The Day After The Vampire Ball

First, a brief update: Went to the movies with Aly on Friday night, saw The Tillman Story, and then stayed up late talking at my house. We hugged. Also fun to get a chance to smoke with her. She's in a tough position with this school she just started working for. I admire her passion for helping, even if the situation she's in makes that frustratingly difficult for her. She also introduced me to Hype Machine, for which my music addiction will be fueled forever.

I wrote my coverage piece for the Vampire Ball this morning while Sean slept on a half-deflated air mattress on the floor. It's up for editing right now, actually, as I'm writing this. Not that interesting of an article, in my opinion, and not the best way to document said event. Therefore, because the event deserves a better story than one that gets pumped through journalism conventions, I will do my best to recollect the exact memory of last night. 

It starts at work, yesterday morning, when I talked with Tessa about good ideas for a costume to wear to the event, settling on the idea that two bite marks on the neck, a little fake blood dripping from the corner of my mouth, and a way to pale my face a bit with powder. Long story short: I don't wear any costume, save for my Sacramento Press t-shirt. People don't second-guess you when you're wearing a Sacramento Press t-shirt.

After work I take a nap to charge up. 

The first mistake of the night is neglecting to charge my camera battery. In my defense, the power indicator said it was juicing with two of the three bars filled. That's a-okay at 66%, in my opinion, but it may have been more like 34%, for all I know.

That said, the loss of the camera usage was a major disappointment. 

Sean is drunk before we get there. I'm completely okay with this, except when he starts yelling out the window at strangers--and not in a very friendly way. This is mostly embarassing, a bit shocking, but an oddly amazing reveal of a part of Sean I've never seen. He was seriously drunk, and in public. It was almost refreshing, in a way, because Sean's been my main friend for a long time now, and he's been the same Sean for all that time. 

Second mistake: Got a little lost on the way there. Panicked a bit about having no gas. 

Photos Sean took from the car:

He's so drunk we're running in the parking lot. Running down the wooden sidewalk planks at full-sprint. Pestering the locals. The entrance to the party is down a flight of stairs in the basement of the Newton Booth Mansion--historic, of course, like everything else in Old Sacramento, and eccentric as all things old and lavish. We have our ID's checked on the way in. 

Third mistake of the night (not mine): Shannon didn't have me on The List. Not even as "Press +1."

"I'm gonna let you in 'cause you know Shannon. But I'll come find you if I found out..." said the sweet old lady selling tickets and giving stamps at the bottom of the stairs. Fuck yes I know Shannon. I interviewed her like six days ago. 

That was my first goal: Find Shannon. It seemed like the best place to start, and it was good to have a goal, especially since the party had started about an hour before and was still slowly filling with people. It was a little empty at first. People in costume, sitting, standing around and talking through fangs and white make-up. Not everyone dressed like a vampire, despite the implications made by the name of the event, and we saw demons, monsters, cowboys, and gypsies. This one guy's whole head was painted red and black. I saw some leather outfits on women that covered as little possible. There were very pretty people and downright ugly people, but there was this shared positive energy and excitement about the event, like a family reunion where everyone got along. No matter who you were, what you did in the real world, you could open a conversation with these people and be automatic equals. It was different than anything I'd experienced--and maybe even the first "costume party" I have ever been to. It was a role playing game for adults. 

I also know it wouldn't have been as fun without Sean.

He was happy drunk. He also had a camera. He was also quite convincing with his "We're from the Sacramento Press" speech that he always opened with. We got into conversations with all sorts of people because of him, especially at first, when I was still preoccupied trying to confront this scenario from a journalist's point of view. We talked to a woman who'd been deported from Mexico, who also smuggled mushrooms in from out of the country, and was dressed like an evil munchkin from the Land of Oz. I remember people at the bar, the people at the palm-reading area, the group outside of the first-floor restaurant, and that older couple in the courtyard who seemed like they could be state workers in the real world. People loved the camera. Sean wouldn't take no for an answer, and they couldn't keep up with his approach, either. 

We went to the empty restaurant on the first floor with a little team of actual ghost hunters, who wanted to go feel the area out. Sean and I were giggling the whole time, with me getting drunker by the minute with an Adios Motherfucker in my hand. Sean took a couple photos. I touched an old piano. The place was some fancy dining room with paintings on the wall and ornate table settings. For the record: I saw no ghost. 

One of those people claims to have seen an orb, once or twice. Or maybe he photographed it. Either way, he told us there's a haunted church between two graveyards in Loomis that we should avoid. 

Here is where the events get blurry. We start wandering. If the people we're talking with decide to go or get boring, then we move. 

I think the next tangible memory I have is dancing by the blow-up gargoyle demon. The music was dance-club stuff, remixes, lots of bass and loud enough to prevent conversation. The lighting was dark. It was starting to get stuffy in there, which made dancing feel all the more intimate, everyone sweating with the humidity. Dancing, oddly, has been something I've been wanting to do for a while. I think there is potential to meet a girl by first dancing with her, then bringing her to somewhere quiet to talk. Anyhow, that idea didn't pan out with anyone this time, but it was good pretending like it might.

Tammie was there, with her friend whose name I can't remember. She was totally dressed up like a vampire, and with a rather awesome costume, and I think she was having a great time. She bought us our first round of AMF's, too, for some generous reason. I remember hanging out with her for a while.

There was a coffin people could lay in to have their photos taken. Booths along the back hallway where people were selling gothic art. A palm-reader, as mentioned, outside. Two DJ's. Two dance-floors. Two bars, one inside and one outside. TV's playing old vampire movies. Actors playing roles from the show "True Blood," and getting a lot of attention from the show's fans. It filled up with people quickly. I wouldn't say the place was packed, but it got busy and loud, and the people watching got better. 

Without the camera, though, we lost our microphone. All reporters have microphones on TV, and they hold it out for people to speak into, all official-like. We didn't have one of those, but we had a camera, and we told them they could be on the Sacramento Press website. Without that, we were just two guys. 

So it became a different night entirely.

The first pair of girls we talked to were from Carmichael. It was a compelling experience trying to ensure a continuous conversation with this stranger. Sean took the taller one and I suggested to the shorter one that we move to a quieter room. The conversations we each had lasted about ten minutes, and then for some reason they left, probably to go to the bathroom. I feel like I lost her interest when I gave her advice about the real value of college. 

We wandered.

Back outside, it was starting to rain. Nonetheless, we fell into conversation with part of the group we'd met earlier, with the mushroom-smuggler. There was a couple who'd been there for our ghost hunting trip, too. But as Sean and I were talking to them, we somehow bonded circles with a group of girls to our right, like two drops of water melding into each other. And suddenly Sean and I were talking to another pair of girls, our age, who I forget where they lived but it wasn't too far. I remember that the shorter girl, my girl, was name Kaz. We had the same question-answer conversation, but this time with a little more confidence on my end, but I think I lost her when I asked her if she thought Paranormal Activity 2 was going to be good. This pair also left us to go to the bathroom after about ten minutes. By then the rain was really starting to come down, so Sean and I went back inside.

This is where the night begins to fall apart, as all adventures do in the third act.

First I was feeling disappointed by the interactions I'd had with those two girls in those two different scenarios. I didn't feel like I'd been very impressive. I didn't like the constrictions of the environment, either, and the fact that Sean and I wouldn't stick around to see if they came back. I suppose at the bottom line I'd been hoping to make out with one of these girls. I wondered for the rest of the night what kind of dialogue would've led to that conclusion, and where my approach had been lackluster. 

Too much thinking, honestly, and not enough instinct. But that comes with practice.

It was astonishing to see how outgoing Sean was, with the alcohol, the camera (at first), and over a year of dormancy in Auburn. After I dropped the journalism approach, I was able to keep up with his tempo, and that's when the night was the most fun. 

Fourth mistake: Letting this happen...

Sean got into a conversation with an older Mexican woman. Some time after 1:30am, I'd lost him in the crowd and came back to see what they were talking about, and it was obvious from the get-go that Sean was trying to flirt his way into making out with this woman. He was on the hunt. I could sense it. It was time to give him some space. I ventured to the bathroom, then passed the Mexican woman on my return, and found that Sean was now waiting for her to come back because he was sure they were going somewhere to make out. 

She came back and they went upstairs, leaving the basement for the wooden sidewalk planks above. 

Suddenly I was alone. I went and danced near the hippie chick in the other room. I could only think about Sean being somewhere I couldn't find him, and being done with this event, me wanting to go home, wishing the night had traveled a different path entirely. The hippie chick wasn't into me. She left after a couple songs and I decided that was a sign that it was time to get the fuck out of there.

I went up to the real world and walked along the store-fronts, heading back to the parking garage, and I happened to pass Sean and his lady-friend huddling in a doorway. I might've been there a moment before or after they made out. I laughed and kept walking. I sat on a bench around the corner to clear my head and plan the rest of the night around Sean's fling. He comes walking by with the woman and says, "I'll call you," as they pass. 

I went back to my car and smoked a little bit of a joint and listened to the radio, a little frustrated, tired and disappointed. I hadn't even gotten any interviews for my article. I had no fucking idea what I was going to write about. Finally I'm tired of waiting, so I leave the parking garage and park across the street from the Vampire Ball entrance on Front Street, and I text him countdown messages saying I'm ready to go. I imagine he's in a car somewhere getting to second base, or maybe even third, if he's really lucky. I feel bad for texting him and interfering, but I honestly hadn't planned on either of us hooking up with someone to the point that our duo is split up like this. Either way, he finally calls.

He's at her apartment by Sac State. 

What the fuck? He asks me if I know where that is and all I know is that's all the way across town, past the freeway. She took him home with her, despite admitting to us both that she had a boyfriend. There was no way I was going to drive all the way to East Sacramento with an empty gas tank and zero patience. Luckily the woman got on the phone and I told her where I lived and she said she'd drop him off.

I went home. Relaxed. Sean arrived not too long after that. We smoked a lot of pot in the empty car ports outside and I had to fill him in on all the details of the night because he couldn't remember anything. He told me he'd made out with the woman, who was thirty-five, and they probably could've had sex if she hadn't suddenly brought up her boyfriend while they were making out on her couch. He was pretty confused about what had just happened to him. It wasn't until about 3 or 4 that we finally passed out. 

In the morning we got breakfast at Old Soul and then walked in the storm to the library and back. 

I would've taken pictures, but I forgot to charge the battery, again.

- Left to Fry