A place built for the after hours, afterall, it is ours.
Betwixt the sounds of rusty bike chains and the ambient whispers of the man upstairs, Sweet Jane closes her front door, breathing in the lingering fug of life’s afternoon. The sounds of the bell tower begin to fade as the paralyzing aroma of pungent tar expands and contorts in her glass lungs. Reaching into her studded leather satchel, she discovers the remnants of the night before, embarking into a new night henceforth. She peels open her bag of treats, its sugary coating grinding down the back of her throat and cracking like sand. With the timebomb of euphoria set, she throws on her baby-blue dress and fabric crown and she laces up her bright red Chuck Taylors. Confidently puffing her chest, she looks into the mirror and revels in her ideal: the less Midwest Princess, and then waits. She waits for the tidal waves of tranquility, where the Sun meets the Earth and everything becomes so much more translucent; much more feasible, much more real.
The lagoon has met the Sun, and the lights of Isla Vista begin to flicker on. Alternating chords of varying genres spew from all sides, beckoning in an uneasy harmony. Broken glass scatters itself along the cracked pavement like serrated knives, allowing the remnants of some cheap booze to fertilize the weeds. Flimsy flyers of events long gone litter the streets, advertising to ants and sewer cats as they slowly fade away in the green torrents of sewage gone by. Sweet Jane walks along the uneven sidewalks, kicking a brown and green compostable paper cup along the way. The mystic mist of marijuana musk follows her silently through the night, fluttering and flourishing the foul haze with a fleeting layer of soft nostalgia. Memory manifests through the fog, and Jane reflects herself in the iris of every other girl on these streets; like fleeting phantoms of the ideal night, flickering into reality through the shallow glow of the silver streetlight.
Drifting, Sweet Jane finds herself at a random gathering on the streets of Isla Vista. It’s “Pint Night,” and everyone is cheerily enjoying their Wednesday night concert session. The crowd creeps into the street like the roots of trees to pavement; perpetually on the verge of breaking containment, yet never fully reaching the point of absolute obstruction. Their brew just simmers along the brim of their glasses, its foam occasionally curling over the edge to rest itself in the crevices between the thumb and index. Jane’s attention, however, has found herself eavesdropping into a conversation with others who have gathered here. One, a mirror image of Jesus Christ, talking to her with the grace and elegance of the enigmatic Jesus. Unsure if this is actually Jesus or not, she decides it safer not to take chances, lest she be wrong about his holy identity. Jesus is drinking some ripe-looking liquor, the kind of liquor that makes condensation look appetizing. The other slyly exclaims himself to be a patron of the humanitarian arts, casually referencing obscure literary works as if they’re common knowledge. His name slips through the surrounding drunken hissing. Instead, she names the man Karl Marx; his beard does look very Marx-like, after all. Regurgitating the fruits of academia, the words begin to drool out of their mouths, pooling into a verbose greyish-green puddle, slipping into the half-clogged drain systems below.
“Do you know why they call it I.V.?” Jesus says, mumbling over his words. “Because once that needle enters you, it’s in your blood for life!”
Jesus and Marx never see eye to eye, but under the fuzzy red starlight, the line in the sand dissipates with the rolling tide. Too drunk to care, Marx and Jesus solemnly grasp each other’s hands, exchanging fleeting kisses as they clash under the ebb and flow of the milkway. The blend of music and alcohol mixes with the sand and the sea, as everyone leaves their worries behind, letting the poison and half-lucid smiles numb the pain.
Sweet Jane grows hazy, and in the mists of her mind she wanders alone once again, leaving Jesus and Marx to the world behind. Time begins to flicker like fire, instances of stained reality born in its smoke. She continues to meander down the concrete river, following the boats and buses down a path only accessible to them. Layers upon layers of shoddily printed flyers decorate the walls, staples lingering in the wood, concreting the residual parchment to an eternity of insignificance. Dancing across the concrete sea, Jane finds herself in an expansive field with a singular tree, the bog looming nearby. Looming overheard, the pungent fog, illuminates the red eyes of heaven, malevolently beaming down at her from beyond the haze. Initially, she thinks it to be divine retribution for leaving Jesus to his drink. Despite this, Jane focuses on the villainous gaze above, realizing the eyes to be nothing but the red illuminating lights of the same old bell tower.
Sweet Jane blinks again, and she finds herself at her last stop of the night. A sign reads “East Depression,” which she thinks to be because of the congregation of sad drunken folk who spill their blood into the sand each night. She does this too, but just as everyone else, there is no knife. Under the haze of the moon’s airglow, Jane allows the sand to consume her, occasionally bumping ways with the resident sand flea. The moon’s gravity pulls her down further into the sand, melting her into the glass-covered beaches of Isla Vista. She feels as though her entire body is being tingled by the sand and sky, each and every gust of wind driving the substrate further and further into her skin. In slight of this minor abrasion, Sweet Jane smiles. Lying down to close her eyes, she feels the blood and body of every single person who has come to this beach before her, as they all melt themselves down into the sand-spit of the Pacific. She feels everything; the alcohol in the water, the tar on the beach, the tears of an innocent soul slain by the spectacles of society. She takes this all, feels the world revolving with her, mixes everything into a nice little cocktail, and throws it back like a Pink Whitney shooter. Buried by the champagne supernova, the landslide completely swallows her existence, melding her entire self with the blood, glass, and tar. Comfortably suffocating in sand, Sweet Jane smiles forever, knowing that the tide will roll back again, and the sun will rise behind the belltower once more. ▲
