My dad, ex-frat boy and Hawaiian shirt connoisseur, began a tradition in my hometown called Aloha Tuesday. Every Tuesday, he’d put on a Hawaiian shirt and wear it to work, and since he was a teacher, he got to make Aloha Tuesdays a thing for his entire class, and eventually the entire school. He would leave ‘Happy Aloha Tuesday!’ notes in my car, and he would try to make me wear a Hawaiian shirt, and I always refused. I never put one on until a night in late summer, when I was home from college. I heard there was a party in the town over and one of my best friends had found us a ride. (This was before Uber and Lyft, but my hometown still doesn’t really have either of those, so a sober ride to a party was like winning the lottery.) The party was themed: tropical. My best friend and I were going to wear bikini tops, daisy dukes, and Hawaiian shirts from my dad’s closet. I think seeing me in that Hawaiian was the proudest my dad has ever been of me, at least until he realized I was only wearing a bikini top underneath and then I went back to being the disappointment I usually was.
The party was about twenty minutes away, and by the time we got there, tipsy off the shots we’d been drinking in the truck, it was in full swing. I could see by the way the house was positioned that this party was not going to last all night—we were in a cul-de-sac, for God’s sake. It was clear that the time to drink was now, before the cops came and broke it up, as was undoubtedly going to happen judging by the noise level I was hearing. I grabbed my best friend vodka and pulled my other best friend into the house with me. We unbuttoned our Hawaiian shirts a little, asked for a few shot glasses, and went to town. My bikini top probably got yanked off or sideways about sixteen times in the next hour or so. As it turns out, drunk boys will grab boobs if they see them (isn’t that written in the Bible somewhere?) so after awhile I sort of stopped re-adjusting my top and just gave the people what they wanted. As I polished off the last of the vodka, I suddenly heard a commotion from the other end of the house. I figured it was just a fight or something, but then people started to legitimately begin to flee from that end toward the exit near the kitchen, where I was standing.
“What’s happening?” I asked my best friend as she ran past me and grabbed my hand.
“The cops are here,” she said, pulling me along. “They pepper sprayed the house.”
“What?!”
We fled out into the cool night air, where people seemed to be running in all directions to escape the cops and the stupid pepper spray. Some people were rubbing at their eyes or yelling, and the people still in the house got it the worst. I just remember a weird smell and my eyes stinging, which I was grateful for, because my mascara is expensive and I wasn’t planning on crying it off that night. My last shots started to hit me as my best friend and I joined the sprinting mob and ran toward our ride. It was dark, and we kept running into everyone else fleeing the scene as we neared the opposite sidewalk, where I could see a few cop cars were parked.
I can’t guarantee accuracy regarding how the next part went down, but I want to say it was my best friend’s idea, because I clearly remember the following words leaving her mouth: “Let’s make out on the cop car.”
Now, this is at the very least frowned upon, and at worst it was a crime. Most of the cops were still in the house, as far as I could tell, but I couldn’t be sure in the dark. All I knew was that I’d just been forced to leave a party as my drunkenness hit its peak. I was ready for another four hours of drunken shenanigans, and they’d just ruined everything. Sure, it was really the neighbor’s fault for calling and complaining about the noise (or the people who’d been stupid enough to try to have a party in a cul-de-sac), but whatever. Long story short, I was down to get a little illegal.
“Okay,” I said, and the next thing I knew we were both sitting on top of the hood of a cop car, making out, while my Hawaiian shirt flew in the breeze like the goddamn flag of America. Her tongue slid in my mouth and I was pretty sure this was one of the most patriotic moments of my life as I grabbed her boobs and she pulled my bikini top down for the umpteenth time that night. I heard footsteps stopping near us as the mob of people realized what was happening and stopped to watch.The party shifted from inside the house to surround us on the street, and no one seemed to be complaining.
“There are two chicks making out on top of the cop car!”
If there’s a better sentence to comprehensively sum up my life so far, I haven’t heard it yet..
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Shannon Layne
My favorite things are tiaras, compliments, and free drinks, which are becoming harder to come by the more I tend to show up at the bar in sweat pants. The proudest moment of my life so far has been landing an actual, paying job that allows me to Facebook stalk people for a living. I tweet about my mom way too often, who is constantly trying to remind me that I'm not nearly as cool as I think I am. Please send me funny stories to read at work here: shannon.laynee@yahoo.com
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