A Night in Ocean City

The time was 7:00 a.m. on a hot and humid June day in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, and my oversized alarm clock had just gone off. Today was the day I had been looking forward to since January, I would drive three hours down to Ocean City, Maryland to take part in Senior Week 2008. Senior Week is an annual tradition that is taken up by members of the high school graduating class. Apart from the excessive amount of graduation parties back home, Senior Week is meant as one last hurrah before everyone heads off to college in the fall. At Senior Week college-bound kids head to the hot and sandy beaches of Ocean City and stay there until they decide they have tanned enough for the day or burned a majority of their body. In the evening several apartments and houses throw parties exclusively for the Class of 2008. The only downside for me was that I was only able to stay for two days rather than the entire week. Senior Week marked the first time I had ever experienced the beach without a member of my family and I was certain I was going to have a good time.
After I woke up, I got dressed and packed some last minute things in my duffel bag before I headed outside to my friend, Alyssa’s car. As we pulled out of the driveway, I had this enormous sense of excitement that made me feel as if I was going to pee my pants at any given point and time. As we made our way towards I-95, we put in some CD’s and started to pump ourselves up for the amazing time we were about to have. After sitting in the car for three long hours, we finally arrived in Ocean City, Maryland. We drove from 90th Street all the way down to 13th Street, where we found the house where we would be living in for the next two days. The house was pitiful with white rectangular maroon shutters and a forbidding front door. Though the front door was mostly maroon, it had white paint chip marks that made it look like it had its own version of the chicken pox. I called my friend to open the door for us because he and a few other people had been there several days prior. As we stepped inside the house, I was overcome with disgust. The house was hideous. There were food crumbs, big and small, all over the dingy maroon carpeted floor, the battered sofa cushions were overturned, and food of all types was left uncovered on the small round dining table. Worst of all, the house wreaked of a mixture of sand, ocean water, vomit and alcohol. After talking with a few people in the house, they all said the revolting smell was a pre-existing one and no one had anything to do with it.
After getting settled in, around 12 p.m., we all headed to the beach which was only two blocks away from the house. We laid out our beach towels on the scorching hot sand and lathered ourselves with a high SPF sunscreen. Some of us laid out on our towels hoping to get a reasonable tan while others went wave surfing, played paddle ball or engaged in some other form of beach activity. After several hours of lying out in front of the sun, we all decided to head back home to shower and get ready to go out and party.
Earlier in the day, Sam had received a call from a mutual friend that he was having a rave at his apartment that night. Once Sam had told us of the party, we all agreed to go check it out. On our way out, Sam remembered that she had a three to four foot black light that could be useful at the rave. However, she did not want to carry it so I volunteered to carry it for her. As we were walking down the street towards the crowded bus stop, my friends and I realized that it looked as if I was carrying a large black shotgun, so we all felt the need to tell everyone that entered the bus and on the street that it was just a black light and nothing else. We pushed our way onto the bus and made our way from 13th Street all the way down to 136th Street. We eagerly ran off of the bus and headed toward the apartment where the rave was taking place. We knocked on the door and walked right on in. As soon as you walked in you were in the kitchen and to the right was a large living room and through the living room was a reasonably sized wooden patio. We were told that we should probably start drinking something so someone directed us to his washing machine; at first I was a little confused as to why he was showing us their washing machine. However, after he opened the lid to the washing machine, everything made sense. The washing machine was overflowing with ice and cold beer, the reason they kept their beer in the washing machine was so that they did not fill up their fridge because that was already filled with food and other beverages. About an hour passed and the size of the crowd grew tremendously, people who did not even go to our high school came to the rave, it was huge! The music was ear piercing, and all the lights were off, Sam had turned on her black light and we all were given green, yellow, pink and blue glow sticks, it was really a sight to see. It was dark enough that you could not see more than four feet in front of you, all you could see clearly were all of the glow sticks moving up, down and side to side in the air. People were bumping into each other, the countertops slowly became “Coyote Ugly” for the girls and dancing that looked like a version of sex known as grinding were all taking place simultaneously. I was having an extremely good time. I was sweating profusely, my heart was racing from the amount of dancing I was doing and I managed to meet some new people. We were all either dancing, talking or playing beer pong when all of a sudden we heard a loud pounding on the door. Everyone stopped frozen in their tracks, the talking stopped and the music was immediately turned off, it was quiet enough to hear a pin drop. Someone calmly went up to the door and asked who was there and a stern sounding voice from the outside said they were from the Ocean City Police Department. Panic quickly spread throughout the entire apartment like a crowd of die hard shoppers running through Best Buy on Black Friday to get the best deals. My friend Dan and I were ready to jump off the third story patio, but just as we were about to jump, we heard everyone laughing and cursing inside so we went back in and it turns out it was another senior from our high school. While some people were laughing and acknowledging what a good joke it was, others were very angry and saying they were not happy and were scared out of their minds. The group of friends that I came with all decided to leave because the party was getting out of control and we did not want to have a “real” run in with the cops. By the time we left, we all felt as if the room was spinning, but we were coherent enough to know where we were going and what we were doing.
After we left the rave, we decided to go to another party on 27th Street. While waiting at the bus stop for the bus to arrive, I ran into one of my friends from work, Chelsea. Chelsea ended up coming with me and my friends to the party on 27th Street. Shortly after Chelsea and I met, the bus arrived and it appeared to be extremely crowded. The bus had hardly any room to sit or stand, not even an ant would have been able to fit. There was no place to sit, so we all grabbed onto the handrail and held on for dear life. On our long journey to 27th Street, we met and encountered some very loud and drunk high school graduates. There were points I would be laughing and joining in with the singing at the same time, I later came to know that during Senior Week, the public buses are known as the “drunk bus,” for its loud, obnoxious and drunk passengers. We arrived at 27th Street and little did I know the walk from the bus stop to the next party was a hike. It felt as if we had been walking for miles along an endless road in the middle of nowhere in the darkness of the night. We eventually got to the party and we all started to play our millionth game of beer pong. After having a few beers, I did not feel like having another one so I asked if they had anything else and some guy offered to make me a drink. The drink was fruit punch and vodka, it was really good, I could not even taste the alcohol. I ended up having at least two fruit punch and vodka drinks and from that point on, it was a disaster.
The lights went out and Sam’s black light was turned on once again. Some of us were still wearing our glow sticks from the rave and then someone pulled out neon glow paint. We started to dance around to hip-hop and techno music and paint our bodies, faces and hair with the neon paint. You could not really see very much because the only source of light was the black light, therefore people kept running into tables, chairs and each other. That is all I or anybody else can remember from my first night at Senior Week.
I woke up the next morning in the house on 27th Street; I never made it back home. As I slowly opened my eyes, I cautiously scanned the room to figure out where I was. As a looked around the living room, I saw a girl and a guy on the floor under a faded white blanket, and my friend Sam was sleeping on my butt while another guy was sleeping near Sam’s feet on an “L” shaped sofa. I pulled out my cell phone and looked at the time, it was 11:00 a.m., I decided to leave and go back to the house I was supposed to be at and go to the beach one last time before I left to go back home the next morning. I slowly got up, left the house and walked fourteen blocks without knowing that my t-shirt was somehow on backwards and I still had yellow and orange neon paint all over my face and hair. By the time I got to 13th Street, I did not even care about the paint on my face; I left it on and joined my friends at the beach.
About an hour after I had joined my friends at the beach, Sam and a few other people arrived after walking home from the house on 27th Street. Today was my final day in Ocean City before I had to drive back home the next morning. We did some of the same activities as the day before. I realized that I was having a lot more fun at the beach with my friends than I would have with my family. I think the reason I was having a lot more fun was because if I was with my family, we did everything together and we never really got to do anything that was “fun” for me, it was always what my parents wanted to do.