suckled at empty air, and jaws writhed in a frantic search for satisfaction. Next to me, one shirtless guy shook as though pierced by an onslaught of lightning bolts. His neck whirled his head around like a tornado, and an inarticulate wail of desire poured out of his trembling lips.
She danced with protean ease. She shook her hips like she was riding an invisible bull. The string-ties of her bikini bottom swung through the air in a tantalizing suggestion—how easy to pull—just a liquid twist. She drew close. Then ground herself against me. Then leapt in time to the music, her raven hair tempest-tossed.
The thudding synthesizer rammed me like a jackhammer. It sent my organs spinning and caused the blood to slosh and crash against the narrow walls of my veins. Soon, my feet were jumping, too. My arms reached and reached. Neon sweat bloomed on my skin. I tried to ride the throbbing cascade.
“Isn’t this fun?” she called through the maelstrom.
You know I want you.
Cut to the chase—
I just gotta hold you.
And on and on and on and on
Let’s get it on and on and on and on....
The swap-fever heat tightened its grasp. One rainbow flash after another punched my eye. White bulbs—ecstasies of polished light—turned cartwheels in my field of vision.
Her mouth pounced upon mine. Her lips were sure and practiced, her tongue subtle and skilled. She tasted of alcohol and sparkling lipstick. Her hands roved—behind, between, above, below. Out of instinct, my body stirred.
The notes fell on, unending—wave after wave after wave. The numberless notes threw themselves against my stubborn, yearning flesh and crashed—evaporating into the open air. They poured in my brain like frenzied bees, swarming along the myelin sheaths. The records whirled blurs on turn tables. The hand—fickle, opportune, indifferent—broke the course of needle, running from groove to groove. As a hand pumps a trombone, it ran up and down a zipper, letting loose a warped helium-charged buzz. Up and down, up and down, scratch scratch scratch.
But the instant turned, and that climbing balloon suddenly seemed a swelling monument of hollowness. I glimpsed myself. All my nerves clenched into a cold fist.
“What?” she asked.
Inside, I staggered. “I’m sorry. I’m, ah...”
“What? Do you have a girlfriend or something?”
“No, not really.”
“Whatever. Let’s just have some fun. Whoever she is, whoever you are, it doesn’t matter.” Her perfume slipped through the air like an undertow. Her voice floated on the electronic spasms. “There are lots of opportunities.” She leaned closer.
“For?” I asked.
“For anything,” she said. Anything—a hand running up my arm, drawing fingertip after polished fingertip across my flesh. Anything—the whine of a saxophone, brassy-bodied and long and slow. Anything—the amber of champagne, glittering with bubbles that rise in a cyclone.
I looked at her face. Two promising eyes. Lips burnished to a kissable strawberry red. Tresses that tumbled across the bare glittering skin of her arms and chest and back. The rhinestones of her headband flashing with reds, greens, and purples.
Anything—a heaviness fell upon me. I felt my arms again and the worn sinews of my legs and each individual strand of the spiderweb of muscles across my face. My voice gurgled out of the clog of my throat. “You’re you, and I’m me.”
Her head tilted in confusion.
And then, myself weighing on myself down to the soles of my sneakers, I walked away. I wandered through the weight of dark bodies—through the black shoves and bumps and stumbles. The lights hit my face like candied flares. Arms pushed me...hips shook into me...the blaring music rose. As the sweat of the dance floor frothed into a haze, oxygen drowned in the eddies of carbon dioxide.
I struggled past the crowd and leaned against a cool, dark wall. The lights whirled in my stomach. A train seemed to rush out of the black mesh speakers and pierce my stomach . The drums pounded as though they were beaten by rows of go-go girls dancing atop spiraling platforms.
Everything faded from me. I closed my eyes, and the flashes battered my eyelids. Everything was pouring out of me. Everything was sucking into that great big hollow in my guts. For a moment, I felt like water, touching and taking from all around me, drawn by lunar aspirations, drifting, fluid. Anything—anything—so hollow.
“Dude,” I heard a voice say, “you don’t look too good, dude. You need to like chillax.”
“I…I…I…” And I didn’t know how to make my tongue shape the words.
Shadows walked around me—throbbing in the distance. My brain rotated in my skull. My chest mumbled.
“Charlie?” I knew that voice.
“D—Danny?” I squinted up at him.
He squatted down and put his hand on my forehead, which I suddenly realized was coated with sweat. “You look—you look—”
Suddenly, like a flaming knife, a high whine cut off his words.
I lurched upward. “Whatsthat?”
Danny looked around quickly. “It sounds like a fire alarm.”
The shrieking echoed in my jaw. The sweet, heavy saliva at the back of my throat drained away.
The music had stopped. Instead, a thronging darkness, as the crowd of shadows searched for the exit. The mist of sprinklers filled the air. The pinpricks of water fell cool upon my face. A hint of smoke slithered through the hallway. The thrilling dance and the flush of music were gone. The nymphs had departed—or were departing. No fairy face-paint could be seen now. Over all, the sirens blared, killing all words of flirtation or invitation or anything else.
The floodtide of people surged through the doors, carrying me with them. The shadows poured out around me. I wandered through the crowd of strangers. The dark night and the vast barren plain of dust carried away all scent of perfume or cologne or body paint or sweat. Some people groped catatonic through the darkness. Others had run to their cars, and the groans and rumbles of starting motors hummed underneath the fragments of speech around me. A few people—young bravos and gossamer sylphs alike—were throwing up. Away from the throbbing music and crowded dance floor, everyone around me seemed lost, displaced, and utterly uncharmed.
In a spurt of headlights, I saw Pat staggering amidst the crowd. He seemed to be looking for something. “Pat!” I called.
“Charlie! Have you seen Danny and Ralph?”
I shook my head. “Danny earlier, but I lost him in the crowd.”
“You’re not the only one who lost something. Or someone.”
We walked toward the periphery of the cloud of shadows. “Oh, that girl you were dancing with?”
“Her?” He emitted a burp of a laugh. “I saw Amelie Darfani. Hair was different—maybe she had a wig on or something—and a lot of make-up, but I could tell. I could tell. I was grinding with this girl, and then Amelie Darfani just slips through the crowd. Now my head’s spinning, and I’m racing through the dance floor looking for her. It was like a labyrinth there, Charlie, a labyrinth. And I don’t know what it is, but my head is popping, and I’m looking for her, and I’m looking and I’m looking. But I never actually find her. I knew she was there—I know she was there—but I could never find her.”
Danny was waiting outside the car when we got there. “Did you see Ralph?” he asked.
“No,” I said. I leaned against the station wagon and looked at the giant building, which no longer quivered with pounding notes. “I wonder what happened.”
“I don’t know if this is true,” Danny said. “But I heard some people were smoking near some curtains by one of the doorways and they just went up. Or maybe it was a trash can.”
“Lucky us,” Pat said. He slumped down in the backseat and massaged his forehead with his hand.
And there came Ralph, sauntering through the night. “Found you at last.”
“And what put such a smile on your fuzzy face, PL?”
The smile almost seemed smug. “Music. Dancing. Kissing. And, ah….”
“You’re as high as a kite.” Pat waved his hand in dismissal.
“So you found someone?” I asked.
Ralph squinted and nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Her name was, ah, Amy. Or was it Alexa? Alice? It was kinda hard to hear.” He shrugged. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter.”
It mattered, I wanted to answer. Names mattered. Faces mattered. There had to be a deeper joy out there beyond the carnival of appetite. Or that’s what I told myself, as we drove away from the graveyard of neon lights.
Travel Journal Entry #2
The past few days have been a blur—you know, the way the first days of school can be? It’s like it takes time for your brain to adjust. So I’m spinning and trying to catch my breath.
Right now, it’s a sunny afternoon in Uncle Neil’s backyard. Lana and Kristy are by the pool, Sarah’s tutoring my cousins in geometry (in the summer—come on!?), and I’m just breathing in the warm air. Breath caught, I think?
True confession: I miss journaling. Yes I’m a total nerd but that was one of the things I looked forward to every night back in middle school: me and my fuzzy pen and my sticker-covered journal. It was a chance to get my thoughts out. A chance to organize my thoughts. Even a chance to see who I was, who I was becoming? And then I got so busy with the becoming that I didn’t have time anymore.
The performance last night was…uhhh…weird. Picture playing Beethoven (oh Ludwig, you heartthrob) in an elementary school cafeteria with everyone sitting in tiny chairs (because, you know, it’s an ELEMENTARY SCHOOL). Like Kristy said, “It sounds pretty exciting to be part of a cross-country string quartet.” But that’s what summer’s for—trying something different…doing weird things…eating Ben and Jerrys and dancing to Spice Girls at 11:30 at night.
Lana this morning: “Is it a sign that I’m getting old if I think that two in the morning is too late to go to bed?” (We got sucked into watching a “Laverne and Shirley” marathon.)
Sarah: “It’s a sign that you’re growing up.”
There’s a difference between growing old and growing up. You can grow old without growing up. (Tell that to Uncle Neil, who’s still dating like twenty-five-year-olds.) Can you grow up without growing old? Maybe sometimes you need to be a little childish. To leave common sense behind. (Yeah, sure, Bonnie, you’re going to graduate school to study the violin—you’re rolling and rolling in common sense.) But being able to slip into kid mode seems important somehow…maybe even to keep yourself sane.
Take what we all now call the “C situation.” Yeah, just invite this cute guy (who definitely is not—no way—a stalker) to meet you at a wedding in Kentucky like 2000 miles away. It was fun to say that. How many times do you get to invite a definitely not a stalker to crash someone’s wedding? But here’s the thing I can tell you and no one else (flip to the next page so that Future Me can tear it out): I’m nervous either way. I want him to come. I didn’t think of that when Lana tossed out that invite but now I know I’ll be disappointed if I don’t see his face there. It’s weird, isn’t it, how something can make you more hopeful and more vulnerable? And if he actually does come—him and his goofy friends (Lana thinks that Pat is pretty hot, TBH)—what then?
It’s fun to be a kid sometimes.