The First Dunedin 48 Hour Party     the Official Truth: by Joe Young, Minister of Propaganda, KAOS Otago

Have a party. Put out food. Get your glad rags on. Jump up and down. Shed responsibilities and inhibitions. Yell and hoot. Rattle and hum. Tell jokes and shaggy dog stories. Get noise policed. Rationalize tomfoolery and shenanigans as celebration of the completion of thesis chapters. Drink. Toke. Huff. Have a great time. Then wake up.

Headaches. Furry tongues. Apres-hanging-around-with-smokers cough. Frustration and self-reproach at ungentlemanly behavior. Stubbing of toes on your way to the loo. Cleaning up. The morning after a party, however briefly and however trivially, you'll be suffering.

With me it was teethmarks.

We were knocking around the back patio at Carthage at 2am, innocently chatting, and I was doing my best to ignore the whirling dervish who was moving from party-goer to party-goer kicking their arses, hoping she wouldn't pay me a visit. The hope proved to be in vain, however, as I was suddenly seized from behind with chair-rattling force by three astonishingly hard little limbs at once. And six hours later, as I made my way through a bleary morning toilette, I found the teethmarks.

In terms of odd things getting done to me, it was actually a pretty comprehensive evening. A fortnight ago KAOS Christchurch had had the lot of us up to their place(s) for a much-enjoyed 48-hour toot, and this weekend we - by which I mean The Dictator, her Floozy, her Floozy's Pet, Carthage and a bunch of spotty young punks in the Exchange - were going hammer and tongs to return the favor. And on balance, I think they managed, though this didn't occur to me until Saturday night. On Friday I was too busy getting chased, danced at, clawed, squirted, headlocked, fondled, wrestled, petted, bitten, flashed, groomed and, in accordance with a piece of etiquette I wasn't previously aware of, engaged to notice.

The evening got off to an indicative start when, in response to my coming up behind her to say hello, the Lackey whirled around and caught me by a handful of beard. I felt two hairs come out with resounding and strangely satisfying plink noises. She wouldn't let me go until she had delivered a lecture on the proper behavior to exhibit towards young ladies in leopard-print dresses who are having their spines massaged in the middle of jury-rigged dance-floors whose trappings include hilarious multi-coloured revolving lamps. I apologized, though in my defense I would point out that it wasn't a combination of circumstances I'd come across before. So I went and watched Yvette explain all the zips on her top to Streak. Streak was allowed to play with some of them, but Yvette quite sensibly steered her away from the zip that would have converted the top into a skirt.

The soundtrack to the party was not the usual KAOS play-list, which had disappeared or been eaten or something on the way here or, perhaps, which Reece didn't really want to bother with. Instead, we had the Carthage play-list, otherwise known as `whatever Reece has on his computer at the time'. This included the original rendition of that wonderful comedic ditty `The Only Gay Eskimo In My Tribe', which I learned has special importance to one of our hosts.

"The first time I ever laid eyes on Louise", he said, "she was shit-faced drunk and sitting in a corner singing this to herself." Isn't that romantic?

Then I got clawed. These claw things aren't new to me - I used to play Deadlands with a fifteen-year-old leVey wannabe who wore one occasionally - but the idea of actually using one to do anything more than ostentatiously display in unsuccessful attempts to scare away Mormons is uncharted territory. And every time someone else turns up with one, it's larger and more extravagant than the last. Grace's, for instance, seemed to be the non-precious jewelry equivalent of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" - enormous, full of bizarre little articulations, ridiculous in the amount of detail that had gone into its production and impressive in spite of the fact that none of it made even momentary sense. It was not, however, Grace's claw to which I was subjected. Her contribution to Make Things Odd For Joe Night '03 was when she managed to catch me in the crossfire when she squirted the Dictator with a water pistol. It was Gareth and Streak who managed to corner me in the hallway and gang-claw me until I curled up on the floor and begged to be allowed to go home and see my Mummy. Then I went out onto the back porch and the Goon made me wear a very silly hat. Then I went out onto the front porch and was suddenly seized, headlocked and wrestled to the ground by a little girl.

I went and convalesced at the Play-Pen, where I found a small group of slightly more sensible people huddled around a rather attractive little open fire. And when I say sensible, I admit that they were watching Speed II. But they were also, to be fair, having the following conversation:

"This movie is really, really silly."
"Yeah, but it's not as silly as a movie with Vin Deisel in it."
"No, but then Vin Deisel isn't like other people."
"No. He employs people who are willing to get hurt for money."
"Silly people."
"Yes".

Frankly, such a conversation was altogether too sensible, perceptive and cogent for journalism. So I went back to Carthage looking for more tomfoolery. Given that the Christchurch crowd had arrived in my absence, it didn't take me long, though it was a long-lost member of the Dunedin tribe who provided me with the first really good anecdote, as I was struck upon and had lice picked off me by a big friendly purple monkey. It pays to get a little surreality check every now and again.

As I stood in the front hallway Reese crashed through the front door.

"Guess what!", he cried, "We just got noise policed!"
"So?", I said. Given my experience, it'd take the noise Delta Squad or, indeed, noise NORAD to get this lot to pipe down.
"And the policeman said `what's that music, it sounds really good!'", he said.

But the integrity of those in positions of civil authority is not a topic for discussion at a party. On my way to visit my stash I walked across the dance-floor again, where I was encouraged to join the revel. I declined, and was not the slightest bit worried when someone said "Don't worry, we'll get him on his way back through". I figured they were bluffing. Thus I was taken entirely by surprise when, walking back into the back door, I was seized from behind and compelled onto the dance floor where Yvette, Laura, Streak, Simeon and Chloe surrounded me and danced emphatically at me. I did the sensible thing and disassociated myself from my surroundings as quickly as possible. But as with all good torture techniques, the real trial comes when they ratchet the level of anguish up just that liiitle bit past the point of human endurance. I've never had ten hands on me at once before. I can't say I`m eager to repeat the experience. The point of diminishing returns here is considerably lower than one might think. But I don't bear any real grudge against my attackers. Most of them were just obeying orders. And given the alcoholic jam their leader had been drinking at Toast before coming to the party, I wouldn't expect those orders to make any sense.

It wasn't long after that, when I was chatting to Donnelle's blanket and trying to get it to keep its hands off me, that I was seized from behind and subjected to an indignity I haven't suffered since the supervisor at Frame Street Pre-School managed to lever Carl Black's jaw open in 1983. Bizarre and remarkable as this was, it was actually only the most notable episode in an ongoing series of incidences at the party wherein a young lady who usually doesn't do such things favored me with a universal expression of human fellowship.

"She really must be trashed", I said after the fifth time.

"Um, Joe", said one of the people I was conversing with, "you do realise that hugging someone eight times in an hour constitutes an engagement to marry, don't you?". Yikes. Admittedly, this didn't strike me as particularly credible, but there are certain things one doesn't want to take chances on.

"[CENSORED]", I cautioned, "please don't hug me again." She did it again. "[CENSORED], please, she's sore enough already after the nonsense I got up to at the Christchurch 48", I continued. She did it again. "For Christ's sake, [CENSORED], think of the children!", I begged. She did it again. The two women I was talking to exploded with giggles.

"You two are engaged now!" they laughed. I didn't think it was that funny. My first duty as a bridegroom-in-preparation was to challenge Simeon to a duel after I caught him hugging the young lady in question. I'm sure he'll kick my arse almost as thoroughly as my fiance did.

I went back over to the playpen to drown my sorrows in rather more sober company. I played a game of chess with Streak, which ended in the two kings chasing each other around the board. Then she and I competed to see who could get more of one of the pawns, which in her chess set are stocky little goblins about seven inches high, into their mouth. I won, and was proclaimed the champion of pawn fellatio, a distinction I wouldn't take much pride in but for the fact that the usual object of fellatio does not, generally, have little spikes on its helmet¹. Meanwhile Daniel sat off to one side, ensconced in a large coffee-table book entitled Lingerie: An Encyclopaedia of Style, which the Floozy assures me had turned up mysteriously in their flat a few weeks ago and which had no apparent owner. Knowing this group it's probably true.

When we had a look back over at Carthage the poor wittle lambs had tuckered out and gone to beddikins. So half a dozen of us sat around bullshitting for a bit longer, then a fellow named Karl gave me a ride home. I went to bed dreading the morrow as only a guy who needs to worm his way out of a wedding can.

The morning came all too quickly and I got up and down to Carthage as soon as my protesting, toothmarked limbs would carry me, as I had promised to help with clean-up duties the previous evening. As it happened it was pushing eleven when I finally got there and, between the general cleanliness of the party and the constantly industrious behind-the-scenes work by the Dictator's Floozy, they'd just about got the place straightened out. Only John was still in bed, and even he was up on one elbow reading. I squashed a couple of bottles and dumped a tumbler full of dark brown liquor into the sink, then spent an hour sitting on the front porch watching Gareth giving the Carthaginians pointers on how not to gut each other with training swords. Then I went and spent another hour in the lounge at the Playpen where, I confess, I dozed off briefly. Then people started decamping to the battle sight.

A small group of Christchurchians didn't know their way to the battle venue. This put me in the rare position of being able to do more than pretend I was the one person who knew what was going on. They'd held last night's party in the middle of Young territory. I grew up one block over from Carthage. My brothers played rugby for the pee-wee club on top of the hill, my mother lived in the Playpen when she was at teacher's college, and as a toddler I'd weed in the paddling pool in the park where the afternoon's hostilities would be played out. As a result I was able to guide them there very quickly and they were spared having to wander aimlessly through North Dunedin or read paragraphs by authors who like to wax mushy about their old neighborhoods.

It ended up a bit like the American Civil War in that neither side could muster battleworthy forces for a while after hostilities began. Several members of both chapters of KAOS stood around the picnic area for a long time waiting for various other people to arrive. Eventually a very pretty young nurse turned up.

"Hello", she said. "For your delectation at this battle, I can offer a choice of dubious lozenges" - she patted the little bag at her belt - "or a communicable disease" - she held up a bottle of heaven only knows what. Various uncharitable remarks were made about the various representatives of the press. The Pet's BFG went off prematurely and killed the Goon. Then we found out that the Carthaginians were kitting up in the next entrance over and went across to make ourselves known.

The two sides lined up at opposite ends of a long lawn and began eyeing each other in a threatening manner. Then the two opposing generals traded insults during preliminary negotiations. I was not present at these, having been momentarily distracted by the awesome firmament of war the Carthaginians were assembling over by the road. I didn't realize these negotiations were going on until I heard a mighty bellow from the Dictator, aimed at the withdrawing back of her Carthaginian equivalent.

"If this were a real battle you'd be dead by now!", she roared. The Carthaginian general, however, was able to come back with something pretty quickly

"If this were a real battle", he called over his shoulder, "you'd have had the plague two weeks ago!" Which might be true, though it would later be the exploits of KAOS Christchurch that got me lumbered with the job of coming up with lyrics for the shanty `The Voyage Of The HMS Syphilis'. Give me a minute, I've had a lot of secondary reading to do lately.

As the Highland and Gaelic Society turned up - my fiance looking as though she'd been dive-bombed by a seriously ill seagull - I went over to the Carthaginian camp and watched them finishing the assembly of their secret weapon.

"Do you two girls know what you're doing?", asked one Carthaginian of the artillery crew. Perhaps they did. And perhaps they didn't. They assured me it was sound in theory, though they were somewhat evasive about such matters as practical tests. And the first firing of the weapon in anger, perceptively compared to a premature ejaculation by one of the artillerists, demonstrated a not entirely spectacular effective range of four and a half feet (I had nothing better to do so I paced it off). Of course, to be fair, a second attempt managed to double this, but the chief achievement of the trebuchet crew that afternoon was to make a suitably amusing, apocalyptic mess on the battlefield. Their secondary achievement was to look the part, which they also managed with great dispatch. In fact, now that I mention it, these two achievements - looking spiffy and causing horrible, complicated, cabbagy messes on boggy battlefields - closely mirror the sum achievements of the overwhelming majority of historical Scottish patriots. And our Gaelic brothers in arms this afternoon proved little exception, turning out in impeccable highland regalia and getting themselves ground into a thin, porridge-flavored paste at the first charge. This would have been a tragic occurrence but for the fact that in six hundred years I'm sure someone will make a very impressive movie about it, possibly starring Sean Connery, and possibly fudging things a bit so that one of the Scotsmen is the mother of one of my children, or something.

The loss of their Gaelic allies, however temporary², put KAOS on the back foot. Lieutenant-Colonel Lodge and Indeterminable Rank Person Morton³ rallied the troops under the trees to one side of the battlefield and tried to take Carthage in the flank. The attack was not a resounding success. As I picked my way through the twitching corpses - some of them trying, I noticed, to twitch errant pieces of costuming back into place - a weak voice beckoned me over to a particular body. It was one of our boys, dripping from a number of grievous injuries and desperately trying to court the attention of the media so that they might record his last moments. No media people were around, however, and he had to make do with me.

"Um", he said, "I'd like to put it on record that I was killed by friendly fire, and that I feel this demonstrates the futility of war." Fair enough, but he might at least have had the decency to be covered in blood or missing a limb or be a victim of ethnic cleansing or something. They don't give out Pulitzer Prizes for mere moralising these days, you know. The least he could have done was be Palestinian.

It was about then that things started going seriously pear-shaped for KAOS Otago. The Goon defected to Carthage, taking the flag with him. The Dictator led a spirited charge to recover the standard, but both she and one of the Gaels got captured and tortured, though for reasons of delicacy I'm not going to say how. As they got poked and prodded with various instruments, Christchurch KAOS stood to one side.

"What are our allies doing, Mister Morton?", asked the Lieutenant-Colonel.
"Getting butchered, I believe, sir" came the reply.
"Getting butchered, eh?", continued the Lieutenant-Colonel. "That's jolly lax."

"That's the thing about barbarians", said John, still erudite even after atrocious dismemberment, "they have no respect for the dead." He sniffed and considered his statement carefully, then added "Or for the living, for that matter." Would that all puddles of gore were so quotable.

Thereafter Carthage launched a mop-up operation. Seeing the object of scatology reaching the apex of it's long, graceful arc towards the rudimentary air conditioning device, the Highlanders evaporated. They were last seen scurrying into the bush behind the battlefield where, one can only hope, they got stinging nettles or wasps or me or some other frustrating irritant up their kilts. In the absence of Scotsmen, Carthage were forced to turn their guns on KAOS Otago. The Dictator, who due to her own resourcefulness had effected a daring escape from Carthaginian captivity, saved her troops from complete disaster by calling half-time.

As the nursies glued people back together - scavenging spare parts as they could - and the remnants of KAOS conjectured as to what had gone so horribly wrong, a few people from both sides began decabbaging the battlefield. An innocent by-stander wandered over and dropped one of those little pearls of wisdom we hacks swoop on like vultures and try to pass off as their own.

"And for half-time", he said, cheerily, "salad!" The second half of the battle was noticeably shorter than the first, and characterized primarily by a pair of failed attempts to emulate the American military. The first of these came when I came under fire from some of the combatants. The rationale for this, apparently, was that I was a member of the media and therefore obviously a target for anyone wanting to emulate the Americans. It would be a fair point, except that I'm not actually member of the media. The media are a bunch of people whose sales pitch is "I'll tell you the absolute truth about something in exchange for a modest fee". I'm a Minister Of Propaganda. My sales pitch is "I'll spread whatever bullshit The Dictator wants me to spread in exchange for a continuation of the cheques I use to finance my cushy, high-flying, debauched lifestyle." But they attacked me anyway, and I had to be revived by that pretty young nurse I was telling you about earlier.

The other attempt at Americanism came when the Carthaginians decided to launch a Blue-On-Blue charge, wherein they all killed each other while closing on the KAOS position. Again, a reasonable attempt, but the thing is that when the Americans kill each other they do it accidentally⁴. You can't get friendly fire casualties deliberately. That's cheating. Still, the attack was pretty funny, and KAOS responded with a suicide charge that convincingly wrapped things up.

Re-reading this section of the report, I fear I've made it sound as if the Carthaginians won the battle. This isn't true. The wonderful thing about this whole carry-on is that it's carefully worked out to ensure that nobody in particular wins. And so it was today. You could tell nobody won because, in the end, everybody was alive to cheer their relative opponents. Everybody was also alive to cheer the nurses, their commanders, the weather, sex, and just about anything else that came to mind. And crucially, you could tell nobody won because virtually everybody stayed behind to help clean up the combat coleslaw.

The third stage of the weekend's festivities was taking place at Rebel High, a flat occupied until this time last year by the Otago chapter of Black Power and now boasting a capacity as probably the most band-ified flat in Dunedin. Its eight inhabitants work out as pretty much a who's who of the Dunedin punk scene, collectively accounting for the entirety of Ritalin, 75% of Two Fat Ladies, 50% of Uncalled-For, 25% of The Blistering Tongues and 77% of super-group The Easy Eleven. To put this in terms KAOS people can understand, this is the local equivalent of Andrew Eldrich, Gary Marx, Brian "Marilyn Manson" Warner, Geordi "Twiggy Ramirez" White, Warren Zevon and the entire lineup of Shriekback flatting together and having Trent Reznor pop by to jam all the time. These guys hold gigs in their flat and turn their front room into a Bosch-esque mosh-pit most Friday nights. They're not easily impressed. But they do have an eye for detail.

"Hey, Joe", said my not-so-little brother, observing the KAOS people who'd started arriving and comparing them with me, "you're a real rebel. Either that or your not wearing enough black!" My siblings knew better than to hang around embarrassing me, however, and variously booked or retreated into the back room once they were outnumbered.

That night we never, it ought to be said, got much of a crowd together. The Carthaginians, bless their adorable, wussy little undergraduate hearts, piked on us completely. And last-minute teething problems with the stereo system meant that Simeon had to spend the first half-hour huddled in a corner constructing a play-list from scratch. Both of these problems, however, had their upsides. We could turn around without jabbing someone in the ribs, and had a remarkable food surplus with which to thank our hosts. And since those hosts possess a full PA system that can be cranked up to eardrum-melting levels in the right circumstances, Simeon's work turned out to be well worth the effort. I mean, everyone who wanted a dance got one. The Dictator spent fifteen minutes sandwiched between two of the Christchurchians, swaying slightly and looking very content. And they played `Twentieth-Century Boy'. Twice.

KAOS people flitted in and out of the party throughout the evening. One of the briefer appearances was by Tom. When he walked in I took him by the sleeve and led him over to the pool table, where I showed him the emaciated KKK member saying "Nobody Likes Tom" one of the flat's inhabitants had drawn on the felt several weeks ago.

"Oh, man", he said, "that's really harsh". He cleared off pretty quickly thereafter. I hope it wasn't something I said.

Later I was challenged to another round of Cleavage Battletech, a very silly game involving the careful study of women's chests and the classification thereof in terms of the various models of Godzilla-sized walking tanks who constitute the protagonists of the original Battletech game. Given the ability of the woman in question to strike targets at very long ranges, we decided she rated an Archer. Over the course of the weekend I'd also, I confess, re-classified one young lady as a Man-O-War after she showed me what she was capable of given a bit of artificial enhancement. I'd also come across a Fire Moth (it only made sense in light of its support network), a Charger (designed in accordance with the theory that size does matter), a Raven (protected by state-of-the-art stealth technology), and a Hoplite⁵. The Charger actually sought me out for a classification, which is worrying. I never intended to acquire so ungentlemanly a party piece. I liked it better when I was just the guy who wrote reports about other people's silliness. But while we're on the subject of breasts and their support apparati, I'd like to put on record that it wasn't me who stole Chloe's bra. If she wants it back, however, I can tell her that I last saw it on Friday night when Louise was trying to wrap it around Gunnie's head.

I ducked a passing Hatchetman⁶ and went and helped get the Dictator out of the bathroom, where she'd unfortunately trapped herself (while the toilet stall has an internal handle, the bathroom door does not). While I was in there I noticed a sign on the wall, left over from one of the concerts that get held at the flat, reading "PLEASE DON'T HANG OUT IN HERE AS OTHER PEOPLE NEED TO DO WEES".

Fair enough. I went and said hello to a fellow I'd barely seen at the last KAOS outing. He and I got talking about stuff and the conversation eventually turned to the long-neglected but ever-pertinent topic of the flirtational proclivities of certain members of KAOS.

"Earlier this year", he said (I'm quoting from memory, you understand, and trying to fudge certain details so as to avoid embarrassing the innocent and the sober, so forgive me if this doesn't quite capture his eloquence) "Earlier this year I was at a KAOS party and these two women grabbed me and led me over to where this other young lady was standing. They got down on their knees and pulled up her top and started licking her midriff, then they got me down on my knees and encouraged me to start doing the same. I kept stalling, and eventually they lost interest and got up and went away. And so I got and introduced myself to the young lady, and apologised for their behavior, and she said `oh, that's okay - who were they?"

Or as another fellow who's skirted the edge of a few kaotic activities once succinctly pointed out, "KAOS girls are kind of like that." It's a generalisation, but there are people in this group who could flirt for New Zealand. This thought caused me to remember, with a sort of slow, runny panic, that one young lady had engaged me in a high-speed, high-intensity assault flirt the previous evening. I swallowed my pride and went to ask her to break off our engagement.

It took a fair bit of pleading before she would to do so. There are two possible reasons for this. The first is that, having landed herself a man, she was loathe to let him out of the engagement lest she never find one again and end up a sad, dowdy, 24-year-old spinster. The second is that she was a lot more sensible than me and refused to acknowledge the engagement had ever taken place because the rationale for it was just a silly urban legend. I'll leave the question of which is more likely up to you.

As befits a low-key event, the party wound up fairly early. We dumped a whole lot of pretzels and sausage rolls on the punks in the back room, made arrangements to come back and clean up tomorrow morning (this mission went ahead, though one host assured me we'd left it "cleaner now than it was this morning") and cleared out by about 1am.

Later that week the Dictator asked me if we'd weirded the Rebel High crew out. It's an interesting question. On the one hand there are a lot of people who consider the whole KAOS thing weird. On the other, the Rebel High crew are people who name their bands after brands of ADHD medication, whose taste in interior decorating extends to smearing cake dough on their bedroom walls, and who write lyrics on the order of ... "Every time you masturbate God strangles a kitten" and "Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum We got eight fingers and opposable thumbs"

... and perform them dressed in boxer shorts and socks. It takes a fair bit to weird these guys out. Then again, my sister did ask me "There was this woman who said she was dictator of Dunedin and who changed her outfit halfway through the evening - what was that about?", so by some measures I suppose we managed.

And it was Streak who flashed me, incidentally.

1. Hang on a minute, let me verify that. Yep, thought so.

2. Thats the thing about Scottish patriotism. Its like an ethnopolitical Energizer Bunny it just keeps going and going and going until it develops a sort of adorable kitch value.

3. Sergeant. He had rank insignia and eveything.

4. Or at the very least have the class to get them with Apache attack choppers.

5. The Hoplite is a very odd Mech designed by a mercenary unit called Wolfs Dragoons. Only two are known to exist, though intelligence reports suggest the Dragoons may have built as many as a dozen in their secret HQ. The capabilities of the Hoplite remain unclear beyond the fact that it falls in the middle of the Mech size range, moves very quickly, and has a cleverly-integrated arsenal far more powerful than anything that size should logically boast. It also possesses an elegant, streamlined silhouette unlike that of any other Mech. Non-Dragoons tend to regard it with a sort of terrified curiosity.

6. Lightly armoured but very dangerous at close quarters.