This weekend, I found myself at a party with twenty strangers on the roof of the Watson Center. It felt unlikely and illegal, and thus important and correct—probably the sentiments of every person who’s ever hung out on a roof of an institutional building. There was cheap, sweet rosé. There was talk of holy shit I’m so glad we aren’t first years anymore and are you kidding at least we aren’t in high school anymore. Every minute or two, a motion-sensitive floodlight blinked on, at which point whatever conversation I was jiving with was met with a horrible overhead brightness, pointing out flaws in faces you would normally choose to ignore in the gush of meeting someone new and interesting. It was as if a helicopter were hovering above, blaring its spotlight and shouting STOP You Have Been Caught In the Act of Trying to Be NICE and Make FRIENDS, and then turning off to signal never mind and that actually you may carry on. After a year and a half of constantly halted socialization, it’s nice to carry on. Even if it’s stop and go.
