Inflatable Animals

Every night out is a mini-adventure, you never know how it's going to end. The other night is a perfect example. The night began with me and a group of friends over-indulging ourselves at a local chain restaurant. After copious amounts of food were consumed we headed back to my friend's apartment in search of a party, which during the summer is harder to find since the vast majority of students have left the area leaving behind the very studious or the people who need to be pay more attention to their grades than their social lives. Through social networking we discovered a small party that didn't sound very promising, but would be better than sitting in the apartment doing nothing.

After arriving at this party and realizing the people we knew had yet to arrive, we walked in pretending that we had every right to be there (which we most likely did, we actually brought the first girls to the party). Making the rounds we introduced ourselves to people and it turns out I knew a few of the guys there and some of them even remembered my name. While I was chatting with one guy I had met a few times before but had never really talked to, a bunch of older guys came in with leis, glow sticks, and grocery bags. The first thought that entered my mind was, "Why do alumni keep coming back to party with students?" I never really understood why old guys come back to their Alma mater and hit on undergrads. I don't get it. Freshmen year a bunch of old guys who claimed to only be 23 (though one was balding) tried to convince me and a friend to join them in the "back house" for a private party. Anyway, these guys started pulling out inflatable animals from the bags and blowing them up. There were two inflatable monkeys (one happened to be 3 feet tall), a crab, an octopus, fish, a flamingo, and other various animals. One guy proudly announced to everyone, "I have crabs and an octopus". Wonderful, an old guy with a sense of humor bordering on a prepubescent boys. The guys distributed out their loot, handing me a flamingo and placing the 3 foot monkey on my friend's back. I decided since these guys made up half of the party that I might as well get to know them, plus they were the ones who brought the decorations (and fun) to an otherwise dull summer party.

One of the guys happened to be 24, which was probably bad news since he looked like the youngest of his friends (one looked about 25/26 and the other appeared to be approaching his mid-thirties). This guy was ok, slightly goofy, but had started his own business. The mid-thirties guy was a complete turn-off, he was not very nice to me and was getting on my nerves (and why was he partying with students is a very good question). The guys with the inflatables ended up leaving because they were committed to meeting friends elsewhere, but invited us to come watch them play later on a street corner. Apparently they were part of some kind of Stomp-esque band and would be entertaining the drunken masses later on. We planned on stopping by, for a laugh, and my friend still had the inflatable flamingo.

The rest of the party was ok, nothing out of the ordinary occurred except the man who had been sitting behind us at the restaurant earlier showed up accompanied by our waitress. The only thought I had about this was that I was glad I tipped the waitress well. We left the party and made our way to the designated street corner. They were there setting up but hadn't started playing yet. Their instruments consisted of paint buckets, pans, a cookie sheet and spatula, along with various other kitchen and household apparatus. Their drummer was still MIA, but they warmed up with my friend creating the beat on the paint cans. Once their drummer made an appearance and they began rocking out, we joined in with maracas and flamingo guitar playing. Their music attracted a crowd that began trying their best to hula hoop or dance to the crazy beat.

That could have been the end of the night, weird, bordering on average, but it wasn't. Right before leaving the raucous orchestra a women came running up to us in a panic, "Do any of you have a condom? I need a condom for my friend." One person replied that they didn't use condoms, while everyone else around explained that they didn't carry them around. The lady began accosting other people walking by, begging each one for a condom for her friend. If that wasn't bad enough, this thirty-something year old woman came running up to us, "Do any of you have a condom? I need to have sex tonight. I haven't had it in such a long time." Wow. This was something. When all of us once again explained that we didn't have a condom, she rushed over to her friend who had found a man, a random man on the street, who happened to have a condom in his wallet. Then the woman who "needed to have sex tonight" had her condom and the number of the man who had supplied it.