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December 31, 1996, Tuesday

Again I worked on the sign at the Rising Sun Bakery. The paint was drying very slowly because of the extremely high humidity and warm temperatures (which made indoor air nearly as humid as outdoor air). Jen and others hung out with me while I worked, though, so there was never a dull moment. I even got a free sandwich that someone neglected to pick up.

I slept until maybe 6pm, but that wasn't much sleep since I was still awake after 3pm.

I ran across Deya as I went to the Rising Sun Bakery to continue work on the sign. But the bakery was pretty much closed, and so Deya and I attempted to visit Persad and Theresa, but both were WORKING tonight, Theresa at Millers and Persad at the C&O. This didn't end up being a big problem, though; soon we ran across Matthew Hart and we three went to that awful crashpad in the Wertland Apartments. This is when I had my first contact with Vanna the Increasing Gothic Punk Rock Girl and Cecelia the Brazilian Girl since their cross-country travels. They, along with Morgan Anarchy and eventually Jesse pretty much joined us at this point (the selfish and austere scene in the Wertland Apartments is uniformly worse than the cool if somewhat roofless energy put out by post-Big Fun Aquarians).

We went in Matthew's Vomit Comet to Barracks Road to get some booze. Wouldn't you know, the ABC (Alcohol Beverage Control) store that is normally open until 9pm on THIS BIGGEST DRINKING NIGHT OF THE YEAR elected to close at 6pm. That meant we had to settle for Beast Ice and Carlo Rossi Paisano at Krogers. It was now doubtful that any of us would go into blackout.

The big problem when we returned to the Corner was that we had pretty much no place to hang out. John my housemate was to be having a "doo dee doo" (read "formal") party at my house, and it seemed tasteless to crash that until the witching hour. So we ended up hanging out on 13th Street, drining vino and beast ice. Some on Matthew's High School age friends came by (including the infamous and trendy "triplets," about whom tonight I spread the rumour that they had originally been quadruplets but had devoured the fourth in the womb). We relocated to the front porch of a big brick house that a few months ago had somehow been moved a hundred or so feet to Wertland, beside an old-folks home (the moved house will also hold old folks some day, methinks).

At some point the cops showed up in a paddy wagon and a cruiser. It wasn't looking good for us. We couldn't just run away, and we all had cups of vino by this point. But the cop who came up to us was nice, and we reciprocated such pleasantry. We agreed without contest to move on, and he continued on his way.

An idea crossed my mind to maybe perform live music at my house with the likes of Zachary (who had by now joined our contingent) and Morgan. But we lost Zachary immediately after he agreed to the plan. So I decided at length to take a group of friends to the Downtown Mall in my Dodge Dart. I don't know who all rode along. I think Zachary and others went independently in his car. On the Mall, I first went into bozART, which for some reason was open, and chatted with A. Faith and others, mostly about putting together a bozART web page. They had good chips and salsa there, too. And I partook of what amounted to a mini-opening.

In front of Millers, Zach and I did some a'capello thing with words such as "Accept Satan" sprinkled in gratuitously. Due to the good warm weather and the fact that it was New Years Eve, the mall was crowded with humanity. Theresa was busy but friendly. Her friend, the new gothic girl who is the lover of Monster Boy, was there too, all gothed out. She, "Monster Girl," used to be the luver of Kiki, aka Bad Sex, you know.

Back at my house I chatted more with the John and a number of pretty girls he'd invited over to what was supposed to be a formal heavy-drinking affair but what in fact was an informal and easy-going dinner party. One of the girls there mentioned that I resemble Leaf Phoenix, and that got me into talking about the Cuomo family. I went to College with and was friends with Leaves Cuomo before the ascendance of Weezer. Leaves' brother, Rivers Cuomo, is, it turns out, the lead singer/guitarist for Weezer. The Cuomo kids both grew up on a commune with Leaf and River Phoenix, who both ended up as actors (the latter of course dying tragically in a drug overdose). Leaves Cumo had his own share of tragedy; north of Oberlin he suffered brain trauma from a serious auto accident in a car piloted by none other than the Eriq of my tale "A Somewhat Fictionalized Account of the Goings on Between Jim Eriqiqer and Eriq Schliqer during the Fall of 1993."

We did end up playing a little live music in my room. Me or Vanna the Increasing Gothic Punk Rock Girl on guitar (she plays real crappy) and Zachary banging on things for percussion while we all sang random spontaneous lyrics in drunken voices.

When came the New Year, we were watching the teevee. I was with Deya, Matthew, Zachary, and Morgan. It was their custom to beat each other up at the new year. And so we did. Gently. Then SOMEONE broke bottles in the street. An orgy of glass decycling ensued. All the bottles in our heaping recycling bin were soon reduced to tiny fragments, then the same fate met the bottles in the neighbors' recycling bins. Some bottles were also aimed at windows at the NMR facility in the back yard, but none hit their intended targets there. When all the bottles in the house were destroyed (an expeditionary force even went into Elizabeth's room in pursuit of bottles) we started drinking a bottle of Carlo given to us by Deya's mother in hopes of finishing and throwing that bottle too. Then I joined a bottle-seeking contingent that went all the way to 14th street in search of bottles. We found some, as well as some unopened beers in a cooler, on the corner of Wertland and 14th. Returning to my place, we saw the cops were there.

So we went to Comet to phone back and see what the situation was. But we could raise no one. On another mission back to my house via the back way, we came across Vanna the Increasing Gothic Punk Rock Girl hiding in the bushes. Later, we saw the street had been closed so workers could manually sweep up all the glass. Poor man's fireworks.

We figured the cops had gone, so we walked by the workers and asked in naive tones what had transpired. The cops were gone, so we entered the house. Deya was the only one not passed out and she'd actually had to talk to the cops; apparently they'd simply said not to throw any more bottles.

Meanwhile Morgan Anarchy, Vanna the Increasing Gothic Punk Rock Girl and Cecelia the Brazilian Girl had passed out in the living room. They'd been up since 6am for some reason.

One of the friends-of-the-house, Ansley, came by. She said she had to go get her New Year's Kiss from someone, so she figured she'd go get it from some former boyfriend. It sounded ridiculous to me. By then again, Deya had already given me a New Year's Kiss.

I'd thought the evening was going to be more complex than all of this. I'd though Jen Fariello was going to come by. I was disappointed that she didn't, but then again, I wonder how she would have fit in amongst the punk rock mayhem that had ensued.

Welcome to 1997, the late 90s.

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