Party

May 27, 2020 | Cincinnati | 20-29 years

I find myself on a beach, with many beachfront mansions nearby. My friends and I decide we all need to throw a party later that night and so we do. Before the party begins I realize I’ll need to bring my leather armchair and ottoman. To do so, I grab it from my front room, and push it through a park to my friends beach house, which doesn’t actually exist in real life. Before the party begins, we sit on the deck and watch the sun set above the ocean. Soon, it seems everyone I’ve ever met is there. We completely trash the entire house and things are going great, until one of my friend’s dads shows up. He takes me and three friends aside and yells at us before making us leave. We wander the beach for a while, until I realize I left my chair back at the house. I break back in to get it, but astonishingly the whole house is now clean. I wonder aloud to myself whether the party actually happened at all, before waking up, with the existential dread that I’ll have to face my friend’s dad later that day, until I remember the party never actually happened.

Note: Dreamer adds, “I’m a college student, currently living with my parents. When this all started I had just gotten home from Spring Break and it feels like I’ve stepped completely out of my little world. The pressures of living at home again with my loving, though overbearing, parents has been hard. There’s nothing that I want to do more than see my friends again, to crack a beer with them, talk to pretty girls again, to be a dumb college kid and get in trouble. The freedom I had when I was away has been more or less stripped away and more than anything, I just want things to be normal again. I wanna shake hands and high five and hug and not have to wear my stupid mask to go to the grocery store. If I’ve gained anything from this whole experience, it’s how necessary it is to savor the little moments you have with the people you love while you can.”