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Party Plein-air I: A quick still life to capture the transient properties of a party
A series where I write about the physical and psychological features of parties. I always have a good time but there’s another experience that always stays with me long after the fun is over.
Pink, red, crepe and satin bows. Green spruce and gold foil candle sticks, a sprinkle of little flames with wax tears, waxing poetic at the scene. Every object shined, reflecting a glimmer of gossip and glam among the pretty party people. It was cool, everything was dreamy soft, like pomme puree. It was a whimsy 20-something apricot and amber tinted mid-mod smoke break in the Heights. I saw the cutest pug and maine coon ever. In that romantic roomie bungalow, sitting beneath a vintage Marlboro neon sign, there was a sunset lamp hiding. Yin and Yang, timeless Facebook Marketplace pickups and trendy dropshipped items looking hip in harmony. But there was something deeply discordant about the total Pinterest-able verisimilitude. Not the coffee table books qua coffee table books (I can’t imagine those books being anything other than for a coffee table). Not the note, "fucked ur dad", nailed to the tree outside. Not not the party theme. A man in a Canadian tuxedo explained it to me, his outfit was on theme. It was supposed to be a Lana Del Rey song—Blue Jeans. Haha. So there was a theme, I see that. The teensy bows everywhere signify: lana del ray coke kate moss coquette girl interrupted sofia coppola fiona apple nymphette…, the list goes on. A second, more starting realization was how for every fawnlette kitty princess, there was a frat boy city redneck. Mary Jane shoes with First Communion socks nestled betwixt steel toed work boots, her pigeon toed Disney knees knocking on his bootcut Wrangler jeans. I was at the junction of two diametrically opposed gendered territories, hyperfemininity and hypermasculinity. A soft curve against a hard line to demarcate different spaces, his scratchy mustache and mullet opposite to her soigné curls and coiffure. He goes to Bass Pro Shop and bible church. She goes to Anthropologie and Catholic mass. He went behind the house to take a piss, and she held his dirty hand. And then they kissed.
Parked cars spill over the precipice of the gentrified East End like milk from the Oak Farms Dairy facility. I drink in, the crowded heat melts the cold wind like ice cubes in hot soup. An artist lives here but he is as mysterious as a milk carton kid. I walk into the mouth made of metal siding where the tinlike tin-e sound is talking; LOUD PARTY. LOTS OF PEOPLE. LOTS OF FUN. LOTS OF LOUD FUN! The throng was in full swing on a party train going full steam ahead. Above me: Wooden planks emerging out from the warehouse wall, as if the building were entirely its own sculpture. Below me: Shifting seismic quakes of shuffling feet and shuttling freights, we are in motion together on the beat. Next to me: A Bacchus ruckus, horny hopes hunker down with other hopes that are hornier. If it were a painting I could title the still life something like, Fornications in Florence. Depicting all the flowers and fruits of a lust for something that is greater, a holy feast. A pair of lovers are practically doing it but his name is Raphael so are they making art? A videographer catches it all on camera in Dutch angles. There are fewer Italians and no santee-claws this year to tell my shame to. “I want pana-toe-kneeee!”, I would have said to anybody that asked. Or maybe most of all, unconsciously I am asking for just a knee. Won’t anybody listen? I had to think about it. Suddenly—a spotlight in my mind swivels toward the second floor balcony, the elusive artist comes out of his hidey home to wash his undies! The facade of his homestead has a flatness that reminds me of a stage set. The scene of domesticity was so far away from the raging ragtag below. He glides like a ministering angel on a mission from God to clean, I am in awe. Smite those stains while we continue to smatter ourselves with wine! Weee. I watch as he loads the washer. The spin cycle thumping to Italiodisco, glug glug gluging—detergent fills the drum then dances dirty with the laundry. Closing my eyes, the feeling of being tossed makes the clothes on my body shrink. S, XS, XXS, I am too small and wrinkled to get another wink at him. He is gone and I am a pile of delicates.