In high-school, I was one of those young hipsters that was always "over" everything. I was over the classes that didn't challenge me. I was over a school that made me feel less than an adult. I was over my friends who just didn't seem to understand the heightened state of maturity that I believed myself to be in.
Post-graduation, I left for college to be immediately humbled. Eventually I checked myself before I wrecked myself but that didn't stop me from parading around my old friends as some sort of mature charlatan.
Recently, my summer boredom got the best of me and I decided to go to a staple of my high-school party scene– Sam's House.
During my younger years, Sam's House was not simply a place of residency for our dear friend. Surround by 40 acres and nestled comfortably at the top of the hill was a safe haven for teenage vices and mistakes. Complete with a pool house specifically used for parties, Sam's House seemed like an island where policemen and adults couldn't reach a group of teenagers that wanted to, "get fucked up," on a semi-regular basis.
Post high-school graduation, I left Sam's House behind. After heavy drinking lost much of it's glamorously mysterious appeal, I came to prefer boozy brunches and drinking in bars on Thursdays while complaining about the responsibilities that come with grown-up independence.
As I drove up the long curving driveway, past thick cedar trees and wild deer, I wondered what it would be like to return. I had come with my roommate Hannah who was similarly used to the laid-back casual alcoholism of the hardest working college students. I imagined that my old friends, who I hadn't seen in two years, would have adopted the same mentality of myself. I imagined all of us sitting around getting wasted and high while talking about how scared we were of the future and how far we had come.
Driving to the top of the hill, my headlights revealed a long row of cars but no party. I heard Sam before I saw her. My favorite, energetic party girl was loudly making demands for people to fill up their shot glasses and take shots. I walked into her pool house where I was immediately filled with sound of dubstep and rum straight from the bottle. I took shots with old friends. I introduced myself to new ones. I got into drunk arguments after jello shots, and slapped away unwanted advances after shotgunning beer.
Somewhere into the night I found my roommate who was not having a good time. Hannah has always been notorious for complaining about staying in and then, once out, immediately wanting to go home and sleep. Somehow frustratingly sober, she offered to drive us home in my car so that she could enjoy the spoils of her own bed. Because my back tail light was broken, I decided to join her into a decent into sobriety, less we run into trouble.
Sobriety hit me twice that night. First, when the boozy haze wore off and, second, when I took a look at the scene before me. When we were about to leave, Adolfo slipped and fell on Sam's driveway. I saw him laying down with blood on his nose and arms while his friend spoke to his mom on the phone. Hannah and I took him inside and cleaned him off. Watching everyone else, who was still wasted off their ass, I couldn't understand how they took care of themselves. Sam was stumbling around wearing just a bra. Scott was letting a cigarette stub burn his fingers. Jenae, knocked down by an invisible gust of wind, slammed her head against the wall.
Worst of all was a tall, thin, pale underaged boy with eyes too big for his face. He introduced himself to me as Garrison and then immediately asked me to call him Neal. He also found it imperative that everyone he met, know he's German and proud. When I walked into the living room I found him passed out in a pile of glass and puking on himself. Also watching this was Adolfo's mother who had come to rescue her inebriated son. During high-school, she had been one of those moms who let us drink in her house, even joining us sometimes. But when she saw that skinny little German choking on his own puke, she called 911, sending a familiar underage panic down the pit of my stomach– not that I blame her.
Hannah drove the two of us away before we could see the wreckage unfold. Passing EMS on the way out of Sam's property, I thought about what it must look like to someone unfamiliar with our familiar partying ways. I thought about what it would look like to me if it had been people I didn't grow up with. In the real world I casually drank often and a sense of calm maturity. But Sam's House was not the real world. Hidden behind Texas oak trees and removed from the watchful lights of the city, I was a straight-from-the-bottle black-out drunk kind of girl.
Sam's House provided something for all of us that we would be hard-pressed to find after high-school. It was a place to unapologetically make mistakes. It was a place to be dirty and wet and break things. It was a place to be as loud as you wanted without fear of a noise complaint, to run, to drink, to smoke, to get "fucked up." It was a place to be wild and free.
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