Adam Ant is my boyfriend.
I’ve been listening to Adam and the Ants’ best-of CD in the car a lot lately. It tells a little story that I like to hear, in which a messy punky garage band slowly becomes slickly pop, in a time when S&M was still taboo and metrosexuality existed without a name.
last night
Like fellow online writer Pinky, I enjoy people-watching to the extent that it’s almost a hobby. Or a sport. So I’ll take a page from her domain and try my hand at some written observations here.
Last night we went to a house party. I had been a little worried that I wouldn’t have fun, because I tend to worry about petty things. I hoped that I would see someone I knew there, in case Tad and his friends ended up huddled in a corner telling inside jokes while I looked on. The party ended up being very, very fun.
It started as a spooky all-J.Crew-looking-white-people affair, but quickly devolved into a scenester scene with enough regular people (by my standards) to make it all comfortable and good. The house had been a gay church, everyone kept saying. There were pews and what looked like a choir loft, to be sure. The DJ worked on the altar. Instead of stained glass or plaster icons lining the wall, there was a slide show of the finest fetish photography money can download.
There was one bar upstairs and one bar down. The woman tending the upstairs made the drinks way, way, way too strong. So I had two from her and one from below, and so it was exactly as if I’d had five. One minute I was fine — craving a lime while politely amused. The next minute I was totally freaking smashed, in a totally new way for me. If my head tilted more than 45 degrees, I had to put it down on the nearest horizontal surface, close my eyes and take a tiny, tiny nap. If my head was not tilted, I wanted to dance. Mostly we danced.
There was a boy there who looked just like a young Brad Pitt. He danced like he was doing the Wave of the breakdancing era, but combined with new millenium sensibility and Brad Pitt-ness. At the beginning of the party, of course we just observed him and nodded in stingy approval. I pegged him for a dance student who worked a copier by day. By the end of the party, he was our friend. He confided that he was self-taught — hours on ecstasy in front of his mirror at night had been the inspiration for his style.
There was a girl there with the same hair style and glasses as me. Her boyfriend looked like a younger version of the surly, swarthy alcoholic I used to date. This girl was a total hipster wearing the stereotypical cool outfit — flowered western-cut polyester shirt and likewisely vintage pants. Her shoes were clunky, I’m sure… didn’t see. In short, she wore the outfit I always want to wear but don’t for fear that I’ll look too dykey or just plain frumpy instead of hip. I told her all this. She told me that she coveted my ensemble. (Black obi-tie blouse, black skirt with yellow pinstripes on the bias, cheap-ass knee-high boots.) We preened, using each other as potential reflections, and then, satisfied, moved on.
I saw a girl I haven’t seen in about thirteen years. A former ballerina, and she looks the exact same. She semi-recently dated a guy I used to want to date. We did a micro-catch-up and then a micro diagnosis of her failed relationship with our mutual acquaintance. I found out she works at a retail establishment I frequent, but I’ve never happened to catch her there. It was good to see her. She looked happy, and I was glad.
There was an Asian girl in a cheongsam, accompanied by a white guy. I imagined that she gave us a sheepish look. Thank godfully, people our age usually don’t stare at me and Tad like some older people will. So many members of our generation (X, baby) are the products of pioneer interracial love, so they don’t bat eyes at a Mexican/white woman with a Chinese man. And no one of any age ever looks twice at Asian women with Caucasian men, I guess because any trend white American soldiers start is automatically non-taboo. Tad and I always jokingly refer to ourselves and other ethnicity-hopping daters as sell-outs. And we always imagine that the female Asian sell-outs are looking at us sheepishly.
I could go on and on about the implications of this and about stereotypical judgments made about the more common interracial couple combos, but I won’t. In fact, this is probably the last time I’ll discuss it to this extent on this site. It really shouldn’t matter, so I won’t make an issue of it. But Tad and I will still make tacky jokes. That is our bond. Tasteless cultural observations are the blood that flows through our hearts, making them like two hearts that beat as one.
That’s all.
(I knew I couldn’t sustain an entry about people other than me.)
