Everyone who lives in Allston gets off on writing about Allston. Talking about Allston. Whining about Allston, joking, singing, talking talking talking all about Allston. The filth! The sex! The Sunday morning coffee shops teeming with hungover BU kids, all of them sort of drooping over their little tables, trying to make sense of their MacBooks as the displays spin in front of them. The little side streets that become main drags Friday nights, spiking among Brighton and Commonwealth and Cambridge –– Linden Chester Glenville Greylock Ashford Pratt –– with underdressed and overdrunk spilling everywhere, tripping over smashing bottles slinging shots down throats mixed with smoke drifting upward upward to little roofdecks buckling under the weights of 12-15 bodies each, eachandevery toting his own 40-ounce –– six-hundred ounces of malt liquor, after all, degrade the wooden porch slats much quicker.

But even with all that swill about Allston pulsing in and out of everyone, nobody gets tired of hearing it, just like nobody gets tired of drinking lukewarm skunked beer or sashaying around puddles of other peoples’ bile on their ways home every weekend. How could you get tired of the circus? Of the zoo? Of the hundred-year birthday party that doesn’t show any sign of stopping? It’s like how some people go to Disneyland every year, without fail, no matter how old their children get, no matter how many times they’ve ridden on this and taken a picture in front of that. Allston is a joke that no one minds hearing over and over again. Allston is the best outfit in everyone’s closet. Allston is Brooklyn because it isn’t Brooklyn. It’s Thai food soaked in microbrews vomited on some guy’s mattress draped across a framework of decaying wood and pockmarked cement with roaches multiplying under it all and pretty stilettos running across it this way and that as the lights turn from yellow to red and the traffic doesn’t give a damn if it hits you or not. After you pay your first month’s, last month’s, security deposit and finder’s fee, you have unlimited access to all the attractions, and you don’t even have to be this tall.

Imagine a place where parties in the apartment next to yours are legendary and draw crowds from way down Commonwealth and even as far as Emerson, Northeastern, Harvard! And when the people start to come ­­–– because houses aren’t made for riots –– there’s a bottleneck at the backdoor and a seventyfive or so kids form a warping line all around the side of the place and some get enough courage to creep over to your porch, to peel your paint, to kick your stoop. All those sinuous bodies, all that fresh frozen meat crisping in the 11 p.m. January frost, schreeeeeching to be let in. While the tenants of this place –– the Friday Night deities who hold the key to a whole world of skunked beer and bathtubfulls of alcoholic purple –– stand atop their own stoop, hands like fins over their furrowed brows, planning the harvest. Don’t overlook a single twisting ankle, a single exposed alabaster shoulder, a single water bottle full of Svedka. Everyone has a chance here. No one escapes the slaughter without a fair chance. Well, except ––

No more guys, no more guys allowed in for at least 45 minutes!

All the bitches in skirts come in, warm up.

No fat girls though.

No, man, no more goddamn guys. I don’t give a f— who you’re with.

Who do you even know here?

Yo! Jessica Zoe Chloe Jess Lindsey Lindsay Kayley Kelsey Jessica Jessica Jessica Jessica Jessica Ashley Allie Allison Kelly who’s your friend?

And just like that the crowd is contained. The ladies pour in through the backdoor, the bros disperse to Ashford and Pratt or the Harvard Ave McDonald’s. Some people –– the ones with the kind of gall that can only be mustered by that particular battalion of brave, drunk freshman boys –– will hang around outside the place, though, floating among front door, backdoor, lower window, hole in wall, hole in universe like a school of minnows, trying to get in. In in in in in! We paid 12 bucks for a cab to Allston and we’re going to get in. They imagine the glorious web of angelic girl hair entangled in bare legs and bra straps and all the beer you could ever imagine that’s connected to a hose connected to a keg connected to a table overrun with red red sanguine red cups. Red, red, red the color of all that is alive and pulsing and wet and vital –– this is where life begins and this is where life lives and livers die –– hell no if we go home without getting in.

And if you’re lucky enough to stand above all of this on your own porch –– fittingly, painted red –– elevated above this maggoty mass, in your apartment next door, you’re probably looking down upon this sea of red feeling like a modern Moses, wielding your own bottle of $9.99 shiraz in the place of a staff –– a different kind of red but not altogether unrelated. And if you strike down upon your porch the way Moses did from upon the cliff overlooking the Red Sea, you will find that you too can clear the way. You too can create dry ground for yourself and your compatriots to walk safely across, so long as you, with the grandiose, booming esteem of a true orator, can rally the sea below you.

Free beer at suchandsuchanaddressonGardner!! You shout, and they all turn up to look at you, as you glow in the Christmas tree-light haze cast upon you, and they listen. They listen. You add, emboldened by their doe-like collective gaze, And get the f— away from my house before I call the f—ing cops and I’ll do it, I’ll do it.

And they disperse in a great tsunami of curse words and spitting and cigarette flicking, call you a slut. But the porch from upon which you reign sighs with relief, and the apartment to which it is attached sighs too, and the tarmac strip that separates your place from the place of the party sighs too, and the gentlemen throwing the fete sigh too, because they couldn’t f—ing handle that many dudes, man. For a few resonating moments, everything is very quiet in Allston. You sip your Shiraz from the bottle and breathe deeply through your nose and throw your chin back and you only a littlebit smell cat piss, stomach acid and rotting food. Glory, glory, halleluj ––

But then somewhere inside your phone rings or something rings anyway and you bolt in to get it because your friend Katie knows about this show in this loft with these bands and these kids in this artists commune in lower Allston and you’ve got to go there. You’ve got to go to the liquor store and secure your $5 cover and you’ve got to got to got to get there. There will be things there to swallow that will be more fun to mash up and insufflate and there will be people lights projections spines dancing against sternums and you’ve got to get there.

And just like that –– descending your fire escape from the red porch to the newly emptied driveway below, with your coat unbuttoned and your bag clanking with bottles of Rolling Rock –– you lose your religion. Again. To Allston. Exodus for the rest of us.

*Images courtesy of boston.com, flickr

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