This is the good side of wrecked, where the granite ball swung right past me and only hit the broad side of my addled brain on the way back.
My ashtray is too heavy for my arms.
My walls are covered in posterboard and poetry and art, about Samumrais and little red spiders and flying monkeys of death and a couple of preferred sexual positions.
Kaff drew a pair of eyes, one in crayon and one in marker, on opposites ends of a rectangle of paper, and they peer out at me...
And it seemed again as if almost the entire world was there, but only half the crowd as last year - so moving between rooms was almost without tangling of limbs.
And as he was leaving, Marc kissed my cheek one last time and announced in a hard whisper "You are the last bastion of peace, there are no more parties left like this one... Don't ever stop." Just as I was thinking that I wasn't sure that I could do this again.
Maybe with help.
And every year there is a drooling idiot that I hadn't intended to invite, last year it was Jeff and this year it was Ratboy, and all the women followed my instructions and announced that they were lesbians...
But that never works anymore.
And there was the mushroom couch, always the last crowd, the old crew from Discreet - complete with air-drum tribute to Chuckies and the retelling of his candy-flipping story from last year.
No candy flipping this year, though - just Greg who'd drunk too much of the home-made wine he'd brought, passed out on the bed and me checking his breathing every few minutes, and Drew who'd announced that he was skipping ALLLL the parties this weekend because he was antibiotics and a lithuanian who can't drink isn't alive.
So we gave him mushrooms.
They didn't hit.
So he took some more.
They didn't hit.
The last batch sent him whizzing back in the hammock chair and singing at me while Kaff and I danced, and danced, and all the jaws were draped across the floor.
Holy shit can she dance. Jaws were draping the floor but her arms were around my waist.
And the Great Big Bag of Weed is empty now and crumpled to the ground, and the Great Big Bag Of Shrooms did a tour of the room and when Alexe said "this is the weak stuff" so they all took a whole bunch and the sunrise was greater than life. Again.
And the sushi was a hit, and my fingers are still sticky with rice and the beer bottles are scooped up and the plates are in the trash bags and my brain is squashed up against the floor
And when I say "please don't play with my nipples"
I mean that I don't want you playing with my nipples.
But being pinned to the floor and painted and markered from head to toe was fun.
There is a dragonfly crawling up my back and a red dragon ornamenting my chest and smudged in the light of the Last Green Lightbulb (the rest are back to sweet old white) it looks suspiciously like cherry-red chest hair.
There is a happy face with three eyes in the crook of my elbow.
They were scented Crayolas.
And Marquis, I wish I understood how you do it, gallivanting about a city as alive as mine, quipping ceaselessly.
I'm tired.
I'm wrecked.
It's a good wrecked, but fucked if I know if I'll be doing it again next year...
Time for someone else to lead, I think. I'll hand you my addressbook.
You roll the sushi, you throw the party, you play host and throw wit at every ethereal passenger that wanders through your door.
I'll help you clean up in the morning.
And I fell asleep to the sound of the humping hampster as the mushroom kids played with porn (on a machine that had BETTER still run Everquest next time I boot it up) squashed up against Ollie with fingers intertwined and hair everywhere.
It was warm, and I'll put some thought into it like you asked.
But not today.
Today I am thinking back on beautiful things that people have said, on Piffoo showing up in full clown gear with ballons that are still occupying my living room ceiling, and his little horn and more energy than the absinthe had left in all of us.
And I am thinking back on the insanity
The hugs
The warmth
The nerf dart guns
The oracle that was seated on a high brown stool in my kitchen spouting love advice who fixed everyone but me
"I have a crush on your best friend."
"My best friend being Marc."
"Yup, that'd be the one. He ought to know tho, it's been a good seven years..."
"I don't think he knows, man, trust me... And besides, you're one of the boys..."
"I know. But at least I got to tell someone. "
I wonder if I will lose them, but I don't want to wonder that.
I want to wonder how many beer caps I will be stepping on until we've found them all.
Found one. ;)