On Billy Joel (Among Other Things)

A forethought:
Anyone decently familiar with American pop culture should be able to recognize Billy Joel as the man who graced us by birthing the classic of classics, Piano Man, into the world (with the help of equal musical mastermind, Elton John, of course).  In all the time I’ve ever spent drinking, I’ve found the lyrics of the bittersweet ballad to become more and more applicable.  Different nights, different dynamics, different companions—and yet I still watch various individuals of my own crowd assume the roles of the song’s cast of characters.  However, if there is no other parallel from song to real life, I’ve found that there’s one lyric that will always ring true: “they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it’s better than drinking alone.”

Lighthouse Beach, Chatham MA, about a week ago:
It was a beautiful night in every sense it could’ve been.  Good location, good people, good music.  Hunkered between seagrass-speckled dunes, our blankets sprawled circularly around a crackling fire, sparks flitting off into the lavender sky with every changing gust of wind.  I was standing, or at least attempting to stand, on a log with one hand firmly planted on a boy's brawny shoulder and the other wrapped tightly around a Poland bottle partially filled with tequila.  As per usual, there were several sets of couples tangled together in a mess of limbs, quietly fawning over each other as they nestled further into the sand.  A cluster of girls chatted brightly by the fire, making fun of the lounging couples.  A boy and a girl from our group had disappeared, although none of us really noticed until they eventually popped up next to the fire from the closing darkness.  They were hopelessly wasted, stumbling and giggling uncontrollably.
That night was probably the first time they’d ever had a full conversation.  The two were madly in love—not with each other, but with significant others that had graduated a tender four days beforehand.  Although both couples had chosen to stay together over the summer, that sunny commencement day had marked the end for both of their relationships.  I’d been with the girl the night of—it was the first time I’d ever seen her cry.  And oh, did she cry—not only for the loss of a relationship but for a best friend.  I empathized as best I could, but I simply didn't have the experience to understand what she was going through.  At any rate, the two came stumbling back to the fire justifying their disappearance on the claim that only they could understand one another’s plight.  Not that any of us truly minded what they had actually been doing when they took off into the night; what we did mind is that they had done so with half a Poland of the group’s tequila and had finished it for themselves.  

By that point the night was cavernously black aside from the crimson glow of our fire and the white lighthouse beam cutting through the air every couple of seconds.  One of the boys had finally won rights over the speakers, ending the horrendous early 2000s music that was previously being played, and moving on to mostly seventies classic rock—finally something I could sing along with.  Zeppelin’s going to California came on, instilling, in the way that song does, a sense of nostalgia for something I couldn’t quite figure out.  It was wistfulness for the sake of being wistful.  It pulled me from the moment long enough to reflect on my surroundings again… and God, how lucky I felt to be alive.  To feel the cool sand under my skin, the sea breeze whip my hair, to listen to good music, to laugh with wonderfully imperfect humans, to let intoxication set in so that I might be myself unapologetically.  But then again, maybe I was (and am) just being pretentious.