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night in Hell's Kitchen
Friday, November 2 2001
Tonight Jami was having her birthday party at her new sublet place near Time's Square in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan. Since I'd actually been invited, I decided to go. For me, one of the big selling points of the party was that Sara Astruc was going to be there also, and, much like Mecca, Sara is one of those entities one hopes to visit at least once in a lifetime. Following Jami's orders, I brought a bottle of champagne with me. Gretchen did not accompany me.
As one heads towards the Hudson River from the flamboyance of the greater Times Square region, it's amazing how quickly things settle down and the neighborhood becomes a seemingly reasonable place to live. The only reminder of 42nd Street as I stood ringing Jami's buzzer was the loud interstate buses idling beside me at the stoplight, outshouting any possibility for me to confirm who I was. But it didn't matter. Whoever was buzzing people in just buzzed me in anyway.
As the door slammed jarringly behind me, I realized I didn't know anyone at the party except Jami herself. She quickly poured me a glass of champagne, the first alcohol I'd had since the night of Brian's wedding. From then on, I mostly just kept to myself and waited for the alcohol to dissolve my inhibitions so I could actually have a conversation with somebody. I'd brought the remainder of my tussin DM gel caps, and when the alcohol seemed to be working ineffectively, I started popping these as well. I took nine or so before the evening was done.
The people at Jami's party were an unexpectedly attractive, photogenic bunch. Furthermore, a large fraction of them seemed to be gay. Only Jami knew what my sexual preference was, though most people seemed to assume I was gay, including this one guy I talked to early in my post-sober phase. Like many such conversations, this one came to an end when he went off to the restroom.
People became increasingly intoxicated and I was gradually introduced to a large fraction of them. I found myself engaged in a fairly protracted conversation in the middle of the room on the subject of hybrid vigor. Everybody in the conversation except me and one 100% English girl (complete with accent) had parents from widely disparate parts of the globe. Dante Woo, for example, is half Chinese and half something European, and as if to further complicate things, he normally wears a sufi-style hat (when, that is, the streets aren't aboil with irrational anti-Islamic sentiment).
Jami seemed a little paranoid about the status of her fresh new sublet situation. She didn't allow the music to get too loud and she took pains to alert people not to let the spring-loaded front door slam shut. Then, when it grew late, Jami had us all relocate down the street to a nearby bar called Siberia.
Siberia was a spacious divey sort of bar featuring American-flag-bedecked pictures of Lenin and harshly abstracted examples of social realist art. Several of the regulars told me Siberia used to be located in a subway station. I didn't really explore the place, choosing to hang out at the bar and have girls buy me drinks. I kid you not; there were two attractive women alternately buying me drinks and they had no idea who I was.
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One of these women was named Bethany and she was from Jami's party. She told me Jami was having a little after-party party and that I should go, but when I got back there it was just Jami, some other girl, and some guy nearly passed out on the floor. I hung out for awhile drinking more champagne
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until Jami told me it was time for me to go home. Sara Astruc never did show up.
On the subway ride home, I had to walk three or more long blocks to get from the Houston Street Blue Line Station to the Red Line Station. The subways are always unpredictable after midnight, especially these days. I was so tired on the ride back to Brooklyn that I slept through my stop and would have kept sleeping except that some guy woke me up three stops beyond Grand Army Plaza. There was light in the sky as I walked back home from the subway station.
That's me with a guy from the hybrid vigor crowd in the background.
Me and Bethany.
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Dancing people.
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