29. Smile Like You Mean It - The Killers

A long time ago, we hired a holiday house for my 21st birthday celebration. 

A quiet affair, a few friends, a few drinks, a few days on the beach. 

It, uh, got a little out of hand.

Kilcunda is a small town down the coast, past the Phillip Island turn off. Town...it’s more like a group of holiday houses, a caravan park, pub and a trestle bridge. 

It sits on one of Gippsland’s magnificent surf beaches with those long, white sand belts leading down to the cold, invigorating surf coming in off Bass Strait. 

The town is up on the bluffs, looking out over the deep blue water. The house we’d hired was a few streets back, a typical 1980s holiday house. 

In the front door, there’s the kitchen. Upstairs the lounge and a few bedrooms, downstairs a few more rooms with another living area opening out to the backyard.

From memory we’d chosen it because it had just enough bedrooms for the people we were inviting. Must have had 6 or 7 bedrooms, thinking about it now. 

Or 5 and we knew a lot of people comfortable sleeping on couches.

We’d left for the house early, to make sure we’d have time to pick up the keys, stock up on groceries and pick up a few drinks for the weekend. 

The plan was for everyone to arrive and settle in on the Saturday, we’d have a bit of dinner and cake, and hang around the house.

A quiet one before a day at the beach.

Our friends drifted in over the course of the afternoon: 

One group, the guys from Hungry Jacks. 

Another group, our mates from school. 

Another one, my TGNW’s friends from school. 

Yet others were going to be late because they had other things on, but the house was filling up. 

The first batch were the guys from Hungry Jacks and TGNW’s mates. Given we weren’t expecting anybody for a while, we decided to walk down to the pub.

Great pub it is, too, with views out over the ocean. The meals were pretty reasonable, I think, though I am more confident in saying that our glasses never ran empty. 

Things were really kicking off by now; the laughs were getting a little louder, the stories a little funnier, the coordination a little hazier. 

The setting sun made everything glow in that wonderful golden light and you could hear the waves crashing down the road and the traffic was slowing down. 

This was before mobile phones were really a thing in our group, so we decided we should head back in case people were waiting at the house. 

This is where things get a little hazy.

The walk back was fine, though it feels like it look a lot longer than the walk there. 

We had stragglers drifting down the wrong street, it was getting cold, and this group of 21 year olds was getting louder. It was outside peak season, thankfully, so Kilcunda seemed deserted. 

Still, obnoxious is obnoxious. 

We got to the house. There were people waiting, so we greeted them and let them in. 

They re-stocked the fridge and we all did our bit to empty it one bottle at a time. 

The walkers from the pub settled into the couches and the music went on. It must have been when the Killers had released their first album, because I’m sure that was the only music played that entire night. 

Mr Brightside. 

Smile Like You Mean It.

Somebody Told Me. 

All These Things That I’ve Done.

Everything Will Be Alright. 

Just playing and playing and playing. 

Things get a lot more rubbery in my memory from here. 

I remember the lights, the cake, candles, more people arriving and the barbecue getting fired up. 

The shouted greetings when people arrived, the messages passed from the front door to the crew at the barbeque downstairs. People who had been driving for 90 minutes straight, trying to hold a conversation with somebody that hadn’t been standing straight for 90 minutes.

I remember walking up and down those stairs, proud in my ability to do so without falling over (though, in hindsight, it would also have been with a ludicrously focused look of concentration on my face). 

The music seemed to get louder, everyone was laughing and talking and telling stories and yelling at the TV. 

More people arrived, with people they’d brought but hadn’t been accounted for in the room count. 

“No worries, they can sleep on the floor, they’re cool with it.”

That they were tee-totalling athletes in the midst of a party about to tip into straight out drunkenness might have made them reconsider that. 

Food kept arriving, snacks kept getting handed around and the drinks kept coming. 

It wasn’t an unusual rate of consumption for a group of that size or inclination, but the sheer duration was starting to take its toll.

There was dancing, and people running through the house shouting and laughing and tripping over. Other people, colorful drink in hand, would stumble over furniture, or trip up the stairs - to widespread amusement. 

There were drinking contests, drinking games, drinking races and just, generally, drinking. 

One guy started running around with a lampshade on his head, another found a string of fairy lights to throw over his shoulders. Only to be stunned to learn that they’d stop glowing once he ran beyond the range of the lead.

The juggling was a highlight, though the unexpectedly low ceilings quickly turned the bottles being juggled into projectiles, raining down on the juggler in a haze of effervescence and regret. 

A few of the group had everyone laughing with outrageous stories. Some people who were formerly strangers became more...familiar than expected.

I headed to bed at one of those times that’s either early or late, depending on when you’d started, and suspect I’d passed out before I fully committed to laying down. 

And on the party raged. For hours, by all accounts. 

I stumbled out of our room relatively early the next day. 

Someone had, wisely, drawn all the blinds the night before. 

The house was snoring, and there were sleeping bodies everywhere.

Arms hung over the back of the couch, pants hanging from the ceiling fan, dishes everywhere and mostly-empty bottles covering every surface. 

The toilets were, to everyone’s credit, spotless, proving that a skinful is no excuse for leaving toilets in that state people seem to accept at bars. 

There were people sleeping on the floor downstairs that I didn’t recognise and could have sworn I’d never met (though TGNW would tell me later I’d spent half an hour discussing something with my hand on their shoulder).

One of the group was a smoker - just one - but still there was a lingering odour of tobacco downstairs.

In one of the bathrooms I could hear was somebody expelling their over-indulgence with misery and pain.

I rinsed my face, and still-drunkenly stumbled to the nearest kitchen chair and put my head back.

I lifted my forearm over my head and fell back to sleep. 

The house started to stir and everyone seemed to drift out to the barbecue for breakfast. The breakfast we’d foolishly committed to cooking for everyone the night before. 

Bacon, eggs, the full spread for everyone. 

Except for one couple, who insisted on eating muesli. I found that really weird at the time - especially because I knew he loved bacon and eggs more than life itself. 

But now, with the benefit of age and experience, it was totally the right call. 

Somehow a group of us decided to walk to the beach after breakfast. Nobody was in a state to drive. 

Seeing half a dozen people silently walk along the road, wearing sunglasses and a sweaty pallor, made for quite the sight. We got to the beach and walked down the path towards a spot on the sand. 

But by the time I got to the sand, I was alone.

Looking around (slowly), I realised that the rest of them had ducked out to the dunes to empty their stomachs of the alcohol and greasy breakfast.

They all stumbled to where I’d dropped the bags, ashen-faced and wiping their mouths. 

Off into the surf we walked, slowly and without enthusiasm for life, let alone swimming. 

It was a curative experience, but it could only do so much in the face of a hangover so universally fierce. 

We dried off and somehow, painfully because it was really wearing off now, made it back to the house. 

Where things had started to get cleaned up.

People were perking up, that poor Tupperware container had been sterilised and most of the strangers had packed up and left already. 

The rest of the group were on the couch, watching TV with a look of mild confusion. 

The stereo was on again, playing the Killers - always the Killers. 

I think we played some board games, relaxed in the sun and generally recovered. 

There were no regrets, which was nice, and nobody had made an egregious fool of themselves. It had been that rare event, a party without any drama and a surplus of good cheer. 

The debrief continued for most of the afternoon, we ate some food, had some drinks. 

Then we settled in to watch TV (TGNW had brought tapes she’d made of episodes of “Pimp My Ride” - a sentence both dated and dating), before turning in.

The highlight of the night was seeing one mate nestle in between the two-former strangers as everyone else went to sleep, throwing their arms around them both and asking “so, what’re we watching?!”.

Most people would have picked up on the hint, but not him, bless him. 

That was my 21st birthday.

Nothing terribly dramatic, nothing Corey Worthington would raise an eyebrow at - the house was cleaned up and left spotless.

We got the full bond back and remain friends with many of the participants to this day. 

And every time I hear Mr Brightside, I’m taken back to that house by the beach, on a warm night, surrounded by friends and some of my favourite (drunken) idiots.