New Year's Is More Fun in a Red Dress

Dammit, I hate being in bed and about to fall asleep but am writing so coherently and distinctly in my head I have to get up and actually type it. Stupid writer brain.

Last night I met a man who was entirely reminiscent of Ian McKellan's character from "Gods and Monsters." (I felt a bit like the young Brendan Frasier in that film, too, in fact, considering what this gentleman appeared to be trying to wrangle.) Imagine the man with gray hair and a deeply lined face, eyes heavily hooded with libidinal confidence.

"Darling McBickle," he said. "You are so lovely." Or maybe he said, "You are tantalizing." Or "alluring." (He did not say, "Let me lick your earlobe," though the effect was similar: viscerally unpleasant and slick. Have you ever had a man you have never spoken to before ask to lick your earlobe? I have. It is not a good thing.) His hand slid around my waist. I was, fortunately, too distracted by the form of his words to be annoyed by the fingers feeling my hip. His British accent formed somewhere in his upper nose and his words traveled down the length of his tongue before exiting his mouth and entering my ear, looping around the three small bones in there and landing somewhere in my fuzzy, bourbon-laden head. It was New Year's Eve, after all—who wouldn't appreciate an elderly producer and his leery-eyed pronouncements? As I wandered off to the other end of the party, he said to me in a perfectly pretentious arrangement of syllables, "Do come back."

I did not.

A couple of nights before, I met a man (likely) named Vito Badabing, baddaboom, daddabing. He was Brooklynese (pronounced "Brooklyn-ay-zay") at its lasagna-baked best. Round body, curled hair, leather jacket and hands like meat hooks. (Is this a cliche? They really were like meat hooks.) He was one of multiple party guests who roundly did not resemble the next, thereby making this particular gathering much more interesting than if it had been only a cadre of musicians and writers, which it was at its core. That night I met a series of men and women who held playful conversations about the bulkiness of men's boxer shorts and more serious ones about the merits of creating art in a colony. (The serious discussions drifted off in a light wind, anyway. A quiplike party, done up in wine and cheese. Oh, and chili. There was a mess of chili on the stove—enough for a squadron, which, in fact, we may have been.)

The entire gathering wove though an apartment in which one room connected to the next end to end in a series of boxes until it unexpectedly began again back at the beginning. In that sense, the party was refreshed about every 20 minutes, making every guest you had seen less than a half hour before seem new and again interesting. Very helpful.