New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, Grown and/or Sexy Style!

My best friend, “Marcy”, came by my brother’s house last night to pick me up. Going to an old – fashioned, midwest house party in a basement someplace. For this crew, it was just another saturday night. The fact that it was New Year’s was just a bonus, really.

“You sure you’re up for this?” Marcy asked as we got in her car. “You know you’re an old man now, Big Daddy Cane,” she teased as I staggered along with Foldy, the Walking Stick(tm).

“And you’re older than me, so whatcha sayin’?” I countered.

“Hey, now, watch it,” she grumbled. ” ‘A’, it’s only by a month and a half and ‘B’, you wanna walk?”

"Marcy" gets ready.

As we rode on, Marcy schooled me in the etiquette and ways of her friends. “They’re really good people. Lisa and Janice have been known to live humble through the week so that when people come over on the weekend, everybody gets fed. Lisa’s kinda the ‘hostess with the mostess’, and Janice’ll just shake her head and let Lisa do her thing. Whatcha drinking, by the way?”

“Huh?”

“Beer? wine? Kool-Aid? They’re gonna have stuff, but is there anything special you wanna get?” she continued.

I thought abiout it for a moment. “I dunno,” I shrugged. “Soda water, maybe?”

“‘Soda water’,” Marcy peered at me over the tops of her glasses. She shrugged. “Okay. ‘Soda water’. Any reason why?”

I don’t want to make a complete ass of myself tonight, I thought. “You know I haven’t been taking my b.p. meds like I should, and I read somewhere that high blood pressure messes up your liver, and I wanna go easy…”

“Mm hm.” Somehow, Marcy didn’t seem convinced. She didn’t press the subject. “Free night, is all I’m sayin’. You could probably use a drink. But, it’s on you. Lisa’s gonna keep offering you something, though.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“Oh, they know I’m a special case,” Marcy shrugged.

“Got that right,” I smiled. She gave me The Look(tm). “You are!” I protested. “You’re my special little flower! A delicate snow flake!”

“I’ma ‘snow flake’ you-”

“Awww, yeah, baby! Snow flake me all night long-”

“I will put you out, you know. Pull right over to the side of the highway and call the police and tell God it was an accident!” Marcy laughed.

It wasn’t really as cold out as it seemed to me. A lifetime spent developing the layers of subcutaneous fat needed to deal with an Ohio winter can be negated by just a year or two in the Floribbean sweatbox. Marcy raised an eyebrow at the sub-zero getup I was in. Marcy looked stylishly dressed for a night on the town in her purple cashmere coat and ballet slippers. Not quite “hunting” attire, as she was already well acquainted with the other women who’d be at the party, but a “you never know what’ll happen” level of attractiveness. There’s a formula for figuring it out, apparently.

“Are you sure people are gonna be okay that I’m gonna be the only not-gay person here?” I asked.

“You’ll be fine,” Marcy answered. “I just needed to tell some of the guys. I figured you’d know how to act if one of them hit on you.”

I scoffed. “When have I ever been aware of anybody, gay, straight, uh, computer-generated, whatever, hitting on me?”

“Oh, if they hit on you, especially Ray, you’d know.” Marcy grinned. “Ray can be very, um…”

“Graphic?”

“I was gonna say ‘crass’, or ‘vulgar’, but, yeah, ‘graphic’ works too,” Marcy completed.

***                                                                        ***

Basement parties are dark.

How dark?

This dark:

See?

This is a picture of Marcy dancing with, I think, Sherry. They’re both very good dancers, wouldn’t you say?  The song was “Cupid (or “Cuban”, I can’t remember) Shuffle”, one of those songs that comes complete with instructions.

Note the pole in the foreground. I’ve never been to a real basement party that didn’t have what I always have referred to as the “Drunk Pole”, a hazard to dignity, safety, virginity, relationships, or all of the above.

“Whatcha drinking?” Lisa asked me. Eyes behind white schoolboy glasses, baseball hat jammed on her head.

“Look out, now,” Janice warned with a laugh. “Lisa ain’t stingy with the alcohol!”

“Oh, hush!” Lisa rolled her eyes. “Let the man make up his mind, damn! We got Sprite, whiskey, beer, vodka-”

“Vodka sounds good,” I shrugged. Marcy looked at me.

“What happened to soda water?” she asked.

“He driving?” Ray asked.

“No, I am, but-”

“How you take your vodka, Chris?” Lisa asked.

“I, um,…”

“With cranberry juice on the rocks? What a coincidence!” I was handed a tumbler of suspiciously rocket-fuel like red liquid.   “What about you, Marcy? Same?”

“Girl, you know I can’t drink. I’ll be naked dancing on tables, making out with folk, or something.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Ray chimed in.

Exasperated, “Chris,” Marcy said, “tell ’em.”

“Yeah. Bad things happen. She’s like a gremlin with alcohol.”

Tony, who looked like he should be dressed in red, with horns and a pitchfork, and about six inches tall perched on your shoulder while you contemplated doing bad things, grinned impishly. “I wanna see what happens! Do it!”

Marcy shook her head with a smile. “I won’t be making out with you,”  she finished. “I come with a different instruction manual.”

“Oh, I know you do, girl,” Tony countered. “I’m just teasing. I come different, too…”

“Hey! Lisa! When we gonna eat?” Janice called.

“Or do we have to wait till next year to get fed?” Ray asked. He turned to me. “We been known not to eat around here till, what? Three in the morning?”

“I’m goin’ upstairs,” Sherry called. “I need to see the ball drop.”

“What? You need to see them balls drop?”

“I like how you put a ‘s’ at the end of that…”

“So, what you’re saying, is you like balls, then?”

“Hey, what can I say? The more the merrier.”

Marcy turned to me. “…And, this is the crew.” She smiled. Lisa came back with a bunch of straws, about two feet long each, and handed everybody one. “Oh, I gotta tell you the story about these straws!” she began.

“It’s getting close to time!” Sherry yelled from upstairs. “Lisa, you gonna pray over the food so we can eat?”

Lisa’s voice came over a microphone. “Dear Lord, we thank you for this time of fellowship…”

“Ten!”

“I made sure that this macaroni and cheese wasn’t made with soy for you.”

“There’s soy in mac and cheese? Since when?”

“Nine!”

“You better look out how you dancing, Janice! You know you can’t move like that with them kangaroo ankles you got!”

“Yo mamma got kangaroo ankles, muhfuggah!”

“Eight!”

“I know I am, well, who I am, but, you still gotta trust God. If you can’t trust God, Who else can you trust? I mean, really?”

“Seven!”

“Hey, y’all, these is some good…um, pheasant wings? They too small to be chicken…”

“No, you just used to them mutant Church’s wings that got the leg attached somehow, foo!”

“Six!”

“This is, like, what, your third drink now?”

“What can I say? Lisa’s a good bartender.”

“Five!”

“Okay, why did I just get a text from my daughter reminding me to be home so I can take her to church?”

“Four!”

“And God, we thank you for the family you made out of us, and the love that we have for each other.”

“Three!”

“Go ‘head, Pinky! Get your groove on!”

“Sherry, lookin’ all Wilona from Good Times up in here!”

“Y’all know James was sneakin’ next door to get a lil’ som’n som’n from her when Florida wasn’t around!”

“Two!”

” ‘Don’t you stop it, don’t you stop, don’t stop the music!’ That was the jammy-jam!”

“One!”

“Happy New Year!”

“And twenty-eleven can kiss my whole, entire, holy black miracle ass!”

“Even the darkest part. And let all the people say ‘amen’!”

“AMEN!”

Here's what 2012 looked like coming in.

words and pictures © Christopher Ward. All rights reserved.