Friday night sights

Kids go out on Friday nights. There’s an idea of the promise of fun that makes the idea of standing in a pool of beer and gyrating your hips far less repulsive at midnight on a Friday night than at, say, noon on a Tuesday. It’s the idea of that promise that has me finding myself saying, yes, yes, I’ll be there, I’ll go, and the next thing I know, I’m there. We arrive in groups, and we stay in them as we navigate our way through the house and down the basement stairs, searching for the makeshift bar and the dancefloor. We fulfill our personal quotas of pre-dancing drink, and step out with less reservation – and less poise – onto the open space where two girls are already grinding on each other, oblivious to their surroundings. Without speaking we assume circle formation, and girls take turns dancing in the center, switching off intuitively, a combination of body language and dancefloor experience dictating the correct stretch of time any one individual can command the center stage. Couples begin to pair off, fingertips on bare skin signaling the right time to find a more intimate corner of the room. Other approaches are less successful, and brushed-off boys and girls circle the crowd, looking for another comfort. The two girls from the dancefloor have disappeared.

There is music – loud music – that makes the air pound, and it’s not until I step outside for fresher oxygen and a cigarette that I can feel the warning throbs in my forehead, the beginnings of a headache. The sudden pain of it surprises me – apparently the music masked more than just the throbbing. The patio is relatively quiet; the handful of people standing around are all here looking for the same escape from the heat and noise, and they talk in low voices to each other, fanning themselves, hands flapping ineffectually in front of their faces. It’s so hot. Cigarette smoke lingers in the air, before being dissipated by the night breeze.

We regroup by a low stone bench, each of us looking around to take inventory, making sure no one was left behind, and in this quick scan we locate and identify other groups. The dancefloor girls are here, and we end up taking in the view as one slides her hand past the back waistline of the other’s pants. We all lock eyes with each other for a moment, then quickly resume conversation, trying to mask the small guilt we feel for witnessing something more intimate than we had intended.

The porch just above – via which we had entered the house upon our arrival – is linked to the patio by a set of irregular wooden steps, and is teeming with more people than the dancefloor. A boy leans over the railing and calls down from above: do any of us want to share his cigar? His face is an indistinguishable mass in the dim lamplight, but we instinctively know he is a stranger. There is a certain separation anxiety involved in being in this place tonight; we seem to have all made a silent agreement not to split up. Three girls answer him – yes, yes, yes – and we all make our way up the stairs. The cigar is passed around while introductions are made, and in the din we are limited to the conversation we can strike up with our direct neighbors. The noise drowns the pounding in my head, and I feel no pain.

By nympheline

I think Andy Warhol is possibly the most insightful life-commentator that I know of.