Bash Compactor: Saturday Night Fever
Why was I lying in bed comatose on a beautiful Easter Sunday? There was nary a bonnet or bunny in sight, and forget about going to the parade or to a holiday meal.
You were barking like a dog and screeching. They loved you but asked you to quiet down, my friend told me, referring to the night before. I vaguely recalled leaping about a room and tying people up during the string-dancing segment.
Things started out innocently at a late afternoon photo session at the colorful Lower East Side home of Garrett Bowser and Cole Nahal, two designers who hold photo parties documenting wild and crazy scenes with club kids, artists and performers. I dressed for the occasion in a bright yellow petticoat, a multicolored silk jacket, turquoise fishnet tights and my new favorite accessory: brightly colored sponge rollers.
Since I was late, it was more about socializing than photography this time. Drink numero uno, a Miller Lite, but the sun was setting and I didnt want to miss the next event.
Wending my way over to the HiChristina party, an interactive performance experience, I recalled my friend Thain bartends at the bar at Dixon Place on Chrystie Street. The Lounge at Dixon Place, which is officially opening this Thursday, serves top shelf liquors whipped up into signature cocktails. Why dont you try The Kirby Thain asked. Made of Patron, ginger liqueur, lime and grapefruit, the mixologists potent potion launched me into outer space. Tequila on an empty stomach is a little like liquid mescaline.
I staggered out in time to catch My Brother My Love, a reading series curated by Robert Smith at a newly renovated Envoy Gallery a few doors away. Among the readers was singer Justin Bond, quite fetching with his perky new haircut. I stretched out on the plush red carpet with the literati, listening to the stories, and afterward convinced a friend to check out Creationizm, Believe in This!, a party on nearby Eldridge Street.
Like everyone, Ive been trying to write a novel for years. The goal of this event was to write one as a group in one hour. The evenings hosts, Christina Ewald and Fritz Donnelly, two personable twentysomethings with a love of mayhem and irony, brought me drink number four, spiked punch. It was a DIY jamboree that we all participated in, 20 of us of varied backgrounds, like we were in someones living room. We each scribbled a portion of the novel onto lined notebook paper, reading it later after dancing with pink yarn tangling us all up. Imagine youre a piece of cauliflower that just got cooked, Ewald told us. It was around this time I began barking and screaming for no apparent reason. It was like a crazy house party full of friendly strangers. Did we finish the novel? Who knows!
I finally made it Joes Pub to see my friend Joseph Kecklers show and was, for once, a little early. Just in time, in fact, for someone to buy me one more drink.