1st September, 2012
I love to party, but I don’t like most parties. Either they are boring and awkward (despite being an extrovert, I am often painfully shy), or there is copious amounts of drinking involved, neither of which makes me very happy. When Till told me that some of us were going to a party, and did I want to come, I deliberated a few hours. Finally, with the assurance that at least Kristine wanted to come home at a reasonable hour (relatively speaking), I agreed.
Around 10:30 at night, Kristine, Shanie, Till and I piled into the car, with Thomas following us in his own vehicle. We roared off into the silent night, winding our way up the mountain through ghostly trees. The moon was almost full, so it cast a silver light over everything. I felt that I was staring out the window at a fairyland: dark, sprinkled with crystalline dew, and devoid of human lights. Within ten minutes we reached the farm where the party was being held. We found a crowd of about fifty people, and a band getting ready to play. Their venue was a stable, with an extra veranda extending from the roof, supported by a few one-by-two posts.
The band was all decked out in costume. A few of the guys just wore pseudo steampunk outfits, but there was also a bearded nun, a bearded Marilyn Monroe, a teddy bear, and, uhm, Labyrinth’s Goblin King with a leopard-print shirt and barrettes in his hair… I think.
I stood around trying to look like I fit in. I said hi to a couple of Till’s friends, and noted that most of the people were drunk, but not outrageously so. Soon the music began: some sort of punk/funk/reggae music with a brass quartet (courtesy of the nun, Marilyn Monroe, and two others)! The lead singer looked like someone who would play French bartender #5 in a World War II movie: chubby-faced, pock-skinned, with a mustache that resembled a comb. Judging from his gyrations as he sang, I figured it was good that I don’t speak French well enough to understand what he was saying.
The audience was really into it: soon the entire stable area was crowded with people dancing and laughing and throwing straw into the air. Then one guy began climbing one of the one-by-twos… I still don’t know how it held his weight. He grabbed for a ceiling rafter, not realizing it was unattached, and brought both beams crashing down onto the audience. The band continued as if nothing had happened, and the people cheered while those of us on the sidelines laughed.
Since I didn’t understand the words and didn’t care to look at the band too often, I stood to the side and looked out at the landscape. In the light of the moon I saw rolling mountains stretching out at my feet, marked only by a single point of lamplight far down in a valley. The moon’s whiteness shone on me, but my vision was tinged from the side by the yellow disco-ball lights. I hugged my borrowed coat around myself tighter as I felt a cold breeze creeping up the mountainside.
Within an hour, I was ready to go, and fortunately some people shared that sentiment. Kristine, Shanie and I decided to ride home with Thomas. We piled into his car, and then he carefully tried to turn around in the driveway. He pulled forward onto what he thought was a level shoulder of grass. It was actually a two-foot ditch. His car nosedived into it. We three girls jumped out and pushed on it, freeing it from the ditch, and away we went, zooming down the mountainside under the almost-full moon, giggling and laughing at nothing in particular.
“That was fun!” Shanie said. “All the people, they are crazy, but that was fun.” She turned to me. “You have lots to blog about now!” I laughed and nodded. Within minutes, we were home safe and sound, and I returned to my bed with my head full of strange costumed men, and white and yellow light, and a blanket of silence over a valley crowned by a wild concert party.
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