One afternoon in early October Elena and Yamioletta were finishing warm forty-ouncers on Rey’s porch when Yamioletta offered to drive Elena around. Elena thought it might be like off-roading in the hills, which she had done with Sam and Chris in high school. They drove across the fields under electrical towers and along the fire roads behind neighborhoods. The cab to Nick’s semi was slate gray and sparkly, like efflorescent concrete, and its hood was slightly pitched, like the tips of Batman’s mask. Yamil said that Nick did not transport cargo but “goods for the hazmat industry,” i.e. explosives. Yamil let her ride in a trailer he’d hitched up. Inside the trailer it was totally dark except for the crack in the door on the loading side, which formed a line around the frame as neat as staples. The stops were gentle. She felt a little weightless when they got on the freeway. She got the idea to ride it in downtown LA. Elena loved DTLA despite it being where her classmate got punched in the face on his birthday. The new places in DTLA were nicer and hornier, and COVID had emptied its high rises of all of the successful industry people who never wanted to be there. The grandeur of bygone eras remained in the marquees, the overpriced hotels with small, cheaply furnished rooms, and the rooftops no one could get enough of. It felt dangerous at night, which was why it would be a good destination for the semi party. It was crazy. Elena had grown up 1.5 hours from LA and yet had only been there a handful of times before art school. Everyone in her family hated LA, including her grandfather. Rey was not at home when Yamil drove Elena around, he was visiting Donna. Aidan was home, probably doing ‘shrooms and blazing, playing electronic music with synths that chased wordless melodies faster and faster until the beat broke like a tidal wave. The sink was magenta from Aidan dying his own hair. Techno was goth-adjacent.
Elena spent that night at Rey’s and saw him the next morning. They were both hungover. The bougainvillea hanging from the metal arbor by the driveway swayed in the wind. Elena passed by Sam, talking with a shirtless guy who was lying in the back of a blue truck with his head of curly hair in her lap. They were parked in the shade. The two rocking chairs on the porch where dirt welled up in the corners were empty, except for a wool blanket and a few tall cans of beer. Over the past few months people filtered in and out of Rey’s freely. Elena would be more surprised if there were no people out here drinking. Rey sat on a cherry-wood rocking chair near the metal arbor, looking out into the road.
“How’s everything in Grand Terrace?” Rey said, dramatically, rolling the r’s. “Is it hot like it is here? Freaking December.”
“It was overcast,” Elena said.
“So, it’s nothing like here,” Rey said. Sweat had collected on his chest. An unopened bottle of water sat next to him in a puddle of condensation. “Sometimes there are no seasons. It just gets hot, like the stupid Mercedes I used to drive.” He pointed to a broken-down royal blue Turbo in the corner of the drive. “My brother tried to fix it like ten times. He says the parts are impossible to get since the factory outside Berlin that made them closed. Sonia would do all the maintenance. She used to drive that thing all the time. It was hers. She tried to give it to our neighbor. She didn’t want to learn stick, though.”
“What are your thoughts about the party, chulo?” Elena asked.
“I love it. Someone might get hurt,” Rey said.
“I know, right?” Elena said. “Yamil said he can line the insides of the trailers with weighted blankets. They’re standard for hauling all the fragile shit. As long as we don’t get hit, he says we should be good.”
“For real?” Rey asked.
“We test drove and he slammed the brakes when I was in the back. I flew, but not far. With more people packed in I would probably just have swayed like a fish.” Rey stared at her from behind his jet-black sunglasses. Sam had given him that pair. He returned his gaze to the road. Elena continued, “I think everyone will be down. We’ll tell them not to dress in chains, and it’s not totally safe, but Yamil is a professional. We should take some pictures of you in the back first.”
“We could have those inflatable toys,” Rey said. Elena thought of using beach balls and blow-up chairs. Rey tapped the armrests from underneath. “I almost shot a porn video in a semi once. It was construction-themed. Something happened to the videographer. I think he killed himself.” Rey looked remorseful. “That’s before everyone had phones and your mom could shoot a wide angle.”
“Why?” Elena asked.
“Why what?” Rey said.
“Why did he kill himself?” Elena asked.
“People said he had an abusive boyfriend,” Rey said. “And maybe he was sick; but it wasn’t HIV or anything. I didn’t really care for him. He never credited me in his captions, while for every other fucking guy he did.”
“We could keep it small. Invite only,” Elena said. “Make everyone pay fifty bucks.” They talked about it some more. They were already imagining what they might wear and who they wanted to invite. Rey was focused on the rude and hairy LA guys who would kill for his career, knew tons about the directors and studios he affiliated with, and welcomed him loudly at every living room orgy. Elena thought of Peter’s new crowd whose awkward privilege and youth made for the right blend of sensitive and insensitive. Both thought of Javi’s gay friends who bragged with their bodies only to drink and fuck like they had no choice. They also thought of Hector’s nieces and nephews who were like a party within a party, the way they drew all their friends and ignored the theme and the music. In the mayhem of all them, Elena and Rey knew they would enjoy themselves.
“LA’s too far of a drive. Plus what are we going to do when we get there?” Rey asked.
“I know, right?” Elena said.
“My friend works in a parking garage in Pomona,” Rey said. “Or was it Chino?”
“Maybe we can just drive to Pomona then come back?” Elena said.
“Let’s see how it goes,” Rey said.
“Let’s see how it goes,” Elena said. “It’s a trip that videographer dude killed himself.”
“It gives me the chills,” Rey said. “Porn draws some crazy-ass people, as you can imagine. Mostly everyone’s cool. You meet your occasional asshole here and there. A lot of guys get into it thinking it’ll always be a party and drugs. Am I talking too much?” The question was rhetorical. “Most of the time you’re just waiting around. The director is yelling at you, cussing about poses, hassling about money. You have to fuck half of production to get invited back on set. Whatever you’re not willing to do, there’s a young guy that is already on it. People you thought were your friends try to elbow you out of a gig. People outside of the industry are even worse, though. I would never fuck with someone who has an office job. After that suicide though, I stopped working for a while. Sonia was very supportive. All I did was watch cartoons and cook. I got a belly, racked up a ton of debt until money was all I could think about. That was fucking long ago.”
“Porn isn’t for me,” Elena said, “but I wonder about it. I don’t want to get stuck doing one kind of work.”
“Why not porn?” Rey asked. “I feel like porn is pure dedication. It’s dorky, and people might kill you over it….That’s what I hate about porn the most,” Rey continued. “People who don’t even watch it come for us like we’re monsters.”
“If Yamil is free later, would you be down to take some photos?” Elena asked.
“Yeah I’ve got nothing going on,” Rey said. “I’m just going to hang out with Hector.”
Yamil drove to Rey’s that night around nine, after it was already dark. Elena brought a bunch of orange glowsticks and pink plastic wrap. Rey wore a rubber yellow singlet with his hair spiked. He threw himself around the trailer with a look of surprise, like he was in a collision. He lay on the floor inside a chalk outline. He moved to the foot of the semi cab, and then sat on the ledge with a slight “ah ha” in his brow, his lips parted. The next look was him saying, Hi with a tiredness that sets in after waiting too long. It was a long drive, a long delivery. They sold all fifty tickets in one night. They had two trailers; one would be reserved for Rey’s sex party, which Aidan recommended being invite-only. Enough folks were bugging about tickets that Elena wanted to crawl into a cave, one of those toxic ones with mercury, up in the Jurupa hills. She didn’t know what to tell them. Even Peter wondered if there’d be room for him. In case it got too crowded, Elena told people that there would be a deejay in Rey’s backyard. She asked Rey to invite his Mexican talent, meaning that seventeen-year-old dad-deejay, but he thought she meant Nina, Aidan’s love. Elena figured she could have the guests meet at the parking lot of the liquor store, away from everyone. She definitely let down different goths and emos with whom she’d become fast friends—goths and emos who always paid. She would never post about her weird parties anymore.
The liquor store Rey walked to every morning was a one-story joint with an outdoor patio where the owner smoked and where clients could eat burritos from the place next door, which was terrible. Rey said that one of the times he ate there he had to strip naked while using the toilet, the food hurt his skin so bad. The liquor store was run by a family from Mumbai, and sold some imported goods on the wireframe shelves. Cigarettes and vapes were sold under the counter, along with condoms and pills that promised male strength. The owner, Subramanium, was passionate about daytime TV dramas which he watched with English subtitles while his daughter, Mina, played video games devotedly. Subramanium had a similar focus on the tables in front, piled with product, beneath posters of super-enlarged beers afloat in space. The posters had no prices on them and were as old as the goats in Rey’s backyard. Incense burned at the foot of a mini-Buddah. Different gods from the Ramayana, in holy yellows and reds, decorated the walls, along with the many notices, licensing, and proofs of inspection. Subramanium was happy with Elena for bringing so many of her friends. She felt sure that he wouldn’t mind her filling his parking lot with thirsty patrons for half an hour but wanted to ask directly anyway, so he wouldn’t feel ambushed. Elena liked seeing Mina on her Switch all hours of the day and night, ceaselessly slashing away at monsters and exploring shrines on the picnic tables weighed down with bags of gravel knotted to the legs. Mina had figured out how to tell the world to leave her alone.
When Friday came, the patio was packed with dozens of people getting crazy over the live banda. Elena had discovered a group playing down the street from a gay bar in Pomona and paid them money to come over. They agreed to a low hourly rate, with the promise that they and their friends could drink as much as they wanted. The tuba player in a vest and black trucker-hat was in his forties. His twenty-year old son Luis, played trumpet. Uriel and Guadalupe rounded out the band, all around Luis’s age. They were excited to play a real house party, not another quinceañera. The youngins were attractive. Luis had the face of his father already, with a thin mustache, but enough baby fat to give him a boyishness that suited his carefree nature. They had moved to California from La Paz, and he was placid. Elena thought he was straight. Later she found out one of her gay metal-heads hooked up with him and they had cuddled all night. Luis told him about high-school years of being a jock-poet who understood the long sighs of art. Elena loved the emotional clarity of Mexicans. Too many US-Americans mistook rage for longing and excitement for violence, to name one problem. Guadalupe didn’t want to live in the US forever, just long enough to build a house and establish a working relationship with the younger restaurateurs in Riverside, the ones that needed help for a few weeks at a time. He liked to come and go. He spoke English and posted about his gym routine and his motorcycle. Uriel had grown up in a small mountain town where most of the guys were gay. Most moved to Zipolite in order to work in nightlife. His parents were not fully accepting, but the town was small enough that people would give his parents shit if they dissed him. He was the showman of the group, and his friends would demand he take his shirt off if the gig went on long enough.
Elena we should go, Yamil texted.
I know, Elena texted.
Get Nick. He’s still at Rey’s, Yamil replied.
After Elena asked what he looked like, Yamil sent a photo of a short guy with bright brown eyes, smooth skin, a high fade, and a grey suede cowboy hat. He always wears that, Yamiloleta texted.
Elena looked around the yard at Rey’s and grabbed a drink from one of the coolers by the back wall. People were already dancing inside a trailer parked near the patio. It seemed that Nick misunderstood the directions. The trailer was filling up with passengers at the party instead of at the liquor store. “Those bitches,” she said. When she asked for Nick aloud, very loud, the crowd got quiet with mild interest and confusion.
“My brother is named Nick,” someone said. Elena went to the banda and asked Uriel to ask for Nick, then she scanned the crowd of everyone being oblivious and high and generous together. No gray suede hats. “Is there a Nick out there? Driver? Nick? Your time has come, bro,” Uriel said. A white guy with dirty blond hair in a blue plaid shirt and no hat emerged from the crowd. “I’m Nick,” he said.
“No one is looking for you,” Elena said. She scanned the crowd again, then went inside the house. Maybe he was having fun in one of the rooms? Two people were making out on the couch. A couple of guys were cutting lines of coke in the kitchen. “Nick,” she called out in the hallway. She went to Rey’s room. Everyone in there was stoned.
“I think he went outside,” one guy said with slight impatience. He was lighting a bowl of pungent weed. “Like a few minutes ago.”
Elena saw him as soon as she stepped outside, the grey suede hat. Nick was arguing with his boyfriend, who wanted to go home. The boyfriend had darted off by the time Elena walked over. “What’s wrong?” Elena asked.
“Nothing. He just gets like this when I’m around a bunch of guys,” Nick said. He left out the part about not-technically cheating on him, and also the possible exposure to gonorrhea.
“Want me to go get him?” she asked.
“No, sis. It’s all good. He’s leaving with some friends,” Nick said. “Where’s that liquor store?”
“It’s close,” Elena said. She followed him to the semi, which was overflowing with people. “We got to clear these people out, the party is over there,” she said. Nick smiled, climbing into the cab as Elena walked around the back. In the trailer she saw shadows and black sneakers on the butt of some jeans. She turned on her phone light to see the rest of some dudes passed out in the corner.
“You all ambulatory?” Elena asked. “We need the trailer empty.”
A couple of guys nodded. Their sweaty faces varied in degrees of delight and embarrassment. They looked at her, processing what she’d said. It seemed like they were going to let her in on a joke, then they climbed out of the trailer and carried their sleeping friend away. Elena slammed the doors shut on the empty trailer and climbed into the passenger side as Nick started the engine. He adjusted his lights and uncoupled the gears. Elena pulled her seatbelt tight, noticing the dashboard was all black and new. Nick seemed alright but Elena still was unsure.
“Nick, are we gonna like each other?” she asked. “This night will be so much more fun if we like each other.”
Nick was quiet, thoughtful. He watched Elena’s open eyes and saw the basic sanity in their depths. “Yeah sis, I think we’re gonna like each other,” he said, and they high-fived. He backed up the semi a few yards toward the patio as everyone watched, then put it in drive and pulled away, as if yanked on a leash. Elena had never been so high up in a vehicle before. The cracked road flowed by underneath. The pepper trees spread in branches that the beautiful light pollution cast as brownish purple. Nick told her how he drove with people in the back before. He preferred bringing his boyfriend or even a couple of friends on the long trips. There were cameras installed in the trailer and monitors in the cab but no one usually used them. Elena figured that it would be safe for everyone to ride in back, or it wouldn’t. All the fragile shit that we buy passes through one of these things, she thought. Among the risks she took as a teenager, this wouldn’t even make the top five. Still her mind raced over the same worries. Having everyone acknowledge the risk when they paid her the money made a little difference, emotionally. She loved not having to care about anyone. Tucked under her arm was a giant bag of molly. She opened one of the toy capsules, the ones from the 25-cent machines, and then swallowed the molly. Like any other Friday, all she could do was get high and hope for the best.
“Just two more blocks,” Elena said.
“So, are we driving downtown or were you guys just thinking about Pasadena?” Nick asked.
“Pasadena…” Elena said, like a question.
“It seems less dicey than driving around downtown Riverside, everything is so close to the freeway,” Nick said. Under his grey vaquero hat with silver embellishments, he remained totally focused on driving. She turned and looked out. She was making it up as she went along, assuring others as she, herself, had no clue what was going on. The difference was that others trusted her. Trust was their greatest resource. She gave trust to her gay-ass party crew by paying them beforehand, sharing molly, and bonding with friends of friends. They were over the world of sterile pleasures that only money could buy. Also they possibly exposed each other to COVID, which was reason enough to become friends. She saw a red latex cap on a lean guy in the empty lot. It was Rey.
“We’re halfway to eleven, sis,” Rey said once he got to her window. “People are already buzzing. Your friend Javi has been entertaining us with a strip tease and talking about his boyfriend’s dick, but we should go, puta. A bunch of people are driving by, staring.” Elena and Rey had agreed to ride in separate trucks. Rey was having the sex party of his dreams. Plus, this way they would actually engage their friends who had funded their latest deathtrap.
Elena made some quick decisions with Rey, sending him back to the other semi. “Suerte,” Elena said to Nick. She got out of the cab, and then joined her friends in the back, in the trailer.
Elena had asked her friends to dress like pin-up girls. Just one couple went all out for the theme, wearing a polka dot dress and a mechanic’s onesie. Everyone else wore jeans, sports bras, Hawaiian shirts, shredded tanks, racer tops, fishnets. Several friends brought portable fairy lights. Two guys had matching striped box-cut shirts. Each also had a digital camera dangling around their neck. At some point the dress code of Elena’s parties became a way to flag new people. Only new people followed it, unless they were goth. The goths never followed, but they always paid. The only one who was consistent was Rey, who was flawless at the start of the night, and a mess by the end. I think the main draw to Elena’s parties was the ecstasy. Elena passed out a bag full of mini-toy capsules. Mine was red. Inside was a pill with a square clump that looked like sand.
“Put the trash back in the bag or your pocket,” Chris said over the banda that filled the trailer. The guy she was talking to just stared at her. He was already high.
“Otherwise you could slip on it and break your face,” Sam added. She had a red-purple whip that she tapped against her thigh. The guy stared and continued staring at the same place after she wandered away.
“—feels so good!” shouted one guy named Manny. He had thick wavy hair and wore black shades with a chain, like lorgnettes have. He carried a small electric Casio keyboard, hung on shoulder-straps like the cigarette girl’s tray. Peter hit a foul note on the Casio. Peter had invited Manny after seeing him play Selina covers in downtown Redlands next to an upturned hat and cardboard sign saying he was blind. Peter flirted by asking, “Did you write that?” in his lesbian school-teacher voice. Manny was straight and Peter was a mother to him, a good mother.
The semi made a quick stop and the crowd drifted forward one or two steps. Nobody fell. Sam said, “Wup wup,” involuntarily, and that was it. When the people around her laughed, she cussed at them. A moment later she put her hands up as the music changed to cumbia.
“What kind of Mexican is he?” Sam asked Chris, meaning Nick.
“Guatemalan,” Chris said.
“I’m so fucking stupid,” Sam said.
“You are so fucking stupid,” Peter said.
“You’re all so fucking stupid,” Chris said. Elena laughed, hearing them bitch.
The semi was going over small bumps. Standing-room-only was the right size crowd for a moving trailer; they leaned against each other. Someone opened Google Maps and saw that they were about to get on the freeway. Manny started playing the accordion on Casio, matching loosely the melody of the trap that boomed through the speakers. Elena had never been embedded in so many people. The semi accelerated like a jet on a runway. The air rushing against the sides made one hum, mixing with the sibilant hiss of the surrounding cars. This drowned out the Sublime house remix before it was turned louder along with heavier bass.
“You’re so fucking stupid,” Peter sang. He reached for the handle of vodka in Elena’s bag.
“Bitch. You are already rolling,” Elena said.
“You’ll never know the real me.”
That was something Elena would never want to be a scholar of, the real me. Elena loved the idea of Peter, while Peter in real life sometimes left a mess behind and forgot to pay her back. Lately he’d been going around with a different guy-friend every couple weeks. She did the same thing except she would just hook up with a dude at a bar, and forget his name soon after. Part of the reason she threw these parties was the money, but the real payment was to see Peter happy.
Some nurses bring parenting or the two-bits they know about social work they learned from TV into their practice. When a patient is self-narrating, I always take their side, no matter how crazy they were. They could be a daddy-boxer with a concussion, or a wounded civil-servant, or a gym-mother who had a stroke. Nursing was an art of empathetic sensing, as much as it was a science. We treated the body stripped down to the body, which includes a soul. I would help any fool at Elena’s party in a heartbeat no matter if someone says, They were irresponsible. They get what they deserve. Really, it was these ones who helped me survive the pandemic.
It grew hot in the trailer. Google Maps said we were in El Monte. That was where Elena’s mother was from. How far are we from downtown? Elena wanted to ask, but instead she just giggled. Elena wanted to say, You’re so fucking stupid, as soon as she opened her mouth, but Elena and Sam embraced, danced in place for a few moments, and then folded back into the crowd.
There were a couple guys who Elena had never seen before. One wore a Laker’s jersey and sucked on a glowing pacifier that lit up the bottom half of his face. His hair was short and gelled into the shape of a flame. The guy next to him wore leather pants, a handlebar mustache, and a garrison cap, like an extra for Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Maybe he got on the wrong truck? A third guy in a piñata onesie and carrying a plastic bat, looked lost too. He had a hard stare when he was alone, like a sophomore deep in the back row of a lecture hall. Elena saw that none of them made eye contact, not even with each other.
The walls of the trailer rattled so you could feel it with the music. Elena thought it would be better insulated, but Yamil never delivered on the weighted blankets. Nick had said he preferred driving it on the freeway where the speed absorbed their noise. At the front end of the trailer people tripping sat watching a guy with LEDs head-to-toe put on a show. He waved glow sticks as blue and green dots swirled above them, and got really close to people’s faces. Only one flinched. Sitting down in the front, it felt like we were dice in cupped hands. Elena made out with a guy wearing a crown made of vines, which smelled spritely and of dirt. Her secret theme for this party was, Sweet Explosions. His lips moved slowly, and he rested his head on her shoulder. She asked him if he was okay as he was nodding slowly. He fiddled with a plastic green capsule that he found on the ground. His fingernails were cut short to nubs, and he made no progress with the capsule. The music had stopped and we enjoyed the sound of the freeway, thrash metal. A bump bounced us, passing from front to back, like a pigeon flying across the room. When cars neared, the sound of speed intensified. When Nick exited to take a bathroom break at a snackbar we heard the freeway swoon on parting from us. It rose and fell from the rhythm of traffic and our own breathing. When we stopped Elena stayed inside the trailer. The doors were thrown wide open for air. She looked at the dirt parking lot where a puddle mirrored the power lines and the lights of a baseball diamond. The dirt expanse hosted soda bottles, wire, and bits of cardboard. Rey and them had continued to LA. Two women wandered up, looking in the open doors. “What are all those people doing in there?” one asked.
“We’re filming a movie,” Elena said. “It’s a thriller about plants. Futuristic.”
“I’m sure you are,” said the other. Elena grew titchy.
“Could I ask you to move? We’re going to start shooting soon,” she asked, adding, “we have a bunch of contractors who need those parking spaces.” The women walked away, put off by Elena’s rudeness and talking loud about the police. Elena was never frustrated by others’ bullshit. If anything she egged it on. The night was getting cold, a welcome change for the rest of the ride. It smelled like body odor inside. Elena looked on as her friends and everyone fanned out across the dirt parking lot, stumbling into the open air. A few people ordered ice creams. They used the restrooms there and at the baseball diamond across the street. Elena went to check on Nick and found him with his feet on the dash, checking his phone.
“Enjoying yourself?” Elena asked.
“Yeah I wish I could be back there with you guys. I don’t know about Molly, though,” Nick said.
“It’s not crazy,” Elena said. “It just makes you sensitive.”
“I’m already too sensitive,” Nick said.
“It’ll get you out of your head,” Elena said.
“Nice,” Nick said. “We’re already in Downy. Yamil says they’ll be in downtown in a bit. We could drive around but I’m not going to bump the music much louder. And I think we won’t even need to fuel up again tonight.”
“Let me know what we owe you for gas.”
“Yamil and I might want to roll when we get back. Do you think you could hook us up with cash then?” Nick asked.
“Of course, sis,” Elena said. “I swear it’ll be chill. Just remember to breathe. And don’t drink.”
“Why?” Nick asked.
“Because that’s telling your heart to do opposite things,” she said. Nick stared. “Be loose like an octopus,” she explained.
“What if I want to move like a duck?” he asked.
“Then duck it.” She liked Nick. It was nice this way. A few minutes later everyone was back inside. Sam watched as one dude in all hemp carried a bunch of water bottles in his arms like a litter of kittens. After she helped him up, he passed the bottles out. They were ice cold.
“Is anyone else out there?” Sam hollered. “No?”
Her and Nick scanned the floodlit baseball fields, waited for any response, and listened as the freeway whispered and the workers at the snack bar started cleaning the kitchen. One had snuck away to join them. Nick and Sam nodded ay-okay, and Sam stepped inside, where there were no lights and no music playing yet. Everyone was talking. The lights flickered on and the semi began to move. Elena again passed around the bag of capsules. It crinkled as it changed hands. She thought it would run out soon but it looked like most people didn’t want another. The music came on. She enjoyed these nights. People paid, had fun, then left. They threw up in corners, passed out against walls, left behind articles of clothing, which she and I added to the Tree of Death. They told their friends about it, and then everyone wanted to join them. Elena thought, when love is involved no one wants it. Doing molly opened up her mind, like no walls. Our minds are filled with emotions and histories the way city streets host a series of buildings, plotted by chance and power, designed obscurely or thoughtlessly repeated, built by anonymous crews, shaped by everyone over time. Disappointment felt like a decision to her. She shuffled through her thoughts. It wasn’t really possible to change the world set-in-motion, the world of warehouses and rent and traffic, a world that continually changed. Elena felt a magnetic draw to everything that wasn’t her own future. Her head throbbed with the bass that buzzed through the entire semi. The lights running across the walls lingered as magenta afterimages. The guys around her looked goofy in their raver gear, like their bodies had burst open and sparkled inside. One had a yellow quilted cap that had been top prize at the mall arcades back in the ’90s. He was a regular. Elena drank some water from a mini-bottle. For some reason she liked thinking of herself as pathetic, until she remembered that everyone was, kind of, in the right light. She promised herself to keep on throwing parties until she had no choice but to stop. She had no choice but to stop.
Manny played and sang Del Shannon on his Casio-turned-organ. It was the party music of Elena’s parents. They’d drive the family car to a cousin’s house and then walk to the bar down the street. Manny’s Casio plugged into an amplifier the size of a cigarette box. He improvised little ditties that clashed with the music, then switched the keyboard to noise drones. His distortion had the weight of a hundred teenage poems, dwelling in their shared isolation. The lights were too much. She looked at the sweaty faces around her. Ambiguous eye-contact made Elena feel afraid and at the same time eager. The body found what it wanted and still held the impulse to continue searching. Elena did not need a reason to return to earth. Violet ran against the walls and across the others who darkened it. A techno Morrissey cover started playing. His deadpan asking and describing prodded at our uneasiness about ourselves when we’re in love. She crushed something under her shoe: a capsule, with a pill of molly. The children be wasteful, she thought.
The smell of slaughterhouses filled the night as they drove past Chino, exiting the freeway toward the industrial areas of south Ontario until they got to the part with motels and garages, personal storage facilities, and more neighborhoods. Had they made it to LA? They waited in the turning-lane to pull into an autoshop. Barbed wire topped the gates. Hedges and mesh shielded the inside from view, where the building sat back from the street. They pulled in behind the other semi and Nick went to unlock the gate. He and Yamil pulled into the lot and let everyone out.
“Should we take another?” Elena asked. “It’s only two in the morning.”
“I already did,” Peter said. “It’s kicking in.”
Two college guys in bomber jackets came out of Rey’s trailer. They had closely cropped hair, and were as short as Elena. “Could we get some?” They asked.
“Help yourself.”
“Are you the one who always throws these parties?” one asked. The cutoffs he wore were Dickies, and the canvas threads dangled halfway to his combat boots. “I’m Rajesh. This is my friend Curan. He’s the smart one. I am better looking. He never has to study. I have to study all the freaking time,” Rajesh said.
“If you pay attention the first time, you don’t have to do it again and again,” Curan said.
“That’s not how it works,” Rajesh said.
“Yeah. Rey and I throw them,” Elena told them.
“Do you ever get down to San Diego? I was there all summer. They had parties like this, in random warehouses,” Rajesh said.
“They have those everywhere, idiot,” Curan said.
“The music reminds me of there, too. It’s so sad and indie,” Rajesh added. “I like it.”
Elena handed them both a couple of capsules. “I’m glad you guys are having a good time. Enjoy.”
“I had a question, if that’s cool,” Rajesh said. Elena nodded. “I’m trying to throw parties like this at my frat, well my friend’s frat. How do you keep them from getting too crazy? Every time we come here people are so chill,” Rajesh said.
“So chill,” Curan said. “We tried to have one, but half the house got destroyed and it was just a big mess.”
“I think it helps that people here don’t really know each other,” Elena said. “Like no one cares who you are.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re never having another party,” Curan said. He laughed. “The stairs, like the railing, everything got smashed.”
“Did you see Norbert’s room?” Rajesh said.
“No!” Curan said.
“Someone punched holes in the wall,” Rajesh said.
“No!” Curan said.
They giggled and pushed each other.
“Half his shit ended up out the window,” Rajesh said. “Someone freed his iguana. You know how he’s on the second story. Get this. It was sitting there in the big tree. He found it a week later.”
“He probably did it himself,” Curan said.
“I know, huh! Ha ha, I never thought about that,” Rajesh said. He turned to Elena. “Is there somewhere we can maybe buy more molly?” Peter and Sam joined them, as if conjured by the word “molly.”
“Ask Rey, the tall one with a red cap,” Elena said. “His brother can probably hook you up.”
“Oh. We met Rey,” Curan said. He and Rajesh laughed. Had they gotten in the wrong truck, Elena wondered. Or maybe the right one?
“We have to invite you to our next one,” Rajesh said.
“What is this place?” Curan asked. “It’s really nice.”
“It’s an autoshop,” Sam said. “You guys should check out the inside.”
“I don’t get the theme,” Rajesh said. “Was there one?”
“Elena said it was pinup girls,” Peter said. He was disappointed that he couldn’t find a girlish outfit in time. “But really it’s just molly.”
“Molly,” Curan said. “That’s a perfect theme.”
“Oh my god. It’s so fucking cold outside,” Sam said. Her boyfriend set her boa on her shoulders as she followed him toward the garage door.
“Don’t look at me. I need to pee,” Elena said.
“There’s bathrooms over there,” Sam pointed.
They each took more molly, and then slowly filed across the yard, where the garage door rolled open.Nick hurried to join them. His flannel was unbuttoned and soiled with sweat, his belt loosened, and one of his socks was drawn completely down. Pounding bass drifted out the open trailer doors, along with people looking like the fish that crawled out of the sea. There were yawns, blank stares, kicked bottles, and soft groans. One guy in a jockstrap and garrison cap hopped out, followed by a fat guy with just his pink underwear, two skinny dudes with their hats backwards and thongs, and then finally Rey, who was shirtless, in red latex shorts. He wrapped one arm around a bald and bulky guy whose torso looked dipped in ink, and who approached like a cute shark. They kissed loudly for a few seconds, before the other guy inched away, drawn to the crowd entering the garage.
Elena joined Sam and Chris in the bathroom to freshen up. The enby bathrooms each had tile floors, ceramic sinks that had turned peach from decades of use, a single exposed fluorescent light, and powdered soap released from a mortar. Names were scratched into mirrors that ran the length of the room. In the mirrors the friends looked more themselves, three cholas in thick shades, their skin beaming, the molly kicking in.
“For real, would you guys hate me if I adopted a baby rabbit?” Sam asked, watching the others in the mirror.
“Why would we?” Chris said.
“Because then I’d be home all the time,” Sam said. “I should adopt a fighting fish instead.”
“That was fun to ride around in, but I’m also ready to never do it again,” Chris said.
“Agreed,” Elena said.
“I hate staying home,” Chris said. “If you were to see our place right now, it looks like it belongs to a drug addict. And grandma keeps emptying the dressers and cabinets for no reason.”
“You are a drug addict. A fair and beautiful one, a just one,” Sam said.
“Want to know a secret?” Elena asked. “I stole two grand of equipment from my art school.”
“Just now?” Sam asked.
“Not now, forever ago,” Elena said.
“How?” asked Chris.
“My friend marked it as returned, but I never returned it,” Elena said. “They worked me like a perrita at donor events, but I still feel bad.” She frowned.
“Don’t girl. Like, it’s okay to take revenge,” Sam said.
“Also, we’re just hard-wired a certain way. People exploit us for it,” Chris said.
“I know. I just can’t get over feeling bad. But honestly, I couldn’t take 99% of the pictures I take without those fixtures. They are so cool, and they never go on sale or anything. Even used it would cost more than $700.”
“Just get fat-rich and then make a donation,” Sam said.
“I’ma do that,” Elena said. “I’ll probably just get fat.”
“Hot,” Chris said.
“I’m on my way,” Sam said.
“Where?” Elena said.
“To being fat,” Sam said.
“Same,” Chris said. “We just need to love our bodies the way every other guy does.”
“Right,” Sam said.
“Right,” Chris said. “If I don’t, then I get depressed, then I get drunk, then I get desperate. Like one time I woke up in Hemet. I don’t know anyone in Hemet.”
“You never told me this,” Sam said.
“Some dude let me ride with him to Jack-in-the-Box. My boyfriend had to pick me up at 7 am.”
“Bitsh.”
“Moral of the story, don’t go to Hemet,” Elena said.
“Nope,” Sam said.
“No, ma’am,” Chris said.
DJ Ninalicious, Aidan’s love, drew more people inside the garage. A small group lingered near the semis. One side of the sky was still dark the other less so. A Camry with one headlight drove past. Elena watched, play-acting vigilance, as if anyone understood the precise details of our existence. The lighter sky was a deep blue. Was it dawn? Probably. Dusk was forever ago. Elena waited until just a small group remained outside. They were smoking cigarettes in motorcycle jackets, assless chaps, and talking about a hotpot restaurant in Koreatown. A guy put out his cigarette against a box of circuit-breakers. Elena told them not to rush. A pickup truck drove by, its loud engine popping similar to that of someone in her neighborhood growing up. The guys finished smoking and nodded thanks as they moved into the garage. The music was thumping. Elena found herself guessing what kinds were in the mix. Nina was at the deejay station, which had been set up on a lift for cars. Overlapping projections of black-and-white detective films covered an entire wall, projected from a cart in the middle that Elena hoped would be left alone. She stood at the back by the emergency exit, where there was a curtained closet with open boxes of screws, bulbs, wires, and small metal parts. From spinning mirrored-balls tiny green flecks combed the room. No one was really talking. They swayed to the drone and glittery distortion. Elena’s whole life felt like an invention of people before and after her, too many to name. Her problems felt not important, but odd and insignificant. She longed for the insignificance that she was sharing with everyone. The oil-stained cement underneath her shoes felt magical. We are increasingly the product of our own imaginations. Maybe the struggle for emotional survival is artificially imposed, a byproduct of someone’s fantasy? In the least hyper corner of the party, Elena felt like the queen of insignificance.
Freaking mosquitoes drove Elena back into the crowd, which included some of Aidan’s friends from Mexico. The guys were thin. Their silver jaw-masks and narrow sunglasses were made for adrenaline. One guy wore a black cowboy hat and assless chaps. A woman wore a pink wig that she held while dancing. Rey’s crew danced half-naked. Two guys pulled their underwear down to grind slowly on one another. There was nothing to see but hips. It was Sam’s idea to go until sunrise. She watched a boy in a bomber jacket with his name embroidered stare at the ground as if searching for lost keys. A group of muscly gays huddled around a bag of coke and one scooped using a pen cap. Sam and Chris dragged a nearly-full keg from the trailer into the garage. Guys like Rey die with everything left undone. Elena danced just behind him. The same two thoughts numbingly clanged around her head: it would take forever to get back to LA, and she was a sellout compared to the cholas she grew up with. A guy zipped into a Dodger’s jersey stared at her through the crowd. A chilango guy walked around buttnaked with just orange and green shades and matching earplugs. Two women in cocktail dresses asked for molly. She handed them some from her pocket. It seemed that more people had showed. Elena joined Aidan’s group in front, passing a bottle of poppers between them. For Elena love was when you don’t know who you are for a big chunk of your life, then someone comes along and ruins it. She made out with a college guy in a Hawaiian shirt. He stared at her, or appeared to. His face darkened as he faced her. Peter and Rey had somehow trotted down to the deepest, darkest part of her heart. She thought about school for a brief infinite moment. Somewhere outside lights flashed, maybe from Rey’s semi. It was 4:30 am. She was hardcore making-out with Aidan’s bodyguard friend. Elena would swear she saw that old micro with the Berkeley colectiva pull up and park by the gate, but Sam could assure her that she was hallucinating. Nina had straight black hair, was pale, and always wore shades. She cut-up a techno anthem, a throwback, briefly into her hard rhythms only because the sky was turning purple. The beat was seductive. The droning brat-pop lyrics were too wide to make sense of on the first listen. The guy next to Elena was softly lip-syncing. She looked down at her arm. There was dried blood above her elbow, or was it candle wax? She had seen one of Sam’s friends burning a red candle earlier. She played with her matchstick bracelet, and thought about putting it in her pocket. Her back was a sea of sweat. The bass could blow her earrings off. Rey came by and held her from behind as the molly picked up again. The repetitions in Nina’s set allowed it all to flow. A few people gathered along the walls with their friends or with their serious lovers or alone. The music stopped, mumbled cheers. Nina sampled three words said to the sound of breaking glass, “Sex Drugs Alcohol,” repeated in a voice like Jackie Kennedy’s. Elena hugged another girl she thought was Sam. The few missing panels in the high ceiling showed a pale blue sky. Elena had the impulse to go home, and then she remembered she had no way to get there. The crowd, which had slightly thinned, drew closer to the deejay standing near a row of televisions. At the back talkative friends continued to pour drinks with store-brand liquor. The night was torn through by drugs, alcohol, and an angel selector. The world was stuck in its traditions, with soldiers who made dreams come true. Peter said the night was sick. Elena said it was diffuse and impersonal. They flirted with non-living, the way they exposed each other. As the sun rose, nothing felt as unlikely as the present.
An excerpt from Demons of Eminence, available now for purchase from the Fellow Travelers series.
Joshua Escobar performs as DJ Ashtrae + Little Piñata, and is the author of the chapbooks Califorkya Voltage (No, Dear/Small Anchor) and xxox fm (Doublecross Press). In 2023 they were the inaugural recipient of the Bo Huston Award. They are the Director of Creative Writing and Title V Director of the Multimodal Lab at Santa Barbara City College. They recommend Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers.
