Adventures in tresspassing (an old story)

One should never, ever, write anything about the past events, especially when it involves people who can and probably would kick your ass. Or at the very least one should never mention people by name. OTOH, the people who knew about the events back then would recognize the participants even if I changed the names, and those who didn't are not likely to guess who they are only by the first name, so what the hell...

Anyway, a long time ago, in a city far away...

There were 8 of us:
Lena, about 16, the birthday girl,
Ilya, 19, Lena's boyfriend,
Vera, 19, sort of Lena's relative,
Tanya, 17, Lena's schoolmate,
Masha, 15, Lena's schoolmate and sort of Vera's relative,
Sasha, 20, Tanya's on-and-off boyfriend,
Marik, 19, everybody's friend,
Peter, 26, running after Tanya.

The friendships within the group would be too long to describe, and largely irrelevant, but we all used to hang out together, except for Masha who usually didn't but occasionally did.

And the event was, of course, Lena's birthday. I am not sure whether she was technically 16 already at the moment. Too bad, because this is relevant.

Lena's parents promised to leave the apartment to us until midnight. Masha's mom had called me before the party and asked me to promise that I would make sure that Masha does not drink, do drugs or fuck boys at the party. "Sure thing," - I cheerfully lied to her.

The party was going fine, everybody was talking, drinking and generally having a good time. I was the only one not drinking, because back then I used to be an upstanding citizen... OK, I know you did not believe that. I was not drinking because I had a food poisoning the day before and therefore had some reasonable doubt about my ability to keep alcohol down. So I only drank pink ginger ale and ate raw garlic. (Yes, that was before the time when I became a mosty sensible person.)

At some point Peter came and started drinking too. When Peter drinks (or drank - I haven't seen him for at least 10 years now) he asks people all the time "Am I too drunk? Am I not drinking too much? Please tell me when I've had enough!". Unfortunately when he really has had enough he is certainly not listening to the people who tell him so. Instead he becomes aggressive and declares himself sober and everyone else a liar. The trick, of course, is to tell him that he is drunk before he is quite drunk, but I had never mastered it.

At midnight Lena's parents came home and we decided to continue the party in Marik's dorm in Brandeis. Marik lived alone in his dorm room and therefore could party there freely. The party continued in good spirit until Lena and Ilya decided to have sex in the hall, which was a very bad idea considering local sensibilities and the legal fucking age regulations. (Nobody, including Massachusetts lawyers, really knew whether the legal age in Massachusetts was 16 or 18. There were two laws, one forbidding sex with people under 16, the other one forbidding sex with chaste people under 18. There was no definition of "chaste" anywhere, although I cannot think offhand of any definition of "chaste" that would have included Lena.) It was also a very bad idea considering that carpets in Brandeis dorms and other buildings are really not designed to be fucked on, and tend to cause carpet burn in all those who try. Tanya, who by that time was intimately familiar both with legal age problems and the burns caused by Brandeis carpets, tried to dissuade the young lovers from the idea, but they just found a quiet corner in the hall, and off they went. Meanwhile in the room Peter was trying to hit on Tanya, which was not a very good idea in the presense of her on-and-off boyfriend Sasha, even though they were in an off state at the moment. I watched Peter with great amusement since he was trying all the exact same words on me two months previously. Sasha danced a slow dance with Masha when suddenly he screamed, grabbed his neck and ran out screaming something along the lines of "she bites!". Masha said she bit him for a reason, and lay down on Marik's bed. Marik sat down next to her and started sweet-talking her to sleep, rather successfully, so she passed out and we never heard her side of the story. After washing the blood off his neck Sasha came back and said that the attack was totally unprovoked.

We sat in the hall for a while. Masha slept in Marik's room, Marik went out to the bathroom, Ilya and Lena were back with us and complaining about the carpet burns, Sasha was complaining about crazy bitches who bite him, Peter was complaining about women who don't put out and I was complaining about the food poisoning that I had the day before. Tanya wasn't complaining about anything, IIRC, and just sat there contemplating the absurdity of the world.

At some point a residence assistant (an older student who lives in a dorm and watches over his/her younger neighbors) came out of his room to go to a toilet. He saw us, asked us whose guests we were, and told us to go to Marik's room since drinking and smoking was not allowed in the hall. We said OK and started getting up, when Peter, who was drunk, aggressive and lacked both college experience and social skills to realize he was dealing with an authority figure, told the RA to fuck off. The rest of us tried to shut Peter up and apologize on his behalf but the damage was done: the RA inflated like a balloon and became red like Soviet flag, and started roaring that we have to be out of the building within a minute or else he is calling the police. I tried to tell him that 1 minute is too little for 7 people who need to get their stuff together and visit a bathroom, and we would highly appreciate if he gave us 5 minutes before calling the police, but he was in no condition to listen. Marik came from the bathroom and tried to smooth it over, but it was a bit too late for that, too.

We woke Masha up and ran to our respective bathrooms. The women's bathroom was full of boys and girls from some pot-smoking party who'd heard the noise and decided to hide in the bathroom. Having quickly done what we had to do we ran down to Marik's room, to find Marik lying on the bed and telling us that the boys have left already. Tanya's jacket was missing, and Marik said the boys took it with them. We grabbed our stuff and started for the door.

I opened the door and ran straight into a scary cop. He was beet-red in the face and so fat that he was easier to jump over than to walk around. Not that I have anything against fat people, but when a person is trying to jam the door with his or her body it's easier to get past them if they are thin, what with me not being a good jumper. "You are still here?!" - he roared. "We were just leaving, you see, just had to get our stuff together and were walking out the door when you came," - I said, trying to look small and innocent and harmless and apparently failing. "Who is driving?" - he continued at the top of his voice. "I am," - I lied immediately, since it did not take long to compute that I was the only person among us who had a driver's license, and also because I just had a very strong flash of intuition telling me that mentioning other people, walking or cabs to this guy would be a big mistake. I rarely trust my intuition, but then I rarely have intuitive insights of such strength and clarity as I had then. Still don't know whether I was right. "Aren't you drunk?" - "No, officer". The RA was jumping behind the officer and screaming that I was definitely drunk, which I wasn't, and that he saw me drinking a beer, which he didn't. I maintained that the RA must've been mistaken.

Not having a breathalyzer, the cop made me stand on one foot, then on the other, and then recite all alphabet forwards and backwards while standing on one foot. It made Masha furious and she lunged ahead, but luckily Lena and Tanya caught her in time. I shudder to think what would've happened if she had bitten the cop. At that time I even thought that one night in a cell in a police station might be an interesting experience, but I certainly did not want to spend it in the company of pissed-off Masha who had just bitten a cop, a cop that has just been bitten by Masha, and contemplating what a judge and Masha's mom would tell me in the morning. After I successfully recited the alphabet forwards and backwards the cop told me to breathe at him. I breathed with all the might of the half a pound of garlic that I had eaten that night. "Out!" - screamed the cop, and out we went.

We had come there in 3 cars: Sasha's, Ilya's and Peter's. Now the cars were there at the parking lot, but the owners were nowhere to be seen. We figured they got lost, although it was strange. We had 3 jackets for the 4 of us, Tanya's jacket being god knows where with the boys. After 20 minutes we figured we better do something because it was getting cold and we had to get home somehow. We figured the guys had returned to Marik's place and were drinking there again, so we went towards that building. The police cars were still there. I approached carefully, the others kept a few meters behind me just in case Masha tries something funny. One of the police cars was shaking and weird thumping sound was coming out of it.

The fat red cop appeared. "You are still here?!" "We are looking for our boys," - I said somewhat sheepishly. "I am taking your boys, and I will take you, too, if you don't get out right now." I took a closer look at the car. There Peter was trying to break the window with his head and screaming something. The door of the building opened and two more cops came out, leading handcuffed Sasha and Ilya. (As later turned out, they also ran into the police while trying to leave, and instead of trying to talk their way out like us they tried to hide in the building and were caught there.)

We did need to get home, though, and I tried to ask the cop to let us borrow Peter's car keys. "You lied to me! You said you had a car!" - he started screaming again. "No, I said I was driving. I was gonna drive his (pointing at Peter) car. He was in no condition to drive." (I figured the cop definitely had to concede that point.) The cop then turned towards Peter and continued screaming without drawing a new breath: "You lied to me! You said you walked here!" Peter continued beating his head on the window and yelling "Give the lady her jacket! Give the lady her jacket!" The cop finally let Peter hand me the keys and Tanya the jacket. I tried to ask Peter whether there is some kind of extra locking system, but the cop's generosity did not extend that far.

We walked away: Masha had sobered up, come back to her senses and was chatting with Lena about police brutality, Tanya and I were trying to develop a plan B in case the car turns out to have either a strange locking system or a stick shift. Luckily it did not turn out to have either of those. Unfortunately it did not have brakes either, at least not of a working variety. Was good enough for a slow night drive from Waltham to four points in Newton, though.

By the time I got home and called Waltham police to ask what is needed to post bail for the guys they had already posted bail themselves and continued partying at Peter's place. While they were at the police station somebody smashed the windows of their cars in Brandeis parking lot. We still don't know whether it was just a coincidence.

The rest of the story is a lot of trial hearings and three fines: $90, $90 and $40. Peter got the $40 fine, because he only got fined for trespassing and Sasha and Ilya also for being underage and in posession of alcohol. There is no justice in the world, or in any case in Waltham.