Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [109]
friday: the eighth
sixty-four
It’s Friday morning-borderline-afternoon here in Sammy. When I awoke, I didn’t recognize my own body at first, as it was still unfamiliarly clad in Dexy’s dress, the polyester sticking to my body with the clammy dampness of drunken night sweats.
As for my corporeal condition, I, apparently, out of the goodness of my heart, volunteered to mop up the floor with my tongue before leaving the party last night. And my whole head now is pounding in retaliatory pain, as if I had spent the whole evening trying to jam it up my own ass. (Which isn’t true, even metaphorically speaking.)
It’s five glasses of water, four ibuprofens, three cups of coffee, two vitamin C tablets, and one immobile hour later. If you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of blowing off my fake job this week, so I don’t have to be anywhere (Bethany’s) or do anything (babysit Marin) until later this afternoon, which gives me several hours to document that which I was too polluted to write about in anything but semiliterate prose last night. As is to be expected, my memory fades in and out, but I will try to piece together an approximation of the evening’s events to the best of my hungover capabilities.
I’m doing this mostly because I feel obligated to finish what I’ve started.
sixty-five
The Social Activists’ Care. Okay? karaoke party is held every Thursday night at Come, the same place that hosted Shit Lit. Last night there were not one, not two, but three snarling bouncers to keep out any wannabe do-gooders who were not, in MILF parlance, OTB. This was a strictly OTB crowd, and as the Cerberean gatekeepers checked and cross-checked Jessica Darling +1 on the various VIP lists, I couldn’t help but think of this as passage through to a very special kind of hell.
In the spirit of Zagat, Come is all about “manufactured scuzziness,” a “Disney-meets-Dionysus ‘Dive Bar’ with bottle service on the LES.” The “grimy,” “no frills,” “dimly lit” lounge is the perfect space for the “glossy,” “all-frills,” “megawatt crowd” who want to “escape the B&T scene on 27th Street” and “pretend they’re slumming.” It was packed to capacity with a melting pot of beautiful people who can afford to pay the $250 door fee and $250 per song, all proceeds going directly to whatever pet cause of the week is chosen by the Social Activists. I could name-drop here, but I won’t because mentioning these boldfaced names would imply that I was impressed, daresay honored, to share the same rarefied air with a certain underage movie actress known for cutting cocaine with Strawberry Quik, or the pop princess who is better known for the inflation-deflation-reinflation of her funbags than for her music.
And these were just the obvious A-listers in attendance. Dexy kept on pointing out other New York notables whom I didn’t recognize at all. The financier’s son who hasn’t let his marriage to an icy blond heirhead slow down his habit for squiring hard-bodied homos for bathroom blow jobs. The deejay paranoid that snorting crystal meth will wreck her nose job, and smoking it will give her jack-o’-lantern meth mouth, so she asks her unpaid intern to administer it via her asshole.
“THAT’S CALLED A ‘BOOTY BUMP,’ OR ‘KEISTERING!’” Dexy shouted matter-of-factly, her neck swiveling around the room as she spoke. “AND BEFORE YOU GET ALL WORRIED, LET ME ASSURE YOU THAT I DON’T KNOW THIS FROM FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE….”
“HOW DO YOU KNOW ALL THIS?” I shouted back. (Okay, I don’t want to pull an Owen Meany here, so just assume that any conversation that took place throughout this whole evening was shouted, all caps, in bold, and italicized, as that’s the only way anyone could be heard over the karaoke caterwauling.)
“How do you not?” she asked, her head still twisting around, her eyes a-goggle.
With all this sordid gossip in my brain, it was difficult for me to remember that it was all supposed to be for a good cause. This week’s proceeds went toward the Global Fund, a nonprofit that helps fight AIDS, TB, and malaria in Africa. It