The balancing act

Once in college, a group of us was walking to a just-barely-off-campus party the likes of which the University of Nevada rarely saw. Contrary to what most people think, the Nevada of the new millennium is not really a party school on the order of Chico State or UC Santa Barbara. Sure, addiction is rampant in the state, but most folks sort of take it in stride, meaning simple possession of a controlled substance is not much of a cause for celebration. "OK, we're drunk again. So what? Dude, that's no reason to start inviting girls over all willy nilly. They'll want me to turn off 'Halo.'"

This time, though, the party threat was real. It was the sort of affair where you could, as they say, feel it calling in the air tonight about a mile before you could actually see anything. Approaching on foot, the effect was maximized. At first you could just feel a vague throbbing somewhere up the street. Then you noticed cars parked haphazardly and packaging from 12-packs scattered along the sidewalk. Then you were suddenly picking your way through a field of humanoids, some stumbling aimlessly, others sitting on the ground jabbering to themselves, still others prostrate and barely breathing. The pungent fallout of a night already forgotten was everywhere. The overall impression was that of being the first team into Chernobyl.

And then we crested a rise and saw it. Three Greek houses along one side of the street were concealed behind a single long fence installed for the occasion. I guess the idea was to keep secret what was happening inside, but it was pretty hard to miss dozens of people standing in the middle of the street and the smell of pot, hormones and kegs leaking into hardpacked dirt roiling from inside the perimeter. The meatheads watching the gate were far past caring who got in and stamped each of my hands several times in a sudden rush of camaraderie.

The event was shockingly well-funded. Where usually a Will Ferrell movie and some wine coolers were enough to lure at least the easy girls into the frats (and who needed any other kind?), this time the brothers were running multiple DJ booths and several thousand dollars worth of decoration and security. I had to hand it to them -- if I were a 19-year-old blonde from Susanville, I'd probably be impressed.

What they were missing, though, was beer. That most crucial of resources had apparently evaporated within the first few minutes, so we went looking for more at a nearby gas station.

Nearby, we passed another fraternity, which was not involved in the party. The house was set up on a hill with a long stone staircase leading down to the street. At the foot, the hillside stopped in a four-foot-high ledge where a guy could sit and collect himself after a long night on the town.

Tonight, a group of brothers lounged around the ledge, shouting at passing girls and spitting chewing tobacco onto the sidewalk. One guy had deliberately stretched his legs into the path of pedestrians and another was rocking back and forth in a small orange classroom chair poised on the lip of the ledge. I'd never been big on the school's Greek mythologies, but I was already forming some opinions about why this crew hadn't been asked to join the orgy.

Then something terrible but completely predictable happened: My buddy Pat decided the guys looked like they could use a friend. He was famous for trying to find common ground with everyone from blackjack dealers to drug dealers by saying things like, "Wow, your shirt sure is tight. At least it's a nice night, though, right?" He never meant to offend, it just never occurred to him that the guy wasn't aware that his shirt was, in fact, too tight, and that he was therefore willing to talk about it with a stranger. So as we walked past the ledge, Pat noticed the guy in the chair and said, "Whoa. That's a pretty precarious position."

The guy peered at him for several seconds through a veil of Budweiser and chew. Then he narrowed his eyes and said, "That's a pretty big word. For YOU."

His buddies laughed and the rocker started oscillating faster and faster, the tiny feet of the chair creeping to within a millimeter of the ledge. He clearly wanted to argue, but I was confident he was going to have a hard time making his point after he tumbled overboard, especially if someone accidentally tripped and booted him in the temple in the ensuing confusion. I knew it would be trouble for all of us if he suddenly showed up injured after a confrontation on a busy street, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to warn him. His pals started to stand up just as his weight shifted forward one last time and the chair angled sharply forward.

And then the cops came. A fleet of cruisers roared down the road, causing all of us to take a guilty step back and the rocker to pull up short just as the front legs of the chair tipped into space. He lurched drunkenly back at the last second and saved himself, blissfully unaware that he had avoided a concussion and subsequent stomping. As the police fired up their light bars and rushed en masse into the party, the frat boys suddenly decided to turn in and began jogging up the hill. We looked at each other and wordlessly turned and kept walking.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the rocker had fallen. Would he have reeled to his feet just in time to see the police speed past? Stayed down long enough to attract police attention and land the lot of us in jail for the weekend? Or would he have described an unlucky trajectory, fracturing his skull on the curb and going into seizures just as the cops arrived, suddenly putting the entire exchange into context for the rest of us?

These days, it's easy for me to picture this country as a 20-year-old frat boy perched in a cheap plastic chair, laughing hysterically, ignorant to the fact that he's about to go spilling into the street. Probably, he'll catch it in time and everything will be OK. Even if he does fall, he'll probably be mostly unhurt and his buddies will pick him up, dust him off and have him back on his feet by morning. But with so very many legs hanging in the air at once, from a voraciously single-minded executive to sputtering foreign relations; from a massive but hollow economy to steadily expanding waistlines, I sometimes wonder how in the world the boy in the chair is going to catch them all in time.