After we dropped off B. and D. and stopped for a visit at a diner where I awkwardly interacted with their high school friends, I crashed at the twins’ house; S. went to bed while W. and I stayed up watching Cheers and waiting for their older brother who works the late shift at the Crayola factory. W.’s extremely nice suburban house was spacious and incredibly clean, and his large bedroom was spotless, full of hundreds of meticulously organized books. I wasn’t terribly surprised. The next morning I had an ascetic breakfast of coffee and a small piece of homemade coffeecake, then set out on my own. I wandered around for a few hours checking out the charming main drag and the historic district, then I made my way across the bridge to the humbler part of town. Two separate SUVs stopped to ask where they might find the Eagles’ training ground before I made it onto the Lehigh University campus. Lehigh is built quite literally on the side of a mountain, and it’s difficult to traverse. (I wonder if the rich kids who attend the school all have personal golf carts or something.) The first building I wandered into was some kind of campus center and after a minute of snooping around I was faced with a closed door informing me that certain areas were off-limits due to the Philadelphia Eagles’ presence. There was an unattended cooler full of water and Gatorade, and, though I hadn’t eaten or drank anything since that morning and had been walking around in the sun all day, I was too bashful to thieve some cold drinks from a national sports association.
I briefly checked out the (casually majestic) library, then started my way up the mountain. After a few minutes I found myself in the fraternity/sorority sector, an eerie, abandoned uphill neighborhood of small mansions with giant Greek letters adorning their façades. I always thought my school had an odd on-campus residency system, but this was truly bizarre: a lavish, school-sanctioned party ‘hood, seemingly removed from any sort of administrative reserve. I was on my way to some kind of “village” and the summit of the mountain (and, presumably, the foretold Eagles training ground in the athletic area) when B. called. I went back with him to his dad’s house in Nazareth, where we walked to an “Indian tower” by a graveyard overlooking a vast cornfield and then watched part of Love Actually. Eventually his sister showed up, along with a large, aggressive dog, and we drove to a party in some little upper-class hamlet.
I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this part of the day; all the grown-up house parties I’d ever been to were boring affairs full of tiresome, obnoxious Jews, but I was so hungry at that point I didn’t care. Free dinner, right? The food turned out to be great, and so did everything else. I was warmly welcomed by the gregarious older women throwing the party, given hugs and liquor (I took a shot of something warm and syrupy called a Slippery Nipple) and soon I was in high spirits. It grew late and we parted with the sister and dog and drove back to B.’s mom’s house in Bethlehem. We had primo ice cream and sat out on the porch drinking more of his mom’s homemade beer. D., whose parents live a few blocks away, stopped by to say hello. He seemed shaken; he’s been going through some depressing personal shit and has been in a deep funk lately. B. and I took a walk and talked, in a mood of drunken candor, about our demons and reservations about the upcoming year. I unknowingly took a leak on a church on the way back and passed out at 2:00 in the sister’s tiny bedroom.
I awoke 6 hours later, having been told of plans to bike to breakfast. Soon we went outside, where I was introduced to my ride: a bizarre adult tricycle that looks like this, except the seat is a more reclined harness and the headrest is just a padded pole:
I got the hang of it in a minute, although I couldn’t quite figure the gearshift. Riding the thing in traffic was alternately fun and terrifying. On a hill it was like a controllable luge, which is still pretty scary; I was leaning back and so close to the ground that I couldn’t be totally aware of my surroundings. Still, I enjoyed gripping the upright handlebars, pretending I was in some kind of futuristic one-man submersible vessel, like Snake Plissken or something. We went to a café called the Blue Sky, which is owned by skydiving enthusiasts, although I was told it had that name before the current owners. Everybody got some fancy pancakes but I just had some coffee and wheat toast—I feel bad when I’m dining on a friend’s parents’ dollar, and in any case I needed something simple to soak up my hangover. I should emphasize that I haven’t been drinking coffee for three months; the caffeine propelled me through the long weekend on little other nourishment. We took a long way home, stopping to observe the modest skate park across the street from the casino, and by the time we made it back I was covered in sweat (with a change of clothes still in my overnight bag in W.’s trunk across town), nauseous, and with my hangover headache worsened by the trike’s non-headrest. I still managed to enjoy the day. B.’s sister came over and we were joined shortly by a family friend with a surprisingly quiet, solemn 8-month-old baby. We were all entertained for a few hours by the baby’s antics and then I spent the rest of the afternoon reading the New Yorker, drinking more coffee and homebrew beer, rifling through B.’s book collection and so on. We watched part of Three Kings and then met up with D., taking a walk to an empty swimming pool and playground. Eventually W. swung by and collected us, and we headed home. I’m glad I went. It’s fun to see how the other three-fourths live.
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