Fascinoma

It's a sleety paradise in the nation's capitol today, a fitting end to a really dismal decade. As I tiptoed down the slippery slope to the Metro today I thoght back on New Years Eves past, trying to recall any that were really noteworthy or even fun. There were some of course, starting I think in college, southern Virginia, my first one with my first serious girlfriend; the cops pulled us over and made her drive to the next party. (That doesn't happen anymore.) After about three or four drunken bashes we just went back to my cold flat and got under my unzipped sleeping bag. I went to work as a bartender soon after that and spent many New Years on duty, rarely a real fun time. Once I worked a joint on 19ht Street in DC that stayed open until 4 AM on that night. I still remember that dawn, tossing a beer bottle at the dumpster so the rats would scatter before we dumped the trash can -- and not as we dumped, scrambling across our backs.

Then there were a few in New York: one, in grad school, where I attended the MLA convention and then kept my room at the Sixth Avenue Hilton for a few extra days so as to do up the town with a big, blonde, slow-talkin' Southern belle who flew in for Newyork Newyeerz . We caught up with an old school friend of mine who was a writer about the New York "Bright Lights" scene and so blessed with a million swanky invites. We started at the legendary club Area, where there was a huge dystopian tableau vivant in the front hallway, model/actors in silver hazmat suits feeding thousands of little fetus dolls into a conveyor belt and machinery then catching them when they spit out the other end; also there were transvestites in both unisex bathrooms to sell you combs, perfume, condoms, and probably coke and Ecstasy (of which we already probably had plenty). Later we were at the Swiss consul's vast place where nearly nude lads in Roman slave sandals dispensed French bubbly by the tank car; this party broke up when some woman (rumored to be the consul's wife) crawled into the bathtub and slit her wrists. We were unceremoniously shoved onto the snowblasted streets about 4 AM and then we went to the egg-white duplex flat of one Mikiko. My gal asked Mikiko what she did, and she answered deadpan, "I shop." Being a bit wired still when we got back to the Hilton at dawn I watched, far below me, a fellow run up the untracked snows of Sixth Avenue toward the park and decided to do likewise. He and I had Central Park basically to ourselves.

About a decade later that same writer friend and I, both sadly on the outs with our girls at that time, trouped fecklessly around the City looking for fun while a vicious ice-storm pissed sleet on us by the bucket. We found ourselves at John Lurie's threadbare place, whereat there was a going-away/New Years party (Lurie was moving to Africa -- briefly) underway with various downtown scenesters, including, oddly, Abel Ferrara and Jaye Davidson (not together), and nothing to drink but white wine and vodka. It was a fabulous party, as I recall -- sort of. One of the last things I remember was being in a booth in Buddha Bar wherein Ferrara and company were passing joints.

And then there was one just a few years ago that started with a nice dinner in the tiny Hamlet of Norge, Virginia before moving to various venues of Williamsburg whereat almost immeasurable mirth and camaraderie was had. I woke up in a living room, halfway in a pup tent, next to a Christmas tree. My hostess had sustained, at some point, a vicious burn on one leg when a pyrotechnic device had rocketed up her leg. We gathered up the undead scattered around the house and went out for Bloody Marys.

I file all these thing now under Instances of the Unthinkable in Everyday Life, the book I will write as soon as all possible litigants have passed on.