Lou leads me to a table crowded with bowls of chips, bottles of beer, and party cups. He fills two of the cups and turns to me. A fragile seriousness falls over his face as he hands me one of the cups filled with a dark red liquid and recites: “Drink this wine, for it is…Carlo Rossi.” He rips out a dry cackle. “You hungry? I got plenty of snacks.”

I shook my head. Too much has gone on for me to eat what appeared to be Ruffles.

“Shit, I buy all these snacks and no one ever eats them. Such a waste.” He deposits his souring mood and returns to more jovial spirits. “Alright, well how about I show you around the place? After all, mi casa es su casa, brother.”

He slaps my shoulder and presumably makes eye contact with me through his douchey sunglasses before motioning me down a hallway. Obnoxious electronic music grows louder as I proceed to the end of the passage which empties out into a massive dance floor. It is dark save for the beams of light that burst intermittently and somewhat reflect the drops in the music.

The bass rattles my innards and high frequencies pierce my skull. Lou comes over my shoulder and yells in my ear “Kids these days…listen to the worst music. Am I right?” We survey the sea of grinding bodies occupied with moaning and rubbing each other. I look back to Lou who is laughing to himself. I motion my confusion and he leans in again:

“The best part about this shitty dance party is that everyone here thinks they’re rolling E. Joke’s on them, as they all swallowed some bullshit vitamin or something. I can’t stand whe—“

He pauses mid sentence and bolts away furiously towards a guy who’s passed out on the floor. Lou delivers several swift kicks to the man’s ribs who then slowly stirs from his slumber and looks up wearily.

“Bruce, quit your fuckin’ dirtnapping! I leave you alone for one hour and lo and behold, here you are again dirtnapping! Go find a couch or something you joke!”

Bruce gathers himself to his feet and unhappily slinks away through his disorientation. Lou must’ve deduced by my face that I was prepared to leave as well, as he returns to me and suggests we move on. I nod assent and we start heading out when a hand on my shoulder whips me around.

Before me stood an absolute smoke show. A fine young thing with scandalous proportions and eyes spinning from her…vitamin. She sneaks her hand around the back of my neck and pulls me in for a kiss. Immediately afterwards she releases, spins around, and shoves her butt in my crotch and begins wiggling to the music.

At this moment everything falls into place. My periphery blurs, my eyelids dilapidate, and every question mankind has ever conjured in its brief existence has been answered. As we keep dancing, I begin to ascend into sublimity until I reach a point where I am convinced I hardly exist as a material being at all, rather as some ephemeral apparition of pure erotic bliss.

I am torn from my dream state by Lou’s painfully icy grip. He yanks me away from the fine young thing and begins leading me down a new hallway.

“What the fuck, man?! Do you see the floozy I was dancing with? How dark are those lenses?”

Lou glares at me and suggests I look back. My maiden danced in place, though she was notably less attractive than before. In fact, with every step I took away from the dance floor she grew even ghastlier and more unattractive. I turn back to Lou who sensed my dismay.

“Funny how that works, huh?”