Dougherty’s Index for Block Island
Most Memorable Moments With The Band on Block Island, 2006:
1. Getting woken up at 4.30a by Ry, crashing into the room, standing over my bed, yelling, “Bon! Bon! There is NO FIRE! Don’t worry, nothing is on fire!” — then running out, giggling hysterically.
2. Racing mopeds (backwoods motor scooter, actually) around a rented house of three inebriated fans at three in the morning. Ry won. Between the wet grass and the crochet paraphanalia in the yard, I was too scared of wiping out to go as insanely fast as he went. Afterwards, we both laughed at discovering our mutual thought, while racing, had been what our mothers would say if/when they found out how we severed a limb in an effort to pass eachother on a curve, full speed.
3. Driving the mopeds through the woods a little after three in the morning, through potholes on a dirt road with Mattie. We picked up D. and C. and revved back into the black night, two to a vehicle, Mattie shaking visably, me reciting the 91st Psalm into the darkness.
4. D., overwhelmingly stoned (etc.), asking me, in the middle of a too-loud set, about God and sin and Jesus and Truth and, in essence, explaining why I don’t drink or eat their pot cookies. Every five minutes he’d walk away, then emerge from the soundboard a few minutes later with another question about spiritual consciousness, or karma, or what life is about. This was a random, serene, oddly fun moment, in the midst of drums and guitars and wailing.
5. The Czech, Polish and Ukranian 20-somethings who were living in the same boarding house for the summer, serving bagels to tourists and learning English and blaring Eastern European TV shows long into the night, as I lay on the other side of the wall, fanatically reading and loathing Lolita.
6. The sun coming out just as we were leaving, the temperature rising 20 degrees overnight, and all of us getting horribly sunburnt (ok, just me; everyone else got butter-brown tans) on the ferry back, with our faces to the wind and the wind on the sea and the sun on everything.