Today’s soundtrack: police and thieves in the streets
Today at 12:00am: cursing



I get to the restaurant at 8:10pm and no one’s there. The place is empty except for a single guy behind the bar wearing a plastic porkpie that says HAPPY NEW YEAR on it. Shaping up to be a grim night indeed.

Inside the restaurant I discover there’s a downstairs. Downstairs I discover my friends ain’t there either. I go back up to the street--in New York you spend a lot of time underground, and basements are to cell phones what impotence is to penises--to make some calls.

Can’t get through to Tony, who is tonight’s Social Director. (It used to be me, when I still exhibited alpha male characteristics, but lately we all take turns.) I get Tony’s voicemail after one ring, meaning his phone is off. Next I ring up California Kirk, who picks up on the third ring. I hear bar chatter in the background.

“Where you guys at?” I ask.

“Me and Tony are at Angel Share, getting a drink,” he says. “Where are you?”

“I’m at the restaurant,” I say, trying not to sound exasperated. “It was for 8 o’clock, no?”

“Yeah, but Lam’s running late,” says Kirk. “We’ll be down there soon.”

We click off, I sigh and lean against a railing. New Year’s is not a big holiday for me and I’m super-low on funds, so I wasn’t even gonna come out tonight, now this. I hate waiting and my cash situation is depressing. Some small part of me (the part that feels like making a time-out symbol and lying down when I accidentally get nailed in the head at Hapkido) actually feels like going home.

But your friends are your friends, and it’s not like I’ve got many, so I stick around. Besides, with twenty minutes to kill this is a great time for me to catch up on my pacing-back-and-forth.

Three people come up from downstairs to smoke out on the sidewalk. Mid-cigarette the three of them look at me and laugh all at the same time. I’m not sure if the joke they shared was unrelated to me, or if I was actually the punchline. I tell myself it’s the former and try not to let it bother me. I don’t have much fashion sense but I don’t think I look especially funny.

Earlier I’d called my friend Maya to see if she wanted to join us, especially since the name of the restaurant Tony had picked was “Maya.” Thai joint. Anyways she couldn’t make it. But later I found out, strangely enough, that the owner of Maya also runs a restaurant uptown called “Rain.”

“Rain,” I hear someone call. Tony are Kirk are getting out of a taxi, both wearing collar shirts and jackets. Uh-oh. I look down at what I’ve got on, which is just a notch better than what I’d wear if I was about to change the oil on my car. Maybe I did look funny.

The three of us get our table, and Lam joins us twenty minutes later. It’s a Guy’s Night Out. Would be nice if the four of us had molls but that’s not the way the dice went. Anyways the nice thing about sitting around a table with three other guys is you can speak frankly about chicks and dating and all that stuff. I think our female friends would be horrified if they heard half the stuff we said, although much of it is your basic male boilerplate about sleeping with each other’s mothers.

If this holiday was a lit cigarette on a counter about to fall into a bin of papers, I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop it. Yet it’s a big deal to Kirk, since it’s his first New Year’s in New York.

“I’m happy to be here with you guys, sitting around a table with friends,” he says. Then the three of us tell him to go to hell and beat him for showing weakness.

When Karin said “Penthouse party” I thought she meant Bob Guccione, but the e-vite said it was hosted by a guy named Weston. Before we head over there we decide to stop by my place, so I can put some decent goddamn clothes on and not be the scummy guy no one wants to let into the party. And I’ve got this powder blue tuxedo with a a frilly shirt I’ve been meaning to debut.

In actuality I just put on a leather coat and a lot of brown, and we head for the subway. The party’s on 51st between 7th and 8th, so we hop the B-train, which lets you out at Rock Center on 6th Ave, just a block east. Big mistake.

We get out at Rock Center, which is close enough to the Times Square epicenter that the streets are all fucked-up. Every street between 6th and 7th Avenue is blocked off by police barricades and we’re on the wrong side of the equation. It is now 11:38pm, so chances are slim we’ll make it to the party in time to see the ball drop. So much for Kirk’s big New Year’s.

“Where’s the first street we can get across at?” I ask a cop.

“Fifty-ninth,” he lies. We don’t know he’s lying, so we take off up 6th Ave. The foot traffic is ridiculously dense and it takes us forever to walk a single block. Kirk manages to find a taxi (outsider’s luck, I swear). But of all the taxi drivers in Manhattan, we manage to get the one son-of-a-bitch who drives like there’s a mule tied to the bumper. We’re fucking crawling. The clock ticks on.

We get out at 59th to discover it, too, is blocked off. And we’re out of streets; preventing us from going any further north is a little obstacle called Central Park.

Next, Kirk and I become separated from Tony and Lam by the jostling crowds.

It’s 11:44 and we’re never going to make it. The only thing that could add to this moment is a clap of thunder followed by pouring rain.

After using cell phones and a highly visible statue to reunite the group, we break east for 5th Avenue, to jump the N/R-train. Only in Manhattan can you get to your destination faster by moving in the opposite direction. Two stops down the N/R crosses over to the west side and will let us out at 49th and 7th. We run.

The four of us stand dejectedly on the platform, waiting.

The train arrives at last.

We get out of the station at 7th and 49th--to discover the streets are again blocked off, and access to 51st is impossible. I call Kim to tell her we’re close, but far.

“It’s between 7th and 8th, right?” I ask.

“Ninth and 10th,” she says.

Fuuuuuuck.

We hoof it up to 57th Street, which is mercifully unblocked, and start heading for 9th Ave. Which takes a while because Avenue blocks are a bitch. If you were standing on 56th Street you could probably shoot someone on 57th Street with little difficulty, but if you were on 6th Ave and wanted to shoot someone on 7th you’d need a scope.

The sole moment of comic relief comes when Kirk, who apparently doesn’t have good night vision, mistakes a random sprinting white man for Tony, and he begins running after him, abandoning us.

The four of us running down 9th avenue at 11:57pm. I feel like Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs after the jewelry heist.

At 11:59pm we locate the building, and look up to see the balcony crowded with people all cheering. The ball is on its way down.

We hit the buzzer, but belatedly realize no one can hear it inside the apartment, because of all the cheering. We’re stuck on the sidewalk.

So at 12:00:00 the four of us are standing at the bottom of one of Manhattan’s canyons, removed from all party life. Staring up at the penthouse balcony, where the cheering partygoers can see the fireworks over midtown. I was hoping when the ball dropped I’d be in a place where I could kiss a bunch of pretty girls and spread this cold around, but instead it’s us four on the sidewalk. (And at dinner I’d already seen to it everyone would catch my cold by sharing food.)

Eventually someone lets us in and we take the elevator up to the penthouse.

It’s a party of lawyers, so I’m not exactly a tornado of mingling. But the penthouse is stunning. It’s a duplex with three different balconies and decks, each with the kinds of views you only see if you’re Spider-Man. Tall buildings, twinkling lights, tenement rooftops. The west side actually looks nice. All the pimps, junkies and hookers are so small from up here.

I’ve been to lawyer parties before, and I can tell you they’re usually a stone drag. Guys in shiny ties talking shop and doing supposedly hysterical re-enactments of Boss Asking for a Fax and other party favorites. At least this one is gender-balanced.

I run into a chick I know and several I don’t. The girl who peed on my seat is there and I feel like telling her I know the pH balance of her urine.

Francis has been there for an hour, and according to Kim has met everyone in the place. He introduces me to a cute girl, and she gives me one of the worst brush-offs I’ve ever gotten from a female at a party: “So how long have you been here for?” I say, trying to make polite conversation.

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, ignoring me and turning to scan the crowd for someone more interesting to talk to. Christ. As usual, I won’t think of the snappy counter-insult I should’ve spat out until hours later. The French have a phrase for this: L’esprit de l’escalier, the wit of the staircase. Clever bastards.

“Kack,” says the Japanese guy. Kirk has just introduced me to some five-minute friends, a bunch of Japanese girls visiting from out-of-town. The one Japanese guy in the group, like most Japanese, pronounces Kirk’s name “Kack.”

“The whole time I was in Japan, everyone’s calling me ‘Cock,’” says Kirk, wincing. (I was ‘Lain,’ which isn’t as bad.) If anyone named Kirk Black is reading this, know that in Japan, your name is pronounced “Cockblock.”

A couple hours later the lot of us are holed up at Kim’s apartment, which is enormous and homey, watching Entourage. She whips us up some ramen and apple chicken and it’s like being in a fucking restaurant. Her roommates, however, are decidedly unthrilled to see the five of us sprawled out in their living room.

We put our coats on shortly before 4, thank Kim, and the five of us guys are out on the sidewalk. Francis decides to walk the twenty blocks to his car. Kirk and Tony decide their night isn’t finished yet, and hop a taxi to the East Village to close some bar. Lam and I make for the B-train.

Inside the station we have the quintessential New York Disgusting City moment: At the bottom of the staircase is a giant rat, picking through a steaming puddle of orange vomit. The rat was big enough that you’d have trouble killing it with a tennis racket. He spots us and jets across the platform, abandoning a perfectly good pile of booze puke. Rats are shy sometimes.

On the platform we spot the puker, who has marked his territory in several places and is having a go at the garbage can. A crooked-eyed thug stands nearby, watching him. For a second I think he’s waiting to roll the puker, but then he reaches out to steady him, indicating they’re friends.

The train takes forty-five minutes to come, which is annoying for us but must be excruciating for the rat; his vomit is getting cold.

Back in my apartment before sun-up. It’s quiet here and doesn’t seem significantly different than it was when I’d left. I shower the subway germs off and get ready for my first sleep of 2005. Starting tomorrow I begin wasting checks with erroneous dates and, hopefully, making something of myself this year.