Heaven and Hell at the Purple House

Last weekend was Halloween. The night before, my housemates and I went to a party at the Purple House, which is where Tony was supposed to DJ that time y'all were going to come down. The party had a swinging theme - Heaven or Hell. See, the Purple House is a very big house. Every room was open to the crazed, costumed hordes who came swarming through. The rooms were all decorated in different ways, colored lights everywhere, black lights, strobes, debris on the stairs, floors, all over. And everyone, it seemed, was wearing these really elaborate costumes. One guy was William Shakespeare. Then there were some zombie tourists. Another miscreant had an Ernest mask that covered his face, and made him look like a ghoul. He was up in people's faces all night long, fucking with them.


One of the guys who lives in the Purple House is a friend of mine named Ian Williams, who worked on a book project with my housemate N'Gai this summer. Ian also was a contributor to this book 13th Gen, which you may remember me showing you at some point, a book all about kids in our generation. Anyway, Ian was dressed as a blue angel. He was the party host in charge of Heaven, this room where he was mixing up clear blue drinks all night long. Also in this room was something thoroughly bugged, which you have to try and find up north.

It was this christmas tree light device called "Magic Christmas" - a specially designed string of christmas lights. They were arranged in a spiral, all strung up on the ceiling. Using this little hand-held device that you squeeze in and out, sort of like a little joke water-squirting device, you can control the speed and frequency of the patterns that these "Magic Christmas" lights flash in. It was too much. Oh, and at the very center of the house was this little scroungy bathroom, lit up with the only red light in the place. So you could say this bathroom was the epicenter of hell as it existed that night at the Purple House.

- Letter to Jared, 11/7/93