We boarded the beat down vintage school bus. Fully spray paint graffitied, it felt like the final demented ride to a Hellish summer camp. Climbing the steps Alex and I made our way to the rear, backpacks in tow, gunning for the final remaining open seat. As soon as we sat down, we realized why it was available – the wheel well. Flashbacks of junior high, spit balls and detention. The god damn wheel well. It all set in as we uncomfortably scrunched together in a mammoth hearse, diesel fumes drifting in through the windows.

Huddled with our napsacks, among one hundred fellow fans, we took off from Reggie’s Rock Club in Chinatown. Jankily cruising up State Street headed toward Dead Man’s Curve: the Bishop Ford Freeway. As we chased The Warriors through the city streets, I fished out my Dark Lord bottle opener.

Dark Lord Day itself, not having existed for the past three years was revealed as a true calling of vox populi, vox dei: The voice of the people being the voice of God.

It would be a portmanteau of nostalgia, bliss and ideal weather. Not any sort of reflection of certain muddled misery of years past. Not a chance on this glorious reunion. Zombie Dust and Donnerman currywurst would make for a wonderful return.

I held with me for the past five years, Tim Zion’s bottle of MMXVIII Chemtrail Mix. I pulled it from my bookbag in all its preeminence and notable prestige. In my snuggled bus seat I raised it up. Thick wax seal with the initials TZ carved into the cap so I wouldn’t forget to give it to him some day. That day never came. Tim didn’t attend Dark Lord Day with us in 2018, or ever again, but he paid another friend $400 for that single bottle. My cellar was its resting place for one half decade.

However, the five-year statute was up and as everyone knows – ownership had been legally transferred.

The rye barrel aged Dark Lord, a Russian Imperial Stout sprinkled with cinnamon, adorned with pink peppercorn mesmerized everyone within a six-foot radius as we blasted down the highway. Five-ounce taster glasses came out as I sawed through the glimmering, sliver wax like coagulated alien blood. In an offer of community, the 750-milliliter bottle was ceremoniously poured in one-inch increments to anyone lucky enough to be sitting by me.

The truth is, this was Tim’s way of living on in the spirit of giving.

Later that day, The Wheel of Death would spin as a grim device run by a vampire Pat Sajak. A gameshow host of cackling ghoulish alchemy, dolling out nothing but jackpots on Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island.

We’d soon cross the threshold into the bottle share tent into a Cambrian Explosion of beer stored for years. People waiting for this church service to release their most coveted vessels. The aqua turquois wax would drip over the 2023 Dark Lord bottles, gushing a cool spring wave, encapsulating the remaining philter, sealed after the angel’s share was taken, absorbed into the oak spirit barrels.

As our school bus raged on, we hit a pothole. Look. These old busses were never designed to cart around a mass of sad, overweight, middle-aged men. It’s hard to predict the offsets and what will shift where. I spilled a bit of Chemtrail Mix on Alex. Only a small black splash, but still roughly $18 dollars’ worth of beer.

At 75 miles per hour we cheers’d in spurious superstition and drank the viscous cinnamon toast Texas Tea at 8 AM. Odd metal music pounded over the surround sound stereo speakers, hanging by twine in the corners. No pretense of a seat belt as even an option. A beer server smoked a cigarette like a guard on a backwoods prison bus to Chino, past the shit pits and over grey, winding industrial highways down to Calumet Ave.