Single Passage

There is nothing more lonely than crossing the Manhattan Bridge in a taxi late at night. And if the window is open, and the cold air is rushing by, it's all I can do not to point my mouth toward the Manhattan skyline and scream in the direction of all those millions of twinkling lights. The exact same view, five or six hours into the future, will make my morning as I zip, saturated by caffeine and that just-warm-from-bed feeling, towards my day. But at night the city glares at me from behind, a socialite whose party I have ruined.

I truly believe going out in Mahattan is the modern day equivalent of the quest for The Holy Grail. Saturday night rolls around, and it seems sparkling and somehow--you are sure--different than it has been before. This will be the night. For what? Who knows. But it will be big. There is something in the air seductive enough to lure you away from your couch and your bed. Forgetting how you limped home just seven days before, you reach into the closet and grab the stilletto pumps that elongate the leg and mangle the foot. Squeeze into the leather pants that leave red marks on your stomach rolls. Smack on the lipgloss. And out the door.

Women in Manhattan are insane to go through this ritual. Anyone who has had to tiptoe awkwardly across subway gratings, afraid that the tiny point of her high heel will slip through the gridding and cause her to fall on her face, knows exactly what I'm talking about. And we have all done it, understanding instantly when we see a group of girls in a row, following each other like goslings, that they have encountered a particularly precarious stretch of sidewalk. We glance down at our feet apprehensively and begin to stretch our calves.

"So. Where should we go?" I ask, as we totter along, "What do you think about Spa?"
"You mean Plaid?"
"Spa is Plaid now?"
"Hello. Yah."
"Oh. Plaid, then."
"Too Jersey."
"Limelight?"
"Just reopened as Avalon. But it's already over."
"Already?"
"Yep."
"Oh. Heaven?"
"Boring."
"Hell?"
"Too tame. Ohm?"
"What?"
"Ohm."
"Is a bar?"
"Yeah. It's kind of a cross between K, 1020 and B61."
"Bingo."
"Sounds lame. Where is it?"
"No. I was kidding. It sounded like...never mind."
"Be serious. At this point, I think we should go with either Envy, Poison, Chaos or Rehab."
"Fun. But why don't we just get really crazy and go to Ebola or Certain Doom?"
"Did those just open?"
"No. Again. Kidding."
"Oh."
"Don't tell me. Oh must be near K?"
"No. I just meant, oh."
"Right. Duh."
"Oh mi gosh! Perfect! I can't believe we didn't think of it before."
"Wait. What?"
"No, Duh. Totally Duh."
"Is a place? You aren't serious."

At this point my calf muscles give out from seven blocks of tiptoeing and I fall in front of a bus and am killed instantly. Years later, my friend opens a club in my memory called Freak Accident which quickly becomes the place in Manhattan to go for a night of fun and dancing, especially on Tuesday, which, by then, as everyone who's anyone knows, has become the new Friday.