text: Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle. James Baldwin D’Mitri stumble-limped to his door, taking mental stock of his condition and his assets in the cool and quiet aftermath of Nick’s party. He didn’t have his keys, but he had somehow acquired a cute girl, and she had his keys. Check. He looked at his shirt and frowned. There were flecks of blood on it, and an ominous brown stain of unknown provenance. He smelled it and decided that it must either be a mixture of whiskey and gooey fudge brownies or, more likely, vomit. Check. What he didn’t have were either pants or shoes. That was odd, he thought, for he was sure that he had gone to the party with pants. And shoes. Check. His right leg was festooned with gauze and tape and pain. It felt like someone had jabbed several needles into his leg and it looked like whoever did the bandaging struggled with the concept of gauze-to-tape ratio; the tape went all the way down to his ankle and as high as his knee to secure a small, square piece of gauze. Perhaps, he thought, I was being mummified and escaped just in the nick of time. Check. The couple fell into D’Mitri’s bed for the night, though it was actually 4:30 in the morning. D’Mitri wouldn’t be seen again until Monday morning, dressed for success. The cute girl left in the afternoon, telling D’Mitri that she hoped they could “do this again.” D’Mitri didn’t know if she meant the party or the bedroom antics or both, but he accepted the informal invitation in the spirit that it was given. He nodded dumbly and closed the door. Double check, with some stars and doodles thrown in for good measure. Let me tell you about the party and how D’Mitri lost his pants. ___________________________________________ Nick always threw great parties because he was rich and spent obscene amounts of money on food, booze, outlandish decorations, a DJ, party favors, and cocaine. He was a third-generation Greek-American who made it big writing apps for Apple and productivity software for corporate tax attorneys. D’Mitri would often tell him that he wrote code for the predators of the American Dream, but Nick would just shrug it off and point to his Lamborghini or his house by way of defense. D’Mitri arrived at the party just as it was getting crowded. Supermodels from the Americas (North and South), Greece (of course), France (predictably so), and one uniquely pretty one from Iceland had just arrived. The guests were indulging in the expensive seafood, the expensive beef, and the expensive booze, all prepared by expensive chefs. The actual servers, however, were more like D’Mitri: foreign, and wondering if the cocaine laid out on the table was for everyone. All eyes were drawn towards the towering ice sculpture upon arrival. It was a 17-foot-tall replica of the Statue of Liberty. The icy behemoth was surrounded by smaller ice sculptures of people kneeling in front of the lady, hands raised in supplication. What the fuck? D’Mitri wondered. He wasn’t drunk enough - or high enough - to ask Nick about it yet. No one else seemed to wonder about it; in fact, the party guests evinced a distinct lack of wonder at the message. They commented on the size and left it at that. D’Mitri was suddenly accosted by a bear hug from behind and the smell of vodka and caviar on the assailant’s breath. Nick, of course. “Hello, Russian friend! You like?” Nick had released his hold and waved his arms expansively around the room. The Icelandic model was by his side, smiling at us. “This is Helen, my woman. Helen! Say hello to this man!” Nick pushed her forcefully towards me. Helen took it all in stride, literally and figuratively, holding out a hand with amazingly long fingers. “You have the hands of an artist, Helen. Are you an artist?” I asked, trying to be polite in the face of Nick’s boorish behavior. Her laugh was deep and scoffing, a laugh that seemed incongruous with her profession and with the types of people that Nick usually invited to his parties. Like she had brains and a a self-effacing sense of humor. “Yes I am. I travel the world wearing beautiful clothes for which I am paid an exorbitant amount of money. Doesn’t that sound artistic?” She laughed that deep, throaty laugh again. What the hell, D’Mitri thought, is a girl like this doing with a guy like Nick? D’Mitri doubted that Nick even knew where Iceland was. D’Mitri wandered around the rooms, marveling (again) at the size of Nick’s house and the decadence (as per usual) of the party. A bevy of pot-bellied pigs in lady liberty costumes passed D’Mitri. It was a sign of D’Mitri’s desensitization to Nick’s excesses that he barely gave them a look. Even the nude, snake-draped dancers in cages failed to elicit more than a cursory glance from D’Mitri. The booze and the cocaine were starting to affect the party goers. Though Nick had eleven bathrooms, most of the guests were either too high or too drunk to find most of them. Long lines formed in front of the three easily-found bathrooms on the lower floor. Some of the guests, though, didn’t deign to wait. One man took it upon himself to relieve his urinary discomfort on Nick’s back fence. That’s what started it all. “Hey! You! Why are you pissing on my motherfucking fence motherfucker?” The man on the other side of the fence couldn’t be identified, it being dark outside and the dim security lighting did little to alleviate this condition; likewise, the angry man couldn’t identify the mystery man peeing on the fence. I mention this because it is relevant to the story. (As I am the omniscient narrator, my word is inviolate. So go suck an egg if you don’t like it.) D’Mitri heard this exchange and laughed quietly. Hijinks and outside peeing were always funny to guys. So were farting and witnessing someone else’s pain. And they wonder why they have such a tough time getting laid. But I digress. The man with the pissy attitude (see what I did there?) arrived at the party, but he was not alone. He had a large and intimidating-looking pit bull with him, secured to the man’s hand with an actual chain. The dog strained at his metal leash, jerking the man’s arm as if the man were a marionette. “Where the fuck is the pissing guy?” the man shouted at no one in particular. A hundred eyes turned towards the outburst. Most of the guests shrugged and returned to their conversations, their drinks, and the man or woman they were trying to impress. This served to make the man even angrier. Striding inside with his dog, he toured the area with all of the aplomb and personality of a general who just found his wife in bed with a corporal. The dog barked and growled while the man looked for someone who looked as if they would be the type to piss on a man’s fence. What that would look like is anybody’s guess, but the man stuck to his strategy. “Okay you fuckers! Who pissed on my fence? I’m not asking again!” But he did. Several times. No one seemed to care about the man, but the dog was scaring people. They moved away. Not to put too fine a point on it, they abandoned the immediate area that the dog occupied, and they did it with an impressive alacrity. And then the dog got loose from the angry man. It was inevitable, I suppose. The man, being who he was and the dog, being what he was, forced fate’s hand. The dog rushed to and fro, barking and growling and snapping at the well-heeled ankles of the now-terrified guests. This caused a chain reaction of events that resulted in...well, you know the state in which D’Mitri arrived at his house. The angry man tossed the food table over, the crash of expensive food and crystal creating an expensive sound. Shrimp, crab, lobster and caviar slid across the floor and came to rest quietly and serenely against walls and shoes. The tablecloths folded themselves inexpertly, gathering stains the longer they remained on the floor. Guests were stampeding outside, causing a crush of bodies in the foyer. Yep. That’s where lady liberty was chilling. Bodies bumped into bodies, some of the collisions causing some bodies to crash into the ice sculptures. This, in turn, caused the aforementioned bodies to careen into lady liberty. Lady liberty fell. The impact with the floor was resounding; the force of the impact sent shards of ice skittering on the floor, dancing merrily in a chaotic ballet of cold, making friends with the seafood that had been left to its own gruesome fate. And, of course, the police arrived. Several cops were trying to simultaneously secure the dog and avoid its bite. As you can imagine, their success was nonexistent. They yelled at the owner to get his dog under control or else. The man yelled back that he would, after he found the guy who pissed on his fence. The cops retorted with their vague threat of “or else,” and this had the effect of the angry man taking a swing at one of the cops. While all of this was going on. D’Mitri was being bitten by the dog. In a display of questionable decision making, D’Mitri decided to watch the drama with the angry man and the cops unfold. Unfortunately, the dog was doing the same, and the dog spotted D’Mitri’s right ankle as a likely target for his aggressive instincts. Soon, D’Mitri was dancing around, trying to shake the dog from his ankle. In a display of good (if desperate) decision making, D’Mitri decided to rid himself of his pants in an effort to dislodge the dog from his ankle. The trick worked; the dog was left with an empty pair of pants (which it quickly abandoned) and a puzzled expression on its face. D’Mitri was now in the unenviable position of wearing no pants and thus displaying his boxer shorts. The ones that were covered with bags of cashews, almonds and the like. Yes, he was wearing boxers that screamed that they were nut holders. A pretty girl watched as D’Mitri tried to get away from the dog and recover his dignity. He was only half successful at this, but the girl still smiled at him and gave him an invitational wave of the arm. She was behind a trellis, holding a large bowl. The cocaine. “You escaped with your life, at least. I escaped with the coke. I guess we both did a fine job in the melee,” she laughed out the words. The pretty girl frowned at the damage done to his ankle and quickly took sensible action in the form of retrieving a first aid kit from the kitchen. “Bixby. Bixby! Come here! We have a hero in need of your expertise!” The girl looked at D’Mitri before responding, her eyes twinkling with mirth. “Bixby’s a doctor. He’ll fix you right up,” she said. During the time it took the very drunk (or high - or both) Bixby to meander his way to the girl’s voice, the girl had unwrapped a gauze pad and soaked it with vodka and applied a small amount of cocaine to the pad. A paste formed on the surface, looking much more innocent than it was. Bixby applied the gauze and the tape, being extremely liberal with the tape. He was also falling over as he knelt, so the tape often went around D’Mitri’s ankle in exciting and unique directions. “Uh. Bixby. You own stock in this tape company?” Bixby looked at the girl, looked at D’Mitri’s ankle, and shrugged as he stumbled to his feet. The girl had to catch his arm so that he wouldn’t suffer the indignity of falling over the trellis. “Let me take you home, sweetie. You don’t belong here,” she said. She intertwined her fingers with D’Mitri’s and led him to a nearby bench. “What do you mean, I don’t belong here? I was invited!” D’mitri sounded more irritated than he was. “Nick’s acquaintances are all the same types. The progeny of the super-rich, the professionally beautiful, the professionally musical, or the professionally athletic. You are none of these,” the pretty girl looked at D’Mitri and smiled. She smiles a lot, thought D’Mitri, but it isn’t always a happy smile. “No, I still sing for my supper. My 120k salary isn’t especially attractive to Nick’s friends...” “Acquaintances. Nick doesn’t have any friends. Except you!” The pretty girl had just realized why D’Mitri was at the party. “But I get by, you know. I own a house with a nice lawn and a two-car garage. My dog has his shots and I always walk him on a leash. I use my outdoor grill often. I have cable TV and five streaming services. I don’t have Nick’s money, but I’m good.” “I, on the other hand, came from the seed of a billionaire. I go to parties like this one, I attend charity functions for the family, and I am generally left alone to spend as much money as I care to spend, and to use my time in any fashion I choose.” “That’s a nice life,” D’Mitri said, rubbing his ankle. It felt numb from the cocaine. “Yours is better,” she countered. The police were wrapping up the party. The angry man was handcuffed, the dog was under the influence of an electric jolt from a Taser, and tired, high, happy guests were straggling to their chauffeured vehicles. There was broken furniture everywhere, and lady liberty was melting away into an ugly amorphous mass. Vomit was everywhere, looking like a gargantuan Jackson Pollock work spread over grass, floor, and wall. The pretty girl patted D’Mitri on the arm, standing him up and leading him to her vehicle. “C’mon sweetie. I’m taking you home.” D’Mitri turned to her. He wobbled slightly because of his injured ankle, and he was wearing those ridiculous boxers. The pants were M.I.A. He held his head up proudly. “I can make it on my own. Really. I’m fine,” D’Mitri sounded more defiant than he was. The pretty girl looked at him and laughed heartily. He liked that laugh. It was genuine, like the Icelandic model’s laugh. “You aren’t understanding me, sweetie. I am taking. You. Home.” She gave D’Mitri a significant look. “Oh!” D’Mitri finally came to the right conclusion. “Tell me where you live, sweetie. I can’t find your wallet.” D’Mitri patted where his pockets belonged, hitting only boxers and embarrassment. “The cleaning crew will find it. You’ll get it back tomorrow, with everything intact.” D’Mitri looked at her and shook his head. “Maybe missing some money, though.” The pretty girl shook her head forcefully in negation. “No. It is an unfortunate trait in our immigrants that they don’t steal money from a found wallet or handbag. Nor do they purloin the odd piece of jewelry laying around. Deplorable, really,” the pretty girl mused. D’Mitri frowned and faced her after flopping ungraciously into her waiting limousine. The driver was scary by his very implacability, so D’Mitri tried to put him out of his mind. The pretty girl simply ignored the driver after giving him a brief smile. “Unfortunate trait? I don’t...” “No, you don’t. Think like an American, that is. Sad, because you are very American success story. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave isn’t it? Free to pursue your own interests, brave enough to do it by any means necessary. You think my daddy made billions by playing fair? Or Nick?” D’Mitri nodded at her logic. She was, in fact, just like Nick. Or her daddy was, at any rate. Either way, it was a philosophy that was deeply ingrained in her. Her voice broke in on these thoughts. “Yeah, I’m like Nick. But I have lady parts and he doesn’t so...” she turned to D’Mitri and kissed him on the lips. It was one of those kisses that linger sweetly, like the smell of jasmine in the back yard. D’Mitri wanted the lady parts, and more jasmine-lingering kisses. “Home, Jeeves!” he said boisterously. “His name’s Sancho,” the pretty girl said. “Home, Sancho!” The destruction of the party receded into the distance; the aftermath would have to be dealt with in due course. There would be recriminations, wounds, and costs to assume. But there would be another party at some point. And another. And another. Their vague and ephemeral allure would just grow stronger with each subsequent party because...because... “Why are you going home with me?” D’Mitri asked, genuinely intrigued. “A girl has needs, you know?” D’Mitri nodded. So do guys. Even bourgeois guys like him. “Besides,” she said, turning her luscious face to him, “you might die of rabies soon, so I want to get something out of you first.” D’Mitri wanted to be appalled, but he wasn’t. He was, after all, an American.