Five women sit around a low table in a cavernous lounge. They are from different backgrounds, with different needs and hopes. They gather to watch a band, featuring one of their lovers. They drink different combinations of alcohol.
Their faces are lit by one small votive candle.
Moving clockwise, starting at 12:00, we have the wife/girlfriend of the musician. She smiles at the crowd assembled to support her man. She watches the door with a smile, waiting for other friends coming out to support her man. Inside, she glows. She works to conceal her anticipation, but she's excited to see her man play for a crowd - in the environment he thrives in - and living for him tonight, she doesn't mine sharing her personal rockstar. She inwardly titters while he plays, watching the crowd engrossed with the sound of her lover, proud.
Next to her, is the indie rock girl. The band is not her speed, but she loves lives music and she loves her friends, and it shows. She brinks her bourbon, straight on the rocks, and quietly sips her drink and waits for the pleasant warmth of a buzz to wash over her, open to the possibilities of what the night may bring to her . She doesn't even remember previously living in middle america where Repulicans reign supreme and ex-wrestlers rule the government. She thinks about her life, filled with partiers and international friends. She eyes the male population of the crowd, perhaps trying a few on for size, wondering if any of them could be the next to warm her bed, and her heart.
To indie girl's left, is the scandinavian transplant. Out for the evening without her inter-racial boyfriend, she happy to be out at bar with her American friends, enjoying what must be her second life. She's far from where she started, s solitary place where snow is more common than sunlight and open space stretches off into the horizen. She thinks, in English, about her busy day tomorrow, filled with errands and activities. She smiles at the crowded lounge, remembering when, not too long ago when she came to America and New York City, alone seeking adventure. When she prowled the cities nightlife, seeing bands she had loved on vinyl and meeting the cosmopolitan people that crowd the city. She remembers when this was new and exciting to her, and is happy to have found a group of friends and settled down among the community that claims New York City as own.
Sharing the sunken in couch with the scandinavinan, is the upper middle class girl. With pearls fastened to her ears, secure in her tailored black pants and sweater, she sips her beer. In a few years, she will be married to a bond trader with beautiful Irish children running through their tastefully decorated house. But these are the years before she succoumbs to that fate and for now, she is chasing her dream of being a recording artist. Gifted with an extraordinary voice, she surprises music snobs when she opens her lightly lipsticked mouth and shares the most extraordinary singing voice many have heard in their lifetime. Rich, melodic, with unnerving feeling, she has the power to move listeners with this talent she was given, but is yet undiscovered in this city filled with talented, ambitious, fame-hungry people. She watches the band, she studies the vocal stylings of the lead singer, she mentally logs lyrics and imagines herself on stage controlling the crowd hungry for an escape in music and drinks.
Next to the middle class girl, is the Partygirl. She wears a bedazzeled shirt that announces that she is a "freak." The Partygirl is the link among the group. She befriended all of these people and helped to bring them together for the evening. She swigs her beer, and watches the door for other friends she told to meet her here. She smiles at the middle-class girl, her friend, who looks at Partygirl's cigarette inquistively, for a moment thinking the Partygirl is smoking a joint. The Partygirl understands her confusion and holds up her cigarette for inspection, both of them laughing at the assumption. She scans the crowd for familiar faces, or unfamiliar ones that may join her legion by the need of the evening. She's not the kind of girl you would necessarily select out of crowd. She remains slightly aloof, so as not encourage any of the pick-up artists from trying their trade on her. She is tired of the game between men and women, the volleying that happens when you first meet someone you may want to get to know.
The Partygirl surveys the men and women in the crowd. She imagines what they are all about. She makes up lives for them: apartments, jobs, families. She feels a delightful numbing with the occasional wash of warmth and internal heart-racing excitement, as if she were rolling, thanks to an unusual combination of beer, pot, toxic-cleansing herbs she picked up at GNC and cigarettes - an ironic combination not lost on her. She wonders if she should tell a story, to keep everyone interested, but her question is answered for her as the band plays loudly and ends any thought of conversation.
As the others bop to the music and smile at each other, lost in the beauty of the sound and their own thoughts and observations, the Partygirl surveys the scene is in for a split second, wonders how she arrived here. She wonders when she grew up. She wonders how she got here. She momentarily thinks of the people she's lost along the way - friends who deviated from the plan and got married or stayed in their hometown. Friends who met untimely deaths to drugs or their own hands or terminal diseases. She wonders what could have been for those people. She's smart enough to acknowledge that she could easily have been one of the ones to pass early and she is thankful she did not.
She wonders what will come to her. And for now, she is satisfied with what she has.
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