We were young, carefree and we had cheap furniture.
It was probably around this time eight years ago, I was cleaning up from the first party I co-hosted in the apartment I lived in at Kenmore Square. It was an old brownstone in the middle of a graceful decline -- tall ceilings, french doors and peeling wallpaper, and it was rented by arcanus, sogellag and sogellag's boyfriend, Gabe. I had just graduated from university and was looking for a place to live. They were losing a roommate and had a vacancy. A few weeks before I moved in, they invited me to a party of theirs. It was packed to the ceiling with people I didn't know but wanted to know, interesting people with highbrow conversation, edgy fashion sense and odd hair. arcanus asked me if I minded having parties like this after I moved in and I said no, not at all. I knew, at the time, that he was popular -- this up and coming DJ who was tight with the BU students that formed the bulk of the younger range in Boston's goth/industrial scene -- but I didn't realize how popular until after I moved in and started throwing parties.
I don't remember much of the particular morning I'm trying to recall, aside from the fact that it was in that summer of graduation, after one of the first in a series of soirees that we would host. A clear morning light filtered throught the thin curtains in my room, spilling into the living room, treading softly around a redheaded girl named Cat, who stretched langorously on the sofa that we scavenged from a street corner while she watched me toss empties into cardboard boxes. A clever smile crossed her face and she slowly said, "Cris, by the end of the summer, you will know everyone."
I don't know if she meant for it to be prophecy, but the words took on that air. At the time, I did not foresee the series of nights when we'd have people spilling into the staircase outside our unit, hanging out on the rooftop overlooking the river, swigging vodka while trying to stay balanced on balconies. I did not expect us to start a tradition of feeding guests in the early morning, making omelettes and serving coffee while watching the sun rise over the river, then shooing them out the door after the T started running and could take them home. I never thought that the name for our apartment would become The Shelter, and that we'd earn it by letting a half dozen out of towners sleep in our living room over Convergence weekend. I just knew that my roommates and I liked to have parties, and we didn't own anything that couldn't be easily replaced. I didn't realize at the time that we'd have a legacy.
Yet the reminders of those times came back to me after the "how did we meet?" meme made its way through my friends list and I lost count of the number of times where Shelter parties were mentioned. I remember the intensity in the connections of those old days, thrust as we were into a vast array of new people and the seemingly unlimited potential behind their faces.
But, of course, that was eight years ago, and over time we filled our social capacity, made the friends that we wanted to make, grew distant from those whose only bond was a favorite band, watched others leave or disappear, and somewhere within that period, the intensity ebbed to a slow pulse of polite dinner gatherings, coffee dates, and weekend afternoons moving pieces of furniture that had grown more delicate and cumbersome. Now, as I approach 30 along with a great number of the folks that I met in that summer of '96, occasionally we'd reminisce about the old days and one of us would say, "Why don't we have parties like that anymore? Why don't we stay out to greet the sun, with strangers that we've never met but who feel like family? Why do we have to be old? Why do we have to be boring?"
When I catch myself asking that question, I have to remind myself that those days were fed by a vacuum that sought to be filled, by a need to forge bonds with people that I could think of as family. Those bonds, once forged, needed their own maintenance, and after a certain point, we reach this threshold where making new friends requires neglecting old ones. It's a choice that I'm often loath to make. Certainly it means the loss of that creative energy that comes with novelty in one's life, but in exchange we develop a companionship so enmeshed with our lives that we feel like they've been with us all this time and when we're asked how we met them we have to use the excuse of drink and old age.
So, yeah, Cat was right, I did meet everyone. And unlike the rest of you forgetful bastards, I remember all of the circumstances and dirty stories ;)
I don't remember much of the particular morning I'm trying to recall, aside from the fact that it was in that summer of graduation, after one of the first in a series of soirees that we would host. A clear morning light filtered throught the thin curtains in my room, spilling into the living room, treading softly around a redheaded girl named Cat, who stretched langorously on the sofa that we scavenged from a street corner while she watched me toss empties into cardboard boxes. A clever smile crossed her face and she slowly said, "Cris, by the end of the summer, you will know everyone."
I don't know if she meant for it to be prophecy, but the words took on that air. At the time, I did not foresee the series of nights when we'd have people spilling into the staircase outside our unit, hanging out on the rooftop overlooking the river, swigging vodka while trying to stay balanced on balconies. I did not expect us to start a tradition of feeding guests in the early morning, making omelettes and serving coffee while watching the sun rise over the river, then shooing them out the door after the T started running and could take them home. I never thought that the name for our apartment would become The Shelter, and that we'd earn it by letting a half dozen out of towners sleep in our living room over Convergence weekend. I just knew that my roommates and I liked to have parties, and we didn't own anything that couldn't be easily replaced. I didn't realize at the time that we'd have a legacy.
Yet the reminders of those times came back to me after the "how did we meet?" meme made its way through my friends list and I lost count of the number of times where Shelter parties were mentioned. I remember the intensity in the connections of those old days, thrust as we were into a vast array of new people and the seemingly unlimited potential behind their faces.
But, of course, that was eight years ago, and over time we filled our social capacity, made the friends that we wanted to make, grew distant from those whose only bond was a favorite band, watched others leave or disappear, and somewhere within that period, the intensity ebbed to a slow pulse of polite dinner gatherings, coffee dates, and weekend afternoons moving pieces of furniture that had grown more delicate and cumbersome. Now, as I approach 30 along with a great number of the folks that I met in that summer of '96, occasionally we'd reminisce about the old days and one of us would say, "Why don't we have parties like that anymore? Why don't we stay out to greet the sun, with strangers that we've never met but who feel like family? Why do we have to be old? Why do we have to be boring?"
When I catch myself asking that question, I have to remind myself that those days were fed by a vacuum that sought to be filled, by a need to forge bonds with people that I could think of as family. Those bonds, once forged, needed their own maintenance, and after a certain point, we reach this threshold where making new friends requires neglecting old ones. It's a choice that I'm often loath to make. Certainly it means the loss of that creative energy that comes with novelty in one's life, but in exchange we develop a companionship so enmeshed with our lives that we feel like they've been with us all this time and when we're asked how we met them we have to use the excuse of drink and old age.
So, yeah, Cat was right, I did meet everyone. And unlike the rest of you forgetful bastards, I remember all of the circumstances and dirty stories ;)