Flock of Seagulls 1: Housewarming

Sometime in 94 or 95, Chuck had moved into an apartment fairly close to my place in Crackville, and began having regular parties. The first party was a housewarming party, since he'd lost most of his household stuff when he moved out of his ex-girlfriend's place. I dutifully brought some kind of kitchen implement, but it appeared that most people were just there to drink. Which was fine, I guess. Chuck didn't seem to care.

Over the course of the evening, I got to meet all sorts of people. Edless, of course, was right in the middle of everything, as were various current and former skinhead guys, including a crazy dude named Ben, fresh out of the Marines, and Dusty and John M, who were not. There were also twenty or thirty people from Cox Cable, where Chuck worked, and it seemed like fifty people of the hipster/rockabilly crowd. Yes, it was a Big Party, but it didn't really get started until Terry showed up.

Now, I've talked about Terry before, over on Midian, but it was a while back. Terry was a big, loud guy who sold cable television door to door with Chuck. Terry was quite a bit older than us, but nevertheless managed to fit in because he was utterly crazy. In this case, he walked in the door, located Chuck, and handed him a flyer. "I stuck about 500 of these on cars down on 10th Street," he said, grabbing a bottle of rum out of someone's hand, "they'll probably start showing up after the strippers leave at 2am."

Chuck handed me the flyer. The top of it said "PARTY!" in big black letters, and below that was a grainy picture of a topless girl. Below, various phrases caught my eye: "oil wrestling," "naked chicks," "free keg." And Chuck's address.

Yes, it was utterly over the top. Surely he wouldn't do that, right? Right! He agreed that it was all a joke, fished for compliments about the flyer, and rummaged in the fridge for one of my beers. The flyer was forgotten.

Sometime after one AM, the party thinned out. The remaining revelers were snoozing or policing the apartment, as I recall, when the doorbell rang. Two rather scruffy looking guys stood outside:

"Hey, they a party off in here?"

"Huh?"

"We got a flyer, man. Where all the women at?"

"What? Let me see that. Where the fuck did you get this?"

"Down on 10th Street, man! Now come on, where's the party? Where's the oil rasslin?"

"Look, there's no fucking party. There's no girls here."

"What? Sure looks like a party!"

"The party's over. Just go home."

"No girls?"

"No girls."

"I see why. You so mean, you ran 'em all off!"

"Ha ha, very funny."

"All right, man, better luck next time."