Monday: A Celebration of Life

"Quiet weekend" I thought to myself as I was cutting limes on a Monday morning barshift at Chili's North Plainfield, Home of the All-Day-Everyday-Happy-Hour. It was Monday, May 22nd 2006 and Billy "The Tall Texan" Walker had died the day before. Monday morning barshifts were more social gatherings with Southwestern Eggrolls, where we learned to curse in Spanish, than they were anything resembling a serious job or challenge. I graduated from Columbia one week earlier and had subsequently initiated a one to three month moratorium on responsibility. I didn't work on Tuesdays, so when I left Chili's at 4:15, I was up for anything.

Matt, Russ, Jimi Frey and I had been living at The Overhouse for one year and had only just begun to scratch the surface of what was possible at our new location. Between being unincorporated, living between 2 churches and having a landlord who lived 1,400 miles away, it felt like we were annexed from the rest of the country, we had diplomatic immunity and we abused it like Peter Griffin or the bad guy from Lethal Weapon 2 (a showcase of Joe Peci's immense diversity.) The Overhouse was a manufacturer of good times. And so it is with this perpetual chance that I came to be at this point in space and time, driving home from Chili's and into a celebration of life, an entrance into a new era: Post-Monday. My first recollections are of a giddy Matt Radowski greeting me, as enthusiastic as a child on Christmas morning, but yet unaware of the enormity of the present we were all about to open, to tell me that he wanted to get sloppy drunk tonight to make up for a dull weekend and requested that I join him. It was no later than 4:30 when we glugged our first shot of Captain Morgan and chugged our first beer; life was good.

The next beneficiary of "Matt's Boring Weekend Compensation Plan" was Justin Goebel. As his grey pickup came speeding up the drive around 5 o'clock, Matt and I were playing our first or second drinking game at the dining room table. I recall greeting Goebs quite enthusiastically, a lot of laughing and cheering, and demanding that he immediately chug a beer; a situation he adapts to with ease. The Kegerator was flowing in the garage as the three of us played Mushroom, a game where the loser chugs a full, usually room temperature, beer. I recall Goebs losing each time, but acknowledge that between the passage of time, the enormity of Monday legend, and my own hazy memory, this, as well as other recollections, may be slightly off. Regardless, by the time The Enemy and Jimi Frey arrived, within 10 or 15 minutes of each other, sobriety was as distant to us as A1689-zD1, we were already intrepidly smashed. After the two newcomers chugged their orientation beers and a game or two of Asshole, I spotted Russell in the Overvan and the five of us scurried outside to greet him, to show him what we had done. We were five, but had the enthusiasm, spirit, and courage of an entire army. We stormed the van, opened the window, and each grabbed one of Russell's limbs, extracting him from the van. It didn't take very long for him to transition from "Hey, what the hell are you guys doing" to "This is awesome!" We carried him, helpless, from the van and into the house. In what is one of my top 5 Monday moments, he managed to grab a full beer off the table as we carried him through the garage, and didn't spill a single drop. If we ever construct a Monday monument or statue, that scene warrants serious consideration.

The team was complete. We carried Russell inside and we celebrated. We played drinking games, we blasted DJ Quik ("Safe and Sound" was our party soundtrack for at least 2 years), and we celebrated. I'm sure a lot happened in the next hour or so, but I can't recall specifics. The next event I remember is walking to Instant Reply, our local dive bar, and stopping at Speedway on the way. As Matt paid for his purchases, the rest of us wildly cheered him on from outside, flailing about and chanting things like "Cigar-ettes, Cigar-ettes!" and "Speed-way, Speed-way!" We crossed Route 30 and entered the bar, a low-key, shot 'n beer, don't get tooo happy kind of place. I should probably mention that we left the house with a 7th member: a giant stuffed dog, presumably won at Six Flags or a carnival, donated to the charity, and claimed by Russell at his thrift store warehouse job, and given new life at The Overhouse. We'll refer to him as Dog. We carried Dog with us and gave him his own barstool at the bar. Between him and our generally outrageous behavior, the bar was none too pleased when they realized what we were, a freakshow. They had never seen our kind, and didn't necessarily care to. The owner, Frank, watched us like a Greek Hawk, waiting for us to do something that he could kick us out for. To his credit, he gave a warning, telling us we were disturbing the solum silence that Instant Replay patrons enjoy so much and if it continued he would have to ask us to leave. He made a comment about Dog, which I thought was hilarious, the 800 pound elephant in the room, taking up a barstool. I asked Dog if he wanted anything and ordered him a shot of Mad Dog 20/20, Anna, the bartender, was unamused. We swilled a few pitchers of High Life and had a good 'ol time. I like to think that after a little while we merrily interacted with other people, but cannot recall with any confidence, as I mostly remember the perplexed and terrified looks on their faces. We made a loud and triumphant exit and you could hear a collective exhale from the bar as we walked out the door. We were only a few feet from the door when it dawned on me: the name of the bar is Instant Replay! What a perfect opportunity to use that like it has never been used before. We turned around and walked back into the bar, yelling "Instant Replay!" For them, it was the equivalent of a Cub's fan watching an 8th inning replay of Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS; painful to say the least. Frank immediately came over and asked us to leave, which I think we all expected to happen. We thanked him for a lovely night and made another grandeur exit before heading home.

Arriving back at The Overhouse, the celebration continued. It was still relatively early at this point, 9 o'clock perhaps. We drank straight from pitchers of beer, played Two Ball, listened to more DJ Quik and wrestled with Dog. Then something very significant happened: Dog started to bleed. Little white balls of Styrofoam began to spill out of a tear in his skin. One by one they poured out, slowly and only if you jostled him a certain way. I went in for the kill, tearing open the wound and hemorrhaging the Styrofoam balls everywhere! We cheered. Soon we were like a pride of lions, hungry and feasting on our kill. We had sacrificed Dog in the name of Monday. The little white balls covered the floor, we had barely emptied out the head, yet the living room was nearly covered. We continued to tear it apart, throwing it at one another until all the stuffing was extracted and only the skin of remained. The living room floor was covered with 2 inches of Styrofoam snow. We high-fived and celebrated like we had never celebrated before. We were the mad ones, the ones Kerouac wrote of in "On the Road," we were out of our minds and on top of the world.

At some point, possibly soon after we got home from Instant Replay, Matt decided that his goal and vision for the night had been realized, and went off to bed (his bedroom was downstairs at that point). This is a key detail I can't recall, whether or not Matt was a part of tearing Dog apart. Part of me says that the mother in him, even in this drunken, celebratory state, would have protested such a mess, but part of me acknowledges the nature and carelessness of the night; I'm sure he clears it up in his recollection of Monday. Either way, at some point he had gone to bed. I think it was when the rest of us were in the garage filling up pitchers, as he thought he could sneak off unnoticed. Well, for our first year or two in the house, we used to play a game called "Wake Up Matt Radowksi." It was a lot of fun and is the reason he now sleeps with a hammer next to his bed. So obviously, it didn't take very long for us to storm into his room and wake him up; though I'm sure between the noise and the fear, it was near impossible to fall asleep. We attacked, ripping open the meagerly locked door, surrounding his bed and demanding that he see the night through to its bloody end. In only his boxers, he made a futile, but committed, attempt at resistance. We laughed. He managed to get us to leave the room, with promises of rejoining the party, but he lied! We came storming back to his door, where he met us and demanded we retreat immediately. In an act of panic, self-defense and pure genius, he grabbed a gallon of laundry detergent and threatened to pour it on us if we didn't stop these shenanigans immediately. We sent The Enemy at him first and Matt violently shook the gallon at him, sending a stream of detergent sailing through the air and onto The Enemy. It was not enough. Ten thousand gallons of laundry detergent is not enough to stop the force and will of these 5 drunk idiots, determined to Wake Up Matt Radowski! He continued to pour the detergent on all of us, including himself, as we forced him from his room and into the living room playland. We celebrated.

The downstairs floor was now covered with 2 inches of Styrofoam balls and a layer of laundry detergent, snow and ice. The detergent made the hardwood floors more slippery than ice and it was everywhere. We rolled around in it. We grabbed handfulls of the Styrofoam/detergent sludge and smeared each other's faces with it. It was in our eyes, ears, noses and certainly in every nook and cranny of the living room. In the middle of this scene, with us rolling around, half-naked, on the living room floor, Anna and her friend Pam walked in the back door. Pam immediately slipped and fell to the floor, Anna clung to the walls so as not to do the same. Pam got up, they watched us for a few seconds and they left. There was nothing for them there, this was far too intense and bizarre for them to understand.

This is my last recollection of the night: laying on the floor, watching them leave, and laughing uncontrollably for the next 45 minutes. I don't remember going to sleep, I don't remember anyone else going to sleep. The moment doesn't end in my mind, it lives on forever. I woke up the following day and walked downstairs. The house was empty, the dog gutted and resting heroically on the floor. Try as I may, there are no words to describe what had happened the night before.

Be sure to check out Matt and Russell's recollections of Monday; between the three of us, we should be able to account for half of what happened that night!