A party on the beach. A bright moon approaching fullness. A raging fire and oil lamps ablaze. Enough intoxicants to wipe out all consciousness in a five kilometre radius. A gathering of close friends and strangers from the hostel. A plethora of gorgeous woman. One special woman leaving the following day. No work for 36 hours. Could a night hold any more potential than this? I was pumped up like an over-inflated tyre ready to burst.
The hostel owners had changed their usual anti-party policy and ferried two bus loads of revelers as far away from the hostel as possible. Perhaps they saw the potential for the first quiet Friday night there in the six years they have owned the place. The ever dwindling Asian population stayed behind and partied on in the same quiet and insular manner that defeats their purpose of coming to Australia to improve their English.
The only other two Australians at the in hostel had taken on organisational duties and had almost set the place up in a manner fit to deliver the sort of memorable experience everyone was hoping for. Failing to supply any sort of toilet arrangement for women was an easy oversight for two males to make. Thinking a pile of sausages and white bread was going to cut it with the few vegetarians in attendance was a typical planning error for a carnivore as well. Eating is cheating, especially when the goal is to get drunk enough to forget about a burnt snag dinner and not being able to go to the toilet. Thankfully I had already eaten, and as a male, the world is my toilet. Shane took chivalry to a sickening level by taking off his singlet and ripping it to sheds for the women to use as toilet paper. This made every other male look inconsiderate by comparison, even though we were all dressed in attire too fine to finish its time as shredded sanitary strips.
The focal point of the night started out being a stolen door on cinder blocks as a makeshift table for shots. Now call me old if you must, and probably will after this statement, but I have had enough shots in my time to know that the end result is usually getting uncontrollably munted far too early and exponentially increasing the chances of violent bursts of regurgitation. Seeing the sun rise seemed like it would be the perfect end to a perfect night. The way shots were being thrown down to multi-lingual toasts meant that many would be lucky to see midnight. I was pacing my consumption happy to watch others start sober, skip tipsy and just fly straight into being embarrassingly drunk. The two Toby's present gave their shared name a shared characteristic by passing out long before most people had blown the froth off their third tinnie.
Thanks has to be given to Katy Perry for singing 'I kissed a girl', and every radio station that seems to believe people enjoy hearing the same song three times every hour. I suspect it was the collective will of every male there, but something beyond normal social graces prompted the women to embark upon an all in snog-arama. Much to the delight of those lucky enough to witness it, tongues were liberated, then shared equally in pairs, threesomes and ultimate a four way pash. My camera almost buckled under the workload, and the increase in pulses was audible above the hooting and whistling.
Julia and I had visited the beach during the day and had our hairstyles altered significantly by Mother Natures obvious over-indulgence in baked beans. This had only increased at night time, and while the temperature remained warm enough for summer apparel or even nudity, every orifice soon became a hiding place for copious amounts of sand. Cameras and other electronic equipment weren't spared either, although wind barely played a part in Kei's camera filling with sand when one of his rambling diatribes ended with him falling face first to the ground. He recovered long enough to tell every girl how sexy they were, but his camera sounds like it would work pretty well as a coffee grinder now.
As my intake started to double my vision, sexual appeal and joke telling ability, the party numbers started to drop rapidly. The shooters had found discreet bushes to fertilise. Workers had wandered back to the hostel to destroy the few hours of quiet the owners had not been able to enjoy for fear the peace would prove to be all to brief. Couples had paired up and proceeded to snog believing the cover of night was sufficient privacy from other people that happened to be sitting less than two metres away. A few bangers had been charcoaled and consumed by drunks hungry enough to eat anything that might have once resembled food.
Five hours shy of sunrise and the party was effectively over. Other than couples and the unconscious, only one American was almost as upright as I was. He was staggering around like a puppet with a few snapped strings trying to find his shoes. He would never find them in that state even if they were strapped to his body. I left him to it and put Julia to bed as her goon, beer, vodka, weed and whiskey combination was threatening to come back out the way it should never have gone in. I survived with my memory intact but mildly disappointed it was all over by the time I started to get into it.
8am and I awake to bright sunlight. A thick layer of repellent had kept me bite free but far too hungover to be thankful. Mosquitoes and sand flies enjoyed a piss up of their own by drinking liberally from Julia's supply of alcohol sozzled blood. The dune I had selected to sleep upon had seemed idyllic at 1:30am. The cold light of day revealed its disturbing proximity to a vast scattering of dirty singlet shreds though.
Returning to the fire found the unconscious conscious again but riddled with regrets. The couples were making polite conversation with partners that probably appeared very different, and far more attractive the night before. A small degree of hangover relief could be found in the last circulating joint that was more tobacco than weed. While scraping sand out of ears, nostrils and more private places, every one agreed upon how fun the party had been. No one had much recollection of things except for me and the few still functioning cameras though. And thankfully the photos taken are funny enough to ensure the night will always be remembered as a special part of the Bowen experience.
