Most of our parties were B&Bs (Beer & Broads) that started on Friday night and extended through early Sunday morning. A jazz group would sometimes come in to jam in the wee hours when they got off from work. We had a piano in our basement bar and would sing Golden Oldies like The Whiffenpoof Song and Blue Suede Shoes. The primary party piano player was P9, who would sometimes play until his fingers were bloody. He was hard on pianos, too, because he stamped out the beat on the soft pedal. He once admitted to me that he only knew five chords and he wasn’t too sure about one of them. However, nobody seemed to notice that at 3 AM.
P9 was an interesting guy. He had a playboy image and his motto was, “Just keep drinking.” So he was eventually elected President of the fraternity. During his tenure he still played the piano, remained the life of the party, and always had a beer in his hand. What very few people knew was that he took the job very seriously. For his entire tenure as President, he was cold sober — the beer in his hand was always warm because it was the same one all night long. (While most of the inmates ended up being criminally liberal, P9’s world view today is somewhat to the right of Ghengis Khan.)
However, that sobriety came in handy. Each year we threw an April in Paris bid party in the spring. (A bid party is one where all the fraternities on campus are invited.) It started about 1 PM on Saturday and we traditionally served French 75s (one part lemon juice, one part simple syrup, two parts gin, four parts champagne), which went down very smoothly.
We actually cheated on the French 75s because we didn’t use gin. P10 was a chemistry major who earned book money isolating the denaturing agent in alcohol for the North End mob. The ATF changes the denaturing agent every six months. If it can be isolated and there is a cheap way to remove or neutralize it, that can be worth a lot of money. He wasn’t always successful, but every once in a while was good enough for the guys in the North End. So we got 200 proof ethanol in five gallon tin cans for free and that’s what gave the French 75’s a little added zip.
At around 5 PM the party was moving along nicely and everyone was having a great time; there were several people already passed out. We always hired an off-duty cop for big parties to deal with party crashers. The cop we had hired, who was probably the only person over 21 at the party, had a few French 75s and was off somewhere trying to find his gun. When the cops rolled up in front about some neighbors’ complaints, P9 was alerted and realized it would be best to head them off at the pass and meet them on the front stoop before they could see what was happening inside. As they came up the walk, P9 met them and asked, “What’s the problem, Officers?”
One of the cops looked at him and pointed up at the front of the house and demanded, “Take a look at that and tell me if you can figure it out!” P9 turned and looked up. Since it was spring all the windows were open. There was a fire escape that went up the front of the Back Bay Brownstone for four stories. Every landing on it had at least one body. People were hanging out of windows, some not too well clothed. Couples were making out. And through the windows a rock band was blaring. It was a great party.
Meanwhile, P9 responded, “Good point, Officer” and began to negotiate. The party continued until about 6 AM on Sunday.