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responsible East Village Friday night
Friday, June 21 2002 The recent decision by the Supreme Court banning the practice of executing the retarded applies retroactively, like all Supreme Court decisions. Unfortunately for all the executed retarded people moldering in their graves, the dream of non-divine resurrection is still a few years away.
My parents wrote me to say their dog Fred was bitten in the hind leg by a poisonous snake and had to be hospitalized. He's reportedly doing well and is expected to make a full recovery.
Last night Gretchen and I had eaten Mexican food in La Taqueria and today I got to eat our collective leftovers. First, though, I had to clean the microwave oven, which had grown so funky from overboil that it was even flavoring my tea with its peculiar melange.At around 10:30 pm I was on the subway to the East Village to attend a party being hosted by Mikila and Drew at their new place in Alphabet City. Gretchen, who is still weak from her month-long bout with mono, had opted to stay home. I like the way the subways fill with dressed-to-fuck young adults on weekend nights. The rush of riding into Manhattan with an anonymous group of like-minded soon-to-be-revelers is an experience few other cities have to offer. How can the freeways of Los Angeles hope to top that? The freedom of the personal car is trap. How do the revelers of LA make it home alive? Does anyone miss them if they don't?[REDACTED]
Mikila had said something about the buzzer on her new apartment not working and that would-be partiers should call upon arriving. I wondered if she was assuming that every self-respecting New Yorker has a cell phone, but then when I got to her door I found a payphone not three feet away.
The party was being hosted by Mikila, Drew, and their housemate Jamie, though upon my arrival, Mikila said that I was the only person at the party who had been specifically invited by her. Most of the people there were Jamie's friends. Though Mikila had originally wanted it to be a "retirement party" with attendees donning DependsTM and other essentials of old age attire, Jamie and all her girlfriends were all dressed up instead in their tightest, cutest "fuck me dresses," though the only guys there initially were the two halves of a gay couple. They had perfect Friday night clothes and face-slicing hairdos. One of them, Rus, had been only a few steps in front of the crazy gentleman who had gone postal in the East Village last weekend. According to Rus, the crazy guy had been equipped with several firearms, a machete, a bag of plastic handcuffs, and some gasoline. He was a black guy hoping to kill a bunch of white people on his way out of this world, and eventually he managed to seize control of a bar, handcuff a number of people, pour a lot of gasoline around before being jumped by a couple of brave women who apparently did not agree with his agenda.
My main goal tonight was to keep from drinking too much. Gretchen wanted me to socialize with some visitors from Connecticut tommorow, and she didn't want me to be hungover. Luckily, though, tonight I took part in a ritual I have not often participated in since coming to New York: the smoking of marijuana. When I smoke pot, the effect of alcohol seems to be intensified, though I also tend to forget to keep drinking, and in the process I end up much less drunk than I would be if I didn't smoke anything. It's a healthy side-effect of pot smoking that they don't teach about in DARE class.
While we were smoking retard salad, Mikila was demonstrating the soccer skills of her cat Tinkerbell. She'd throw a crumpled-up wad of paper and Tinkerbell would intercept it, even if it was flying like a basketball through the air. Tinkerbell is one of those all-play/no-affection type cats, and thus Mikila and Drew were amazed when I managed to befriend her enough to stroke her back and - get this - even get her to jump into my lap for a whole quarter of a second (on the way to that crumpled-up wad of paper).
I noticed that outside Mikila and Drew's bedroom window was a sign that said simply "Karaoke" - advertising the main attraction for the bar downstairs. I asked Milila about this and she rolled her eyes and said, "Yeah, well, when we first moved into this place we thought we'd really been taken, because it was karaoke until three in the morning, not just on the weekends, but also Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, ..." Recently, though, the karoke bar has installed many thousands of dollars worth of sound insulation (cutting the buzzer wire in the process) and instead of sounding like it's in the next room, well, according to Mikila, "You can still hear it but it's a little quieter now." What are people singing at karaoke bars these days? The big thing seems to be Pink, particularly this song:I'm comin' up so you better you better get this party started
I'm comin' up so you better you better get this party started Pumpin up the volume, breakin down' to the beat
Cruisin' through the west side
We'll be checkin' the scene
Boulevard is freakin' as I'm comin' up fast
I'll be burnin' rubber, you'll be kissin' my ass
Pull up to the bumper, get out of the car
License plate says Stunner #1 Superstar
Though it was still going pretty strong, I left the party at a reasonable 2:30am. In the L-line subway station at 14th Street and 1st Avenue, I was sitting next to a bunch of young women who were talking about Los Angeles. "How do you get home when you're drunk?" one asked. "I don't really know," said another.
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