Do you ever get that feeling like everyone around you knows more than you do? As I slowly walked through the quad, half blinded by the sun, it seemed to me that everyone was looking at me. I tried not to think about it too hard. I still had a good, long way to go and the sun hurt my eyes even when I shielded them with my arm.

A group of girls walked past me. One looked at me with a strange gleam in her eye. “Hey, John,” she said. I glanced at her as she walked away, giggling with her two friends. I had never met that girl before, at least not that I could remember. Jeez that’s kind of lame. I considered asking her where we had met but realized that if I had met her some other time she might get mad. Girls… I trudged on.

I passed the apartments and noticed that one of the buildings had been completely trashed. Empty cups and bottles littered the stairs, the balcony and the pavement all around the apartment building, fluid dripping out of several containers and staining surfaces. A half naked boy was hunched over the bushes, either throwing up or asleep…or perhaps both. A girl wearing questionable attire was passed out on the stairs. Her exposed skin appeared to be covered with writing and artwork in black sharpie. One of the apartment’s windows was broken and from what I could see through it the inside was not looking very good either. Something was oddly familiar here. Perhaps I should come back and ask around at a better time.

I approached the I Lounge, still quite stumped about my connection with the ruined apartment building. I grasped the cold, metal handle, it was unlocked. I didn’t remember anyone ever talking about a party in the I Lounge the night before. Then again, I had also forgotten a great number of other things. I stepped into the cool, soothing shade of the Lounge.

I was a bit taken aback. I was expecting there to be at least some remnants of a party. The I Lounge looked like it always did, maybe even a bit nicer than usual. The pool balls were all hidden in the pockets, the armchairs chairs by the television were set up in a perfect semi-circle facing a blank white board. What sort of a lame party had this been, anyway? It was probably a school-run thing. People always clean up really nicely after those.

I poked around for a few seconds and then I noticed something odd. There was an area of carpet in front of an open window that was discolored. It was actually darker than the rest of the ground around it. At first I assumed that it had rained or something and water had blown through the window. However, I looked a bit closer and realized that the carpet was actually burnt. The area still gave off a faint smell of burning….something. It was a familiar smell but I couldn’t quite place it. Next to the burnt carpet I found an eye patch, the strap was broken.

Had this been a pirate party? Was that why Iain was dressed like that? No…Knowing this part of the University a pirate party would be better advertised than Christmas. I made a deduction: this must be Iain’s eye patch. When I considered it, Iain’s outfit didn’t have an eye patch when I saw him this morning. An eye patch would really make him a bit better looking as far as pirates go.

As I pondered the eye patch I noticed something else underneath one of the armchairs. It was a small, white shape fluttering in the slight wind that my movement was making. I bent down and picked it up. It was a page of a small notebook:

Drinking

Don’t do it

Don’t do it often

Don’t do it around an open flame

Drugs

Marijuana smells like skunks and smoke

Drugs are illegal

IMPORTANT: If meth lab is found in student dorm or apartment wait for authority before attempting to rectify the situation

Meadow

Meadow is where students go to smoke and do bad stuff

Don’t go to meadow

Discipl

Hey Karen, what are you doing tonight after the RA meeting?

Really? Want to help set up the charity auction at the Animal Shelter?

At the orphanage? Well I promised to help with the animals and give blood but I can help the kids at the orphanage with their model airplanes too, what else are Saturdays for, that and World of Warcraft of course but...

The note trailed off suddenly and I got a real funny feeling. There had been a Residential Advisers meeting in the I Lounge? I guess that it’s not really too uncommon for the RA’s to take over the I Lounge for meetings on the occasion. Something still gave me that weird feeling though: “Saturday,” the note had said. I took a moment to check the top of the paper. There it was, right next to a small doodle of a duck roller skating, the date. The meeting had happened yesterday night.

Well that’s quite odd. It is fairly weird for the RA’s to have a meeting here on the same night as a party. Then it hit me, I remembered:

---

It was 12 o’something, Greg, Iain and I were drunk. We were very drunk. Iain also happened to be high. He never actually told us what it was that he was high on but he was quite gone. Someone somewhere had told us that there was a party in the I Lounge. Or they might have told us that. When we learned this information all I know is that we were somewhere loud and distracting.

We were in my room just now. There wasn’t jell-o on the walls just yet and I’m doubt that there was a violin either. Greg and I were getting ourselves ready for the party. Iain had just left to god knows where in a state of excitement. Greg and I seemed to have different versions of what the boy had told us about the party.

“Man, it’s just a party,” I said, fumbling through my shirts and looking for something nicer than the crappy one I had worn the rest of the day. “What in the hell are you doing dressed like that?”

“Man, you heard him,” He put his hand on his hip and shook his head. Greg was hard to take seriously for two major reasons: first of all I was very drunk, secondly he was wearing a long red dress, a formal strapless top and long, velvet gloves. “He said that it was a drag party, man! You know chicks dig a guy with party spirit and machismo enough to dress like this!”

I didn’t remember what machismo meant, it was too big a word for me. I did, however, know that chicks don’t usually dig dudes in dresses. I was about to tell Greg so when Iain smashed into the room.

“YAR ME HARTIES!” Iain was wearing a complete pirate outfit, down to the detail of a red bandana, a black eye patch and a fake, green parrot perched jauntily on his right shoulder.

I simply shook my head, buttoning up my shirt.

“Iain,” Greg looked terribly confused. “What are you doing? Where the fuck did you get a pirate outfit?”

“Didn’t ye hear?” Iain glanced around with one wide eye, wild with drunken exuberance. “The lad said that it were a pirate party that be at the I Lounge!”

“I don’t know if I can be seen with you two,” Greg said, glaring and shaking his head with excess frustration. “One of you has no party spirit and the other is a pirate. Chicks don’t dig pirates, man!”

“Aye, but they do,” Iain became distracted by his parrot and began stroking its green feathers. “Isn’t that right, Mr. McCornswaggle?”

The parrot didn’t respond so I spoke up instead: “Dude, whatever the case is I am pretty positive that this isn’t a pirate party.”

“A Pirate Party?” Iain looked at me with a puzzled face. “I didn’t know there were a pirate party!”

“But you just said—”

“Well that changes everything!” Iain threw up a fist. “Let’s go and make ourselves noticed, lads! AR HAR HAR!” Iain had that look again. The last time that I saw him make that look on a Saturday night he had ended up naked and painted with mud, throwing knives at raccoons. The time I saw the look before that Iain had filled a stairwell with water and pretended to be a dolphin. That look of his could mean a lot of things, but it never really ended up well.

“Fine, whatever,” Greg sighed. “But the parrot has to go.”

“Me parrot Mr. McCwozzlesomething? He’s me first mate!” Iain looked genuinely shocked.

“Chicks don’t dig parrots,” Greg snatched the parrot and tossed it onto the bed. “It’s not your first mate, it’s a fake bird.”

Iain sulked for a bit on the way to the lounge but soon forgot what was going on. Greg and I argued a bit longer but I soon lost interest and forgot the topic after a few minutes.

The I Lounge was lit up. If there had been a party it would probably have been a lot darker inside. We should have figured that out but the second wave of shots that we had taken just a scant bit before were just catching up to us. We barged into the place, me trying to look suave, Greg in a dress and Iain through an open window across the room.

I froze. I knew right away that whatever this was, it sure as hell wasn’t a party. Greg looked shocked and confused as well: he was the only person in drag.

The chairs were filled but not with partiers or merrymakers. The way that they sat gave me the shivers; their backs were all so straight. The way they looked at us with eyes that were surprised but also alert and horribly sharp made my blood run cold. A familiar man in a familiar outfit stood alertly in front of a white board that read “Patrolling rooms is a duty to be taken seriously.”

I recognized the man’s attire first. He was a Campus Security Officer, a step down from a cop. The bright eyed and very sober students sitting in the chairs were Residential Advisers, RAs. We three were like a trio of fish who had swum into the middle of a swarm of sharks. We were mice in a room full of cougars. We were lambs coming to the slaughter pre-marinated. In short, we were three heavily intoxicated students in the presence of over a dozen people trained and commissioned to discipline us for that very reason. Greg nodded to me and made a move to slowly leave. We had both recognized the threat, conflict could be avoided.

Iain, however, recognized nothing and desired to avoid nothing. He gave a great, bellowing, pirate laugh and began dancing to music that wasn’t there. Then he reached into his pirate shirt and pulled out a full handle of Bacardi 151.

The RAs visibly stiffened. I swore that I saw nostrils and ears twitching as the group simultaneously used their keen RA senses. A deathly silence had filled the room. This was not going to go well, not at all.

“Lads and Lasses, let me show ye a bartending trick I learned from me captain!”

Iain made a dramatic show of uncapping the needlessly alcoholic drink. Next he pulled a Zippo lighter from his pocket. I felt like this should have been grounds enough to react but I was frozen in one place, unable to look away. I was watching the event unfold like someone would watch a fatal motorcycle crash.

Whatever trick Iain was trying to do, I had never heard of it. He began pouring the drink onto the carpet and then, in a simple motion, lit the stream on fire. There was now a puddle of burning Bacardi 151 in front of Iain. As Iain kept pouring the puddle of fire got bigger. Everyone moved at once.

The RAs, as one, stood up and exited in a swift but inhumanly orderly singe file line. Perhaps this situation was not covered in the RA manual. The CSO did exactly what CSO’s should not do, he panicked. The CSO left the lounge, fumbling clumsily with his radio, stuttering that he didn’t get paid enough for nights like this.

I finally gained control of my intoxicated body and dashed at Iain. With great effort I wrestled the handle and the lighter away from him, accidentally breaking the strap of his eye patch in the process. Greg had torn off his nice top and was using it to put out the fire, it worked strangely well.

Iain looked at me. “Some trick, eh?” He looked around for a bit and grinned. “Well I guess that means the party’s over! AR!”

My brain was far too broken to deal with all of this. I just sighed and followed Iain out the door, dropping the nearly empty bottle into the trash can by the door.

The CSO outside was facing the bushes, trying and failing to coherently voice his requests into the radio. I allowed myself a moment of sobriety to wonder where the school got this guy. He certainly wasn’t cut out to deal with emergencies; he was just a lump of jelly. Or was he a lump of jell-o? Hmm, jell-o. I forgot what I had been thinking about as my liquefied mind hatched a scheme.

Soon Greg came out, complaining that he had ruined his top and had to throw it away.

---

Then it blurred. Try as I may I couldn’t remember anything else. Still, it’s a miracle that Iain wasn’t arrested. RAs might be able to identify him but he WAS wearing a bandana and eye patch.

I got hit by a sudden pang of annoyed sadness. The shirt I lost last night had actually been a really nice shirt. Dammit where did that go? I couldn’t remember. I stuffed my hands in my pocket; feeling the big key, chilly and hard. Where had this key come from?

I leave the I Lounge, noticing without much interest that Greg’s strapless top was still sitting, charred, in the trashcan on top of the bottle of Bacardi. My head started hurting again from all this remembering. I’m never drinking again.