Barn Burner
Barn Burner
It was a starry night and pitch-black except for the green light from the car radio blasting Kurt Cobain’s Rape Me. I could barely see between the heads of the sardine-packed vehicle the start of the desolate dirt road to what felt like nowhere. Having escaped my Queens-bred sub-par teenage life, it was exactly where I wanted to be. We were on our way to the barn where my friend and his brother would go to get wasted off the summer compound they treated as a second home. We made our way there as loud as we could; I can still hear the clanking of the glass bottles from the percussion section in the trunk.
Geographically, I was two or so hours north of NYC. His family was of Irish and German decent so based on what I know of the area now, their humble summer dwelling was somewhere in the cracks between the Borscht Belt and Indian reserves. Here, there was a history of bungalows, pastures, bocce ball and sauerbraten and it was far from my own acquaintance with the Jones Beach pool. Yet, I was uninterested in where I was or in the meatloaf I learned to make for the first time the next day. I just wanted to get fucked up. Did they know how desperate I was to get mental? Did they know how little I cared?
It was too dark to retain any kind of memory of the barn itself. There was a stage inside of it sized for a small play where these hang outs would congregate. We sat upon it, protected by the candle-lit bubble and smoke as we piled up empties of beer and took turns watching each other bow down to the gravity bong. Shots of whisky were passed from out of the bottle, my beloved sweet and yummy Southern Comfort in hand to keep things level. Soon, what came to the barn looking like Dirty Dancing’s Baby-dancing-with-Patrick Swayze now looked more like Baby-needs-to-take-a-break. I danced, I screamed, I stage dived. The terminal twist occurred on my final toke from the liquid pale, my reflection looking back at me. My desert-like insides reached for the Southern Comfort and I guzzled til I could guzzle no more.
I didn’t know how far I wanted to go until I found myself huddled on a shower stall floor feeling the warm water surrounding me turn cold. My eyes had been closed for hours. I couldn’t move, I didn’t want to move and I stayed there for another long while. Where did I go? Where was I? I opened my eyes for the first time. I came to my knees and looked down at myself clad in an oversized white tee. Am I an angel? Have I left and gone to heaven? Have I been casted and transported into an Eddie Vedder music video? I knelt there and waited until I realized nothing had happened. I had gone nowhere; I was in exactly the same place as before. It was morning; the group had all already gone to bed.
[Header image: “Southern Comfort 2” by kara, used under CC BY 2.0]