An early morning prayer session, as captured by our subject
Junior | Female | Medill | Off-Campus
The funny thing about summer in Evanston is that, despite the beautiful weather and nonexistent stress of the school year, I still want to get the fuck out. The cringe-worthy memories of snow, sleet, and classes make me stir-crazy.
So, on a Saturday night, in an effort to avoid another mundane night at TKOE and unable to get our underage selves into bars in Chicago, my friends and I venture to a house party in the city. The party is typical—lots of shitty beer, decent music, hipsters galore.
After a bit of aimless drinking and socializing, a dance party breaks out in the living room and amuses us for a while. The beer runs out around 4 a.m. It’s time to leave. We’ve overstayed our welcome.
We get in the car and start driving back from the Chi when my friend comes up with what may prove to be the best idea of the evening. Why not watch the sunrise on the beach in E-town? Great. Except the sun is starting to come up and we are still south of Wrigleyville. In our drunken stupor we decide to solve this minor time crunch by blowing every red light on Clark from Chicago to Evanston, cheering the entire way. The streak of brilliance continues. I remember I have an entire bottle of cheap tequila at my apartment. We add to our list of reckless driving violations and speed to my house, grab the tequila, and take off for the beach.
We charge Lake Michigan and start to play catch with the tequila. I decide I don’t want to ruin my new party dress, so before I am completely submerged in the dirty Lake Michigan muck, I strip. My friends follow suit and now we are completely naked, deep in the water taking shots of $7 tequila. In retrospect, probably not the safest, classiest, or most hygienic idea, but hey, neither was our high-speed jaunt to the Ev. (A jaunt we would later come to find out landed us multiple red-light-camera tickets.)
We continue to frolic until we hear singing coming from the shore. Nearly 50 Christians are on the beach having a prayer service. We are buck-naked and completely smashed in the water. The polite thing to do would be to swim away, but our clothes are on the shore. Instead we emerge from the water, gather our clothes, and leave. But not without taking photos of the Christians first.
