Sun 23 Apr 2006
I called up Aaron yesterday and he called me back with an invitation to a couch-burning party at his friend Nate’s place, just south of Des Moines. I met up with Aaron and Nick (we’d all gone to high school together), met their girlfriends, and we headed over.
Driving up, we saw the couch in a heap with an armchair and a treestump by the side of the house. Two chocolate Irish setters ran around freely. They were the friendliest of dogs, but I kept hearing about their fondness for bringing home dead cats and racoons, maybe even larger animals. I found a jawbone with human-looking teeth on the ground, just as the conversation veered into ominous jokes about burning Eastern Europeans instead of couches. Fortunately, a game of Bocce Ball distracted us.
After the sunset, there were burgers. More people arrived and the couch burned. It burned briefly but gloriously as the night grew colder; we shivered around the smoldering coals and drank. Talk continued to twist around: Lucha Libre, anecdotes about strippers, work ethic and just rewards, Aaron’s move to Connecticut, Isma’s Caribbean med school, $trick9’s videos, embers from the fire raining on the house. Denis and Leo were asked to sweet-talk strange girls on the phone in Russian. Nick wrestled Nate for fun. On the way home, I found out that last year Snoop Dogg and The Game played in Des Moines on April 20 to a half-empty Val Air Ballroom.
