Amborsia by the backdoor, Sleepy Hollow in the MCM, October, If Your Going to San Francisco by Trance, Hunter S. Thompson/Jefferson Airplane Techno.

After definitive misadventures on Friday night, I was dedicated to a sober saturday. The regatta at Yale had not gone particularly well. Nick G, my Hanover, NH skipper, and myself were WAY too heavy for the 3-5 knot breeze we found at Yale Corinthian Yale Club.

Fortunately, Will "Turbo" Turnbull, dropped some serious heat and won the A division. We finished third over Yale, Harvard, and Salve, but below Conn. College and URI.

We booked it back to Providence in time for me to spending 3 hours cleaning up my room and doing laundry. I scrubbed my floor with a sponge, then with resolve cleaning spray and finally with Clorox bleach wipes. It was spic and span. I was absolved of my great sin by cleaning so thoroughly.

The night grew later. Knowles got back from MIT, and we talked over Riots in Keeney with Evan at the Ratty. It was inevitable that some serious carnage go down a Brown. It was inevitable that radical freshmen, (i.e. me, Evan, and Jeff) holed up in Keeney and brought national media attention by rioting in the dorm and demanding withdrawal from Iraq and bigger cups in the dining hall.

We decided that we would request water from the government, hit it with high amounts of acid and then distributed it to the detriment of our classmates. Things were turn ugly, people would begin tripping out evil. We would leak a story to the press that the government had given us acid-laced h2o. We will embroil the world in cynicism and controversy.

We would prevail, and when the citadel fell, there would be no leadership nor retribution we would part of the maddening crowd, incapable of leading a riot or of any culpability.

We got back to my room and drank a six pack of Newport Storm while watching an episode of Family Guy that featured Brown University heavily.

Theresa showed up at 11:30 and demanded to know what we were doing. She told us about Ambrosia, the top-notch party that was going on in Faunce House. It was the definitive hipster-cognazanti-rave. It was upstairs, and there was a line of more than 200 people waiting to get in. The line went up the stairs and onto the Main Green. There was no way that I was waiting in this line.

Jeff and Evan abadoned me to the dream that I would get into a party people had been waiting for two hours to enter. I snuck halfway through the line on the cause of bathroom needs and then switched to the far stair-case and tried the backdoor. It was a no-go. There was heavy security and the GHM staff wouldn't have anyone up the stairs.

I explained that I had already been up. They explained that I needed to go around.

Pretty soon, I was going to be completed twisted. I had one more shot for the killer rave before I gave up, called it a night and slept in my recently cleaned sheets or played Pacman on the screen at the MCM.

I went into the mail room and checked my mail. There was nothing in the box. I remembered a second stair case near the mailroom. I tried a few doors. There was nothing. Then I found the stair case at the far end of the mail room with the words "FIRE DOOR" stenciled in red-lettering onto the hunter green metal door.

I pushed through. There was no alarm, but there was a stair case. It looked like an abadoned access shaft in an old mine. I climbed to the second floor pushed my way down the Chaplin's hallway and through another door that said "DO NOT OPEN BETWEEN 1 am and 6 am - ALARAM WILL SOUND."

I was at the top of the line to the party. Three or four guys were suppreseign the top of the line that was surging forward for admission. I walked up to the cashiers and gave them my money. A guy asked for my ID and then asked if I had already shown it. I said yes, and he hit me up with a red bracelet for buying drinks.

I walked into the party able to do more than most of the people in there. I had not waited in any line. I had outflanked the insanity of waiting it was nothing but dancing ahead.

I went over to the bar and bought a drink called "God on the Beach." It was a combonation of cranberry juice, orange juice, and tequila. I couldn't deal with it. I threw it away.

*******MAJOR SIDENOTE HERE***********
*I have only thrown away three drinks in my life. The first was a WRETECHED tequila *that Tom Rodelli of Sherman Street, Newport and Paris, France mixed. The second was *a Mount Gay Rum at Marisa's house on Spring Street, Newport. This drink, this *terrible concoction- was the third.
*************************************

I went back to the bar and bought another drink. It was called "Hades Hjinks." It was Red Bull and Vodka. It was delicious and it glowed like enriched uranium under the blacklights. I saw a TA and bought her a drink. We danced for a long time until I had to go to the bathroom and found Schuyler.

It was a beautiful evening. It was the best party I had been to in my life. I wasn't drunk, though I had been drinking. I was depressed, though I had been thinking. I was out of control on the dance floor. I was dancing for truth and happiness. They were one and the same. I didn't care about the girls or the glow of dance lights around the room. I dropped my scarf onto my eyes and danced blind. There was more than enough guidance in the music.

I saw friends and waved, blissfully happy in Ambrosia. I saw Gillian in the midst of her 20th birthday. I saw Caroline dancing with an alumni and former TA. I saw Jamie snapping photos with a Digital Rebel XT. I saw Schuyler with a posse of potentials. I saw Mara and welcomed her with a huge hug.

They closed the bar at 1:30 and then dropped a blazing set of tech-house and trance. It was seemlessly mixed. It was hipster-rave music of remixed Jefferson Airplane and "If you're going to San Francisco." I went into the bathroom looking for Hunter S. Thompson. He is my virgil. He is my Whitman.

Ginsberg needed an idol too. He confessed in poems what he owed to the Brooklyn poet.

"What thoughts I have of you tonight Walt Whitman." What thoughts I have of you tonight, Hunter Thompson.

I sang out the words to "San Francisco," and wished that the Jefferson Airplane would never stop.

I left with five minutes to two because I knew the end was near and I wanted to revel in the glory of an unrivalled party.

I tripped on joy across the green and down to Keeney. There were policemen on corners looking concerned. I didn't care what they were doing. I was safe, sober, and sublime. It was all so surreal.

I got back to the room and downloaded the Anthems of Ambrosia. I danced with Laura, the Louisville, Kentucky belle, and enjoyed the returned melodies of remixed 60's counterculture classics.

I loved the moment and wished it would never end. I promised to stay up until at least 4:00.

We went to the MCM building at 3:00 and started to watch Sleepy Hollow. It was a tribute to New England and October. The month of memory, and of fall. There will be great beauty here. We all knew that. So we slept on and off through Tim Burton's masterpiece and Evan alone was glued to the pixels. He screamed out "Oh my GOD!" with plot twists and bizarre imagery. He ohhed and ahhed like a girl at her first horror movie.

We finished a five and walked back to Keeney straight down Thayer. There was no traffic. The lights changed at their leisure and we were alone in the world.

We got back to Keeney and broke apart. Moira (r unpronounced) went upstairs to sleep. Joy was already unconcious. Evan gave in and crashed.

I did not go to bed. Neither did Laura.

We waited out the sunrise.