Malcolm and I grumbled all the way to Park Slope Saturday night. As I got ready, got gas, bought wine, and coffee for the road, I kept muttering why why why. It seemed so unfair, so cruel, to have to drive all that way to drink and be merry, when all I wanted to do was read and sleep and watch T.V. But my best friend Angela Bernice Delecke and her boy, the Excellent Urs Ross were having The Holiday Party, and I knew it was anathema to skip it.

Their apartment was festive and warm, and we relaxed into early drinks and chatter. Tadd poured Prosecco and mandarin vodka, a heady combination, and down the rabbit hole I went. Couples came in from the cold bearing wine. We all acted lovely and refined, as we are, and exchanged totally pleasant pleasantries.

I had decided somewhere around Larchmont that I was going to be alienating and mendacious, and not engage in a single serious conversation all night. “I’m studying to be a butcher” was one idea that I don’t believe I actually practiced. I did for sure mention that I planned to dip my balls in the chocolate fountain, and I’m nearly certain that act of treachery was not performed. I can tell you that I used a plastic sword to slather marshmallows and fruit slices with the burbling brown goo, which I deposited into the waiting mouths of various friends and strangers.

Many of the guests, longtime friends of Angela and Urs, are favorites of Malcolm and I. We’ve all been tubing together in Phoenicia, spent sordid afternoons eating clam strips and riding the Cyclone at Coney, and consumed enough PBR to ensure a bond for life.

I had already started wielding a sword when we descended to the basement to break open the pinata. It was here that we found the seat of our collective crimes of that night. At the tiki themed bar we took shots of rum from the tequila donkey. Jackie used nunchucks to strike the first blow to the pinata and Brian Urbano, a lawyer I think, finished the job with his skull. I was engaged in swordplay and extemporaneous songwriting we couldn’t remember the moment after, and I drank anything that was put in fron of me.

We drank recklessly. We sang and smoked and swashbuckled. We danced with abandon. We became something else. It was the sort of party that could have happened in East Egg in the second decade of the twentieth century. I awoke in the guestroom wearing no pants but my party shirt and I knew a boy must have put me to bed. I checked for my jewelry and appendages and all seemed in tact. Malcolm was there next to me breathing.

It was a truly sublime soiree. Hats and pants off to Angela and Urs, for bringing together so many awesome people, serving some fabulous food and letting us drink all their booze. I salute you.

It’s Monday and I’m returning to what has become routine and yet it seems some alternate reality; only two days in time, as we conceive it, but I can’t stop thinking: Why am I here and not there, living my real life, as a tequila-shooting pirate in a basement in Brooklyn?