Originally posted: August 10, 2005
When I was a senior in college I lived in this big, crazy house with my brothers Dre and The Knife and pals Leo and Freaky. There were cement floor hallways that snaked throughout the house connecting the 5 bedrooms, 4 of which had doorways to the outside. The other one was the size of a walk-in closet. The Knife slept in the closet room. This house, with it’s aqua-green concrete hallway floors and the thin carpeting that covered the hard floor of the den that provided just enough buoyancy to sleep on if you were drunk enough but not so much that you couldn’t smash all kinds of delightful electronics on it, was essentially a frathouse for freaks.
Well, the other day I heard the song “True Colors” by Cyndi Lauper, and it brought back wonderful memories of this house. And of the three young ladies who would occassionally come back to this house with us at 3am after the kegs ran dry. The Weird Girls…
The Weird Girls were these three pretty girls that frequented the same parties that we did every weekend. Their names were…uh… Weird Girl #1, Weird Girl #2, and Weird Girl #3. I think. So, we were all just a bunch of broke college students, and our weekend nights began with us sitting around our crazy house, listening to Sublime on repeat, smoking cigarettes inside, and drinking Milwaukees Best. We’d then hop in the car of whatever poor soul had to be designated driver for the beginning of the night (it was never me, cause, thankfully, I didn’t have a car and no one had any faith in my driving ability anyway) and head over to whatever apartment was hosting the keg for the night. We’d lurk around the party or stand around the barrel for hours laughing and making fruitless attempts to pick up on the co-eds. Occassionally we’d strike up a conversation with a pretty lady that might last a while, but most nights we’d just finish off the party sucking out the last dregs of the keg with the same group we started with. And every once in a while our group would be three individuals larger. Three girls larger. Three weird girls larger. Yes, for some reason the Weird Girls kept coming back to us.
So, me and The Knife and Leo and Freaky and the three Weird Girls and whoever else was with us for the night would hop in a cab ($3 a head, anywhere you wanted to go) and make our way back to the crazy house. We’d step inside and then race to the fridge to grab any remaining cans of Beast and pass them out in the kitchen. The Weird Girls would usually be sitting, three in a row, on the old dirty smokey 70s couch against the wall, waiting for the show. And if it was a show they wanted, it was a show they were going to get. We’d crank up Sublime in the stereo as loud as we could get it, and then someone, I’m guessing it was probably Freaky or Leo or The Knife, would go rummaging through the house looking for props. Props being old desks or computer monitors or ironing boards or other mundane living items that were left behind by the southern fratboys who lived in the house before us. They’d carry these items back into the den, stand in the middle as the rest of us backed up against the wall, raise the item above their head, and hurl it down onto the floor as hard as they could.
CRASH!
Glass would shatter. Wood would break. Metal would bend. Shrapnel would fly into all corners of the room. The girls would scream. The guys would cheer. Bradley Nowell would sing from the speakers, “I. Heard. That. Payback’s a mother fucking bitch, but I won’t stress and I won’t switch…” Then we’d all dive into the mess, and in a furious panic, we’d grab any remaining debris that wasn’t completely demolished, raise it above our heads, and smash it again onto the floor. The girls would remain seated, staring, shocked, yet not suprised. For it wasn’t the first time they’d seen the show. And they would continue to watch as we went mad, destroying anything and everything in our path. Ironing Boards would clang down onto the floor, bent metail wagging in the air like a broken leg in a soccer game. The rubbish would continue to pile up, growing wider in circumference as it filled the den. One time Dre ran over to the untarnished side of the room and lifted a large ceramic statue of an elephant. It was hollow, but it was big enough that it still must have weighed a good twenty pounds. The Knife had brought this with him from the apartment where he’d lived the past year. Dre carried that statue to the middle of the room, and before we could yell out, “No! Not the Elephant!” he had hurled it down to the floor in an explosion of white clay. Pieces of the elephant flew in all directions. The ceramic dust eventually settled on the broken pieces of wood, metal, and clay that littered the floor. The girls would continue to watch, silent, hands on laps.
We’d stand within our circle of destruction panting and smiling. Sublime would continue to pump from the speakers. One of us would then run over and flick the light switch, smothering our mess in darkness. And then someone would hit ‘stop’ on the CD player and hit ‘play’ on the tape player. The wheels of the mix tape in the cartridge would begin to spin. And we would be greeted by the solemn opening drum beats of Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors. We would each grab one of the Weird Girls and pull them off the couch and ask them to dance with us. Reluctantly, they would accept. And we would all slow dance to True Colors atop the violent mess we’d just created – a drunken junkyard prom night…
When the song ended, I would flip back on the lights and run into my room. I would return a few moments later in costume – shirtless, cowboy boots, a pair of those gross tight red shorts that every Gym teacher you’ve ever had has worn, and a wool ski mask that covered my face, revealing only my eyes and mouth through the creepy oval holes… I was an inbred white-trash version of the Gimp from Pulp Fiction. I’d creep back into the den, crackling through the pieces of ceramic and metal and wood, and extend my hand to the Weird Girls in an invitation to dance. Repulsed by this scrawny, hairy, pale abomination, they’d shreak and take three steps back. I’d twirl around the room to demonstrate my moves, and hold out my hand again. Eventually one of them would succumb to my hooded charm, and would join me for a slow dance. Almost immediately, she’d jerk away and head back to the safety of the others, disgusted. Devastated, I’d slink back to my room – a sad and lonely hick gimp.
I’d return to the den in civilian attire, and we’d convince the Weird Girls to join us in a game of hide and seek throughout the house. At one point I remember hiding under the 8 foot desk in my room with one of the Weird Girls. She had just seen a group of guys engage in a manic orgy of destruction, then slow-danced with the lunatics to Cyndi Lauper, then watched a gimp pyro-rete through the trash, and now she was bending down underneath a (literally) 8 foot desk with a 21 year-old man who was taking a game of Hide and Seek very seriously. Had I not been so drunk, I’m sure I could have actually watched her sanity leak right out of her eyes…
We’d then all meet back up in the den with brooms and dust pans and begin cleaning up our mess. The Weird Girls would stand to the side and watch as we mechanically swept and bagged trash, silently and responsibly, as if we were cleaning up after a Sunday night pizza party. Watching, they must have debated amongst themselves as to whether the fact that these drunken madmen could spend a good 2 hours post-party with 3 girls and not put the moves on them was refreshing, or was just plain old creepy.
By then it would be close to 6am, and the girls would announce that it was time for them to head back home. We would all smile and wave to the Weird Girls and congenially call out that we’d see them next weekend, and then they’d walk out the door and close it behind them. We would sit down on the couch next to the garbage bags full of broken shit and smoke a final cigarette, and then retire to our respective rooms to sleep away the remaining morning hours. And we’d know that the following weekend would be full of keg parties and co-eds and kicks, and we’d bask in the comfortable knowledge that if things got dull, we could maybe count on the Weird Girls to come back and sit on our couch and watch us lose our minds.
Man, those girls were weird…
No, you were weird!