Perfect Wreckage

2005, school trip, Prague. We’d just started the year with a mix of people I’d known forever mixed in with new faces. But somewhere on the drive down from Bavaria, it stopped mattering. We became this blob of friends. Drinking on filthy bus seats, kissing behind gas stations, laughing at nothing, someone’s guitar in the mix. The bus itself felt like it was made of happiness.

Prague was like this enormous temporary playground. We moved through the streets, the breweries, the clubs. Our hotel was some massive prefab building and we turned it into one long party. Burnt holes in the carpet with a shisha. Set a t-shirt on fire. Hannah’s room was full of pretty girls in their underwear and we sat outside it grinning, talking about the future, and then we threw empty beer bottles out the window. Of course we did.

Years later, I still pull up the specific moments. The drive back and suddenly snow everywhere, all of us piled on top of each other while Manu picked out Californication on his guitar. André. Meggi. Heinz, our bus driver, genuinely the best bus driver alive. Those are the moments you want to keep. We had a camera running the whole time, caught it all.

That blurry person in the footage with the long greasy hair and the dumb wet mouth? That was me. It was 2005. I was an asshole. It was perfect.