Free.

The moon always looks closer in August. The outside of a bar and the inside of a swimming pool feel exactly the same; balmy and sticky and sour, in the way that only chlorine and whiskey can be. This summer will be my last. In a few months, I will join the drone of worker bees, shuffling our way from subway platform to concrete street on our way to work in the morning.

To be honest, I’m terrified. I’m scared I won’t be able to stay awake from 9 until 5. After about three hours in my black stilettos, I’m afraid I’ll start making that face I make after being in high heels for too long. My teeth will be ever-stained with lipstick. My pantyhose will always have a run. And I don’t know when it will ever be acceptable to wear American flag shorts with a bathing suit top again.

I want to remember these summer nights forever. Ideally, they should never end, but even if they continue, they won’t be the same. I want to remember the last summer I spent in Los Angeles, throwing parties at Oddfellows Museum of Artifacts and Oddities with Kati and James. We were inseparable that summer, always finding excuses to throw tea parties in the park or sip whiskey in Audrey Hepburn’s bathtub couch at the Museum. We would roast marshmallows indoors and James and I would sneak around back to make out by the pool. An old couple stopped us in the super market that August and told us, “It’s so nice to see young people truly in love.” I blushed.

I want to remember the following summer, where Jimmy and Matt and I packed up my car with dozens of fireworks and borrowed bottles of tequila and headed to Waco. We split the cost of gas and spent our nights getting drunk in seedy Southwestern motels. I was falling out of love, and so was Jimmy, and so was Matt. We had a 2002 Ford Explorer full of heartbreak and explosives. It’s a miracle we made it to Austin alive.

I want to remember South by Southwest in the Austin spring time. The Strokes were playing a free show, Juicebox blaring from the main stage set up at Zilker park. Security guards and police officers with riot shields closed the gates with nearly 300 of us still left outside. I didn’t think. I just ran. My bare feet passed over the grass and hooked easily into the chain link fence separating me from Julian Casablancas. All around me, dirty teenagers and wasted young folk were being thrown back over the fence by the Man. There was a cacophony of drums and bass and lead guitar, nearly drowning out the screams of our generation. But we prevailed. Somehow, we got over that fence, landing in the backstage area, no less.

I want to remember the nights I spent dancing in the kitchen with my best friends at Beatnix. Chris would turn on Lovefool by the Cardinals and we would scream it to each other while Billy rang up grilled cheese orders and Eric smoked cigarettes. We would race over there as soon as our day jobs cut us loose, the same place every night for weeks. It was better than therapy. Eric and I would talk about books we had read and places we’d been, and Billy would write songs about girls. Chris would need a ride there, of course, because his motorcycle was always breaking down, so we would speed down the highway listening to mix CDs and swearing to one another that we wouldn’t forget about each other when I moved away.

I want to remember watching the Olympics in Hyde Park in London. Duran Duran was blaring some old 80’s tune, and six thousand eyes were glued to the giant screen projecting the opening ceremonies. Even though we didn’t know the British national anthem, we sang along as best as we could. We bought icy beers even though it was raining and danced without umbrellas alongside people from Mumbai, Norway, Mongolia, Australia, and Brazil. We cheered for JK Rowling and booed when the sound cut out, briefly, during the Peter Pan part. For a few hours, we weren’t a group of mismatched transcontinental strangers. We were citizens of the world.

I want to bottle up these wild, wild nights so that I can take them out and savor them when I’m no longer young. I want to always remember what it feels like to be this free.