Obviously someone anticipated the date -- July 7, 2007, which in digital translation came out to 07/07/07. I don't know if there was supposed to be anything magical or occult about the numbers, but it made a good excuse for a party.
Word spread by grapevine, as it often does. There were no direct invitations, nothing in print, just
oh yeah, there's a party out at so-and-so's on Saturday, and there's going to be
etc. etc. Annie told me about it -- she usually had a better ear for social crap than I did, as I was working in construction. So that Saturday morning, we caught a ride with Charlie and Sally to a farm way out north, out in the bushes.
Turned out that one of the local bands, comprising fellows we knew, or at least knew of, would entertain more or less. There'd be kegs of beer, a free bar, and a barbecue, with Bill G. and his gang minding the smoke pits. It sounded like a good day.
Annie was my squeeze at the time. She worked as bartender in one of the cool restaurants downtown and was tuned to the local rock scene -- as i say, she had a better hand on the local pulse than I did. She was from Queens, typical Italian, all loudmouth and up-front. And up-front is where she really made the first impression, with a pair of large, perfect tits that she squeezed daily into a black leotard -- the restaurant uniform; all the girls there had to wear them. Along with a sheer black skirt and black tights.
She was tall and had long legs and wore her hair long with a native curly frizz. I got a boner the first time I saw her, and the boner lasted until the day she and I split up a year later. For another year or two afterward, in fact.
Oh god, she was red-hot. All I ever had to do was to hint at wanting it and she was ready, willing and eager. Too eager sometimes. She and I had more than one smash-up concerning "other people" -- she with the usual would-be rock stars and me with occasional strays, of the baby dolls who'd fuck a guy, then fuck a couple of his buddies for fair measure.
I still have steamy memories of Annie. That time on the bus back from a club in Manhattan, full bus in the 3 a.m. dark, and on the back seat we couldn't keep our drunken hands off each other, finishing just in time to zip up and get off at the stop in Jersey. Or the two of us naked with a few other naked people on a hot afternoon. We were in a community pool, and I fucked her up against the tiled side of the pool as her naked friend Nancy cheered and coached us from poolside. Or out in the river by a highway bridge, me, Annie and Nancy naked and howling at cars on the bridge from midstream. We ended up on the muddy river bank and I fucked them both, believe it or not, in a mud-slimed mini-orgy. Annie stayed pissed off at Nancy for a month afterward, and for no reason; it was partly
her
fault, right?
Anyway . . .
We drove, we rode, we stayed sober until we got to the farm. Charlie and Annie had been long-time companions before I met her, and Sally, a thin, drawn-looking blond, was his current flame. We unloaded early afternoon and started drinking. The day was a lot of fun. Various people, with various degrees of ability, sat in with the band, which was good-natured about the misuse of their time and equipment. Annie tried singing, and I tried out on drums. A lot of people we knew were there.