Marge encouraged them to have a big party at the end of the year, and so the inaugural Rockin’ New Year’s Eve Bash at the Rusty Bucket Ranch was hastily planned, brought to you by a large keg of Miller Beer, with Bobby Brew doing a very disturbing Dick Clark impersonation. Marty had some new, military grade speakers that Jimbo salvaged from an old theater he was remodeling in the City, and there were so many great rock & roll albums, they wouldn’t have time to play them all before midnight. The surging creek next to the cabin was almost as high as the energy level, in anticipation of another great party. They were more careful now about inviting just the close friends they knew, but there were still several faces Marty didn’t recognize: those “friends of friends” who show up like flies on shit. The Quarters games started early now that everyone knew the drill, and people were disappearing regularly into various rooms to snort cocaine. Now he knew why Marge wanted to have a party with their bleacher creatures community from school. As the “cool mom” she was offered a toot by all the kids who had some blow, just because they were so fascinated to be doing lines with somebody’s mom. Marty was disappointed that there appeared to be way too much of the evil white powder at what was supposed to be a festive event. He missed the “good old days,” when the tribe could party sufficiently hearty on just pot and beer. Cocaine seemed to put a crazed edge on everyone, which made it hard to enjoy the simple, vapid fellowship of getting wasted together.
As the night wore on, and the stereo crushed rock like a stamp mill, the people who sniffed cocaine became increasingly annoying to those who didn’t. Marty, Chas, Iggy, and a couple of guys from SWAS were the only ones not putting anything into their nose. Mike’s side of the room was snowing like a Christmas globe with white powder, while Marty’s was smoky with buds. The coke-heads laughed too loud, moved too quickly, and listened not at all. They snorted anything that remotely resembled powder. Marty figured if he put Krishna’s kitty litter box out, someone would eventually try it. Eventually he inquired of Chas, “Is it my imagination, or is everyone at this party becoming an asshole?”
“Nope, it’s for real, man. The world is full of shit and it needs a way out.” He was going through Marty’s albums, trying to decide whether to play Wishbone Ash or April Wine next. The eclectic collection included some great new live albums by Aerosmith, Jimmy Buffett, and Kansas, and the amazing Blues Brothers. Too many great records, and not enough time! It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, and nearly everyone was behaving like over-caffeinated zombies. They lurched in and out of the bedroom door, grinding their teeth and pouring beer down their throats like it was water. When one of them managed to speak, it was a terse question like, “Do you know where I can get some more blow?” Marty told them to go find Mike & Annie, just so they would leave them alone. He knew Mike wasn’t selling anymore, and it was amusing to think he’d have to ward off the undead coke fiends all night. Just a little payback for all the lost sleep while he and Annie banged and binged in their shared room!
“Hey man, why are you sending these people to me?” Mike confronted his little brother later, and Marty could tell he wasn’t having any trouble finding coke, because he was sweating profusely. He was tailed by half a dozen hopeful fiends who were trying to appear as if they weren’t following him, but it was obvious because they were all lined up like baby ducks having a nervous breakdown. “I stopped selling that stuff! No more!!” he turned his head so his erstwhile entourage could hear it above the music. A few faded sadly back into the crowd to find other victims, while others remained, chiefly because they didn’t believe him. “Don’t tell anyone I still have an eighth left,” Mike confided to Marty on the sly, as if bestowing a special favor by sharing his secret.
“Well, you can have it, I hate that stuff,” Marty said, and Mike looked hurt, as if his brother’s opinion of the drug somehow applied to him as well. Marty realized then how a dealer becomes addicted to popularity nearly as much as to the drug he sells. “Don’t worry man, there’s plenty of other things to do. Hey, did you eat anything?” He had to yell louder than the stereo, which nearly busted his diaphragm. Mike frequently forgot to eat when he was sniffing lines. Marty grabbed an apple turnover from the junk food stash in his cabinet, and gave it to him. He also had some beef jerky, granola bars, and leftover Halloween candy in there, in case he got the munchies. (That would be the only food left in the house by morning.) Mike hungrily swallowed half of it in front of the remaining zombies, who were still tweaking because they could smell the white powder in his pocket. Marty accepted half the pie from him as a bonding ritual, and Mike gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder before rejoining the melee in the main room, with a string of awkward coke fiends following in a hopeful wake.
Marty asked Chas to guard his stereo, while he made the rounds to check on the house, and he saluted stiffly at attention, clicking his heels together. The noise got louder as he entered the main room, because they’d placed the nuclear-powered speakers out there, so the stereo could be controlled from the relative tranquility of the bedroom. He noticed a big difference in the crowd immediately. Whereas kegger parties were often infused with a jolly spirit of drunken camaraderie, the addition of toxic chemicals hardened the participants, fracturing them into distrustful little clusters of anxiety that were suspicious of all the other groups. Someone he didn’t know told him the sophomores in the corner were doing acid. Marty looked over, and Tom was making a fort out of the couch cushions with Randy inside. All around him, the people who didn’t have cocaine were ceaselessly pushing through the crowd in search of more, while those who did have some were paranoid and arrogant. It felt more like being in a P.O.W. camp than a party.
Even the Quarters game had an uncharacteristic belligerence to it. Rob was dominating the table, slaying all who tried to make him drink. He could bounce a quarter into a beer cup in his sleep, and those who knew him stood around and watched him destroy those who didn’t. His string of victories meant he really didn’t have to drink, except in consolation, as he often joined his vanquished opponents in chugging a cup or two. Bobby Brew played the “referee,” and used his oversized beer mug to keep pace with him, while Derek filled a plastic milk jug with beer from the keg every few minutes to top off everyone’s cups. Boobers, Dave, and Bart were among the crowd watching the fledgling party people try in vain to out-drink Rob. Some of the youngsters were getting a little green around the gills, and Marty brought in a bucket from the deck, just in case. The energy sparked and surged erratically through the crowd, in the same way the creek outside roared and twisted in its banks. The water was nearly up to the foundation from the recent rainstorms, and Marty was afraid some fool would walk out the back door and drown, so he wedged it shut. Meanwhile, Marge had become the ice queen of the party. Her door was wide open, which was highly unusual for her, and her room was packed with hopeful mendicants, but Jimbo’s hulking presence ensured that everyone behaved.
Tillie and Maryanne were dashing nervously in and out of Susie’s bedroom like squirrels, completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of cute nuts available. If they had any coke, they would have been instantly popular. Alas, all they had were Pepsis. (But Marty observed them sneaking cups of beer into the room nonetheless.) It was getting close to midnight and a few people were trying to watch the ball drop in Times Square on the TV, as if it was an event of national importance. “It happened three hours ago,” Marty informed them cynically, but they waved him off.
“Ten… nine… eight…” the crowd started chanting and crowding around the TV, while Stephen Tyler screamed “Dream On! Dream On!” over the big speakers. “Seven… six… five… four…” The Quarters game stopped momentarily, and the formerly anxious mob of tweakers linked arms in a false amity that suggested they knew what they were supposed to do, but would rather not. “Three… two… one… Happy New Year!!” Then all the pent-up emotions of the night came bursting out, in an explosion of exuberance that lifted the roof off the cabin, and slammed it back down again. Drunken young men hugged and cheered, while aggravated coke fiends tried to give each other high fives but messed up the timing, and glanced around furtively to see if anyone had been watching. Young teenage girls presented themselves for a kiss from the cute guys next to whom they had strategically maneuvered. Jimbo and Marge presided regally over the rowdy revelry, nodding solemn approval like the king and queen of the Twisted Madrigal Feast; benignly bestowing their blessings on over a hundred minors who were breaking laws that hadn’t even been written yet.
Back in his room, Marty put on the new Outlaws album for the third time, and passed on the joint Chas offered him. He was already tired, and wanted to stay up as long as possible. There was something very odd about the vitality of that party that he wanted to observe and sketch with his mind. After midnight, the energy quickly changed for the worse. The sophomores and other lightweights went home, and the hardcore party animals roamed the jungle with hollow, searchlight eyes, hunting their quarry. They wanted one thing only: more cocaine. Mike became an instant hero when he triumphantly pulled out his baggie of white powder. People got real serious then, and swept the beer cups and cigarette packs off the Quarters table with a dramatic flair, as if they were planning a great escape. “Give him room! Give him room!” Derek appointed himself the referee this time, so he would be sure to get some. Mike doled a little powder onto a mirror, and dozens of eyes acutely watched his every move, just in case he spilled some. He ceremoniously chopped the powder into fine lines, and called Marty over.
“The first one for my bro!” he commanded, and the jealous eyes of the crowd swiveled around to marvel at the lucky winner. What could he do? To refuse would set off a riot. Mike smirked because he knew he had him dead to rights, so Marty bravely took the rolled-up dollar bill used as a straw, and snorted the smallest line, making sure to follow proper etiquette. A chemical numbness seared his nostrils, his brain seized up, and his eyes watered, while he pretended to enjoy it. The ravenous eyes turned back to Mike to see who was next. There obviously wasn’t enough for everyone, and people subtly began jostling for position and suspiciously eyeing their neighbor. It struck Marty as a scene from King Rat, when the starving prisoners divvied up the food. After doling out a few lines to his favored friends, Mike emphatically rolled up his baggie, and slid it into his breast pocket. Fifty pairs of eyes watched his every move.
Chas – the zonked-out DJ – played one awesome album after another, while the Quarters Olympics resumed in earnest. There was still almost a half a keg left, and the party animals considered that a direct challenge to their beasthood. The first round of lines had been duly distributed by Mike, but everyone in the room was acutely aware of his left breast pocket, where he still had more. Bobby Brew and Derek appointed themselves his bodyguards, and obstructed anyone who tried to get too close. As the Man with the Coke, Mike could do whatever he wanted. Annie had gone home with the other lightweights, and he was enjoying his freedom and popularity immensely. Marty was buzzing with bogus energy and needed to do something, so he went for a walk outside. He helped a couple of guys he didn’t know find their way back inside, and checked the creek with a flashlight. It was hard to tell which was louder – the flood or the stereo. Standing on the bank next to the surging rapids, he could feel the bass lines of the music in his feet. Or was it the rocks and logs rolling around in the rapids? If anyone had fallen in there, nobody would know about it until they were found floating in Tomales Bay.
By the time he went back inside, Bart had passed out on the couch, and a few others on the floor next to him were being moved out of the way. The party was now downgraded to a concentration camp, Marty thought grimly, and the dead were being stacked like cord wood. Mike, the “King Rat,” was sitting crookedly on his throne at the Quarters table, like a pirate captain surveying a flotilla of defeated rivals listing off his port bow. Suddenly, Boobers turned green as a Grinch, and clapped his hand over his mouth in the universal pantomime of those about to puke their guts out. Marty grabbed the bucket and followed him to the bathroom, but he didn’t make it. He blasted sour beer all over the kitchen floor like a fire hose, and not a drop went inside the bucket! In his haste to get to the john, he slipped and skated on the smelly slime, grabbing the door so he wouldn’t go down. Marty helped him inside the bathroom and cleaned him up, then sent him to the clinic (Marge’s room), which was nearly full of destroyed partiers seeking refuge.
Marty returned to the main deck, and it was tilting to starboard. Everywhere he turned, some random rogue was ready to pass out, throw up, or piss in a corner. Their brains had been congealed into useless jelly, and they were no longer recognizable as bleacher creatures. Rob was slurring an argument with Dave about some meaningless point of Quarters protocol, while Derek, Bobby Brew, and Mike disappeared into Susie’s room to finish off the coke. Terry was passed out under the table, and Tom was poking around, to see if there was any more room for him to lie down. Randy’s feet stuck out from under a pile of couch cushions. Marty felt a bit woozy himself, and groped his way back to his bedroom. Chas looked up from the floor where he and Iggy laid on their sleeping bags (such clever lads), then put his head back down when he saw who it was. He’d already switched the stereo to KTIM so it would keep on playing music. Marty’s last coherent act was to flop onto his bed, which was just a few feet from the raging torrent outside his window. Somehow, he fell asleep amidst all the turmoil, with his cold, damp mattress swirling and spinning out of control through the night rapids. The last thing he remembered was leaning over and puking in his underwear drawer. Other than that, it was a totally awesome New Year’s Eve party!
The next morning, the din of the creek woke Marty up, the way the TV turns on suddenly when the power is restored. It sounded as if it was inside the house, but a quick glance out the window told him it was still in its banks. He staggered out of his bedroom like the sole survivor of a shipwreck. Bodies lay strewn and snoring all over the floor, with Bart and Dave sleeping end to end on the couch. Rob was curled up on the hearth like a huge bear. The noxious odor of vomit and stale beer was overpowering, and he opened a window to let in the cold, foggy air. Jimbo was the only other person awake, and he was blessedly brewing some coffee. This smell was more invigorating than he believed possible, and he realized he was starving. He opened a can of corn and slurped it down without hardly chewing. Then he puked it back up, and that was something that should not be described! Marty could barely keep down a cup of coffee, but after he did, he felt a little better. Jimbo was as resilient as an ox, and offered to go down to the store and get some food for everyone.
He soon came back inside with a panicked look on his face. “Marge’s truck is gone!” It took a moment for Marty to register what Jimbo was saying, and he presumed from all the drama that Marge was still asleep in her room, so she hadn’t taken it. They checked around and revived a few corpses to ask if they knew anything, but nobody was coherent, so Jimbo took his truck out to search the road. Apparently, someone had taken off in Marge’s Toyota truck, for God knows what reason. He came back half an hour later, with grave concern all over his rugged face. “I wonder if we should call the cops,” he mused, stroking his bushy beard pensively.
Marty was in no condition to drive, and Marge was still cluelessly asleep, surrounded by her comatose party minions, so it was up to Jimbo. He decided to drive into town and get some gas, which would allow him to search all the way to Fairfax. Then he’d check in back here, and if necessary continue looking out west. Marty had a huge headache, and quickly agreed that was a good plan. Over the next hour, a few other bodies stirred to life, stimulated by the smell of coffee. Chas, Iggy, and Maryanne had gone home to try and fool their parents into thinking they had returned much earlier. Mike was nowhere to be seen, and was probably crashed out in Susie’s room. Jimbo finally returned, shaking his head grimly. “I think we’d better call the sheriffs.”
He called the Pt. Reyes Station office, and strangely enough, they knew exactly what he was talking about. It seemed they had been accommodating Bobby Brew and Derek for several hours in one of their jail cells, after finding them staggering down a lonely stretch of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard just before dawn. The story was they had taken Marge’s truck for a joyride, but a roadside ditch took away all the joy, leaving them without a ride and barely able to walk. A passing deputy mercifully handcuffed them and threw them in the back of a patrol car, transferring them to their present location on a jailhouse bunk bed. Jimbo hired a tow truck in Pt. Reyes and rescued Marge’s truck, which was muddy and dented on the side but otherwise not too badly damaged. Then he bailed the guilty explorers out of the brig and bundled them in the back of his truck, while Marty followed through the fog in Marge’s Toyota. In those days, juvenile perpetrators were routinely released into the custody of their guardians, who were entrusted to impose the appropriate discipline. The two shamefaced scoundrels were suitably chagrined, but Marge didn’t punish them, or even call their parents. She just shrugged and said, “Boys will be boys,” and went to get a cup of coffee.
