King For A Night

King For A Night

John W. Gilmore

The 5th floor was the place to be in Johnson Hall on the weekends, and we started the weekend Thursday nights. The Residential Assistant would pack up his bags in the morning and take the Greyhound bus home for the weekend to avoid having to interfere with the Thursday night craziness, when we would order a keg of beer, turn up the music, and invite as many people as possible to crowd into a small dorm room with the challenge of kicking the keg before anyone went home.

Here I stood, my last year, a Senior, with only 6 months left to go. Most of my friends graduated early so I had to move into the dorms again from my off campus housing with a lot of freshmen and juniors in East Halls. We were way out near the edge of campus. We were so far we had our own gym. All tall towers standing in a clump next to highway 322.

One night we were drinking, which was usual. When I say we were drinking, I mean drinking. It wasn't a Thursday night, but we got beer from somewhere. It always seemed to just appear.

“Hey!” Gregg suddenly says. “It's Halloween and we aren't flippin doin nothing.”

“So true,” I said, taking another gulp of my beer.

“Well let's find something to Fn do,” Rick says.

“I know a girl named Lisa. She said there's a big party going on at one of the Frat houses tonight and she's volunteering there. A flippin Halloween Party. I bet we can go,” Gregg said. “We can just use her name to get in free.”

“F Yeah!” I shout. “Let's get some costumes.” Everybody staggers out of the room looking for some kind of costume while I look around for anything that I can find to pass as one. I had some aluminum foil and a walking stick. I looked more. I had sheets...extra sheets for the bed. I had some Styrofoam balls. Where I got them from I'll never know. I made an aluminum foil crown and put it on my head, stabbed the grapefruit sized Styrofoam ball with the stick and then wrap the ball in aluminum foil, and tied the sheet around my neck like a cape. I looked in the mirror.

I am wearing nothing but a tank top, regular pants, a crown and a cape. I'm a King, I say to myself. I am kind of drunk, but I don't notice that anymore because I am too drunk to even notice how crazy this is. Rick comes walking in. He has on a white bathrobe and has taken a towel, put it on his head, and put a belt around it like someone in the Middle East. “I'm a Sheikh,” He declares. Gregg had the same idea.

He comes in with sheets draped and tucked all over his body and a towel on his head with a headband. We just started laughing as we made our way to the elevator cursing like crazy for no reason at all. We get downstairs. This is State College, PA in the mountains. It is the 31st of October and it is cold. We don't care. We just burst out of that warm building into cold wearing nothing but sheets. Somehow we walk about a half of mile across campus to the outer edge, and then we walk about another mile to Frat House Row not knowing what to expect. We come to the door.

There is a guy collecting money at the door. It is packed. All kinds of people are cramming in. We come to the door. Gregg says, “We're here to help Lisa.” He waves us through and points to the right. “She's in that direction,” he says. He turns his attention back to the crowd and we head to the left. Gregg whispers “Flipping A-Hole.” As the only Senior Class-men I whisper “Fn right!” We are just howling with laughter going into the main room. We stop at the beer keg and have a few more drinks. Music is playing in the background. We try to keep a low profile because we have just crashed the party.

I am about 6' 2” tall with two guys who are 5'7” at best, very muscular, into body sculpting, carrying a big scepter with a giant silver ball on the end and everyone else is in the whole building is white, but I think I won't be noticed. The music is playing. They are jamming with new wave music and punk. I figure, Yeah, I can do this. Somehow we get out on the floor. They have a disco ball, flashing lights, loud music and we are just jamming. People are bouncing up and down, some people are slam dancing. I don't know what is going it, but it's fun, and then the B52s come on singing Rock Lobster.

A shout goes up from the crowd. I wondered what it was about. The lead singer in the B52s is just talking along with the music as it is jamming and his back up group is doing this amazing chorus. I am just kicking it out man—kicking it out and then the music begins to slow down. They hit the part of the record where Rock Lobster is descending to the bottom of the sea. The singer is saying “Go down, down, down,” and everyone is dancing slower and slower, bending their knees and moving down to the floor. I say to myself, What the heck are these white people doing (?), as I smile with glee and go down, down, down until I find myself lying there on the floor with about two or three hundred people and there is dead silence.

The music picks up. Rock Lobster is ascending and we move up, up, up as the music builds to a rapturing pace and beat. I am flipping going wild, jumping, spinning, doing whatever the old body wants and the DJ shines a big spotlight right on me. I am shocked. Here I am trying to hide and I'm in a spotlight and he's shouting, “Look at that guy, Man! That's the most cool outfit I've ever seen.” People are cheering. The spotlight goes off. We keep dancing until we were totally exhausted. We stumble out and start the long trek home.

As we are about half a block down the street we run into some of the women who would hang out at the parties on the 5th floor. We are laughing and joking, holding each other up. We are not really staggering, but we are walking hard, like we would like to stagger if no one was looking. The alcohol is getting into our systems from all of the dancing and laughing, and we are getting more and more intoxicated, and starving. We walk pass MacDonald's and stop in to get some food. We offer to buy them something and we order all of the food. When it is rung up we realize that none of us have money. None of us even had pockets.

I have never been so embarrassed in my life. They put their money together and paid for the meal. I felt kind of bad as we ate their food together, but it was really funny. I really didn't feel so bad, I am sad to say. I was way too drunk for that. Until the next day.