A Fortnight of Fun

January 21, 2000

The last half of the last month of the last year of the last decade of the last century of the past millennium was one continuous party for me in New York. Booze and brie and rolled-up cold-cuts and handfuls of Chex Party Mix were on the menu every night.

Some nights there were three parties in a row. A couple glasses of Beaujolais near the Bowery. Merlot in Midtown. Then all the way back down to Wall Street for a bottle of white.

Beautiful single girls and homosexual European males at every stop. Always together. All of them buyers for Saks or Macy’s.

There were friends’ office parties in the restaurants of fancy hotels. Then there was my office party, where the smoke clouds from funny-looking cigarettes barely masked the multiple pairs of girls kissing each other, and the one kid from finance who--drunk and gyrating--expressed his love to all the lovely ladies in the house. (The V.P. of Sales being one of them.) "So these are the people you work with?" my date asked. "Did you just end that sentence with a preposition?" I replied.

On the eve of New Year’s Eve, thirty or so friends, lovers, and acquaintances gathered at Phebe’s, across the street from my office. Deliberately and coincidentally, a half dozen girls who have graced the pages of this column were in attendance. Among the stars of this show was Nikki, the Coconut Girl from London. She’d flown in to do a performance at Windows on the World, so she stopped by to down a few pints. The ingredients for disaster were all in place. But disaster did not come. Explosions were averted. That night the girls from the different phases of my life mixed and mingled with friends of mine from the different phases of my life. High school friends, college friends, army friends, New York friends. Characters from different chapters prying themselves from the chronology, skipping backward and forward, picking up other characters from earlier chapters and bringing them back to the present. The timeline, the progression, the symbolic figures of distinctly different epochs all mixed up and woven together into a drunken, hyper-real adrenaline rush.

New Year’s Eve. Penthouse Number Five of the Mondrian on 54^th and Second. We’re on the very top floor. Forty-four stories up. From on high, we can see everything in Manhattan.

Ten rooms. Over a hundred people. As we wait for midnight and the terrorist explosion to come fireballing out of Times Square, the last few minutes of life before the Apocalypse are happy ones. More wine, more brie, more rolled up cold-cuts, more Chex Party Mix. Music from many eras pumps out of the CD player. See the pyramids along the Nile flows into ninety-nine red balloons which bursts into back that ass up. Ah…progress. All the while, the beautiful single girls and European gay guys sway and smoke and suck down the sauvignon blanc as fast as the bartender can pour it. Guys kiss their girlfriends. Other guys kiss those same girlfriends. The boyfriend, now finding his lady indisposed, kisses some other guy—not because he’s gay--but because he’s drunk, he’s in New York, he’s on the eve of either a fiery death or a wonderful new millennium. Either way, he’s going to party like it’s…well…1999.

The moment is at hand. "Ten, nine, eight…" The clock strikes. No fireballs. No demonic horsemen descending from the sky. New York has made it. We all have made it. "Pop!" go the champagne bottles. The kissing resumes. Now everyone is kissing everyone else. "When you go to the big party, you dance with the one who brung ya." But no one seems to remember who that was. Fuck it. Auld Lang Syne is sung. Some genius decides that crazy purple spray string is really cool and would make the party a lot more fun.

An hour passes. The alcohol has claimed even the most stout of liver. Dawn finds two young lovers asleep in a hot-tub filled with colorful balloons. Unbeknownst to them, beneath those balloons is the vomit from a most ungracious reveler. Probably the same guy who brought the crazy string. Oh well, it’ll all come out in the wash.

Sucking gallons of water at a diner on Madison Avenue at noon on the first day of the first month of the first decade of the first century of this new millennium. Two weeks of partying are over. Reality—currently in the form of a hangover—settles in. The damage to the wallet will appear in a couple weeks when the credit card bill arrives. The damage to the heart, liver, and lungs will show up in a dozen years or so. But by then, there’ll be a cure for everything. Party on, Wayne!

There will never be a stretch of unbridled revelry like the one just concluded for a long while. Not until eleven months from now, when I, and the rest of New York, do it all again.

Cheers!

Broadway Jim Sosnicky

		A Fortnight of Fun
		January 21, 2000 The last half of the last month of the last year of the last decade of the last century of the past millennium was one continuous party for me in New York. Booze and brie and rolled-up cold-cuts and handfuls of Chex Party Mix were on the menu every night. Some nights there were three parties in a row. A couple glasses of Beaujolais near the Bowery. Merlot in Midtown. Then all the way back down to Wall Street for a bottle of white. Beautiful single girls and homosexual European males at every stop. Always together. All of them buyers for Saks or Macy’s. There were friends’ office parties in the restaurants of fancy hotels. Then there was my office party, where the smoke clouds from funny-looking cigarettes barely masked the multiple pairs of girls kissing each other, and the one kid from finance who--drunk and gyrating--expressed his love to all the lovely ladies in the house. (The V.P. of Sales being one of them.) "So these are the people you work with?" my date asked. "Did you just end that sentence with a preposition?" I replied. On the eve of New Year’s Eve, thirty or so friends, lovers, and acquaintances gathered at Phebe’s, across the street from my office. Deliberately and coincidentally, a half dozen girls who have graced the pages of this column were in attendance. Among the stars of this show was Nikki, the Coconut Girl from London. She’d flown in to do a performance at Windows on the World, so she stopped by to down a few pints. The ingredients for disaster were all in place. But disaster did not come. Explosions were averted. That night the girls from the different phases of my life mixed and mingled with friends of mine from the different phases of my life. High school friends, college friends, army friends, New York friends. Characters from different chapters prying themselves from the chronology, skipping backward and forward, picking up other characters from earlier chapters and bringing them back to the present. The timeline, the progression, the symbolic figures of distinctly different epochs all mixed up and woven together into a drunken, hyper-real adrenaline rush. New Year’s Eve. Penthouse Number Five of the Mondrian on 54^th and Second. We’re on the very top floor. Forty-four stories up. From on high, we can see everything in Manhattan. Ten rooms. Over a hundred people. As we wait for midnight and the terrorist explosion to come fireballing out of Times Square, the last few minutes of life before the Apocalypse are happy ones. More wine, more brie, more rolled up cold-cuts, more Chex Party Mix. Music from many eras pumps out of the CD player. See the pyramids along the Nile flows into ninety-nine red balloons which bursts into back that ass up. Ah…progress. All the while, the beautiful single girls and European gay guys sway and smoke and suck down the sauvignon blanc as fast as the bartender can pour it. Guys kiss their girlfriends. Other guys kiss those same girlfriends. The boyfriend, now finding his lady indisposed, kisses some other guy—not because he’s gay--but because he’s drunk, he’s in New York, he’s on the eve of either a fiery death or a wonderful new millennium. Either way, he’s going to party like it’s…well…1999. The moment is at hand. "Ten, nine, eight…" The clock strikes. No fireballs. No demonic horsemen descending from the sky. New York has made it. We all have made it. "Pop!" go the champagne bottles. The kissing resumes. Now everyone is kissing everyone else. "When you go to the big party, you dance with the one who brung ya." But no one seems to remember who that was. Fuck it. Auld Lang Syne is sung. Some genius decides that crazy purple spray string is really cool and would make the party a lot more fun. An hour passes. The alcohol has claimed even the most stout of liver. Dawn finds two young lovers asleep in a hot-tub filled with colorful balloons. Unbeknownst to them, beneath those balloons is the vomit from a most ungracious reveler. Probably the same guy who brought the crazy string. Oh well, it’ll all come out in the wash. Sucking gallons of water at a diner on Madison Avenue at noon on the first day of the first month of the first decade of the first century of this new millennium. Two weeks of partying are over. Reality—currently in the form of a hangover—settles in. The damage to the wallet will appear in a couple weeks when the credit card bill arrives. The damage to the heart, liver, and lungs will show up in a dozen years or so. But by then, there’ll be a cure for everything. Party on, Wayne! There will never be a stretch of unbridled revelry like the one just concluded for a long while. Not until eleven months from now, when I, and the rest of New York, do it all again. Cheers! Broadway Jim Sosnicky