Post-Party Party Post

DECEMBER 21, 2009

The invitation for the party consisted of exactly one line: “Suzanne and Mike invite you to a party at our home on Sunday, December 20th at 7 pm!” Since we’d never been to a party at their home before, we had some concerns about what, if any, food there would be.

“The party starts at seven,” I said. “I’m sure there’s going to be something to eat.”

“Yeah, but I’m starving,” said Deborah. “Maybe we should grab something quick before we head over there, just in case.”

To play it safe, we inhaled a couple of burritos from the corner deli before catching the bus. The bus let us off just a block away from Suzanne’s loft, but the fresh snow made it a treacherous walk, tricky to balance with my arm in a sling. Every time I slipped, my veins inflated with a surge of blood as I pictured falling on my weak wing.

When we found Suzanne’s place (a former something-or-other loft building in Williamsburg), we were greeted in the building’s entrance by my friend Paul, whom I hadn’t seen in months.

“Hey,” he said, surprised to see me. “You were on my list of people to call.”

“Are you heading upstairs?” I asked.

“Not yet. I’m down here working the door.”

“Seriously?”

Suzanne and Mike’s loft is on the top floor of a four-story walk-up. The usual way to let people in is to throw a set of keys wrapped in a sock out the window to whoever is waiting down below, but because of the snow, it didn’t seem like a good system, and Paul, dressed in a heavy leather jacket and sipping on a 24-oz. Heineken was employed to hang out on the first floor to let people in.

“I’ll be up a little later,” he said.

Deborah and I climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. Mike opened the door and let us in, I handed him a bottle and, after refreshing his memory about who we were and where we’d met before, he directed us into the main room, which was filled with paintings and sculptures, and musical instruments — guitars, keyboards, drums, an acoustic bass, an upright piano, several vintage amplifiers, and countless old-school gizmos. In the middle of the room, under a couple of dozen silver mylar balloons, was a 25-foot banquet table with two dozen place settings.

“Well, looks like there’ll be food,” said Deborah.

Sitting on a side table were at least two dozen bottles of assorted wines and proseccos. I felt a little foolish having just handed Mike a cheap bottle of Korbel at the door. Whatever, by the end of the night, I’m sure that bottle looked pretty good to whoever was left standing.

Deborah and I didn’t know anyone, and we did our best to mingle among the up-and-coming art stars, the well-established musicians, the cabaret performers, and the insurance broker. Having been cooped up in largely self-imposed broken-arm exile lately, I felt even more awkward than usual, but it turns out that an arm in a sling is a good ice breaker and I got a lot of milage from my dirt-bike story.

“I wish Paul would come upstairs,” I said, after milking the dirt-bike story for far too long.

“Go down and hang out with him if you want,” said Deborah. “I don’t mind.”

The downstairs foyer — if you can call it that — was freezing, warmed only slightly by Paul’s tales of his recent trip to Miami for Art Basel, rolling his eyes at egomaniac twenty-something art brats during the day and playing pool with coked-up pimps who cruise up to the local bar in cranberry-colored drop-top Cadillacs at night. The party was supposed to start at seven and it was already nine o’clock. “Fuck the stragglers,” I said. “Come upstairs already.”

Now, as you might be able to guess by the look in Deborah’s glassy eyes, the night wore on in colorful ways; however, as I write about it now, I’m having trouble cramming the larger-than-life figures onto a smaller-than-life blog post. I’m afraid I’m going to have to put the story in my back pocket for now. I’m accumulating a lot in there — stories begging for long-form treatment. Maybe, when I have enough of them, I’ll string them together and pretend it’s a book.