Pink Saturday

The PlayStation was pink. Someone had joked about it beforehand, but there it was, and it worked, and that’s all that mattered. Saturday night, friends, a microphone. I’d only brought multivitamin juice, which completely undermined the getting-wasted narrative, but nobody cared. We were loud and stupid and the TV was turned way too high, and that was the whole point.

Umbrella-ella-ella got destroyed, line by stupid line. Then Wir beide by Juli, which has always been the perfect SingStar song—something about the way it fits in your voice that lets you sound decent for just long enough before everything falls apart. We moved through some Disney stuff, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, the kind of thing you’d never admit loving unless you had the specific permission structure that comes with karaoke and friends and late-night hours.

One blurry photo remains, too dark to make out details. The audio recordings got deleted without getting a second listen. I remember the feeling of it more than anything—that specific stupid-loud energy that probably makes no sense the next morning but felt like everything right then.