16.2 – Party! Party! Party!

To prepare for the big kegger party, they moved a lot of stuff out of the house and into the shed, and took down anything that could get broken. Marty covered the family heirloom couch with plastic, but it looked so weird that he took it off again, not wanting to give their guests the impression they were in a senior rest home. There was still some vestige of festivity for a party left over from his childhood, and he gaily hung some crepe paper that quickly sagged in the humid redwood grove. It never really mattered, because the guests always wound up looser than the decorations. There was no doubt that young people those days were partying hardier than ever before in history. There were students at their high school who got drunk every day! The nearly-legendary Bobby Brew was one of them.

Nobody could figure out how such a small body could consume so much alcohol and still function. Bobby defied the equilibrium of physiology daily. He must have had some genetic mutation in his liver that absorbed the impact of the alcohol, and he chain-smoked, too! Marty had a serious chat with him one day about his health, but he just laughed it off with one of his sarcastic jokes. “Good health ain’t all it’s cracked up to be,” he announced after chugging another Miller High Life (the only bottled beer he drank), “It’s just the slowest way to die.”

Marty wondered if he would live long enough to reach the legal drinking age of 21. “Maybe you could donate your liver to science,” he suggested innocently. He could extend a sarcastic volley with the best of them.

“Yeah, they could tap it like a kegger, and party off it for a week! Hyuk, hyuk!” Marty had to laugh, too. Bobby Brew had the most infectious, goofy guffaw, and rubber band lips that spread into a wide smile that covered half his face. He wasn’t just the life of the party – he was more like a rodeo clown.

“I drink, therefore I am!” Marty parroted the Monty Python sketch like a good bloke. (He could sing the entire song, but it only made him look weirder than he already was.) Conversations at a kegger party were usually like that: weird, but inanely profound.

In the early afternoon their closest friends began showing up, because they’d been told to come early. Marge wanted to have a large group of “family” present when the marginally invited guests started to arrive. Annie and Boobers were there, of course, and all his brothers. Rob, Dave, Terry, and the other guys that hung out at the bleachers were drinking already, priming themselves to patrol the grounds with the dedication of a paramilitary security force. Otter and Rabbit showed up with a familiar bearded face: good ol’ Jimbo, back from Oregon and exuding the tentative, macho confidence that came from having reached a truce with Marge. Marty gave him a big hug, and was truly glad to see him. He and Marge stood next to each other, dubiously posing as responsible adults under the circumstances. Otter tapped the first keg (all three were in new plastic trash cans filled with ice), and the party was officially started. There was a rush of anticipation as a wave of more bleacher creatures arrived, and streams of party people were soon pouring down from the driveway, having parked their cars in places unknown. Marty cranked up the stereo, and switched to more popular forms of rock & roll, with Bad Company being an apt first choice.

The front deck and yard filled up fast, and a crowd of people started a fire in the pit down at the picnic grove, so Otter went to check them out. He returned with a half-full bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and reported that they had purchased a campfire permit. One after the other, the loudest rock & roll records were blasted on Marty’s stereo. He propped his bulky, industrial strength speakers up on his window sill, and played the role of DJ. All night long, the entire canyon rattled with the blastoff of Boston, the eruption of Van Halen, and the apocalypse of AC/DC. After setting up a stack of LPs on the spindle, he pushed his way through the crowded main room to look out the front door. He saw Ent’s head poking above the crowd, so the McAuliffe clan must have arrived. There were already a lot of faces he didn’t recognize, and he estimated the number of guests was over two hundred already.

Marty roamed the house and yard constantly, wanting to be everywhere at once – so he could soak in the atmosphere and capture the images for his cartoons. Some dudes were playing quarters on the melamine table that had been left in the main room for just that purpose. The entire house smelled like beer and cigarettes. There was a gaggle of nervous babes crowding the bathroom as usual, so the back door over the creek became the unofficial men’s room. There were about ten times as many dudes as babes, so the frightened young ladies traveled in packs for safety, the way a herd of gazelle moves apprehensively through lion territory. Marge had locked herself in her room, and Jimbo was nowhere to be seen, so the underage house guests lost their adult supervision for a while. It was true that the number of people at the party who were legally old enough to drink could have fit inside one car, but that probably wouldn’t have turned out very well.

Marty stood on the kegger deck, which also served as a kind of stage built on the front of the house, and surveyed a front yard full of teenagers laughing, smoking, or talking loudly over the music. Some were even dancing – or possibly having an epileptic fit – he wasn’t sure. It was starting to get dark, and the zombies that had been up in the driveway doing lines in their cars now came down and energized the scene with their nervous enthusiasm. Little Jason was up there in his uncle’s old police hat, making all the tweakers nervous. He used his flashlight to knock on the windows of cars full of coke fiends, and totally freaked them out. Marty went out back where the music was blocked by the bulk of the house, and could hear passionate noises in the bushes near the shed. Nobody in his family went back there, because of a huge patch of poison oak, and he thought, maybe I should warn them? But it was already too late, and anyway, who was he to spoil their fun? He walked down to the creek to see what was making the splashing noises, and found several linemen from the football team, hurling boulders into the creek with their shirts off. That’s what happens when there’s not enough females in the tribe.

By the time it got dark, the first keg was drained and rolled unceremoniously off the deck into the creek. Marty could see many cans and bottles lying around, and the trash cans were full already. Everyone in the crowd was a little tilted to one side by now, and a cheer went up as the second keg was tapped, to the strains of the Allman Brothers being tied to the whipping post. By this time he didn’t recognize half the people. They must be coming from other schools, or perhaps a couple of tour buses had pulled in to the driveway. He talked with Bart, another friend from the bleachers, who arrived later and reported he couldn’t even drive into their road – it was completely clogged with parked cars, with people partying inside them. He had counted over a hundred before he stopped keeping track. New faces kept streaming down from the driveway like an escalator at rush hour, and the yard was starting to look like a Day on the Green.

Marty went inside the house where Boobers and Derek had invented a hilarious new game. They and several other friends were hanging out in the crowded kitchen and grinning like cats at a mouse carnival. When a stranger approached and asked “Where’s the bathroom?” They all immediately pointed towards the back door (the one where the deck was missing), and pretended to resume their conversation. The unwitting visitor would walk right out into thin air, feeling for a light switch – sometimes catching himself before falling four feet into the dark, and sometimes not. Each time, there was laughter and high fives all around from the perpetrators. “Twenty-seven!” somebody yelled.

“But guys have been pissing out that door all night!” Marty commented to Derek, incredulously.

“Yup,” Boobers’ little brother nodded slyly, “They’re so pissed, they’re falling in the piss and getting pissed off!” He laughed like that was the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard. His eyes were as red as the tail lights of Marty’s truck, and he punched him affectionately in the arm.

Meanwhile, instead of getting mad, the victims of this ruse would circle around the house to the front door, grinning and weaving, and pushing their way through the crowd inside, until they got to a strategic spot where they could hear the next sucker ask, “Where’s the bathroom?” Then they (and all the other victims) would point enthusiastically towards the back door, and roar with triumphant vengeance when they booby-trapped the latest victims. This went on for quite a while, until the kitchen was so packed with vengeful spectators that new prospects couldn’t get in anymore. Marty saw Marge’s door attempt to open, and then it closed again. He deduced that the adults thought better of trying to exert any influence on what had become an uncontrollable mob of high school drunks.

The climax of the party was the crescendo of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, which inspired an impromptu air guitar contest, spilled countless cups of beer, and rattled the windows with the exuberance of reckless youth.

“And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our souls
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all is one and one is all, yeah
To be a rock, and not to roll!”

All this time, the Greatest Rock & Roll on Earth had been blasting away on Marty’s stereo, so someone else must be changing the LPs. He pushed and edged his way about ten feet to the door of his room, and shoved his way inside. The heavy duty speakers were vibrating on the windowsill, and he could feel the bass lines in his feet. Mike & Annie were there, and many of his closest friends, mixed in with some older dudes he didn’t know, and the latter were going through his albums, sorting them into piles of “What the fuck is that?” and “Omigod, we have to play this next.” Marty rescued a few loose LPs on the floor, wiping them off and trying to find the jackets in a sea of blue-jeaned legs, crushed beer cups, dirty sneakers, cigarette butts, beer cans, dirty laundry (was that somebody else’s underwear?), and God knows what else. He spread the word among his friends that he wanted everyone out of his room whom he didn’t know. He had to hold his lips up to their ears and yell to be heard. Then Annie introduced him to her cousins, and Mike pointed out a few guys from work, and Marty met Bart’s older brothers, and hardly anyone left at all.

There was a loud crash out on the deck. Marty and several guys including Mike, Bart, and his brothers, hustled out there as fast as they could, pushing a wedge through the mob in the main room. They saw the Quarters game was still going strong, and the hardwood floors were soaked with spilled beer. By the time they got to the deck, the second keg had been dispatched into the creek, and the cheers were going up for the tapping of the third one. It was close to midnight, but the party showed no signs of slowing down. The crowd in the front yard was shifting and flowing from side to side in a raucous, drunken undertow. There was a large bonfire going down in the picnic grove, where he could see Ent’s head and Otter’s battered cowboy hat, so he assumed all was well down there. The driveway was eerily lit by the headlights of cars full of people, who were hopeless in their desire to actually drive anywhere, due to the sheer number of vehicles jammed in behind them… all the way back to the highway. Not surprisingly, Marty saw two Marin County Sheriff’s deputies picking their way through the crowd, headed down the path to the front door. He decided it was time for his mom to make an appearance.

He slipped inside and knifed through the human debris, telling the strangers sniffing cocaine on his grandmother’s picture that the police had arrived. The word spread like wildfire, and party people began jumping out the back door like rats from a burning ship. Marty banged on Marge’s door. “Mom! The sheriffs are here!” There was a thumping noise and a crash from inside, and Jimbo pushed out, pulling on the straps of his overalls. He disappeared into the main room, and Marge came out, straightening her clothes and looking rather wasted, herself. “Come on,” Marty said, “Put your arms around my waist!” He half-dragged her to the front door, which was easier now that the house was emptying fast.

The deputies were talking to Jimbo on the front deck. They were very mellow, explaining that the vehicles blocking the road were a hazard in the event of an emergency, and they had to ask their guests to move their cars. They didn’t mention that nearly all the “guests” were underage, and beer was everywhere. Bobby Brew still sat near the keg, which had been hastily covered with an old tarp. All this time, dozens of car owners were bushwhacking their way through the dark forest, cursing loudly and groping their way up the embankment, or splashing across the creek in their zeal to avoid the sheriffs. The deputies didn’t care so much about the illegal activities – they just wanted everyone to be safe. When they heard engines starting, and saw headlights in the driveway, they left to assist as best they could so nobody drove off the cliff. Marty heard later that one college guy was arrested for drunk driving when he slid his car off an embankment into a tree. Fortunately, nobody got hurt, and the crowd thinned out by about 90%, leaving just their closest friends (whose cars were parked nearest to the house anyway, so they couldn’t leave even if they wanted to).

It was time to put on some mellower music, and encourage people to either leave, or settle down somewhere and wait for morning. It didn’t work. Not even John Denver could drive them away. There remained nearly an entire keg on the deck, and it was still ice cold and delicious. Bobby Brew slumped in a folding chair right next to it, with the spigot in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and yelling at the top of his lungs, “Thank God I’m a country boy!” He had appointed himself the official bartender, and was alternately filling cups and his mouth with beer. By now, he didn’t even need a cup. He just threw his head back, and poured the ice-cold Heineken down his throat, without touching the spigot to his lips. Often it splashed on his face and shirt, until he was soaked in beer, and completely in his element. From time to time, there were drunken yells far off in the forest, and answering calls from the highway across the creek, as wayward party animals tried to find a ride home.

Gradually, the voices and automobile noises dwindled as the night wore on, leaving their peaceful little redwood grove shocked and dazed. It was safe to say that at the party’s peak, there were well over five hundred people in that little corner of the woods, expending energy like an active volcano. Marty suddenly realized he forgot to party as much as he normally might have; just for the sake of patrolling his house and property to observe the spectacle from as many perspectives as possible. At last, he could finally relax with a cold cup of Heineken, and he plunked his body in a battered folding chair next to the popping campfire. The coals were thick and fierce with heat, and cast an orange glow on the drooping branches. There seemed to be some metal structure melted in the fire, and later he discovered it was the other folding chair. In the wee hours of Sunday morning, he said his own kind of prayers in the cathedral grove of redwoods, and fell asleep.