Note to self: (this one's for you, Ariel!)
NEVER, EVER, EVER ATTEND ANOTHER HIGH SCHOOL PARTY AGAIN.
NEVER.
Before last night, it had been a long (and welcomed,) while since I consciously decided to go to a high school party, let alone one in the back country of Carpinteria.
What possesed me to think that it would be a fun and logical idea to go, I do not know. All I do know is that I did- big mistake.
It’s about 7:30 in the evening and I'm bored, as I tend to be, so I text my friend Jennaynae. She's a lovely lady with fun ideas so of course I trust her in her choice of nocturnal activity. When I get a reply saying "PARTY IN CARP EVERYONES GONNA BE THERE COME!!" my gut recoiled and I auto-txt'd back something like "that's ok. im good." The mere thought of such a social gala made me want to puke; high school kids+carp+booze= big disaster.
Another hour rolled by and after asking several other trusted comrades about their plans the unanimous concencus is the carp' party. Maybe I'm being a snooty, college bitch... maybe this could be something interesting. Fuck it, I'm down.
I hit up my good friend (whom I am dedicating the LJ to, her and the two other heroes of the night to be later mentioned ,) Ariel to come along. She hadn't been out for a while and I wanted to show her a good time (!!!). She picks me up and off we go, into the night completely naive to what would soon happen.
After about a half hour of driving, the scrawled directions we got from Jennaynae, that she got from other unknown dubious sources, were useless. I franticly hit up the man of the hour, Tim, to help us for the first time that evening. Being a google-maps major, he pointed us in the direction of what would be the demise of our good night. SO, yet again a quarter hour flys by hunting for a parking spot, most already hosting selection of rich kid 'Cito Land Rovers, and working class Westside bound 94' Hondas. Soon enough, one opens up- right in front of the house! LUCKY US! We thought....
We walk in, fiending for liquor and other intoxicants we scavenge and manage to wrap out hands around a friend -of-a-friends' handle of horrific brown lighter fluid; they called it "spiced rum" or some other savage moniquer unbeknownst to my virginal innards. Rough. And once one managed to squeeze through the heard of blondes, Mexican bros, and bitching...bitches... it wasn't so bad. So long as one had a few shots down one's throat, which be both did. Life was merry, for a minute. Until that blood curdling phrase rings through the mansion corridors and out into the yard
"COPS ARE COMING."
...
"Cops??"
"Ya, Cops, man. Keep it down it'll be aiight."
"Aiight."
...
Whispers and a few drunken whores laughing were all that was audible for what felt like hours.
"NOOOO COPS! AYO!!!"
"W0000000T!"
The massive raged on and my heart stopped banging up against my rib cage; I needed a cigarette. Me and Ariel walked out the door, tripping a little- more drunk with fear than alcohol. I clumsily lit the thing and put my hands together as in prayer to the saintly man who actually gave up a fag for me, a humble nervous girl. Bless him. I thanked the man profusely and wandered out into the dark. A couple minutes of babbling under-the-influence ensued and, I shit you not, less than 5 minutes after the safety shout out was heard- I hear shuffles in the bushes,
...see flashlights scoping
...brown uniformed shirts with badges and pot bellies swaying
...and lastly, while ever so subtly poking my friends shoulder, I hear
EVERYBODY FREEZE.
I think that air raid pilots over Dresden saw less people flee in terror.
Kids ran like they never had before! Into the bushes, closets, bathrooms, attic, falling down a revine that house happened to be perched on... cries and pleads of mercy mixed with haughty laughs of sheriff-hardened youths.
"MY MOM WILL KILL ME!"
"IM NOT GOING BACK TO JUVI!!!"
"SOMEBODY HIDE THE HANDLE!!"
Choice words, they were. Choice words.
And considering my recent run in with "the man" I was almost at the point of shooting myself in the face. I'd rather be dead then caught again.
Let's rephrase that, I would be dead if I was caught again. No doubt in my mind .
Soon after the pigs noticed that not many people were going to freeze and take up the ass, as expected. A more tactical "OK EVERYBODY OUT- MOVE IT, FUCKERS" sufficed. Me and my friends were amongst the panicked, complying was we opted for. After leaving the house we thought we were in the clear-
Not a chance.
We followed our friends Jenny, Feliz, and Christina back to her car. None of us were 0.00%, thus none of could drive. We could walk? And risk getting stopped by the 6 cops cars ahead of us, or the 3 surrounding the other perimeters of the neighborhood, all stuffed with rosy, drunken children getting spanked by the firm, paternal hand of Big Brother... OR... hide. So we hid. Hearts racing, blood pumping, heels clacking we raced down a dark hedge way, private property surely, but inconspicuous none-the-less. We were sitting ducks, simply waiting for the blitzkrieg to blow over. While me friend looked to me for answers, I didn't know what I could do... I called a couple friends from neighboring Montecito for help, neither picked up.
Shit.
No, like really- shit.
We both tried to come to terms with the consequences of coming to this party. I apologized to Ariel,
"Maybe this wasn't the cool thing for us to do... I'm sorry I had to ruin our first hang out sesh in months with this shit"
She nodded in agreement, and said "We need to do something. I can't drive. I can't get near my car. I need my car... we need to get out of here!"
So I called the two I can always count on... and who've saved my ass more times than I can count. Folks, I give you Tim 'n' Ashleigh. It would take another ten pages to tell you everything these awesome friends have done for me, so in short, they're amazing. They were just finishing dinner in town, it would be another 30 minutes or so before the rescuing could be carried out. Now it was up to us to survive, on the lamb.
Fuck. What to do? Both of us concluded that we should venture into the open again, because if we get screwed, it best not be on private property. So we continued to pace, and shit ourselves, for a good 20 minutes until we were about the last kids sitting up there, aside from 3 girls- all blonde. One wearing a sombrero, one in short-shorts. It was our only hope.
Meekly, we approached the ladies. We needed to get somewhere not there.
"Are you guys waiting for a ride?" Ariel asked, they said "yes."
"Do you think by any chance on the planet we could get a ride outta here?"
or something along those lines
"Ya, totally. My brother is coming to pick us up."
SAVIOUR. SWEET, SWEET SALVATION!
"THANK YOU!"
Soon enough the brother, who had mini dreads and pseudo-fro, named Julius, a friendly hippy of sorts, screeched o the scene and picked us all up. Charming dude... but those girls really helped us too. Named Caty and Leanna, they ended up being pretty cute. The ride down consisted of marshmellow fluff conversation about police and shreaks of aw at each of the 5 cars getting DUIs coming down the hill from the house, all of which were friends, or friends' friends.
Soon enough we reached the safe house in town, and when I say safe house I mean the town's McDonald's. Atleast 4 other lucky cars drivin by idiots were there so after a few handshakes, farwells, and more than a few whole-hearted sentiments of gratitude towards the good samaritans, Ariel and I decided McDonald's was the next party getting rolled. We dipped out, favouring the damp backside of the Albertson's parking lot. We waited the rest of the wait there, looking like crack heads dealing next to a sticky dumpster... or something. Freaking out at the sight of oil stains (obviously shadows) and the sounds of night labourers at the super market (quite blatently people talking about us and calling the cops) subsided to awkward acceptance of how far we'd made it already, and if we got caught now at the tail end of our endevour it would purley be out of shitty luck.
A few moments later Tim (Jesus, I think) called and said they were here; welling up with tears of joy at the sight of his wagon-thing I jumped in and saw two very tired saintly figures. They drove us back to Ariels car and we followed them home.
***
Upon arrival back at the house, Jesus and Mary crashed, rightfully, and me and Ariel smoked a bowl out of my lovley homemade contraption, went outside laughed and danced to far off melodies of Benny Bennassi. Everything ended better than we could've ever forseen earlier in the evening... thanks to many people.
Bottom line:
N'er again a high school soiree, n'er again shit to pay.
xo