Faust in his element, The boy under the bed, Buxton one-hand-cigarette-dancing, Boosfest, Lauren, The Hurricane, Mother Fate, the tight knit web of the universe, inescapable.

There is the unique question of where to begin. The notion of the narrative is suddenly challenged by readings in the post modern and my concerns that though I have all day, I still don't have enough time.

I could make it interesting. I could begin with the girl rolling out my bed this morning and laughing as she went looking for her shoes and a sweatshirt she could borrow.

Faust is playing Rachmaninoff in the background. It soothes the soul. I pity the time in my life when these hung-over, still high mornings will have disappeared beneath the pavement of a civilized life. What will I do then? Will I connect the dots and follow life to its inevitable conclusion? (oh do not ask 'What is it?') Will I reject the Americana that reared me and disappear into the jungle of the third, unexplored, uncared for world?

I will live. And I will write today. And the conclusions/actions of the distant future will have to remain the concerns of those temporalities. My life is busy enough, I might say. My experience is clouded and convoluted enough. I need no concerns of futurama. The present and the past are enough to occupy my mind thoroughly.

Saturday morning broke like a scene from the Perfect Storm. Wind and Water everywhere. Up the quad, down the quad, wind was funnelling autumn leaves like lost children into a crusade they would not survive. I see the lines marching down George Street clearly. It was 8:33 in the morning. There was no one in the Ratty. Tranquility pervaded. Brown was how the viewbooks might prefer it to be. Life was slow, rainy, and self-reflexive.

By the time we got down to Rhode Island Yacht Clud, we were all convinced that it was not windy enough and that fate would force us to sail. We resisted. No! It was windy. It was scary. We were hung over, and sailing in a nor'easter with hurricane winds is no way to start a saturday.

Like it was a snow day, we had all drunk heavily the night before. There was a party at Machado. Faust, Sky and Myself shotgunned Busch Lights on the Patio. Anne was across the party. I didn't care. It was clear that she wanted no part of me, and by prideful equaniminity, I wanted no part of her. She was a lost cause- A femme perdue- the cause was not worth it.

The juice was not worth the squeeze.

But I digress. Machado was a decent party. I was dressed as a cyclist with my wallet and my cell phone padding the crotch of some tight underarmor shorts. I had a Ben & Jerry's Cycling Jersey to boot.

It was all fun and games. We left by jumping over the highest wall in the patio and running to The Gate where sweet Hindi girls served me sandwiches that might have been made for the gods themselves.

Sky took us back to the room. We were still recovering from Thursday night sheningans with Godrey and Bramie. Three Joints, Two rounds on the Vaporizer. Thursday was lethal.

In Sky's room, I picked up the Admiral and we smoked another J. Kate, sweet girl and true, was invested in protecting her sobriety and smoke-free living. Unfortunately, the corruption was too strong. We won her over to the realm of the sith and the pot fiend positing her failure on our raw evil and her intrinsic goodness.

But that was Friday. And I was writing to recollect Saturday. The Autumn Tempest raged far and wide throughout New England, and only with the coming of twilight did the foul storm desist. I had the faint notion and recollection that the storm might sacrificed itself for the glory on Halloween Weekend partying.

Saturday night left me in the room tripping on Postmodern theory and reviewing New Media Artwork for an online exhibition. The project was titled "Interfaces of Imagination" and I was frankly getting way too into analyzing digital artworks that others could not understand without an introduction.

As a means of checking my analysis, I subjected the Hindu prince to the project as a whole. He struggled with the artwork but accepted the writing as 'good' and 'informative'. I had a terrible headache. Faust was at Jo's obtaining a necessary bottle of coke for mixing. Goethe was not partying. Sky was still working on his MCM project. Godfrey and Bramie were in Vermont. I was alone, cold, and with a pounding headache.

Things did not look good.

But the human spirit has a strange ability to recover even under the most extraordinary conditions. Within the conviction of my exasperation, I collapsed onto the floor and begin weeping gently about the failure of the Universe to allow its participants the occassional departure.

But fate, the cold knife in the night that stabs souls who are content to die, had a few twists and turns it wanted for me.

I threw on the preppiest clothing I had at my disposal. I popped the color of a white polo. I put on some boat shoes and draped an argyl sweater over my shoulders. I made a note, in italics, trying to emulate some sort of Greenwich scrawl that might ensure my costume's authenticity. "Ask me about the TEA PARTAY".

I set out. Alone. This level was a solo mission. Faust was a half hour late on the coca cola. I took a shot of Admiral than thanked the sailor for his hospitality and did one again.

I went over to try my luck at D Tau but there were about a hundred people waiting in line.
I did a 180 and snuck into Buxton where it was all house music, cheap wine, and cigarettes.

I have tried my best not to judge the Buxton crowd or to reduce them to their classic "Eurotrash" moniker. But unfortuantely, this has grown impossible. Not only is just about everyone in Buxton overtly pretentious, but they also dance with one hand in the air while the smoke a cigarette or holding onto a glass of luke warm, weak Californian wine. Last night, the people in charge of the party in Buxton wouldn't let a song finish. The sneered on Americana and changed tracks more often than Fabio at a fashion show.

I couldn't handle the scene. It was bullshit. The dancing was weak and uninspired. They had the music but lacked the movement. In the definition of fullest irony, they played techno remixs of great American acid-rock anthems. They thought they were avant-garde and lightyears ahead of the culture Americana. I laughed because they had not spent four hours narrating a collection of Video Game art for a class that was so absurdly post modern you had to check your old books at the door.

I bailed on Buxton with Sky Sky and made a go of D Tau from every which way. We tried the backstairs, the upstairs, the backdoor and the window. Fortunately, right as I was makign my last go at the fortress, a friend caught my hand and led me down the stairs right into a steady handshake with a boy I had gone to High School with.

I got on the dancefloor fast. I ran into some friends and smiled with them over 'Gansetts and flashing disco lights.

I was about to leave the party when I ran into an old friend who hooked me up a beautiful blonde girl who look curiously like someone else I knew. Foolishly, I supposed it was this other girl (it wasn't). We danced hard and long, throbbing and grinding on expertly mixed beats from the Fishco DJ. I lost my sunglasses, or rather Faust's sunglasses, somewhere their on the dancefloor. It might well have been my virginity. The pulsating strobes and shimmering neon lights disoriented me from the moment. I looked down and saw a beautiful blonde schoolgirl gyrating somewhere around my waist.

She was wrapped in apron of neon lights. The techno was glowing all around her. I had her name was Lauren when I was introduced. The process had gone something like this:

Friend: ZACK!
Me: Hey!
Friend: Meet my friend here. This is LAUREN and she is (muffled voice with deep bass overlay) my girlfriend. Why don't you dance with her.

I did. We danced all night. I was with her on the dancefloor for anywhere between 1 and 2 hours. It was unbroken and quasi-mystical. We approached one another in the same instant. We were kissing for the rest of the night.

We went back to my room with trail of friends for shots from the Admiral. When I got back to the room Faust and Blessing were out of control. Faust had clearly smoked WAY too much. He was ranting and raving about savage burns he had employed on the women who had come down to Poland looking for me.

Lauren was looking pretty and sexually-charged. I asked her mutual friend for more information. She explained that Lauren and her had gone to boarding school together. I laughed and turned to Lauren.

"You go to Ethel Walker?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Do you know AJ Callie from Trinity?"

She nodded again now blushing.

"That kid and I were best friends." I explained. "He's my boy."

The mutual friend started laughing uncontrollably.

"Zack you idiot," She explained. "This is AJ's girlfriend. Didn't I tell you that?"

*************************************************

Go back to the beginning. Go back to this morning. A girl rolled out of my bed and went laughing after her shoes and my sweatshirt. Think about it.