Dance Mania at the 5th
As always happens in the 5th, I was completely lost, roaming around
in the dark looking for a friendly face. I peeked in at the dance floor,
gasped, and then broke into a run. It was mania. A crowd of
sweaty, shirtless bodies, packed dangerously tight, hugging each other
and bouncing. It looked like salmon spawning. Front row center was
Bert. The heat hit me like the opening of an oven door. I peeled
off my shirt and joined the dance. Within seconds I was pouring sweat,
I slipped and slid around on the oily skins of my neighbors. Bert,
Beet, Wease and I made a protective cocoon around Karrie Iceberg and
her cute friends. "Come on Ilene" and we touched another level.
Beet in his element
My heart was screaming in my chest, I could barely breath the steam that
surrounded us. I looked into the eyes of the proctor at the front
of the stage and I saw absolute terror. I was hugging people I barely
new and jumping and jumping as high as I could. "Dancing with Myself"
and the dancefloor had ceased being a party and was now a civil disturbance.
Police and proctors stood shoulder to shoulder at the front of the stage,
the band was invisible, but loud. I felt like I was flying.
I looked at the bouncing Bert and from his blank stare it was obvious that
his higher level brain functions had been drowned in animal pleasure.
Encore at the Street
The energy from the 5th carried over to Ivy. Some people never
put their shirts back on. Karrie Iceberg became the object of a six-way
tug of war which resulted in a stalemate.
After hours of non-stop dancing, I took a break. I sat with my
head in my hands on a black wire chair on the back porch of Ivy, breathing
hard, and concentrating on stopping sweating. When I looked up I
saw a scene I wouldn't have thought possible in a Protestant country. Some
alum in his early thirties, with multicolored strands of mardi gras beads
around his neck, was ballroom dancing with a pitcher of beer. Through the
foggy walls of the solarium, which was pulsing like an enormous glass ventricle
to the beat of "Boom Boom Let Me Here You Say Eh-Oh", all that was visible
was flushed sweaty pink flesh.
This was going to be a marathon. Applying lessons learned at
Preakness, I continually rehydrated, filling cups up from the tub of
ice by the bar. Bert did not. Bert danced for 8 hours straight.
Bert is unbelievable.
"That guy is unbelievable," Prenner said, "He never stops dancing - not to get
a drink, not to go to the bathroom, not to rest, he stops for NOTHING."
"That guy is unbelievable"
At 3:30 I took Judy Brown to Cottage. Not the direct route through
the yards, but the most indirect route - all the way around the other side
of Ivy and then out on to Prospect. As we headed around the building
she said, "I'm not going to hook up with you just because you take me around
to the side of the club."
Strike one.
Unphazed, at 4:30 I said, "C'mon, let's go home."
"No. I'm not hooking up with you randomly anymore."
Strike two but I was already out.
At 5 I went to fill up with more ice to see Greg Powell booting into
the ice tub. Sunrise came and went. We partied on.
At 6, Ivy closed with "Pour Some Sugar on Me." Incredible - the
club had raged for hours despite having absolutely no beer. I staggered
out into the sunlight and Prenner's video camera. I can't believe
we are still partying! We are the most unbelievable partiers of all time!
No one parties like us!
Post-bird-chirp Partying
Unbelievable
Wrong.
Out of habit, we swaggered over to TI, confident in our status as the
hardest core at Princeton. Entering the taproom, we were floored
to see a live band blaring away for a sizable audience of helmets.
"I want to thank you all for coming out tonight. This will be our last
song," the singer said.; The band launched into "Disco Inferno" - "BURN BABY
BURN!!" It was 6:15 in the morning. In the corner somebody was chugging a pitcher,
an appropriate exit cue.
We walked home on sore feet. With our hoarse voices and blown eardrums we didn't talk much. Every few minutes someone or other would mutter "Unbelievable."
Reunions '98 Related:
Friday, May 29, 1998: Stone Naps Through Worst Day of Career
