It was a serenade of hipster proportion
that happened to be outside this dingy house
that was two blocks or so from campus
that was packed to the brim with costumed folk
that had been searching endlessly for
that perfect party to end the night with
It was one of those kinds of parties
where flirting was limited to the people
who were full of liquid courage
from the community liquor or ecstasy that was scored
from that kid in the back dressed as Gerard Way
Some boy asked me if I was from around here
and swayed to the techno beat of a Mormon’s
Spotify playing Die Antwoord softly in the background
The boy shimmied his shoulders in sync to the shrill voice
of Yo-landi Visser singing ‘’Tech-Tech-Tech-Tech-Techno Heartbeat”
I told him I was from Austin to which he replied
“I heard it’s nice there in the summer”
which told me that he was from up north
where he hides away from the Texas heat
between semesters of musical theory and jazz
The cover band inside the house began to play that one
Dexy’s Midnight Runner’s song “Come on Eileen”
the clarity of the singer’s voice was very true to the original –
indistinguishable and sloppy
but it sparked an instant shift in energy
and everybody that wasn’t too far gone
began to jump in beat and sing as loud as they could
until the band could not be heard
My friends and I huddled into a large circle
partly to hold up those of us that could not stand
mostly to absorb each other’s body heat
and began this wonky “Ring-Around-The-Rosy” thing
and as the song got faster
we ran faster
until one of us threw up and coincidently
the bridge began
We pushed the vomiter into the center
and mocked her with our slow chant of
“Come On Eileen, Too-Loo-Rye-Aye”
and the vomiter who should have been angry at
her expulsion from our friendship circle
began to laugh so hard she peed a little
and then she began to cry
She wiped her eyes and smeared
the liquid eyeliner that made up the cracks
of her porcelain doll makeup
She mumbled some unintelligible cry behind
a hand that smudged the Toledo Opera M·A·C
lipstick that we all sported as a pledge of solidarity
and then spoke again
at a faint whisper
that her boyfriend was inside somewhere
flirting with some other girl
It was barely one o’clock and we had planned
to be out until four in the morning
but we picked her up off of the ground and linked arms
so that we were all in a row
partly to console her
mostly to absorb each other’s body heat
We skipped down the middle of the road towards the campus dorms
that were further than we thought
that were actually more like twelve or thirteen blocks
that were excruciatingly painful to skip due to the fact
that all us girls were wearing at least six inch heels
But we did it gracefully
as gracefully as possible with a third of us
completely wasted
and we Too-Loo-Rye-Aye-d the whole way
in our Toledo Opera M·A·C lipstick
Written for a Poetry and Prose course, first in the series.
