by Alan Osi
And so, somehow, we managed to power through; the venue was ready. Around seven o’clock, Wally came to set up his equipment, as he opened at nine o’clock. This was more than we’d expected from him. But, it was welcome, because it showed he took it as seriously as his little mind allowed. So we left it all in his hands, for a while, and rushed off to our respective apartments to shower, fall into our resplendent finery, and let festival become our skin.
The very air around me seemed to throb pure, holy anticipation.
Night fell.
114. ANNIE
Yesterday afternoon ended in an unusually vibrant sunset. I took it as a good omen. I had to concede a certain excitement about tonight, when I would go to a party called “The Moondust Sonatas” with my friend Elba, who was very plugged in to the scene and had invited me along.
I was slightly embarrassed by my eagerness; it was out of phase with the standard New York attitude. We wrapped ourselves in protective angst—it was how we got through the day, how we dealt with melting summers that reeked of rotting trash, the everyday battles for rank and status, and the way the city stripped us naked. It was how we showed we belonged. And how else could we keep our heads in the face of the occasional, fleeting, sublime moments of perfection the city offered? It was a garbage heap shot through with diamonds. And so we shrugged and told ourselves that nothing mattered.
The outfit I chose was simple, retro-classic. Black dress with my favorite belt, which was white, leather, from Doltze’s Vida Vibrant collection. Black flats, so I could dance, pearl earrings, pearl necklace. Over it I wore a little red jacket, in the modern style.
Around nine o’clock, Elba came to my apartment, and we pre-gamed a little. Then we called a car service and went downstairs when the cab honked its arrival. I was just a touch blurry, and I liked it that way.
As the city flowed by outside our windows, Elba regaled me with recent stories from her fascinating life. And I listened, hoping maybe tonight would become a story like this for me. As Elba was telling a tale of how she and a guy had, in a hotel room, nakedly shot the fire extinguishers off at each other until they’d caused such a ruckus security was pounding on the door, the city outside our windows flowed to a stop. We were here.
The street was nondescript, less part of a neighborhood than a huddled collection of industrial buildings, cutting jaggedly into dark sky. Of course, this was only the backdrop: The counterpoint to the still silence of the street was the building; we were sitting in front of the font from which flowed the blood jangling steady boom of bass.
And lights glowed through the lower two stories of the building, pulsing rhythmically along with the music, and there was a line out the door. It went about halfway down the block. I knew then—looking at the people standing and waiting; looking at their expressions, filled with laughter or cool anticipation—that this would indeed be a night.
“Oh my God, check out that dress,” said Elba, about a girl who seemed to have rolled around in glue and ostrich feathers. I laughed and pulled out a twenty to pay the driver. Elba took my twenty, added her part, got change, and then, with an intake of breath, I opened the door and joined the crowd milling on the sidewalk.
The sound of all their voices mingled with the muffled boom of bass. The line shuffled slowly forward. The clothes, as Elba had noted, were wild.
In truth, I felt not understated, but underdressed. These girls had gone all out. Some looked like covers of American Glam catalogues, others were pure bohemia: fingerless gloves, fohawks, that kind of thing. Individuality abounded, so much so, it almost curved back into an odd sort of conformity.
Yet, glamour was here, true and simple and shining. Dotted between the people who’d clearly gone too far were queens and princes of America. Young, fast, and cunning. I even saw a few people I thought I recognized: artists or musicians or models. I guess there was no VIP entrance. I liked that.
Elba grabbed my hand, putting an end to my ruminating and people watching. We went forward, until the crowd absorbed us.
115. WINSTON
I hadn’t been able to let it go: the problem of moondust, this drug corrupting the youth. It was an affront to everything I believed. I was a priest, and my duty was to shepherd the souls of men. I came across the narcotic in the course of my duties, saw it corrupting everything it touched, turning souls from the light. How could I forget?
I prayed every night, I begged God to intervene. To my shame, I did more as well. When people came into confession and spoke of illicit substances, I asked them which ones. I asked if they’d heard of moondust, or done it. My queries were sin, violations of my duties and oath. That I sinned in service of greater good still it haunted me. But, I persevered, and God granted me the lead I sought.
A parishioner told me she heard of a moondust party happening tonight, here, and gave the address at which I now stood. What could I do to stop it? Bound as I was by my calling, the only tool I had was worship. It didn’t feel like enough.
Still I came here, to the scene of the party, to pray. I stood outside now, watching the people go by me into the party and prayed: For their souls. For salvation. For the world. For myself. For God to finally act, and disallow such blasphemy. For the ability to make a difference. For the return of Jesus instead of the coming of the beast. For peace.
In the void, where God’s voice is heard, there was no sound.
116. YVONETTE
And I paid the cover charge to a dreadfully skinny boy and who’s smile
Looked like Jolly Roger’s.
So I was inside. Finally.
And how did I feel?
I was a fem-bot,
Every emotion I’d ever had I had shed.
Tonight, nothing was left.
Nothing but
Cocaine I’d taken earlier, to replace.
Feel.
Numbness.
Like electric dead light
Or neon in my bloodstream.
The chemical taste dripping from my sinuses
Raining down inside me
Until I wasn’t real.
And the music lit explosives in my limbs,
And I was dancing toward the center of the room,
Everything
Forgotten.
117. ELBA
We paid the cover, twenty bucks each, and I knew it would be worth it. I had a smile on my face and yearning. I wanted alcohol, I wanted a memory, and I wanted what was promised tonight: a new experience. I wanted to be shown something I’d never seen before.
Because when you came right down to it, life was a battle against boredom. You go through it, searching for the next high or the next lover or the next donut. Whatever you’re into. And you go from thing to thing because none of them ever suffices for long, every color fades.
So we were here: I locked arms with Annie, whom I loved for her simple, unassuming, natural elegance, and we pushed our way inside.
First, there was a long dark hall, painted black, the walls and floor bearing scars of the past, and lights at the end, colored and flashing. We all shuffled forward, mostly two-by-two, because the space was that narrow.
The walk built the tension, there was nothing to see, except the backs of the people in front of you. But, you could hear the music, throbbing like a second heartbeat, adrenaline-pumped and hungry. It pulsed, it filled every nook and cranny, shaking walls, floor, and ceiling.
What played now was a remix of a Daniel Johnston song, “Devil Town,” put to a dubstep beat. It was fucking hot. Daniel was singing:
All my friends were vampires
Didn’t know they were vampires
Turns out I was a vampire myself
In the Devil Town…
Something about the beat changed the feel of the lyrics, turned them from downers to cold truth, beauty. Or maybe it was the event itself, the mingling voices of people singing along. Here, in this moment, we were all feeling the same things, we were all one. The best parties felt that way. For one night, stran
gers were your closest friends.
Annie squeezed my arm as the hallway unfolded like a flower, and suddenly we were in the main room.
All the people were singing: I was living in a Devil Town…
And the walls were also black. But, there were crimson highlights: red glitter on the walls, on the floor, and the lights were bright and colorful. Somehow the effect was the illusion the party was happening in the infinity of outer-space, with glittering stars. And were those balloons, on the walls? They were: black and occasionally red. There was a bar on the far wall; between us and it was a sea of humanity, swaying to the music as if the sound were tides.
A funny thing happened as we started partying. It was like time unhinged. And I mean, before I got really drunk or anything: the sequence of events went away. I remember only the people’s faces, which either were intensely into the party or kind of shocked stiff, almost zombie-like. People were just staring into space, as if they’d seen something they couldn’t understand. But, that just made the whole thing that much more interesting, and the DJ was amazing. I hadn’t heard of him. But, he was really perfect, playing the mood of the room as if it were a grand piano.
It was rare, special.
So we drank screwdrivers, and we danced, and the night passed: everything got blurrier, more disconnected, and the people around us got more and more drugged out, it seemed—sometimes on uppers, but mostly on downers. Some were crying, some laughing hysterically like they couldn’t stop, some still just staring into space. It was kind of crazy, actually. Usually people held it together at these things. Still, the ones freaking out were in the minority. Most were dancing, like we were, inhaling life.
“Look at that,” said Annie, suddenly excited. And so I followed her pointed finger and found myself looking at the ceiling. And on the ceiling, paint spelled out the word Heaven, and an arrow pointing to stairs.
So I said, “Let’s go,” and we went, pushing our way through the crowd—hopefully toward something new.
118. HAILEY
Cameron, a guy I saw sometimes, tended the upstairs bar, both a favor to us and a favor for him. So I hung up here also, taking in the scene. It was a favor to us because we had a bunch of jobs we needed done tonight. But, Perce, Mark and I decided we shouldn’t do any of them, because distancing ourselves from moondust was the whole point of the party. It was a favor to Cam because the kid was killing it. He flashed his winning smile at all the pretty girlies and got paid like a banker.
I had my arms folded and leaned against a wall, smoking more than I should have, just to have something to do. Watching all the happy, giggly, swagger-party people come up the stairs, sure they mastered the universe and understood all her folds. I watched them go back downstairs, too, stunned and mute because they understood now how little they understood anything at all. Of course, every so often someone really flipped out, which was totally entertaining.
It went that way on moondust. Fools like Wally seemed pretty much immune though, which tonight proved useful.
Now, two girls walked up the stairs, arm in arm. One wore black and white, classic yet modern, suggesting a nice New England Waspy-type living it up in NYC before she married into money and turned into a baby-making machine. The other gave off wild child, pure and simple: a girl who was up for anything, my kind of woman. But, you could never really tell just based on appearances. I figured events would soon let us all know what was what.
Watching these unsuspecting newbies collide with something which would forever change them put me in a reflective mood. I thought of the first time we took moondust, Percival and Mark, and I. It was in the in-between place—that strange, suspended period after dropping acid, but before the feeling of the normal world completely returned, when we were settling down. We lounged in Mark’s apartment. Percival reached into his pocket for cigarettes and pulled out the instructions for how to make moondust instead, with a packet of the gray powder, written in a hand unlike any of ours. We tried to remember how we got it. One of the boys thought the guy who wrote it was made out of strawberry syrup, for God’s sake. And we were in between enough to believe in the magic of it—by luck or fate, the moon shone bright and full.
And so we stood on the roof, and we burned the newspaper. I don’t think we really believed: We had nothing to lose, and we loved the child-like wonder of it, the mysticism. We took the tiny pinch of moondust he’d given us, and we dropped it in the ash, and let it sit. Eventually we debated who should try it.
“You go,”
“No, you go,”
I don’t even remember who went first. I only remember the feeling of my whole world falling away.
I spotted the two girls looking around, trying to figure out just what went on up here, whether they should be excited or wary. The party-girl seemed drunker than her more conservative friend: to be expected, I guess. The other girl studied the room with an expression increasingly more joyful every second. Maybe I underestimated her, I thought, watching her pull on her friend’s elbow, point to the painting describing how to take moondust, and then approach one of the strategically placed bowls of the stuff all around the room. She even examined the bin marked “to go,” taking some of the small packets of powder wrapped in cellophane, perfect for purses or pockets.
Quite a few people came up here, all in various phases of discovery. Still, these two had my complete attention. The drunken girl, now curious because of her friend’s explanations, shook herself into boldness and then, rather unsteadily, crossed the room, heading straight toward Cameron. Her friend followed her, and I edged toward the bar myself, to overhear what would be said. Because of the booming music downstairs, I would need to be close: I figured this was as good a time as any to get a refill on my drink.
I missed the first part of the conversation, what they asked him. But, I heard his response.
“I guess you’ll have to try it to find out, if you’re brave enough.” he said. “You ladies need drinks?”
Drunky raised a finger as if about to say yes. But, her friend beat her to the punch, and said, “No, we’re fine. Is it safe?”
“Hell, no. But, it’s not dangerous.”
“Addictive?”
I answered this time, “It’s like nothing you could imagine. So none of your questions make sense. There’s only one way to know, and you will or you won’t.” Then, to Cameron, I said, “Gin and tonic, twist.”
“Sure thing, pretty lady.” The warmth of a smile spread, liquid, across my face, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted it to.
He winked at me and handed me a drink, on the house, of course. I walked away, back to my previous spot, to observe those two girls. I wanted to see what they would do. But, I needed to play it a little cool: If I stared too hard, they would notice. Instead, my eyes fell on three guys, who sat on one of the sofas. They didn’t seem like they belonged here.
They wore really basic hoodies, they were by far the most underdressed people here. There was something about their whole vibe: They sat with their heads together, in some discussion with heat, ignoring the women in the room. But, they looked about as straight as guys could be. The energy of it put me on high alert.
One of them broke the argument, seemingly by taking moondust. Another seemed pretty disgusted by that, and the third just shrugged. Something was definitely up with those three. So as not to be noticed staring, I turned my eyes back to the girls: They too were on the cusp of dropping moondust, nervous, obvious first-timers. Which made me realize the hoodie guy wasn’t. He didn’t have the look of someone experimenting, the shaky hesitancy. I turned back to the three men. Nothing about the guy who dropped moondust would give me more right now. But, his friends did. They sat silently. But, every once in a while they seemed to spit words at each other. One thing they did not do was hover over their friend to make sure he hadn’t died or something.
These three had all taken moondust before.
I took out my cell phone, opened my media folder, and scrolled through my p
ictures, until I found it. The photo Cameron and I took, a week ago, of the guy hanging around outside of Percival’s apartment.
I don’t know why it surprised me. But, the guy in the picture was the hoodie-dude in the middle, the one out on moondust. His hood down around his neck, he slouched almost horizontal as he sat, with his head back, and his eyes closed and darting. My blood turned to rapids.
When I felt calm enough to do it nonchalantly, I high-tailed it down the stairs, to find Percival.
119. PERCIVAL
“Should we feel guilty about this? We’re supposed to be in there. You know, helping,” said June, biting her lower lip.
“But we are helping,” I said, nuzzling her.
“How do you figure?” she said, and she pushed me away.
“‘Cause Stevie Wonder and the Dalai Lama agree, the world needs love, today.” After I said it, I almost winced. It was a cheesy thing to say, an attempted joke that fell very flat. I could only hope she’d let it go, change the subject. But, she didn’t.
“Is that what this is?” Her eyes were kind of twinkling, as if she took joy in mining the depths of my faux pas.
I decided to treat it like a serious question, not a wind-up. “There are no absolute truths,” I said. “If I answer your question, either way I answer, I’ll be creating a truth. That truth would define the future.”