2006-01-06 - 8:32 a.m.
The year is, I am sorry to say, off to an inauspicious start – at least it is for me. And I am now here to tell you the tale of the most dire New Year’s Eve that ever was. It was unendurable! Imagine if you will the most appalling juxtaposition of boredom and horror – beasts and sows, demons and fiends, all gyrating in a vile and revolting display -- and you just about have the sum total of it all. If this next year is going to be anything like the way it’s started out, I am just going to throw it all in and take a retirement somewhere. It’s important to remember that things can only get worse and that no one gets out of this horrible life alive.
Yet, even on those most pessimistic terms, this year is beginning to sound as though it’s going to be uniquely horrid and detestable. If you are one of the folks of this world who believe in omens and premonitions –well, if trajectory of the narrative arc holds true, you shall want to poke out your eyes with knitting needles just so you shall not have to see the terrors and horrors that lie before us. You shall want to rip out your hair. You shall want to shriek and run for the hills.
The adventure started at around six o’clock on New Year’s Eve, when my dear mother phoned to let me know that I was expected to join her in attending the annual New Year’s Celebration at the House of the Enderpigs deep in the heart of the mean streets of Brentwood. If I had agreed to go along to this “celebration,” and I must use the term advisedly, the “party” would have involved me and a group of “young senior citizens” sitting in rocking chairs around a fire, talking about things like upcoming hip replacement surgery and the class schedules of the two members of the group who were junior high school math teachers.
“Oh, you MUST come!” my mother cooed on the line. “It will be such fun! There shall be champagne and a fire, and we will watch the Ball Drop on TV!” I knew the truth: My mother just wanted me to go along with her because my stepdad patently refused. I have discovered, in my dotage that I frequently serve as her secondary companion when Stepdad is able to wriggle out of a social engagement. And without a chaperone, my mother would feel distinctly uncomfortable, as Pa Enderbeast always tries to slip her the tongue while taking part in the time honored custom of the New Year’s Kiss.
My dears, I simply must confess that the idea of attending this tediously dreadful Wrinkly Soiree did not appeal. And so, when my mother phoned, I made an excuse. I told her that I was otherwise engaged for the evening and that I would rather be covered with quicklime and buried alive before going to Ma and Pa Enderdrone’s on New Year’s Eve. With a huff and a sniff, my mother rang off, accepting my demurral, if not believing in the reasons behind it. And, free of all commitments, I boarded the bus to West Hollywood, deciding that I should spend my New Years in the company of Anonymous Men.
I am afraid that I just have the wrong attitude. And perhaps the problem is that I just don’t know how to have fun. But when I arrived at Mickeys, which was crowded with men of all shapes and sizes, I was appalled to discover that they were charging 20 bucks just to come in. 20 bucks to go into a bar. To go into MICKEYS which is little better than the Union Station Train Station men’s room at the best of times.
Zoiks! I was shocked and dismayed – and disgusted, too, for they were not even offering free champagne or lap dances or anything like that. For 20 bucks, you just got to go into the bar, where the same sloe-eyed bartenders would charge you SIX BUCKS MORE for a gin and tonic – and where the same, same, GoGo Boys were dancing in the same underwear that they even wear on Wednesdays. I paid my bucks, fuming under my breath – for 20 bucks one could just go to the Zone or the Hollywood Spa and get a “sure thing” rather than nothing much at a cheesy bar.
Mickeys was, as you can imagine, a terrific disappointment as a place to spend one’s New Years. There were masses of horrid men, and as the evening unfurled they proceeded to get more and more drunk until the shape of their faces fell, their snouts started elongating, and their ears seemed to morph upwards into little spikes. Little cork-shaped tails started sprouting from the seats of their low slung jeans, emerging over the waistbands of their 2Xst briefs. And intelligent conversation quickly devolved into grunts, shrieks, and the high pitched lowing of maddened, crazed beasts.
The place was disgusting! I noticed that the bartenders were only selling the most watered down drinks, and serving them in plastic cups. After a few minutes, it became blisteringly clear, why, too: The floor was soon SOAKED with spilled booze, noisemakers, and sodden confetti. You would try walking across the bar, and be shoved this way and that, until you were totally on the wrong side of the place, pressed against the wall like you were reliving the senior prom scene from CARRIE.
The year turned at midnight, as expected, and I decided to throw in the towel, something like 26 bucks poorer and no happier. I headed to the bus stop, deciding to take the one o’clock bus home. It was an irritating thing, therefore, when I approached the bus stop to find this young man, sprawled in the gutter, wearing a black blazer and a paper top hat which read “Happy New Years!” Around his feet, but not touching him, was a huge pool of pink vomit, clearly the results of an endless stream of Margaritas from that nasty Fiesta Cantina place next door to Mickeys. The young man, Latin and about 24, was covered with sweat. And then he looked up at me, his eyes boring right into my face.
“Johnny Darling!” he croaked. “Will you please, please help me get home?”
Much to my horror, I suddenly realized that I knew the fellow who was lying next to a pool of his own vomit. In fact, I was appalled to discover that more than “know” him socially, I “knew” him in the Biblical Sense. He was a former trick! Not a bad trick, really, but not one I would invite over for a second visit. Indeed, so full of holes is my memory that I would never have recognized him if he had not glommed onto me first. But I could not avoid it: After the young drunk twink addressed me by name, I had no choice but to return his pleasantries with a “hey” – even though the idea of pretending to be someone else was decidedly hard to resist.
The bus approached, and the young man held out a sweaty paw, so I could pull him to his feet. He weaved and shuddered, as drunk as anyone I had ever seen in my time. He was as drunk as I think I have ever gotten – certainly more drunk than I ever got when I was his age. I helped him aboard the bus, taking his hand. Everyone on the bus, bus-driver included, looked at us as though we were some kind of a crazy New Year’s Eve fag couple – and I suppose in some sense that is what we were. I settled him into a seat in the back of the bus, and he nuzzled my shoulder in a sort of drunken amorousness. I felt the sustained glares of the other bus riders. I patted the young fellow on his knee and kept telling him to put his head back so he could breathe. He mumbled and whimpered a little bit – it would have been rather sweet if he hadn’t been so frigging, disgustingly plastered.
“Glurrr,” he burbled and slurred. “Thank you soooo much fer helllpin’ me.”
“Think nothing of it,” I muttered, through clenched teeth. He continued to moan gently and sigh. His hand rubbed my inner thigh. And then he started to moan loudly. I looked down worriedly.
“Uhhh,” the boy whimpered. “I’m not feeling so good. Uhhhhh!”
I got a look at the boy’s very green face and trembled with terror. And why not? For the boy was surely going to vomit -- within seconds. I hastily whipped off the boy’s top hat – the one which said “Happy New Year!” on it. I put it right under the boy’s chin. What else could I do?
“Here, throw up into THIS, it’ll be fine!” I muttered, as the young man emitted the most appalling stream of hideous pink vomit, which plopped right into the center of the top hat. The vomit was accompanied by boy’s wailing and gagging – noises coming right from the gut.
From the row behind me, the lean, bald homeless black guy, wearing a raggy trench coat and a pair of crackhead sun glasses, gasped, “Oh my LORD!” The fat schizophrenic lady with the frizzy hair sitting two rows ahead of us shrieked, “Oh my GAWD!”
But the child continued to vomit in long groaning streams. And before long, he had filled the paper top hat half way. Soon, the inside of the hat was resembling, if nothing else, a gigantic pitcher of frothy margaritas. And, I was pleased to notice that the top hat was doing quite commendable service as a receptacle for vomit. The folks who invented the hat probably suspected that at some point it would be used to catch a fellow’s throw up.
However, the trouble is, the manufacturers of the hat did not expect that their paper New Year’s Eve Top Hat would be used for quite SO much vomit. And the boy just KEPT ON throwing up! The pink, frothy vomit approached the rim of the headgear – and then the unspeakable happened: The bottom of the hat started melting. Vomit began pouring out of the bottom of the hat in a slow, but increasingly heavy viscuous purple stream. All over my corduroy slacks – and my 300 dollar cashmir sweater! I was appalled!
I leapt from the seat, still holding the hat, with vomit streaming out of the bottom, and ran helter skelter for the bus’s rear door.
“Oh my God!” screeched the frizzy haired woman, shrinking back from me and my hat, pressing herself against the window. “Watch it! Keep it AWAY from me!”
“Lawdy, lawdy, lawdy, hold on hold on,” soothed the white haired, black bus driver, smoothly pulling the bus over to the side of the street and opening the rear door. I tossed the hat right out the door onto the sidewalk, neatly splashing the contents all over a homeless man who lay on a bus bench, covered with a blanket. My 300 buck cashmir sweater was simply COVERED with vomit, but at least I was not the drunken kid, who had continued to throw up all himself while I was wrestling with his hat.
“Is he gonna be all right?” the bus driver asked.
“Hell if I know,” I replied. “I barely know the kid.”
The bus finally arrived at Barrington and Santa Monica, which the kid had said was his stop. I stood him up and walked him towards the door.
“Can you get home all right?” I asked.
“I dunno,” slurred the boy.
I wasn’t going to go with him, though – for goodness sakes, at that time of night, the bus only runs every hour or so. So I pushed the child out the door of his stop and got back on the bus. He staggered backwards a few steps as I dashed back up the bus.
“Now, kid, be sure you drink lots of water when you get home!” I called behind me, as the bus doors closed. Last I saw, the kid was staggering across Santa Monica Blvd, against the red light. I made it home as well, I am pleased to say, enduring the stares of numerous folks, whose eyes gaped at the sight of a 300 buck vomit-covered cashmir sweater. The moment I got home, I peeled off the damn thing, flung it into the sink, and doused it with cold water and Woolite, stirring it up like a witch’s potion, muttering curses against stupid drunken 24 year olds. But ultimately I managed to clean the sweater.
It was not until the next day that the sober and chastened child called me up to apologize. “Thank you SOOOO much,” the kid contritely cooed. I told him it was no big deal and that he should just forget about it and pretend that the entire evening didn’t happen. It was then that he asked, “So, uh, I could come over there now if you liked… and apologize in person!” I regretfully told him that after seeing him covered with his own vomit, and indeed being covered with it myself, it is unlikely that I could muster the libido to accept any more contrition. And thus I hung up. And that is how I saw in the bouncing baby New Year!
