Boulder, Colo. (AP) - Hundreds of young people rioted until nearly dawn Saturday, setting fires, pelting police with rocks and smashing windows after firefighters put out a bonfire near several University of Colorado fraternities.
Two police officers and about 20 people were injured. Eleven people were arrested after police used tear gas and nonlethal projectiles to quell the melee.
Firefighters arrived about 11:30 p.m. Friday to put out a large bonfire that witnesses said was being fed with furniture. Firefighters were hit with rocks and bottles.
When a police riot squad arrived, the crowd had grown to 1,500. Tear gas chased off many of the rioters, but about 400 remained, damaging more than 50 cars, starting fires and smashing store windows and parking meters, police said. Calm was restored about 5:30 a.m.
University of Colorado Chancellor Richard L. Byyny said some of those involved were students. He said they will be punished. Police could not confirm how many were students but said all those arrested were over 18.
Boulder spokeswoman Leslie Aaholm said 20 young people were treated for cuts, bruises and burns. A female officer hit on the head with a rock or bottle was treated and released from Boulder Community Hospital.
Extra police patrols were planned to ensure the violence does not reoccur, Aaholm said.
I have no recollection whose bright fucking idea it was to start a riot, but when a smoking tear gas canister flew past me at a high rate of speed and landed on the ground by the tire of a nearby Honda Civic, I knew the party was over and it was time to get the hell outta there, ASAFP. As usual, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and no thanks to my being severely impaired by drink, I almost had yet another arrest and subsequent warrant issued for my arrest when I'd deliberately miss an out-of-state court date.
The party-turned-civil-unrest night began that morning, when I caught a pre-dawn flight out of Oklahoma City to visit my father, who'd been doing some business-related traveling and had a four-hour layover in Denver, Colorado. In case I've not previously expressed it publicly, I hate my father and can only tolerate seeing him a couple of times each year before I'm ready to assault him, but that's another story. In typical male bonding fashion, we manage to set aside our differences for a few hours each year and get thoroughly trashed (well, at least *I* do) in one of the numerous hangover/layover-type airports bars somewhere between New York and California while we're each en route to ghod-knows-wherever else.
Daddy offered to fly me to the airport to hang out and catch up on current events rather than offer to have me accompany him elsewhere, as he knows I'd decline the offer. I can't tolerate him for that long; a few hours together in an airport is all I can manage. After chatting in the bar for a while, I could simply turn right around and fly back to the relative safety and normalcy of Oklahoma City. What the hell, I decided, I'll get trashed in any airport, especially if I know there's a semi-responsible individual around to ensure I make the return/connecting flight [recent thanks to Gonzo for putting me on a connecting flight out of Arizona a few months ago].
I grabbed everything I'd need for the trip (wallet, smokes, Zippo, sunglasses) and caught a ride to the airport at eight o'clock on Saturday morning. I highly recommend the "ticketless travel" offered by most airlines, as an actual printed ticket is sometimes an annoyance for someone to remember to bring all the way to the airport (right, Sondra?) and with your name added to the flight roster, you can simply show a photo I.D. at the gate-type-thingie and you're good to go. However, they do still make you pass through metal detectors, so leave your knives and stun-guns at home. This I found out the hard way in Los Angeles, but let's not deviate into that wretched tale of drunken depravity right now. [Lisa K., if you're reading this, I want my FEAR t-shirt back, goddamnit.]
I waited in the airport bar for Daddy's flight to arrive and involuntarily started a conversation with the bartender. Where was I from? Around. What did I do for a living? As little as possible. Leave me alone, let me drink. You know-- my usual drunken/suave style and technique.
Her name was Evelyn, and when she sauntered over to me for the second time and said, "Okay, stranger, lemme say something. I don't see many interesting people at this job, but you look like you're a real character. I just wanted to say that. Besides, you've got the most beautiful eyes I think I've ever seen," the warm glow of free drinks masturbated my aura, so I played along with the routine.
[Mental note: thanks to my parents, whomever the fuck you are, for the blue eyes.] I thanked her, complimented her attractive hair and alluring eyes, requested another beer and eventually asked what she was doing later on that evening.
"No plans," she said and I knew things might become interesting from there. She'd be off shift in a matter of hours, so all I'd have to do is hang out, drink, and wait for the morning to become afternoon.
Daddy finally arrived around 1:00pm and caught up with me in the bar. Nothing worthy to report of those few hours of our conversation, except that I managed to drink about $55 worth of relatively inexpensive beer while we sat and talked. I'll venture to guess we had a meaningful conversation, because when he got up to settle up the tab and catch his connecting flight, he leaned close to me, his eyes welling with crocodile-type tears, and said, "Son, take care of yourself, okay? I miss hearing from you...I want only the best for you." Yeah, whatever, fuck off, I have drinking to do. I motioned to Evelyn that I'd be back shortly and left to throw daddy on his connecting flight. I saw Daddy off and staggered back through the airport.
Back to business. Back to the bar.
"So, where are you really from?" Evelyn asked upon my return.
"This season, Oklahoma City," I said and climbed back onto the
barstool.
"What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a professional writer," I lied and added, "I'm a full-time
drunkard as well. You?"
"I'm a student at U.C., part-time this semester."
"Gotcha. What're you studying?"
"Criminal law."
I made a mental note that Evelyn might be a very good friend to keep.
"What time is your flight back to Oklahoma City?" she asked.
"Umm, oh shit," I said while glancing down at my watch. "What time is
it here?"
"Four-thirty."
"Shit. My flight left twenty minutes ago. I guess I'll need to
schedule another," I said.
"Well, you could catch a flight out early tomorrow morning."
"Good idea. Smart thinking. Can you arrange a place for me to sleep
tonight?" I asked.
"No problem. You'll be in good hands," she said.
"Literally, I hope. There's only one major problem here."
"What's that?"
"This glass is empty."
Evelyn and I continued talking (and I kept drinking) while she finished her shift and by the time she was ready to leave, I was, to use the term sparingly, trashed. She helped me stagger out to her car in the employee parking lot and threw me in the back seat. The drive to her place in Boulder would take about half an hour, she alleged, if traffic was merciful, and that I should make myself at home in the back seat. Considering I was too drunk to even sit upright, making myself comfortable wasn't a problem-- I laid there, giggling at the squeals from the Bush cassette blaring over the stereo.
I vaguely recall screaming, "This is Bush? I eat bush! I eat bush for fuckin' breakfast!" but the stereo, an Alpine 7162, discontinued in the mid-1980s to allow for more expensive models to be produced and peddled to wealthy American high school kids with their parents' credit cards, was powerful and I was easily muted by the squealing "music." I looked up at the blue sky above and my vision became blurry. Minutes later, I think I passed out.
I thought we'd gotten into a wreck, but it was Evelyn's parking. I was thrown onto the floorboards and tried to regain my composure while shouting obscenities at the top of my lungs.
"Jesus! Fuck! Goddamnit!" I screamed.
"Okay, we're here!" Evelyn returned. "How're you doing?"
"O sweet christ, where the fuck am I?" I asked as I scrambled up to
the back seat.
"University of Colorado, Boulder," Evelyn said.
"O ghod, my head. I need a drink."
We weren't actually *at* the university, rather we were in some apartments close to the campus, but we might as well have been in the dorms, as I felt I'd been delivered to the wildest primary off-campus party apartment complex in Colorado. The general vicinity of the apartment complex looked like a small drunken street fair, with people hanging out, getting trashed and generally enjoying the weekend.
Evelyn helped me out of the car and upstairs to her apartment, where she peeled off her t-shirt, went into the kitchen and began making screwdrivers. I excused myself to use the toilet, but I really wanted to get a better look around the small apartment. I was checking for any signs of a significant other who might stop in at any minute to find his girlfriend mixing drinks as some strange guy with the proverbial shit-eating grin sits on the couch wondering what the hell was gonna happen next.
The apartment appeared occupied by Evelyn only, thank ghod, as I was in no mood to receive a boot party/chain whipping from anyone's boyfriend, his friends and/or a gang of militant lesbians or anything of the nature. I went into the bathroom, closed the door and stood over the toilet for a couple of minutes as I looked through the cabinets above. Nothing out of the ordinary-- hair spray, saline solution, tampons, bath soap, cotton balls, shit tickets (toilet paper), the usual. In addition to the regular things, there was a disposable camera, which I grabbed. I flushed the toilet without contributing to the water system and went into the kitchen.
"Nice place you've got here." I said.
"Thanks. I got a pretty good deal on it. You really like it, huh?"
"Yeah. There's a bed, a shitter; you've got booze," I said and
smiled. "What more could you possibly ask for?"
Evelyn laughed and handed me a screwdriver. I thanked her and gulped half the mixture. It was a strong concoction, but I needed it to maintain my buzz after the Ride Back from Hell. By that point, I knew none of you bastards would ever believe a word of this tale, so I produced the camera and asked Evelyn to pose for some evidence.
"I, uh, found this camera when I was going to the bathroom. Can I
take your picture? None of my drunkard friends will believe any of this," I
said.
"Well, if you're going home with a souvenir, it might as well be a
good one," Evelyn said, unhooked her bra and lifted herself onto the counter.
There have been only a few times in my life when I've felt as if time has stopped and, fellow bastards, this was one of 'em. There I stood, drink in hand, in the kitchen of an attractive bartender who didn't mind posing topless for a piece of high school-type photographic evidence. I think a tear of joy may have slid from my eye and my jeans might have tightened slightly, but I truly don't recall what I did for the next minute or two. Instinctively, I pressed the camera's viewfinder to my face and aimed. One small shutter-button click later, the emulsion that created my evidence was burned onto the film and for the first time in a long time, I felt happy to be alive. [see evelyn!.jpg]
Evelyn and I were exchanging tasteless jokes three drinks later while still in the kitchen. I began to get very, very sleepy and began looking around the apartment for somewhere to have a nap when Evelyn said she wanted to take a shower before going to a party. I was instructed to sleep on her bed while she got ready. I flopped onto the bed and feigned an immediate slumber as Evelyn undressed and wrapped herself in a towel. She entered the bathroom, closed the door, and the last thing I remember for a while was her soft pillows that smelled wonderful and her hot water knob that creaked.
I awoke a couple of hours later and still felt a bit drunk. The room was dark and I could hear my hostess in the kitchen, lightly singing along to a Stone Temple Pilots song on the radio. I massaged my temples and scraped some of the scum from my smile. It's not easy to look cool when your head is still spinning and you look like roadkill. Still, something in the kitchen smelled great and my stomach was growling.
I staggered down the short hallway and peered into the kitchen. Evelyn saw my reflection in the window above the sink and gasped.
"Jesus!" she scolded and spun around on her heels to face me. "Don't
sneak up on me like that!"
"Sorry," was all I could muster. "I'm gonna steal a glass-o-water
from ya, okay?"
"Sure. Go right ahead," Evelyn said and pointed. "There's some beer
and vodka in the 'fridge, too. Help yourself."
I didn't know if Evelyn was trying to be a good host or wanted to kill me, but I appreciated her hospitality. I drank three tall glasses of water, burped a few times and grabbed a beer form the refrigerator. The triple batch of french fries Evelyn was cooking (hence the delicious odor drifting through the apartment) was cooling on a haphazardly constructed pile of paper napkins designed to catch the excess frying grease.
"Ah, yes," said and pointed to the mound. "It looks not unlike the
nine cities of Troy, with the exception that in ancient civilizations, they
had no use for paper towels."
"You don't know that. Maybe they would have greatly benefited from
paper towels back then," Evelyn defiantly said.
"Nonsense. They would have greatly benefited from anything
manufactured by Smith & Wesson. That much, I know for fact. Just look at the
cave paintings!"
"Joel, the Mesolithic Era of cave painting ended about a thousand
years before the first city of Troy was even constructed," Evelyn said.
"Well, if you want to pull some cheap technical shot in a vain effort
to save the sinking ship of your flimsy argument, then go right ahead," I
said. "But I'm onto you game and I'll hear no further arguments of the like,
understood?"
"Shut the fuck up and have some fries," Evelyn commanded.
When we got to The Quad, an area of semi-desolate streets that each intersect near dead-end side streets and vacant gravel parking lots, Evelyn parked and we walked a few blocks to the main party area. I observed about 400 people milling around, laughing, chain-smoking and most importantly, drinking.
The party itself started out kinda tame at first, but before long, a lot of people showed up and brought a LOT of alcohol with 'em-- mainly homebrewed beer and other homemade mixtures. Some guy named Mark had a five gallon jug of grain alcohol punch in the back of his Firebird (or whatever faggot muscle car he drove) and was scooping cups for distribution as quickly as people could accept the six-ounce plastic goblets and move out of the way. I stood fascinated and watched as Mark disbursed about fifty or sixty cups as though he was on his first hour of another long day in a Depression-Era soup kitchen. Also, I noticed the liquid level in the cooler hadn't dropped much. I approached Mark, accepted a cup of the sweet-smelling mixture and introduced myself in typical form.
"Oklahoma City? Drunken Bastard? Fuckin' great, man! Drink and destroy, baby! Drink and destroy!" Mark howled as he shoved a second cup into my hand.
Other than his bitchen Camaro (or whatever), Mark seemed like an okay guy. Perhaps his sweat-stained GG Allin "Suicide Tour 1990" t-shirt prejudiced my initial opinion for the better.
Mark told me that he usually ended up pouring out the last gallon of the punch, as people usually got insanely drunk and began puking well before it was empty; he later said he should have brought an extra gallon or two, as more people turned out for the party than he initially expected. Feast or famine, I alleged and Jeff agreed with a hearty laugh and a "Fuck yeah! Drunken Bastards!"
Evelyn and I continued drinking and socializing as we walked around the central area of the party, which, by midnight or so had grown to what seemed like a thousand people. Fellow drunkards, this wasn't the wildest party I'd ever been to (or so I thought at the time), but it was easily the biggest, attendance-wise. My recollections from that point are vague at best, so I'm gonna have to improvise some of what happened. Part of what caused my confusion was Evelyn's leading me from car to car and putting drink after drink into my hand, which went immediately into my mouth.
A cool nighttime air rolled in and someone started a small bonfire in an improvised pit towards the party's epicenter. Several people produced hot dogs and straightened coat hangers (with which to cook the dogs over the fire) from coolers and formed a human ring around the steadily-growing blaze. I didn't think there was enough wood around to maintain much of a bonfire, but the flames would soon be fed by anything not human and/or bolted down.
A beer-stained flag went up in the back of my then-buzzing mind that said-- There will be weirdness here tonight, it's a given, and when the earth splits with a loud roar and a stampede of pissed-off bulls with glowing red eyes runs directly towards you, drunkard, are you gonna stand your ground like some asshole with a pathetic personal point to prove, or are you gonna turn your back and run for your meager life, as though the devil himself was out to ram a pitchfork directly up your ass?
Fuck it, I'd stand there. Mark's muscle car-cooler-punch-stuff was efficient, if absolutely nothing else.
"You okay?" a female voice behind me asked. It was Evelyn.
"Uh, yeah," I said, turning around to face her. "I'm okay. Why?"
"You're staring at the ground. Did you drop something? Are you going
to be sick?"
"Bulls," I said.
"What?"
"Have you seen any red-eyed bulls recently?"
"What are you talking about? How much punch have you had?"
"Enough," I said. "Never mind me. I'll be okay. I need to sit down
for a while."
I staggered over to a nearby fence, sat down on the moist grass and leaned against a wooden post. Passing out would probably not be a very good idea, I surmised, so I forced myself to keep watching all the drunken activity in front of me. People were staggering in all directions, cheering and screaming in delight, bumping into one another and weren't aware that they'd done so...so many people...so much noise...huge mo'fuckin' fire in the middle of this thing...my head...
I passed out.
I awoke to the sounds of screaming and yelling all around me. My head felt as though it weighed eighty pounds as I fought the demons of exhaustion in order to raise my point of view for a look around. What the hell was happening? What had I gotten myself into this time?
I recognized an all-too familiar sight in my peripheral vision:
flashing red and blue lights. The police had arrived and I knew unless I
wanted a trip to the drunk tank, I'd best summon the requisite strength to get
outta there and make someplace else my bed for the evening. Evelyn-- where
the hell was Evelyn? I had a vague idea where she'd parked, but whether she
decided to stick around and wait for me to get moving was another story
altogether. Fuck it, I decided, I was on my own. I'd get a ride back to
somewhere with someone, but with whom?
Now that I think about it, it was a very surreal experience-- there I
was, trying to fight the demons of drunken fatigue that were attacking my
every movement, yet I seemed apart from most everyone else in the crowd, as I
wasn't moving away from the scene as quickly as a human being could. Rather,
I was evading the center of activity as quickly and accurately as my body
would allow at the time. Individuals were streaming past me on the left and
the right, yelling wildly and screaming with adrenalistic terror. One
individual slowed his pace a bit and clapped a hand against the small of my
back in encouragement.
"Come on, man!" he screamed, "You can make it! Go, go, go!"
"Yeeeaahhhhh!" I screamed back and spit, mainly wanting him to leave
me the hell alone.
The guy yelled something in return and resumed his drunken sprinting.
I had almost run the gauntlet of the adjacent field to the freedom and safety of the larger mass of confusion located on the outlying areas of The Triad. All I had to do was keep my speed for another fifty yards...thirty years...ten yards...
Something reached out from nowhere and knocked me to the ground as though I'd run full-speed into the wire of a clothesline. I remember seeing my feet fly out in front of me and then my entire body tensed as I prepared to crash against the ground below, which I did.
Instinctively, I began kicking my legs and flailing my arms to make handcuffing me a more difficult task. If I was going to jail, I'd be damned if I'd go without a fight.
"Goddamnit, Joel, get up!" her voice screeched.
I relaxed, looked up a saw a familiar face. It was Evelyn.
O thankfuckin'christ! Here was the one person who, several hours earlier,
alleged I'd be in good hands for the evening and she'd pulled through. Hell,
she knocked me down and was then going to pull me through!
"What's up with this 'knock me on the ground' shit?" I demanded while
staring up at her face.
"Unless you want to go to jail, get the fuck up and come with me,"
Evelyn scolded.
[Flashback to the original Terminator movie, in which the protagonist finds the character Sarah Connor in the crowded nightclub, shoots the place to hell, grabs the heroine and barks into her face, "Come with me if you wanna live!" That's exactly how this scene felt, though my tits aren't as nice as Linda Hamilton's.]
I scrambled to my feet and stayed closely behind Evelyn, who was darting in and out of parked cars, other fallen drunks and miscellaneous small obstacles of unconscious human debris littered along the footpaths towards safety. An occasional black-n-white police car sped past us towards more immediate points of confrontation and as far as I could tell, we were home free. Evelyn led me over/through a few small shrubberies and over one more sidewalk where her car was...
...where he car was parked a few hours earlier. Evelyn stopped dead in her tracks and I thought she was going to explode, literally.
"Motherfucker!" Evelyn screamed and began swinging clenched fists
against the air. "They fucking towed my fucking car! Goddamnit!"
"Okay, okay, not a problem," I said. "We'll get out of here. We've
come this far, right?"
"How the hell are we supposed to leave now?" Evelyn barked back to me.
"Easy. Let's steal a car," I said and began looking for an unlocked
car door or a rock with which to smash a window and therefore create an
unlocked door.
"You're crazy."
"I'm not crazy. I'm drunk and desperate. Same difference. You see
any big rocks around here?"
"That's not going to work," Evelyn said. "Let's see if we can hitch a
ride or take a bus or something."
"Or something," I said. "Come on, let's go. This is your town, so
I'll let you decide how to best get us outta here."
We began walking up the dark street, which was still busy with activity as people scurried here and there in search for a way out of the area. I wasn't sure if the local authorities would try to seal off the perimeter of the area, as the NYPD had done during the July 4th Squatter's Riot of 1995 (during which I was proudly standing right inside the police barricades, thanks to my forged press passes), and I had a fair idea that arrests would be imminent, as the local officials would certainly need to generate some revenue (via bail) to pay for all the manpower required to quell the drunken students' disturbance.
No sooner had my hypothesis drained from my medulla oblongata than a police cruiser rounded the corner and illuminated its lightbar. Silent red and blur strobe lights pierced the nighttime air in front of us and a stern voice over an intercom ordered us to freeze.
I've tried running from the authorities in the past, and as much as I would have liked to have fled then, I knew my body wouldn't take me far enough or fast enough to evade those guys. I opted instead to stand there as ordered and maybe, just maybe, explain my way out of the matter. Yeah, right. As if it ever works out that way. Additionally, I was prepared to "assume the position," and be cuffed-n-stuffed and en route to the tank. What a fine fucking night it'd turned out to be.
I squinted my eyes when the piercing white beam from the passenger-side floodlamp hit me square in the face. I told Evelyn to relax and let me do the talking, though I knew speaking coherently would be a task in and of itself. Perhaps I'd allege I was a minor, as I know the police hate having to do all the bullshit paperwork associated with minors in trouble. Plus, by law, they'd have to keep me detained (and entertained) until they could arrange for me to be returned to Oklahoma City, at the taxpayers' expense, once my identity was "verified."
I have numerous friends who know that if they receive a post-midnight phone call from an out-of-state law enforcement agency, I'm seventeen years old and have no possible means of caring for myself, blah blah blah. When you have several collaborators on a story, many officials are loathe to deal with you and your circumstances, as there are simply too damn many liabilities involved. They'd much rather let you be on about your business and get into trouble in someone else's jurisdiction.
And that was my plan. When the police asked for identification, I'd say that I didn't have any, as I was only seventeen and that I didn't even have so much as a library card or anything. The plan would be beautiful unless...
...unless I fumbled with my wallet and four different photo IDs, all perfectly state-issued and valid, with my date of birth on them, fell out and dropped to the ground.
I was, in short, fucked.
"Oops," I muttered and looked down and the plastic pieces of my life on the pavement at my feet. I squatted down and began scooping the cards into order. Maybe I could eat them or something and rid myself of any identification? Doubtful. I once tried to eat a friend's Visa Gold in an effort to keep him from tabbing-out prematurely during a hardcore drinking binge [again, sorry about that, Spot] and those fuckin' cards are tough! My mind skipped to plan B, which hadn't yet formed, and prepared my wrists for a new set of chrome bracelets.
We were still blinded by the car's spotlight, so I couldn't exactly tell what was happening, but the street was still wild with people running from the scene of the party and my luck had us standing the middle of it all, blinded and about to go to jail. I distinctly heard the static of a police radio through all the noise around us and the slamming of a car door. I prepared to be taken into custody. No sooner had I replaced the identification cards in my wallet and shoved the wallet into my back pocket than something on fire whizzed between my face and the police car's floodlight.
I heard a metallic *clank* followed by a dull thud and looked to the source of the noise on my left side. My eyes were still blinded by the spotlight and I was straining to see what the hell was going on when I heard someone yell, "Gas!"
Oh fucking joy! Evelyn and I were about to be tear-gassed and arrested. What could possibly make for a more memorable combination? Gassed, beaten and then arrested? I was sure it was the main course that night. I've never experienced tear gas, but I have been maced on accident twice, so I have a bit of experience with the stuff. I prepared to wrap my shirt over my face and voluntarily hop into the back of the police car with Evelyn, then request the windows be rolled up and the air conditioning/ventilation stopped. Going to jail is bad enough, but it's worse to go to jail when you're choking, hacking and pissing in your pants. Ya gotta love tear gas, as it's so damn efficient!
"Get in their car," I told Evelyn.
"What?" she demanded.
"You heard me. We've got about five seconds to get inside someplace
before we're both gonna be hacking our lungs out and convulsing," I said.
"Oh shit," Evelyn said.
"No shit," I confirmed.
I was about to peel off my shirt, tie it over my face and voluntarily climb into the back seat of the police car when one of the officers barked something about the gas, climbed into his car and slammed the door. The spotlight switched off and the police cruiser sped backwards up the street in reverse with its red-n-blues still pitching spiked bursts of light through the darkness.
My ghod, they were fuckin' leaving! Maybe they didn't want to mess with trying to arrest me (as they knew I'd surely beat the shit out of 'em) or maybe they didn't have gas masks handy, but whatever the case, the cops were out of there and so were we.
"Let's roll," I yelled to Evelyn and we took off running in the direction the police car had taken about four seconds earlier. Yes, *we* were chasing the police.
The confusion behind us only got worse as several terribly drunken people were slapped by a caustic wave of airborne pseudo-toxins specifically designed to assault a person's respiratory senses. Poor bastards, I thought, those poor drunken bastards. They should learn how to be tough and fight off the police like me! Several individuals were rolling around on the ground, coughing and hacking and probably not having the high point of the party, I surmised. If nothing else, the effects of the gas are only temporary, but they're not fun while they're scraping the interiors of one's lungs and eyes.
Evelyn decided a few blocks later that we'd wormed our way through the dragnet and were safe. It was her town so I trusted her judgment. We opted to walk the remainder of the way, as it was a nice night, all things taken into consideration, and I was feeling remarkably sober by that point. Perhaps the adrenaline rush that accompanies a near-arrest had turbo charged my senses, but whatever the case, I was in extraordinary spirits and life suddenly seemed tolerable.
Our walk back to Evelyn's apartment wasn't all that bad. I suppose I thought we were a lot farther away from her place then we really were, because the journey didn't take too long. We'd have been there sooner if I hadn't had to make three stops to piss, one stop for a six pack and yet another stop a block from the apartment to puke all over the hood of a hapless El Camino parked too close to the chain link fence I was using to stabilize myself. Actually, I think my gastro-intestinal contribution improved the car's reddish-orange paint job a bit.
Evelyn shoved me into the apartment and bolted the door. I wandered into the living room instinctively and plopped myself down on the floor in front of the television. Evelyn disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a drink in each hand. Ye god, I thought, do I curse this woman or propose to her?! I decided I'd ponder the thought later and the two of us sat in the relative darkness of the apartment, drinking screwdrivers and laughing occasionally to ourselves. I swapped my crude jokes and drinking tales with Evelyn's accounts of various weird things she'd seen in three or four years of bartending while in school.
Before long, I achieved another warm and smooth sense of intoxication for what seemed the tenth time in one evening. The sun was loomed just over the back of the horizon and the sky began to show signs of life. Evelyn closed the blinds tighter and suggested rest. As much as I wanted to continue drinking until I was poured onto my return flight to Oklahoma City later on that day, I knew I'd have to get some rest if I wanted to go back in one semblance of a human piece, or at least get there without puking all over the seats and aisle of the return flight.
Evelyn peeled off my clothes, as I was at a loss for general motor coordination by that point, and helped me into her bed. She removed her clothes and got in bed beside me.
I was smiling when I passed out.
The next afternoon, Evelyn and I took a bus to the scene of the previous night's melee and discovered her car hadn't been towed-- we were standing a street away from where she'd actually parked, hence the confusion as to where the hell her car was at the time of our near-arrests. Drunkards don't always have the keenest navigational skills, especially when the riot police show up uninvited and with tear gas.
We drove to the airport so I could re-schedule my return flight and get the hell out of Colorado and back to Oklahoma City. We had an hour to kill before the next flight, so we sat in the bar when she worked, the same bar where this disgusting tale of drunken depravity began, and sipped a few cold (and free) beers to extinguish the smoldering hangover that was charring the recesses of my skull.
We didn't say much to one another, as there really wasn't all that much to say, or at least there wasn't anything that hadn't been expressed and/or felt in the previous 24 hours. I told Evelyn that she's welcome to visit me anytime, and I'd try not to get her stirred up in any civil unrest or anything of the sort, but I guess one can never tell what'll happen when hundreds, perhaps thousands, of drunkards get together for a maddening trip into severe intoxication and matters only get strange from there.
All in all, I'd say it was an interesting weekend.
Cheers,
JOEL