I Saw Jesus at a House Show: Sleepless Nights, Empty Beer Cans and Stories to Tell My Kids
Networking at parties, red solo cups on the lawn and rumors spreading like wildfire.
By Stella Violet
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At a former party school in the desert where the dean’s main mission is to stop the student body from having fun, finding weekend plans is like solving a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle.
Joining a sorority was never in the cards for me, but frat parties get shut down within the hour anyway. So, I found comfort surrounding myself with people who don’t shower moshing to bands screaming angsty words into a microphone.
In the past year I’ve seen and experienced enough people, places and things to write a six-season television show about.
Stolen kisses, empty beer cans and listening to girl’s life stories on the bathroom floor have become a weekly event.
One minute I’m seeing the Jonas Brothers for free and two hours later I’m face to face with a dude in a band dressed up like Jesus, to this day I'm still not quite sure what the theme of that party was.
I’ve spent a lot of nights in bathtubs taking selfies and saying things to people that I’ll regret in the morning. And, I almost always miss the bands at a house show because I’m having too much fun getting ready. But, it probably wasn’t worth writing home to anyway.
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I’ve seen a lot of red solo cups and pizza slices scattered around backyards and kitchens, and I think about how grateful I am to not be the one cleaning them up in the morning.
Waking up next to a sweaty friend in the morning and feeling like I lived through a Skins episode is what I live for.
Getting home at 3 A.M. just to wake up four hours later for brunch and an in-depth debrief is the only way to accept our youth.
Finding innocence in growing up is seeing a trampoline in the backyard of a house party and jumping around with your friends listening to music off of someone’s iPhone.
Sometimes I wonder how different college would be if I would have gotten a fake ID from some random guy's basement or a sketchy website where I have to convert cash into bitcoin. But, at the same time I would have never experienced the art that is, meeting people in the comfort of someone else’s house.
Giving pleasantries to the homeowner and gaining social skills with random strangers I’ll probably never see again is beautiful. Sharing cigarettes while sparking up enough conversation to ask for another is my form of traditional bargaining.
And, being the very last people at a party shows strength, even as all eight of us are piling onto a hammock while practically falling all over each other.
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You should know it’s always okay to show up to parties you're not invited to, but you should always be courteous to every partygoer because you never know which one is the host.
And, when you see “BYOB” on someone’s party flyer, bring something. Oh, and making out on the side of the house is always the best spot.
There’s too many chances for sleeping eight hours in the future. So, don’t feel so bad about adding some sleepless nights into your weekend routine.
Last year on Halloween I didn’t inherently intend to chip my tooth and gain a small scar on my index finger. However, I did pull off a really cool parkour trick for a small audience in someone’s backyard and gained some serious street cred.
And, if I would have never gone to a friend of a friend’s birthday party, I would have never met a 100-year-old tortoise.
Now, at 21, I feel as if my days of house parties are reaching an end, minus birthday’s and the occasional dinner party. However, there is no feeling like cracking a cold one in some dude’s backyard with music blasting off a JBL light-up speaker.
My only piece of advice is to savour the moment because there is truly no reason why you shouldn’t be having a good time with your friends.
