Scene and Heard

My first foam party experience was at a skeevy club on the top floor of a concrete shopping mall in Oxford, England. I was 15. It was the first and only time I was carded the entire summer. Along with a group of ten teenage Americans, I was asked to show identification, amusingly enough because they thought I was over 18. Embarrassingly, it was a teen-only night. As I sashayed among the soapy suds to Brit-pop, I couldn’t help but enjoy the blend of childhood and adulthood.

Foam parties are a delectable mix between the blissful naivete of a bubble bath and a scandalous romp in a red-light nightclub. Last weekend’s Mather Lather strived valiantly for this tenuous balance, but unfortunately, or, perhaps fortunately, its mix was light on suds and heavy on scantily clad. While it is refreshing, and, depending on your standards, stimulating, to see Harvard boys and girls strip off their inhibitions and get a little wild, the regimented environment and lack of foam depressed much of the crowd. In an effort to move beyond the stilted Harvard scene of boys and girl swaying off the beat and lather up for a real party atmosphere, two friends and I stampeded the foam quarantine and rushed to the wall under the foam machine. As we began to be engulfed in suds, we were pushed and jabbed on every side.

Hordes of shirtless boys and bikini clad girls grabbed at the foam attempting to cover themselves in its bliss before the red siren signaled their exit from the foam corral. Unlike my escapades getting freaky to BBMak, Mather Lather demanded its guests to seek out and fight for their suds. Instead of enjoying Britney among a sea of foam, I danced in a bubble barren corner with friends. As Polly R. Seplowitz ’05 aptly put it, “The only difference between the foam and non-foam part was that in the foam part your shoes wouldn’t stay on because the floor was so slimy.” As were the people, Polly, as were the people.