Nurse the Hate: Hate The After Party

We had played a show in Erie PA.  The show went very well.  People were excited.  We were invited to a party.  There are almost no circumstances in which I attend “after parties”.  There are some very sensible reasons for this.  First of all, let’s all admit to one another in this open forum that the idea of “nothing good happening after 1am” is a very solid idea.  Most decisions I have made in the spur of the moment at 1 am have been disastrous.  I have reasonable decision making abilities.  Can you imagine some of the decisions Leo has made after 1am?  Don’t even make me go into some of his fiascos.  You ever see that "Celtic Dragon" tattoo on his arm?  Judgement goes right out the window at that time of night.

I have seen with great clarity the “post gig after party”.  I challenge you to come up with a different scenario than this one.  There are seven people in the room.  Six of them are male while the lone female is either the pissed off housemate of one of the men that had no idea that this gathering was happening or is obviously mentally ill.  It should be noted that this obviously mentally ill woman will be targeted by the drummer as his next wife regardless of the band this drummer plays in.  I believe that Carl Palmer from ELP met his first wife in this manner, as did Robo.  (Can someone fact check this?)  One of the guys will be very urgently talking about something arcane like the Presidency of James Polk or the merits of Ford pickup trucks.  It will be crushingly boring. 

There will be music.  It will be too loud.  It will be something that only one person in the room is interested in, like a latter career Thelonious Monk LP, Sonic Youth side project, or ironic Donny & Marie record.  The only beverages available will be slightly warm cheap domestic beer like Busch Light, MGD in cans, or Stroh’s.  There might also be low end liquor that is remarkably obscure.   This tends to be a disconcerting clash of cultures like “Ian MacTavish Tequila” or “Boris Kremlin Sour Mash”.  It was purchased in either a drug store or gas station.  It must be avoided at all costs or the following day will be spent vomiting blood in truck stops across the heartland.

There will be someone that decides 3:47am is the time to really start getting after it and suggests shots, or pulls out a plastic bag of some type of drug that no one has heard of in their lives.  “What man?  You haven’t done Popsicle Lightning?  Fuck.  This is the shit here.  It’s like ground up meth and baby aspirin mixed with paint thinner.  You get a migraine for 36 hours but then it’s a super mellow buzz…  You want to try it?  Get on the plastic tarp.  You take it with this hot syrup enema…  It burns a little bit at first...  There you go… There you go…”

I knew in my heart that the "after party" was a bad idea.  However in this particular case I went to the party.  The party was being thrown by two women that seemed like white collar professionals.  I was optimistic that not only would the band be happy that I went along with it, but that there would be delightful snacks on site.  These seemed like gals that would have frozen shrimp ready to thaw and maybe something bubbling away in a crockpot.  Yes!  I would like a crab puff!  I thought their apartment would look like a Pottery Barn catalogue.  Of course when we arrived we discovered the scenario I laid out for you earlier with a few details swapped out.  (There was no “popsicle lightning” or if there was the tarp wasn’t out yet.)

I sat sullenly on the couch looking at my watch nursing a warm Miller Lite (can).  I dug into the bottom of a bag of old chips.  The cheap stereo played Guns N Roses.  All I wanted to do was take off my boots and go to sleep.  That would be impossible.  There was nowhere to crash out here and Leo was already in full swing.  “Ohhhh!!!!!  That’s fucking funny!!!!  HAHAHAHAHAHA!”  I had really bungled this one.  I sat and fumed, angry at myself for allowing this to happen. 

I’m still not positive why I picked up the fire extinguisher in the kitchen.  I suppose it was sort of a Mt. Everest because-it-was-there thing.  I was sort of joking around about putting out the “fiery” Cheetos that were on the kitchen table.  Then that became “oh, you would never shoot that off” from our hosts.  Then that became me thinking it was not so much of a dare as a real test of my manhood.  This was a real crucible.  Then I pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher and it became “Oh ha ha!  You would never do it.  I dare you!  I dare you!” and then the whole room was filled with whatever came out of the fire extinguisher.

In all the videos I have seen of fire prevention safety, I have never seen the aftermath of a fire extinguisher.  Let me tell you, if you have a fire, serious consideration should be made to let the flames just burn themselves out and tossing out the burnt remains of the household afterwards.  The mess the fire extinguisher made was impossible to calculate.  It had to be worse than an actual fire.  A layer of white dust covered every inch of the apartment.  A fine mist hung in the air which of course set off the smoke alarms.  Now it is 3:47am and the alarms for the entire building are going off.  I soon learned that these were hard wired into the 911 system as I began to notice the sirens from multiple fire trucks getting ever closer.  I had made an error in judgement.

One of the things I was taught as a child was that if you made a mistake, you stand tall and accept the responsibility and consequences.  This was foolhardy advice from my parents.  There was nothing good that could happen if I had to explain the twisted path I had taken to make these various civil servants drive across town in the dead of night for what was essentially a false alarm.  "If you could get these cuffs off of me, I can just run down what the hell happened here.  It's funny actually, a heh heh heh...  See I saw those Cheetos which said fiery on them and um..."  No.  That would not go well.  I needed to do something else.  I did what any sensible gentleman would do. 

I ran away.  

The fire department and police were briefed by the women as to what scoundrel did the deed.  I was a wanted man as they very wisely threw me under the bus.  It's not easy being a cowboy on the run in Erie PA.  You stand out from the crowd.  I hustled over a few blocks to a house where a deadbeat friend of mine allowed me to crash on his couch.  The band split up in the melee.  I lost all the guys.  My friend that had the warm invite for us to the party had the women come back to his apartment as theirs was completely filled with the horrible white powder they would deal with for months.  It should be noted that he somehow created a scenario where the three of them all masturbated in front of each other on his bed "to help us relax, and since we are such good friends it won't be weird".  This surprising turn of events also turned out poorly when it was found to be definitely "weird" for the women.  I think my friend's timing of ejaculating when one of the girls started crying freaked out both of the women, or at least that's how it sounded to me when I heard the recap.  They all stopped talking shortly after this incident.  I was never invited back either.

I don't go to after parties very often these days.