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Interloping
Someone’s parents are out of town, so the party is implicit. I park my car at the end of the long line circling the cul-de-sac and stretching off down the street. I stride around to the back yard towards the rich sound of illicit merrymaking – occasional shouts pierce the dense layers of conversational hubbub, volume knobs twisting upward on the speech of those whose pre-gamed momentum has carried them into double digit beverages already. As I round the corner of the house the party comes into view, little knots of boys and girls, or men and women as they’d call themselves, flirting and bantering under dense umbrellas of cigarette smoke, mingling as it rises with the smoke from anti-mosquito candles that form a wide perimeter around the patio and yard. The bulkhead is open, and in between track silence from “the best of Johnny Cash”, I hear the aggressive staccato of air hockey coming from the basement. I spot my regulars and head over, and I’m already nodding agreement with the current pontification as I slot myself into their circle. Someone is saying something terribly critical about the new album from a band I’ve never heard of in a genre I couldn’t define, meanwhile I’m just waiting for a pause in which to ask if anyone else is picking up a Gatsby vibe.
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