Actual party report

Jack's apartment in Brooklyn last weekend

1. She looks like the Statue of Liberty, face-wise, and she’s wearing a matador shirt. She’s a dancer. This is what people keep telling me. Not that she dances but that she is a dancer. (Later at the party, people danced in the living room. The dancer was in the kitchen, talking, permitting her wrists to be held.) The word dancer is spoken the same way my friend described her maid of honor’s mother as Chilean—“her mom’s Chilean”—friendly envy, glint of anger.

2. The dancer’s carriage reminds me of a Vincent D’Onofrio clip I’ve never been able to resurface. He’s teaching actors. He’s saying, “You’ve been told, haven’t you? Didn’t someone tell you? Acting”—his hands are in front of his hips—“acting begins here. Your groin. Your power is in your groin.” He stalks forward. His power is in his groin. At the beginning of this paragraph I misremembered the quote as “Hips, your power is in your hips,” which would’ve been bad enough.

3. In general, people at the party went to Bard. Tom, for example. When I told my friend Eva, who went to Bard, about my new friend Tom, she asked what he was like. I said he was feline and languid with big sad eyes. She said, “They’re all like that.” I assumed she was exaggerating until I met Jack and Finn and Cyrus.

4. Before the party began in earnest, Jack and Cyrus and I spoke haltingly in the kitchen about the future of the internet as it relates to artificial intelligence, a future of which we know nothing. We did the best we could.

5. Jack is charismatic in the manner of a young Christian Slater. He has permitted me to crash on his couch for three days, culminating in this party. My friend Ben said, “Three days? Doesn’t he like you?” before letting me crash on his couch for two days. This wasn’t Ben’s fault, a fact the paragraph acknowledges reluctantly.

6. In general, people at the party work at Metrograph, the chic downtown repertory cinema movie theater. Historically I’ve enjoyed telling people that Metrograph is staffed by the cast of Daria, but it turns out people are more cheerful when they aren’t working.

7. Not everyone at the party works at Metrograph. Jack is in the arts (nonprofit). Pansy writes about architecture. Her sister is a tutor. Esme has an unusual accent and a shambolic charisma. If that sounds like a lot of charisma for one party, it is.

8. When they are old, they will be everyone’s favorite old people. When I responded skeptically to an offer of mushroom chocolate, I was reassured that the chocolate itself was good, too.

9. As to whether ———— is still dating ————, reports were initially mixed.

10. Sabrina told me that if I loved Ashbery I should read the Berrigans—both Ted and his son. Glimmers of larger structures. At the bookstore where I work now, the architecture section has one book on bridges and dozens on communism.

11. Walking to Jack’s from the train, I realized I was only a couple blocks from the apartment where I first watched Game of Thrones. My then-girlfriend convinced me I should watch it and she was right. I was new to sobriety, to spending time on purpose. I was afraid I’d already met all the poets I’d ever meet. At her apartment it snowed for days. It was narcotic, the snow on the brownstones in the windows behind the screen. The binge itself. She wanted to tell me the most popular fan theory about the characters’ backstories; it would explain where the show was going. I asked her to wait. I didn’t know how much I wanted to know about the future.