A Party

I was invited to a party two nights ago, and I can't get it out of my mind. The invite came from someone I hadn't thought of in many years. The host was Mr. Carrigan, my sixth grade teacher and, at the time, and maybe now still, my favorite living adult. I thought it was odd that he remembered me, and odder still that he managed to track me down at my current address, a good 15-hour flight from the classroom where we once knew each other. Standing in the street, I double checked the address... Mr. Carrigan had given me. The building was something like a dilapidated aircraft hangar, but so old that it might have once housed the first Wright brothers' prototypes. Vast sheets of rust poured down the sides of the round metallic structure and overtook the disintegrating rivets and unintelligible signage on the door.

The belly of the building immediately blanketed my body in warmth. The air was heavy and smelled something like what I imagine an engine that runs on oil and tiger balm might smell like.

At the far end of the hangar was the glow and buzz of a gathering. Bodies moved about covering and uncovering the dim lights, creating a mesmerizing flashing effect. Someone noticed me and called me over. It was Mr. Carrigan - he was smaller, balder and happier than ever. I looked around at the people - children, teenagers and adults all milling about an area set aside as a livingroom with sofas, chairs, a rug and standing lamps. They were a funny group, all mismatched and awkward. I laughed discreetly to myself. What were all these people doing here, how did Mr. Carrigan know them all?

My laughter stopped, as suddenly I came to realize that, in some way, I knew each and every person in the room, though I couldn't place it at first. I tried my best to act casual and sip my drink as normally as I could. This simple action became more and more difficult as I studied the faces around me. Each person, I discovered, was a former classmate, perfectly preserved. They were a random assortment of people I had known throughout my years in grade school, some from elementary, junior high, high school and even a couple from my undergraduate years. They were exactly the same as I remembered them - literally, from their age to their clothing. Most
curious was that, as I made my rounds mingling, my classmates related to me in the same way they would have five, 10 or 15 years ago. They talked to me as if we had seen each other just yesterday.

I wondered if I appeared to them as the age they remembered me or if, perhaps, I was physically, right where I stood, time traveling with each new greeting. I chatted away casually as I shape shifted the night away, a seemingly normal behavior to the rest of the room.

Slowly, in the shelter of that timeworn airplane hangar, the insane situation I found myself in began to feel completely natural. But still, while it's easy to cast acquaintances and unknowns into the background at a normal party, here, each person stood as a grand totem of memory, invoking their respective fireworks in my mind.

I was sitting on an old leather sofa talking about our physics teacher with a girl I had known in grade 11, when Mr. Carrigan stood up and suggested we all move to the opposite end of the hangar for a 'little game'. Drinks in hand (red wine, Coca-Cola, Colt 45s, and Kool-Aid for the varying age groups) we all left the makeshift living room space and headed for the dark end of the hangar. There was dripping water and a large cluster of electrical equipment. A jungle of unidentified cables and wires surrounded a grease-stained rug. The walls were rusty, and it felt very much like we had just been ushered into Dr. Frankenstein's workshop. We were instructed to form a circle and join hands on the rug.

The younger contingent of the party began to guide us in a game of ring around the rosey. Ring around the rosey/ a pocket full of posies/ ashes, ashes/ we all fall down. Around and around we spun, in the thick air, a blur of smiles - each offering its volume of memories. Maybe it was the fumes from the industrial gear, or the repetition of the rhyme, either way, I entered a sort of trance. The elements of Mr. Carrigan, a dozen classmates from all echelons of my memory, the nursery rhyme and the environment of harsh metals and electrical equipment blurred together into a pleasant, fluid substance washing over my senses.

Eventually, as the game faded out, I noticed, through my haze, a difference in Mr. Carrigan. No longer short and bald, he was now tall with wavy, dark hair. He busily circled the group as we all fell down for the last time, flipping switches and connecting cables. Soon we were surrounded by the sound of snapping electrical arcs. The powerful current was coursing as much in our veins as it was in the room, and everyone was completely entranced. Still holding hands, but no one daring to speak a word, individuals began making freeform movements that looked something like an elegant airborne yoga, or a contorted form of slow-motion kung-fu. I came to admit, more so than realized, that our guide and host was not Mr. Carrigan, but in fact Nicola Tesla. He smiled gently just outside the cirle, with elbow length electrical gloves and a knowing look of satisfaction. He watched us as we continued our movements. It was a very peaceful, completely uninhibited expression of ourselves, but also completely new, and perhaps forbidden. This forbidden aspect of our dance might explain the feeling we all shared, the feeling of taboo excitement and adventure that can only be brought on by crossing new frontiers. And so it was that I found myself in a ancient airplane hangar, coasting on bygone emotions and memories connected to people I thought I had forgotten, and expressing these elements of myself though an unspeakable form of dance, brought on by an arresting experimental electrical current at the hands of the one and only Nicola Tesla. It wasn't until I spoke that the current broke.


Note to self: In future, don't eat a lot of kimchi before bed!