Another slow night at home. That’s the last thing I can handle. I need to get out of this place. I’ve called everyone in my phone book, and nobody has a plan. I need a plan. I need to get out in the open. I walk up to my roof to have a smoke. I can hear my phone ring through my jacket pocket. It’s Craig. I hate Craig. Craig and I went to school together for eight years, and although he thought we were friends, I never really liked him. My mom was friends with his mom, and because of it I had to hang out with him. I did not want to hang out with Craig, but Craig is better than my roof, and he knows people in the city so it seems that I have no better choices. He told me his phone broke, so he gave me the number of a girl he was hanging out with.
I went downstairs and hopped in a cab. I went across the park to the Upper East Side, right next to the metropolitan museum. I was calling Craig’s friend to try to find out where they were. I walked around the met until I saw a group of kids sitting in a circle making a bunch of noise. I hoped for the best and walked over to them. I lucked out, Craig was there. The group had the idea to go to “the obelisk,” or as sometimes referred to, “the penis statue.” They spoke of it like a mystical Garden of Eden for teenagers, and wow were they wrong. I was already wishing I stayed on my roof. The obelisk was an octagon of benches surrounding a large Egyptian totem pole like artifact. We sat on two of the benches and tried to find something better to do. I met a few of Craig’s friends. All but one was even worse than Craig, but I unfortunately cannot remember his name.
As a lost my buzz, I began to remember that I had been to the obelisk with a different bunch of friends from my old school. They were much more entertaining than Craig, though. Both times I was at this place, there was the same tall, lanky guy wearing all black. He had to be at least 5 years older than me, and I was probably the next oldest person there. He was very strange, and had a certain energy that made me think he might have been a narc. I wanted to get away from him, but everyone else seemed to like him and know him very well, so I played along.
Craig’s only cool friend, who I will call Andy for the rest of the night, pulled me aside to tell me that there was a huge party going on in the mid west side, as long as I was willing to pay a ten dollar cover charge. I was, of course, going to say yes. The whole point of leaving my roof was to find a party, so what kind of person would I be to turn it down. Andy, some other kid, and I stealthily left the obelisk to grab a smoke, find a McDonalds, and get a cab without the rest of the crew. Little did I know, the night was young.
We crowded into the cab and asked for 47th and Broadway. It wasn’t too long of a drive, and the kid that I didn’t like was paying for it. We got out and my stomach dropped. We all admitted later to getting a terrible feeling about the party when we saw at least one hundred people outside trying to get in. It was loud, but the line was misleading. Most people were just waiting outside, not going in but not leaving. We paid our ten dollar cover and went in. There was a staircase packed as tight as it could have gone. I heard that the fifth floor, the top floor, was the place to be. I thought about going up there, but since it took me ten minutes to get to the second floor and when I was outside the door, someone opened the door and pulled me in by my arm. It wasn’t too crowded, but it didn’t look fun. I was about to leave when I saw some of the people I was at the obelisk with, so I sat down and took my coat off. I talked for a while with the people I had met earlier and some college kid selling shots of cheap vodka. I walked over to the window after a few minutes and saw a massive crowd waiting outside. There had to be at least three hundred people outside, and the building must have been at maximum capacity. People said that if the crowd doesn’t cool down, the cops will come. I didn’t want to leave, but it was a matter of safety. I stayed, and to be honest I kind of wanted to get in trouble.
Well, as expected, the cops came. I panicked, but people said to stay in this room and they’ll vouch for our not being a menace. I stayed, and when the sirens were in earshot a stampede formed in the stairs. I’m still not sure how nobody was killed. People rushed down the steep, crowded stairs like their lives depended on it. I sat down on the couch and thought about the terrible punishment my mom would give me if the cops took me in. Most of the people left and the cops never even had to get out of their car. They weren’t trying to bust people, but they needed to clear the street. There were so many people outside it looked like there was no sidewalk.
About ten minutes later, the cops came back. This time, they brought multiple cars and they got out. I was on the second floor staring out the window when I saw the cops get out of the car and walk towards the building. I heard someone mention that they were going to go to the roof, so I followed them. I’m not sure what compelled me to trap myself on the roof while the cops were raiding the house, but I found myself trespassing on the roof of a five story building with a bunch of teenagers, either drunk or drugged. Across the street, there were a bunch of people videotaping us from a window, so everyone sober enough to hide their face did so. I walked to the far side of the roof and looked down. There were five or six cop cars and hundreds of people running down both sided of the street. It was mayhem. It was like watching a movie, a completely surreal experience I doubt I will ever see again.
The guy who owned the building came up to the roof and told us all to get down. I think he realized how ridiculous it was that we were all up there. We made our way down the building and the cops were regulating everything. They were directing traffic, and I have never seen a scarier cop than when I knew the cop wanted to catch me doing something. I walked by him and I could hear him sniff me. I sped up and briskly walked out the building. On the sidewalk, everyone was power walking or jogging away from the building.
When I got to Broadway Avenue, everything was dispersed. I found a guy that seemed cool and stuck by him. Some hot girls offered us to go to their party, so we obviously said yes. They turned around for a minute, and a bunch of other people who saw them tried to join in. They stood near me and my newly acquainted friend, so when the girls turned back around and asked if I was in college while I was staring at the cops, someone else answered, saying that he wasn’t. I would’ve said I was. They assumed that I was with them and said that they couldn’t take people anymore. My friend waited until they were away from the crowd and asked if he could go. They took him, but nobody else had a plan.
I got a call from an old Gunnery friend Katie Cunningham literally moments afterwards. I don’t think either of us actually like each other, but we have mutual friends, so sometimes we hang out. She called within a minute of my walk back home. She said she was having a party at her house and I should come. I got in a subway and took off. It was a short ride back to my normal stop, the one I get off when I go home. She moved about five blocks away from my house, so her house was closer to the subway stop than mine. It took me a while to find the building, but once I did it wasn’t hard to get to her apartment. It was crowded and loud, and there was a thick smell of smoke through the hallway.
I went in to a small, crowded house with lots of older, sketchy guys and a few younger girls. It looked like the worst excuse for a party that I have seen since middle school. Nobody seemed contented except for one guy on my right side doing shots alone. He was really happy, though. I turned left and wandered my head into the next room. It seemed interesting, as there were about five reasonably attractive girls in there and no guys. I leaned a little further in and saw that one of them was crying and the rest looked occupied. I turned around so fast I nearly knocked over another guy to my right who wasn’t doing shots, but wouldn’t give me one of the beers.
I found Katie and exercised my lacking skills in “small talk.” We spoke about her new apartment and her job as an actor and the party. I found out that she and her roommate found each other on craigslist, and they hate each other. I couldn’t help but laugh, and she gave me a very angry look, so I took her cue and told her that I would have to leave shortly. This, of course, was not true, but the thought of staying in that room with a bunch of over privileged actors under the impression that they were living their life to the fullest ruined my mood and made me want to go home and sleep. I stuck around for a half an hour longer to see if anyone there was genuinely interesting, but as I expected, no. I left the house and walked back at around 2 a.m. to my building, where I was greeted by my doorman snoring loudly and the rest of my family asleep.