Fantastic is really just the word. I went to sleep dreaming of bizarre continuations to the night's activities, but the preceding reality wasn't much less odd.
This was the first time I'd been to Raleigh's "First Night" New Year's celebration, the name of which was the cause of much initial confusion on my part, it having reminded me more of nuptial practices in Braveheart than of some annual hullabaloo. I nearly skipped it -- many thanks to Diana for changing my mind.
Sanity is such a tenuous thing. Looking from without into a room filled with old music, colored lights, and gyrating bodies, one knows upon which side of one's bread the butter resides, and may pass by with confidence of right actions taken. But if one should find oneself within that room, with music thumping numbingly through nerve and marrow and discarded jackets piling ever higher in one's helplessly outstretched arms, one's moral compass would spin wildly as strongholds of right and reason crumble. One begins to mull over the possibility of flailing one's limbs like an epileptic, to wonder at the apparent ecstasy of one's erstwhile acquaintances, even to question the existence of a quiet, stable world beyond walls dappled with spinning flecks of light.
In such straits did I find myself last night, after the first blurred bout of drunken orgies. That was disco. That was peer pressure to the bursting point. That was when I threw down the jackets and woolen gauntlets, took up my father's sword and struck out seeking the legendary Fayetteville Street, where betrayal and heartbreak awaited.
To make a brief story from a long and tiresome run, I failed to find the others and eventually reunited with the Trio Disco (Erica, Diana and Hannah) who had by then switched to ballroom dancing. Cha-cha (cha? cha-cha-cha?) lessons and hot girl-on-girl action followed -- more than I would usually suggest with that glib phrase. That was a new experience -- the dancing, not the action, as there's no "guy" in "girl-on-girl", though I hardly need give my opinion of that fact -- a new experience, I was saying, since before I'd taken part only in the "slow dancing" popular among middle-schoolers. Diana and I both became passably competent, I think, though the unfamiliar steps forced me to focus more on my feet than on my wonderfully patient dance partner.
Then came pointless tram rides, huddles for warmth, the inexplicably much-celebrated acorn drop, smashing fireworks, pancakes and hashbrowns, and the longish drive home at 2 A.M. It was the best night I've had in a long while, though there's something I've yet to resolve...
Oh, and next time out, I'm back to hitching rides.
posted on Sunday, January 02, 2005
|
|
