The Original Call/Wedgwood/Sun April 15/1:30 am: Officer M. G. Severance reports: “There were some lights inside the address. As I walked along the east side of the house, I noticed the ground-floor windows were covered with what appeared to be sheets. I walked to the north side of the house and saw inside a very sparsely furnished living room. I saw a white male standing in the kitchen. As soon as he saw me looking at him, he ducked and ran out of sight. The door on the north side was locked. I walked around to the west side of the house and looked through the glass in the door. I observed a white male on his hands and knees, slowly crawling on the kitchen floor. I illuminated the subject with my flashlight and he immediately rose and ran down some stairs off the kitchen.
“Based upon the original call and the actions of the two people I had thus far observed, I believed I had a possible burglary in progress. I observed two white males looking furtively into the living room and toward the north windows of the house. I illuminated both of them with my flashlight. Both were empty handed. They looked at each other with what appeared to be shock. One slowly walked toward the kitchen door. He took an unusually long time opening it. As I entered the house, I tripped over a cardboard box filled with ice and I fell to the floor…
“I got up and handcuffed the suspects. While Officer Skarr watched the suspects, I went downstairs and determined there were about 15 people in the basement. I requested an additional patrol unit…”
The rest of the report explains that the house was not being burglarized, as the neighbors had imagined, but holding a party thrown by people who rented the property. The reason for their secrecy, guilty looks, and crawling around is not explained, but we all know that for a party to be a real party it cannot be a lawful party. A real party, one that is exciting and memorable, must permit the breaking of several laws—teens are allowed to drink, drugs are shared, the music disturbs neighbors, and drunks take off their clothes. Packed within every second of the occasion there must be the potential for everything to explode into a mess. That is the life of a party.
Like Bakhtin’s carnival, a party turns the outside world upside down. The outside world is sun-clear, the world of a party is shadowy; the outside world is regulated and permanent, the world of the party is irregular and transitory; the outside world is quiet and sexually stable, the world of the party is noisy and sexually distorted—if not dangerous. To go to a party is to go to a demonic space that is the negative of the light of law and order. 
