August 18, 2020 - Casa Irresponsible Throws a Shindig -

There was a party on Saturday night at Casa Irresponsible, down the end of the alley. First we heard some electric guitar chords, and I thought maybe the sweet couple next door had friends in the back yard. But then it got loud, louder than the sweet couple would inflict on the neighborhood, so I went out to the alley to see what I could see, and Whoa.

Whoa. There was such a big crowd down there, the alley was full for several garage-lengths. I could see dozens of people, maybe 40 or 50, but I couldn’t see the band.  

It was (no surprise) a young crowd. A few were facing my way. I saw two who were masked. Most of the rest were drinking or smoking or just shouting over the music. 

I was particularly taken by one tall, pale, thin young man who had a shaved head and big green blotches on his scalp, possibly remnants of an uneven dye job. He was wearing a bridal gown, and glowering at me. (And now we will pause to pine for my daughter together, because she has a certain deadpan, understated thing she does when she sees unusual fashion statements, an affirming and sober, almost defiant “sticking up for your best friend” look of seriousness and resolve, while she quietly says,  “That’s a choice.” No eye roll. No eyebrow lift. I tried to say it right then, as she would have, but I never get it quite right.)

A different young man, a cheerful one on the edge of the crowd, spotted me (I was about four garages away), and gave me a big smile and the traditional “Come on down, we’ve got beer,” wave. I mimed No, thanks, and then, because everything was echoing off of everything else, “Where is the music coming from?” He pointed over the fence into the back yard of Casa Irresponsible. 

Ah. Made sense. There was only one other likely candidate, the green house opposite, where I'd heard a drunken young woman exclaim some few months back, "We should start a band!" I had wondered, for a second, if she'd persuaded her housemates, and I was hearing the band in question. But no.

I turned around to go home (honestly, it was too loud, plus the sight of all those people right in each other’s faces, shouting, was giving me the COVID-willies), and then I heard someone running towards me, shouting, "Ma'am!" 

I turned around and performed a full Supremes STOP in the Name of Love move, including some excellent wrist action, and it was super-effective: he went straight from fast-forward into this cartoon backpedaling motion, saying, “Oh! OKAY! Okay!!”

I realized he was worried “Ma’am,” he shouted, “It will be over by ten.” I yelled, “That would be nice.”

And I went home.

I don’t know if he thought I was going to make trouble, tell his parents (but it’s Casa Irresponsible, those parents likely were there), or maybe call the cops because of the noise, but I have to confess that I was enjoying the noise just as evidence of A Party.  When I first heard it and first saw the crowd, I thought: Oh, remember parties? Remember bad garage bands and loud young people on a Saturday night? Oh, those were days!

Part of me did want to call the cops on them for an unsafe and perhaps illegal gathering of too many people, but only in an abstract way, not in real life. Portland Police right now? Heck, no.  And was it actually illegal? I wanted them to go home and not get sick and not make anyone else sick, and I knew they simply didn’t care about that, that if I got up close to them and tried to harangue them over the din, it would have no effect except to make me frustrated, anxious, and hoarse.

So I went home, and dreamt about being unable to rescue drowning babies. Rough night.

The next morning I went for a bike ride with a neighbor, and at the end, when I was putting my bike back in our garage, she said, “Which house?” I grinned, because it was going to be so easy for her to identify Casa Irresponsible. I said, “ You see the black stripe of motor oil running down the alley? Just follow it until you come to the really big part of the stain, where the motor oil made a huge pool. And then look right! That's the place.