Party stories that we’re legally allowed to talk about

Brooke Nguyen

(Staff Photo by Brooke Nguyen)

Dylan Campana 

I was a senior in high school, going to a party on a Friday night in the Lower East Side. The basement was packed, the music was blasting and the crowd was denser than a rush hour subway car. It was suffocating, so we went outside into the courtyard. 

We began to hear yelling from up above in the building. Confused, I turned around and saw a man above us screaming at us to shut up and leave. This was not unexpected since the party had been going for an hour. But then the man started to throw bleach, drain cleaner and other cleaning supplies at us. 

Panic set in. People were screaming from the burns. Everyone started panicking and people began running to get out of the building. To make matters worse, the police came — not because of the acid, but to shut the party down. Fortunately, my friends and I were able to escape without any burns. The party was over.

P.S. This story was covered by The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/05/nyregion/brooklyn-tech-party-acid.html 

(Staff Photo by Taylor Knight)

Ryan Walker

Freshman year, my roommate and her boyfriend invited me to a party. I agreed, because why not, and we got on the train, though I didn’t know exactly where we were going. Anyway, we end up on the Upper East Side at some random person’s rooftop. There’s live classical jazz playing, panoramic city views and everyone is stoned out of their minds — except me, I’m a child of God. It was pretty fun though, and I met a cute boy, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Sabrina Choudhary

When I was a freshman, the Latin dance club I’d barely participated in threw a fight club-themed birthday party for two of the e-board members. They rented out a boxing gym, and the email invitation promised that the birthday boys would fight at midnight. I had to see it, so I dragged two of my friends with me to check it out, and boy, it delivered. 

Also, my sophomore year roommates and I threw a KFC-themed party for the release of the Colonel Sanders dating sim, so that was pretty iconic. 

Anonymous WSN editor #1

During my semester of acting out, I somehow managed to befriend my now ex-Tinder boy’s roommate’s finance bro best friend. We bonded over our mental instability and love for the same drugs, so I started getting invited to his and his other finance friends’ parties. The highlight of that semester was standing on top of a table in a TriBeCa penthouse screaming the lyrics to Taylor Swift’s “Enchanted” with two ex-frat boy investment bankers from J.P. Morgan. Later that night, we took some pills (I have no fucking clue what they were) and proceeded to have a long discourse on stock markets and quant trading, which somehow ended up with me doing calculus on a whiteboard in the middle of the room. I have now forever been labeled as Trevor’s (now ex-Tinder boy’s roommate’s finance bro best friend) art-hoe side piece that’s good with numbers.

(Staff Photo by Taylor Knight)

Max Tiefer

In my younger and more vulnerable years, at some woebegone summer camp for film kids, I was invited to a dorm party the actors were throwing. Actors at a party are like bagel salesmen at a doughnut factory, if you know what I mean, so this was a veritable den of sin and iniquity: Drinks were drank, tea was spilled, strong opinions about Al Pacino were expressed —and at one point someone emptied a cooler full of ice onto the RA. Eventually, building security knocked on the door and everyone panicked — there was at least a hectogram of illegal substances on the premises and our summer camp had the morals of a Mormon choir. So I took the host’s Ouija Board and blurted out that we were hosting a seance for Richard Nixon. The feds found this so funny that they didn’t actually bother to do a sweep of the dorm before they left, which was a relief because everyone had just thrown the evidence under a bed. And then the partying resumed. There’s not really a moral to this story, so I’ll just say that we need more French Revolution representation in the media. The end.

Anonymous copy editor #1

The night before Halloween this year, I was invited to a rooftop party. My Halloween costume was a vampire, and I was wearing a long and tight skirt. I didn’t eat anything all day, so I was already super tipsy after two White Claws. We were definitely not supposed to be on the rooftop we were chilling on, because some old dude kept yelling at us, so we had to jump a few rooftops. Hopping across rooftops on a rainy night in a tight skirt while tipsy was not the best idea. On top of that, someone was trying to take photos with the self-timer on her phone. She propped it up against something on the roof and the next thing she knew, her phone fell down a chimney. A bunch of people spent a while trying to get it back, but it was dark, we were drunk and we definitely couldn’t ask anyone for help. I still don’t know if the girl got her phone back, and it still haunts me in my sleep sometimes.

(Staff Photo by Julian Hammond Santander)

Caitlin Hsu

WSN staff Halloween party, 2021. A few of us were on the roof — chatting, taking in the skyline, generally having a good time — when we realized that the two people in the window across the street were about to have sex. The visibility of this act was very much aided by the fact that all the lights in their room were on and glaringly so. Have you heard of morbid curiosity? I swear I didn’t want to watch, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Thankfully, it was far away enough that we couldn’t see any details beyond silhouettes. The man kept his shirt on the whole time. It lasted less than five minutes. 

(Staff Photo by Julian Hammond Santander)

Ashley Wu

It was one of those smarmy summer nights in Georgia. It was midnight, and there was a line of more than 500 people in front of a local church. My friends and I were social media friends with the bouncer, an up-and-coming fashion designer creating high-end tie-dye pants. We skipped the line and walked inside the church, where Lil Yachty was sitting on a throne underneath the cross. Someone had attached a swing wrapped in vines to the rafters, and a woman in a flowy white dress was swinging back and forth into the crowd. In front of the throne, Lil Yachty was pouring champagne over the revelers. I’m pretty sure Trippie Redd was there too. A man approached us wearing cargo pants with a million different pockets embellished with studs. In each pocket, he had lollipops that he was handing out. It was a surreal Atlanta night, but the champagne was a bitch to get out of my clothes. 

Anonymous WSN editor #2

I studied abroad in Paris, and one night we went to this club called The Key. There was this one dude who kept dancing on me. Now, in the dark and drunk, I vibed with it, but when we went to the bathroom, I gagged out loud. Well anyway, at that point it was too late to back out, and I went home with him. Congratulations to me: I got the shortest, ugliest dude in the room. We’re driving for 20 minutes in the Uber at this point and I’m thinking, “Where the FUCK are we going.” When he says we’re here, I look up and out the window — it’s the La Défense building, aka one of the NYU Paris residence buildings. He wasn’t one of the NYU students, just a random-ass fella living there. I don’t wanna go into the details, but all I’ll say is, I wasn’t there long before I left. I went downstairs, and while waiting for my Uber, the concierge came out behind the desk, looked me up and down real slowly and asked what race I was like three times. He surely thought I was a prostitute. I got into the Uber, where the driver also laughed at me. When I got home at 5 a.m., I noticed the living room light was on. I thought my host mom had gotten up super early or something, but I just went to bed, too tired to talk. The next morning, I found out that my roommate had been the one in the living room with someone from the club — someone tall and hot. Con?grat?u?lations?. 

Contact Under the Arch at [email protected]