A mild din emanates from the house: clinking bottles and chatting people eager to hide their emotions behind any paint-by-number conversation topics. A hot, plastic odor wafts from several hundred nervous, sweaty manikins bumping roughly against each other, engaging in overblown displays of affection with every intrusion into their personal space—helping to mask their agitation. Of course, the most densely packed area is the dance floor and bar. The floor is illuminated by multicolored lights reflected off a gently swaying disco ball. The house’s interior colors alternate between a faded dark blue and light green, although the colors have long since faded and dulled: resembling an almost uniform, murky-turquoise hue. The music is pallidly inspired by the mid-seventies, playing a pastiche of tunes. An air of ambivalent acceptance hangs over everyone and everything, like a unified sigh expressing a “Whatever, let’s get on with it” sentiment.
Two men enter wearing black pants and white shirts. One has a leopard pattern jacket; the other, shirt unbuttoned, sports a gold chain nestled in his chest hair. One of the two is munching on a fat cigar crammed in his mouth, and the other is wearing sunglasses that bath his eyes in a cool yellow. Moving in perfect synchrony, they tiptoe quickly and deliberately around the venue, with precision fitting of agents on a top secret mission. Their hands and hips shake and groove out of tempo with the music, as if what they hear differs from what’s playing at the party. Occasionally, the two stop and chat. While they’re too shy to linger for long, their deceptively cute looks are enough to warrant a brief distraction from the mundane ongoings of the evening.
Each finds opportunities to interfere with the party: turning off the lights, disconnecting the disco ball, hiding firewood for the backyard campfire, and smuggling out bottles of alcohol outside. They continue removing elements of the party until folks begin noticing items are missing. At the raising of the alarm, the pair change the music to a song titled, “Hele Natta Lang.”
As the record begins, the two start shaking their hips harder and in tandem with the song. The crowd starts to angrily chase the saboteurs, who, amazingly, continue dancing despite dodging steeled hands and shaking fists. One removes his sunglasses and throws them at the crowd, like a pop star throwing his shirt at a screaming group of teenagers; the sunglasses ricochet off someone’s face, enraging the crowd further. The scene is strange and chaotic as the two men continue running and dodging, all the while performing elaborate, cringey dance moves. The two escape the house, panting and laughing while they run, the other’s glasses askew and precariously hanging from his face. Their energy is manic; one moment, hopping and skipping in time to the music over the painted portions of a crosswalk; the next, standing on a nearby car, arching their hips, bending towards each other as they mimic the lyrics—alternating, side to side, in tandem with the music. The crowds’ fully buttoned shirts and blouses gradually come undone while they run, exposing their own sweaty, hairy chests.
Some of the crowd, losing their anger to the mania, only step on the painted bits of the crosswalk as they chase.
“They’re heading for those mopeds!” screams someone in the crowd… Indeed, two mopeds appear on the horizon, initially as faint, black specks, but growing in size. At this point, the saboteurs, along with some of the crowd, are wearing only their boxers. Without hesitation, they leap aboard the mopeds, revving them loudly before peeling out into the street, disappearing as suddenly as they arrived. The crowd slowly stops running after realizing they’ve lost the party crashers. Someone curses at the sky and shakes his fist in their direction. After the commotion dies down, two other chasers turn and face each other. Crestfallen, one scratches the back of his neck and says, “Why don’t we head back? Try to salvage what’s left of tonight? I dunno…” The other, still panting, smiles. “What for? This is the most fun I’ve had in years!”