“No tunes!”

“He’s right. Stop everything. What’s up next?”

I pause, razor in hand, hand dangling over the mirror, drifts piled as far as the eye could see, as far as our bank accounts could stretch.

“Dark Side?” I suggest.

“Yes!”

The chorus of voices agrees upon Pink Floyd in harmony, cigarette smoke circling around the ceiling, ash falling in every direction, sullying everything that had once been clean.

“Put that shit on!”

I resume my work, vaguely aware of the first few bars of “Speak to Me” drifting into the room, the air fetid with our sweat and our musk and our mania. My teeth grind together and the insides of my eardrums itch, and I light another cigarette with my lucky pink lighter as I wait for the group to reassemble around the large mirror on the coffee table.

Our motley crew of students and friends and lovers and strangers had come together as the sun set several hours before; now, we are flying high on our camaraderie and our dopamine and our collective potential to change the world.

So wise are we, now that we are in our early twenties.

“C’mon, you guys!” I finally yell over the din. “It’s ready!”

They come, bringing smokes and water bottles and pheromones and exuberance. We sit like snake charmers around the perimeter of the table; cross-legged; single-minded with purpose. We are a study in austerity, a study in hedonism.

“Did you know,” Mike comments apropos of nothing, “that David Bowie had two different-colored eyes?”

Love for David Bowie is strong here, in this room full of bisexual acting students and Liberal Arts majors. We appreciate the beauty of androgyny; we have watched “The Labyrinth” mainly for his codpiece.

“Not true!” I interject without looking up, attempting to crush a particularly stubborn pebble with the side of the razor. “One of his eyes was just permanently dilated.”

“Is that a fact?” asks Jenna.

“Google it.”

I separate the white powder into piles as the group, indeed, Googles it, learning of the childhood fight that injured Bowie’s eye; lamenting Bowie’s absence; lauding Blackstar, Bowie’s final go, Bowie’s swan song.

“Bowie liked cocaine,” comments Will absentmindedly.

“So did Matthew Perry,” snickers Eddie.

“YOU GUYS.”

Mike has had an idea, and it would appear to be a relatively significant one.

Mike is, in fact, fidgeting on the floor, so excited is he in this Eureka moment, and I take a second to reflect how all ideas seems significant right now, because every single idea is just amazing.

Then I take a second to reflect how I’m going to feel tomorrow morning.

“You know how a ‘Bowie’ is a circle?” he asks.

“Everyone knows that!” Jenna agrees, and I carve a few Bowies out of the drifts to illustrate. “It’s ‘The Width of a Circle’!”

“But wait!” Mike continues. “Wait til you hear what I learned!”

He is vibrating with this information, Isaac Newton on the verge of inventing calculus, and I notice my pack of cigarettes is empty. How many have I smoked? What time is it?

“I was visiting my girlfriend last weekend, and I met a guy next door who showed me how to do a ‘Matthew Perry’!”

The group breaks into laughter at this, our voices echoing in the apartment, still empty except for a futon, coffee table, and pathetic little floor lamp. It is the end of summer, and the community will descend on campus en masse over the next few days. But until then, it is only the occupants of this room, alone in the world, the spinning of the planet paused, the rest of the human condition politely waiting for our fun to end before resuming their own lives.

“May I?” Mike questions, indicating the razor.

“You may,” I respond, “if I can bum a cigarette.”

We trade, our fingertips trembling against one another. From my position on the floor, I can see the moon through the window. It is nearly full, though I have no idea if it is waxing or waning, and this realization makes me sad.

After all, what is in store for tomorrow? Has this moon already reached its peak, its climax, a moment of splendor to which I didn’t know to pay attention, and everything downhill from here? Or does the full moon still await, this entire evening a breath of anticipation, the piece de resistance yet to come and dazzle us all? Is the moon fading in spirit and size, losing luster like Matthew Perry’s career? Or is it preparing a magnum opus, Bowie dropping Blackstar through sheer tenacity?

“Shannon! Watch!”

Mike has been busy with the razor while I was staring out the window, and an array of lines have appeared on the mirror.

“So, a Matthew Perry is two lines next to each other,” he gestures with a rolled-up dollar bill in his left hand, “only you do them at the same time.” He displays another rolled dollar bill in his right hand and adds, “Top to bottom and bottom to top.”

Mike demonstrates, left and right hands coordinating like a drummer at a kit, the sound of his sniffing very loud in the room. Then, of course, nothing can continue until the rest of the group attempts a Matthew Perry of their own, and what follows is several minutes of delicate choreography to avoid spilling anything on the floor.

“But that’s not even the best part!” says Mike. He picks up the razor and works quickly, shaping a large circle around two of the parallel lines. “Any ideas what this is called?”

Silence greets this question – or, something as close to silence as a dozen hyperactive misanthropes clenching their jaws and biting their nails and jiggling their toes can achieve, that is.

Mike grins.

“It’s a Bowie around a Matthew Perry…because Matthew Perry is a ‘Young American.’”

It goes on all night, and it is the best night; and things indeed go downhill from there.