There Was This Girl Who Wanted To Be A Talk Show Host

Fall will probably always remind me, for the rest of my life, of going back to school; it reminds me of Chico. I don't know, there's something about fall and college campuses that just go together like whisky and my belly.

I think about Chico often. It's not that it was necessarily a great time, in fact I remember being miserable quite a lot of it, but it was a necessary time. It was that time when you're trying to figure out who you are, when you’re taking your first trembling missteps as an adult.

The one particular night that always creeps up out of the memory murk, was the night of the spontaneous party. Amy Lou had a friend up visiting for a week and she was leaving the next day. We were sitting around the bargain rate kitchen table, covered by a Mexican blanket purchased on an ill advised trip to Tijuana, having cocktails and listening to music and talking and laughing and smoking...

As it was summer and hot, the windows were open, the sliding glass door to the porch was open. Rob and Colin, who lived upstairs, came home from their shifts at the Dairy Queen and hearing us conversing, walked on in. This was par for the course, they would often come down to sit around the porch and talk or watch a movie. But soon, the apartment was filled with people milling around and drinking. I'm not sure how it happened, one minute there was six of us, the next a party.

It was good, nothing out of hand. I remember a lot of laughing, a lot of Blue Curacao colored vodka shots. I remember someone coming up with the brilliant idea of letting a very drunk Colin shave parts of people's heads with my electric razor. I remember eventually settling down with about 7 other people into my bedroom, lit only by a strand of Christmas lights, and listening to a Grateful Dead show recorded in New York. A slow and full Friend Of The Devil had everyone singing along.

Somewhere around 4, people began drifting out. Amy Lou's friend and I laid on my bed and talked for a couple of hours, about her brother, about how she was unsure of what to do with her life, until I realized that it was near 7 and I had to drive myself to Sacramento to catch a plane to Seattle and see my family.

These are the nights I remember when I think about Chico, the easy going smiling no drama times. Memory is a liar, but a sweet one that dulls the edges with the passing years. I don't need to necessarily remember to dark days and bouts of depressions so well, I guess I have the scars.


Zeptember song of the day: Celebration Day