Automatic Midnight

That was the very first weekend I’ve had in a very long time in which I did not step off the island of Manhattan, not even once, not even for Brooklyn. Friday night, we hung out with Apollo and Mackie, a smashing pair, Mackie with a gold lightening bolt charm necklace and Apollo with his tiara on, perched to one side, leading the way like the Pied Piper of the Lower East Side, right into Tonic, where he haggled our way past the cover charge. We ended up at a spacious loft party in SoHo with four gold records on the walls, dancing, a chance encounter in the stairwell, and, strangely enough, office cubicles.

Saturday, I was actually early for once, to meet my friend, Mr. Hook (seriously), on a boat party at the Chelsea Pier. So I wandered into the first party I saw, which was a luau, with a burnt pig staring up at me from the buffet table -- wrong party. I was supposed to be at a birthday party on the barge, where the food was much more appetizing. Although, I guess you can get seasick on a barge, or at least I felt a little nauseated after a while, so I met up with my gal Tina on the Upper West Side, wayyyy up there on 110th, had a business consulting meeting and then, once that party became out of control boring, we split, heading back downtown.

Somewhere in there, somebody gave me a business card, oh so this is networking. I networked. But then, between the West Village and the East Village, I lost the business card, so is that still networking? And I met a cat, named Tolouse, who made me want to claw my brains out; I’ve never been more allergic to anything in my entire life.

After all of that, I decided I am still not used to island living, because when we saw a gigantic, dead rat, on the corner of Rivington and Stanton, at 6:30 on Sunday morning, I was the only one who jumped back in terror.