LAST NIGHT’S LIT PARTY… Bookforum Release Party!

1. Mike Winston works at The Barbarian Group and takes his Scotch on the rocks. 2. Cheers! Amy Bryant, blogger and budding PR maven. 3. Literature as bar napkin.

Wednesday night marked the latest of Bookforum’s increasingly notorious Issue Release parties, this one at Hotel Americano. I’d never seen the hotel before (hell, I’d never even heard of it and my husband works around the corner), but Grupo Habita’s swankadelic new space fits in perfectly with surrounding Chelsea’s arty, clubby scene. It’s actually a welcome, shiny sliver of cool in an otherwise desolate corner of the hood.

1. Hey Portlandia, I got your next episode right here: Full House flashback? You got it, dude. 2. Do you see the man in the white shoes? He’s was too busy to talk to me. Why? Because he was otherwise occupied. Being awesome. 3. No, seriously. Best Dancer of the BookForum party, hands down. The white shoes are magical, but he remains a mystery.

Since the Bookforum party was straight booze — no lit chaser — I don’t have any specific readings to recount, so I’m left with only the flashes of the party that still remain in my brain after three, four, five glasses of champagne. Furry sheepskin stools, Kanye blasting through the speakers, woman with red lipstick and Flock of Seagulls haircut.

Really, how does one write up a party when it was spent squished between beautiful young things all gyrating to Top 40 hits, your vision blurred from the sweat generated by communal body heat?

Perhaps I should just plagiarize the Last Night’s Party Blog:

I vowed not to look back and I didn’t — I just walked backwards a little slower than I usually do. But it was the least I could do… It was the least I could do since she skipped class, missed sleep, ditched her friends and drank rosé even though she hates rosé… just to hang out with me…It wasn’t until I landed and Harry asked me what was the best party I had been to over there that I realized that I didn’t even care about parties right now. I cared about… you know what I cared about. In the cab I thought about how we didn’t need to talk to communicate. We didn’t need an indie soundtrack to control the mood. Or gogo dancers to heighten the senses. Or alcohol to make it mindless. But now reality sets in and I realize that I will have to adapt to the bullshit called “my everyday” again. Just when I was ready to learn a third language. Just when I was ready to eat sushi rolls that only come with Philadelphia cream cheese.

Sorta poetic, mostly incoherent, a little ridiculous. The style of Larry Mannequin’s Diary perfectly mimics the style of last night’s party. A Bookforum Issue release celebration is hot, loud, crowded, a little obnoxious…and all over much too soon.

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— Cassie Hay is a regular contributor to The Outlet. Her essay, “Queen of Pain,” is in the current issue of New Letters.