The Stokes House Smoker’s Ball is an annual tradition of spring term. Though the theme changes each year—most recently, Medieval—the preparation remains consistently similar. The residents of Stokes will gather in the common room, someone having bought something close to a metric ton of cheap rolling tobacco and hundreds of tubes, and they pack cigarettes for days in preparation for the Ball’s festivities. This year the cardboard posters included hand illustrated marginalia of dragons and swords.
I have often remarked that Bennington College exists in a very interesting type of time warp—we smoke like it’s the eighties. People who never would’ve ordinarily taken up smoking (young, intelligent, well-to-do people whose parents would admonish their “disgusting habit,” or something of that ilk) quickly become pack-a-day fiends. Nearly every door has an ashtray to prop it open. Cigarette breaks are certifiably the number-one source of in-class bonding. All of this is to say: The Smoker’s Ball is part of this phenomenon. At the party, Stokes girls pass out their rolled cigarettes in baskets and on trays.
My friends and I enter as we always enter Stokes parties: around a quarter to one, by trekking up the hill into the backyard. The night of this spring’s Smoker’s Ball was one of the first warm nights of the year (and really, I don’t know if there have been any since), and the heat was well-supplemented by several firepits which were alive, roaring, and surrounded by people. One could say there was a haze of smoke on the Stokes porch that evening, as most people (that is, people who were not dancing) congregated outside, schmoozed, and smoked the cigarettes that were passed to them.
Early on in my night at the Ball, I had several residents of the house inform me that the best part of the evening came to pass well before I arrived at the function—around a quarter before one—with my party of five: an 11:30 set, with a dancefloor packed to the brim with people dancing to songs such as “Twist and Shout” (The Beatles), “Pretty Girl” (Clairo), and “Brown Eyed Girl,” (Van Morrison), among others. Nonetheless, Stokes, bathed in its signature red light, welcomed us with open arms. We danced, smoked, talked, and ran around the house until they pulled the plug.
As is the case with most Stokes parties, different, amazing things were happening each place I looked. I would say that this year’s Smoker’s Ball was no doubt a raging success—to have the dancefloor packed at 11:30, while indicative of a fabulous pregame, is still a feat that few houses can earnestly achieve. When I entered the scene at the backyard, the stars shining above all of us, it was like the renaissance faire came to Bennington—in the surface level way that I’m sure you all anticipate, yes, but also in feeling: lawlessness, drunken spirit, the sense of pretending to be somewhere else when you are really just in rural New England. Remember: everyone looks different beneath the haze of The Smoker’s Ball…
Finally, I will give a fond farewell to the fair rulers of Stokes Kingdom, Luce and Bianca. They have served the Kingdom diligently for several years now, and must sadly depart having completed their studies. However sad, the Kingdom will be in the hands of new rulers; and we, at least, have managed to usher out an era with a final hurrah!
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