Nineteen/twentyish

Painstakingly tilt that LeBron James cap, let your shirt sag just so, to make it look like you haven’t bothered. Check the party date, Saturday the Third, arrive two hours late, in the guts of the gathering, your gang giggling. You bang the door til the glass bends; the host greets you with a flipped finger, embrace of mates. You shoulder your way in, pop the tops off your lips and spill kisses on chiquitas’ cheeks. You swap secret handshakes with your mates, drop in-jokes, check up on bros in jail, A&E, mates in wrecks, mates munted on their BMX.
Cool kids don’t dejacket or decap. The host is magnetic; you’re a metal fragment. You compliment her hair, stroke the host’s threads, bump knuckles, reference the rugby, the league, the quake, the pink stickered Skyline of some mate. New hands are shook; nicknames stick.
The first beer’s cracked, the first sculled wine stains your gums. You clock your buds, slap their backs, butt their heads. Veranda opens up, leak on the deck like yolk and hit the boundary-black, regret the cigarettes which slip into your lips. Cigarettes are politics, lighters invite acolytes, you flit and stick to some fresh clique.

Someone’s married. Someone’s miscarried. Some with baby born. Some with mortage comin on. Someone hogs the bathroom, getting banged on the handbasin, mashing the soap, knocking toothbrushes into the toilet bowl. The first asphalt smashed bottle. Car keys are tossed, swapped, dropped, lost; cans of Cody's are burned like bullets; peeps lurch in search of a feed, harangue Burger King. Some dude collapses in the flax. You tip your head back, drink the rain. Someone brings a dog. Someone flashes iPad apps.

Beer cans rain on the Noise Control gatecrash. The first bulbs are broken, bizarre things stolen – freezer meat, cutlery – and you sword-fight with umbrellas, vault couches, practice parkour against the fence. You lose twenty bucks betting on the Juggalo in the punch-up; the combatants bump bottles, swap sorries, apologies for the sake of Quakechurch. Kids plant their empties in potted palms, puke in upturned hats, promise Facebook friendship adds, hook up in triplets, swear infinite fraternity, then the bonfire fades, passion on some mattress and you wake on the wrong side of the Holy Day, roll over, check your texts and cuss and pray the quake was a drunken dream.