Party at Portland State

I was on a late-night canning run through Portland State University, or at least that's the only reason I can think of for being there, even though I wasn't carrying anything to put bottles and cans into. It was one of those warm summer nights — I was only wearing a t-shirt — and either the moon had set or it was overcast because it was dark.

I was being spooky, keeping to walkways obscured by shadows, lamps few and far in between, because I was avoiding the campus public safety who had excluded me from the university property some time ago for trespassing on university property; I was canning then, too. As I approached a set of stairs leading up from Stott Field to the old core campus housing buildings and Milar Library, I heard someone approaching to descend them. I immediately ducked into an open utility shed of some sort that I noticed on my way there in the hopes of going unnoticed and hopefully not getting locked in. To my relief it was an obviously homeless person shambling downstairs in a hulking, grunting spectacle of public intoxication, so as soon as he staggered into a belly flop and passed out next to the shed I leaped out to ascend the stairs he came from. What in hell was he doing here?

When I made to the top I beheld an expanse of flotsam from what appeared to be left over from an enormous outdoor frat party: benches and tables sat strewn haphazardly all the way to the Stott Center, covered — as was the lawn between them — in paper plates dripping globules and chunks of half-eaten food and cans of soda (and the occasional beer), and everywhere there were people, most of them already passed out while some were stumbling around or murmuring incomprehensibly like ghouls, visibly drunk; even the odd couple here and there shamelessly fucking. What the hell's going on? I decided for some reason to head toward the pay phone ahead of me, lean against the wall and smoke a cigarette to gather in more of the scene and maybe chat with one of the more lucid among the still-ambulatory revelers to find out what the occasion was, when tow public safety officers arrived. They started writing tickets to the obvious homeless people among the students, so I turned around pretending to fumble for change and make a phone call. One of them, a guy who should have recognized me, asked to see my ID; I turned around quickly, feigning glassy-eyed inebriation, and shrugged, muttering "Sorry, I usually leave mine at home" and resumed my charade, whereupon he decided to leave me alone.

After polishing off pretense with an obligatory invective ("Damn it!"), so that it be known to all my ire at having forgotten to carry change on me, I turn around and walk away just in time for the public safety officer I encountered to be joined by his partner and the two of them to head back my way. God damn it! I grit my teeth and force myself to remain insouciant and head toward a parking lot nearby that's off campus property and observe with relieve out the corner of my eye that they're still hassling the bums behind me. When I encounter a sandy stretch I glance down and notice with dismay that somehow the loafer on my left foot had somehow been replaced with an old white tennis shoe, so I backtrack in search of my missing shoe, only to be laughed at by some Vikings football players. Huh? Scowling at being the brunt of a bizarre joke I look down again and now I'm standing in my socks! "Fuck, I have to go to work in a few hours!" at a temp agency I just signed on with, and already it's growing light with dawn! I start despairing of being able to do that, or even walk around town — to get home, at least — when I remember I have a pair of boots at home.

At this point I remember with alarm that I was supposed to be dodging Campus Spam, so I glance furtively back in the direction I came from, to see the two public safety officers had just turned to head toward Stott Field. Grinning with relief, as if I’d somehow outsmarted them, I spun back around to head home when a small group of students accost me gregariously and pass a nefarious bit of surgical tubing toward me, urging me to help them finish their last keg. After a moment’s hesitation I smile and say “What the hell” and take the proffered Barleycorn in hand, introducing myself to my new "friends". So much for work.