last night

I showed up at "The Queen" or "Queens" or whatever it was at 4 yesterday afternoon for c's birthday/graduation celebration. The Queen is a really odd place to be at 4pm because the walls and lighting have a dusty indifference to anything that's happening in the outside world. There was a mirrored wall and dozens of relatives and a lot of drinking and only the blazing sunlight lighting up the front window to remind us of how awfully, awfully early it was. I sat at a "kids" table with C, her boyfriend, and some other people and at first it was really awkward. When you walk into a party there's always a certain adjustment to the mood of the place, but with The Queen, and with the people who had begun to adapt to The Queen there was the timeless awkward restraint that comes with very consciously celebrating something where you feel you should either be clinking a glass for a speech or crawling under the table.

I was sitting across from B and I liked him a great deal, he had a really soft face and his beard made it even friendlier, with hair flowing down the sides of his face till about his ears, but it could have naturally flowed on down to his shoulders. He works with computers. I drank several glasses of prosecco really quickly. There was also j, who speaks very loudly but is really fascinating, and c, who is a difficult person to celebrate if you don't have a parent's zeal for humiliating her.

apparently there were some printers in the mid 1700s who, protesting their working conditions and the relatively plush lives of the cats their bosses kept in their factory, chased down, tried, convicted and hung dozens of them. C has flabbergasting views from her window, a little boy said it looked like the statue of liberty was waving to the sea.

and then we went to char 4, a whiskey bar near c's house on smith, and drank whiskey. it was modern looking and had tons of whiskey and a hilariously hearty menu. i had a couple glasses of kentucky gentleman, which cost a dollar an ounce. there's a real sweetness in having such down at heel offerings in a place for connoisseurs, to appreciation for that gut-turning drink for any budget. some people have a dep wine soul, and it's kind to grant them a place on that broad spectrum of whiskey loving, at any price.

later i deliberately took a convoluted route to where i was going in williamsburg, but the subway made it even more complicated and i got where i was going quite late and it was sold out already. finding obscure parties takes you through so much emotion. there is the initial worry that you aren't going to the right place, that the numbers will skip suddenly, that N Kent should actually be S, that the numbers shouldn't be rising because you're going down and it's all much too quiet, but then it opens up and you start to hear the thumping and the pairs going home together, picking each other up and offering to read their iphone verse. and then the whole herd emerges, leaning sulkily against chainlink fences and smoking many, many cigarettes, desensitized to match the big black bouncers urging them out of the area. i want to say something about how improbable and exciting it is to come across this herd in the wilderness, like a carnivorous party cat sneaking up on wildebeest , the long awaited camp.

taking the train back i was reading, and had been e.b. white's personal essays. they were so silly on the train, when drunk. nothing could have felt stuffier. when you just want to crawl in a crevice, reading someone so articulately lambast the world around them, the adorableness of the volunteer fire department, the overexcitability of the radio's hurricane coverage, it's like that guy who talks too much when you're high. e.b. white doesn't make it look easy.