purgatory party and aftermath.

The Saturday before Halloween this year we threw a Purgatory party. The invitation promised: "as soon as you enter the apartment, you will be filled with anger, semen, cheesecake, self-love, self-loathing and more!" For decoration, I brought in two mattresses off the street, put some opened (unused) condoms on them, at first representing Lust, later more known as jumping and wrestling pads, make-out spots or sleeping places for many a drunkard. For Vanity, Alex collected the strangest assortment of light bulbs to install above his mirror; I added a dry erase marker for writing on the mirror. Those were the most conceived sins. The rest of the connections were more shoddy: Tod's old tourniquets, snorting pens and syringes mixed with lollipops, gum balls and tootsie rolls. Another friend made a confessional booth. Alex's new tower of TVs in the living room also debuted, playing Meet the Feebles throughout the party, a horrible film by the guy who directed Lord of the Rings about muppets succumbing to drug addictions, prostitution, STDs, porn-making and sodomy. After much deliberation on costumes—coal miner, boll weevil, Robert Falcon Scott—I settled on gay terrorist, most appropriate for the party theme, the costume replete with a Korean War-era hard hat glazed with glitter, plus Vietnam boots which I have been wanting anyways. My three gay terrorist weapons were a dildo, a box cutter and a glitter spray can.

To make the party additionally insane, kinda as an experiment, I invited all my Facebook and MySpace friends, over a thousand people technically, although most don't know me or live close enough. It had a lot of potential in a way that I could never predict, so the suspense was a kind of rush that I'm already longing for again. In my Facebook invitation, I posted a photo of a close-up of gay bareback sex which got me temporarily kicked off the site, but only after almost everyone had seen it. In the mean time I made a new profile, and upon the old one's returning, turned the new one into my hedgehog Kalu's profile. A bunch of people must be surprised to see him as their friend.

For the most part I was a warm host, approaching tenderly and immediately zapping my prey with glitter, unknowingly permanently soiling their clothes with tiny gay sparkles. Two drunken men entered the apartment who looked so out of place that I immediately sniffed them out as party crashers. Who invited you? "Ughhm, somebody," they responded. You think you can waltz in here and drink all our alcohol and lie to me? Get ooouuttt! And thus began my rampage, pushing at them, screaming at them, high octane, eventually knocking one of them to the feet of party-goers just outside the front door. And as Tod and others tried to restrain me, I kicked one of the crashers "in the nostrils," as one witness described. Vietnam boots and all. After that, there were sightings of the two crasher guys coming back up with a sharp shiny metal object, one described it as a knife, another saw it as our stolen can opener. There were these two big tough dudes at the party whom Tod met and instantaneously invited earlier that day on the streets in downtown LA. One was missing one of his two front teeth. I ran to a closet and drunkenly hid out, while the two tough dudes protected the building. They ran into the drunk crasher bums in the street and had a little skirmish. The crashers thought they were seeking revenge for having been attacked by several people before; I had the impact of a whole pod of defenders, I guess. The two downtown dudes stood guard at the entryway for at least an hour; I watched them from the front door still in my tiny bicycle shorts. When they came in, like a servant I hunted down cigarettes for them. In gratitude. They saved me from my own can opener. I never expected Wrath to inhabit my body for the evening.

Tai, ice-cream maker and Scoops owner (easily the best ice cream in LA), showed up with vegan beer ice cream. Even weirder (to me), someone brought a 24-pack of energy drinks. No Glutton could be more satisfied. One friend dressed as Jesus and was inside the confessional for a stint. One guest came as Envy; his green glittery eyeshadow was a pain for Alex to scrub out of his bathroom sink. Envy later passed out on the prairie couch. Eric appeared as Sloth, an amazing interpretation that went between the idea and the animal. Before Sloth was a sin, there was Sadness. As Sloth, Eric's fabric heart bled Mardi Gras beads in memoriam. His girlfriend Heather was dressed as Greed; there was a second Envy and maybe a Lust. No one portrayed Lust better than Tod. No need for a costume, he was abuzz and ready for the mattress upon first stumble. With one girl he spent a good hour involved in a sexual wrestling match. This girl shoved her hand down Tod's throat several times, his reaction with enjoyment only begetting the next mouthful. At some point, Mark So would smilingly put his hand in people's faces, then, as they smelt shit, he would smilingly point at Tod's ass, gesturing that his hand was just up it, Tod too drunk to notice. Eric later joked that he hoped Mark and the girl shook hands inside Tod.

Tod being restrained after choking some straight guy.

The residue of the party was more than just spilt Bourbon. Andrea, Tod's girlfriend, slept in Alex's bed through the second half—the debaucherous half—of the party. The next day, we—the six of us—don't you hate how parties just keep going and going?—enjoyed the photos of Tod and his fist girl. Andrea took it personally, although it wasn't immediate. She actually seemed really casually amused by the photos at first glance. Later in the day she stormed into the apartment like a banshee, raising bloody murder, having a hairy canary, as my parents would say. She first lunged out at me (verbally), saying I shouldn't have been photographing Tod cheating on her, that instead I could have woken her up. She asked why I didn't. In my three seconds to react to all this, I said "I thought you wanted a bad boy." And that was the core of our misunderstanding. She yelled at Tod for a while longer and ended with "I hope you overdose on heroine and die." And then left.

That night while I was sleeping, Tod got soaking drunk and gave Alex a black eye. I heard a door being banged on in my sleep. Alex locked Tod out of their room so that he could go to bed in peace, but decided to unlock the door after Tod's ceaseless pounding. According to Alex, after that, Alex went to bed, and Tod continued to talk at him for a full hour after he fell asleep. Tod laid down in Alex's bed, held Alex, called him "Andrea" and asked her (him), "Will you make me your bitch?"

The next day a gossipy girl in the writing program showed Andrea that I had posted the party photos on Facebook, and then I received histrionic phone messages from Andrea threatening to sue me for sexual harrassment for posting photos of Tod with the other girl. And before I even got the messages, she also talked to Student Services, her lawyer father and several professors in the Writing Program at CalArts, including Matias who is my mentor and also Andrea's. She also apparently told the whole story to just about every fellow student she ran into. I was even on the phone with Eric when she suddenly came up to him, completely disregarding that he was on the phone, and he held it open as she took twenty minutes to explain to him every exaggeratedly negative detail she could come up with about me. Eric bashfully repeatedly responded to her, "that's terrible." I wrote her an e-mail that night saying she could have just called me up and asked nicely and I still would take them down. And I did take them down. I saw my mentor Matias at the Machine Project art gallery the following Sunday. He came up to me and said, "I heard you were a bad bad boy."

But, for your viewing pleasure, the entire party's photos are up again in full unedited glory if you go here.

That Tuesday, the day after Andrea's lawsuit threats, a saddened Tod took all his antidepressants and painkillers at once just before hopping on the subway to his work serving hot dogs in an art gallery downtown. He could barely function, repeatedly leaving the hot dogs for the bathroom to vomit up pills. He never told me outright, but from our conversations, I assume he was fired. The following Saturday he got very drunk, and that lady down the street—Melody (see October 15, 2007 entry)—called him up looking for a drug connection, and he went over there to help her. Well, he came back missing half his clothes and covered in his own blood. He apparently pissed off some guy on the street and got punched really good in the face. His lower lip looked completely split down the middle. When he arrived home, I was listening to Klezmer music and in the midst of mopping the kitchen and foyer, and he drunkenly trudged all over it as I screamed like a 50s housewife. Melody showed up, chased Tod back and forth across my fresh-moppéd floor and had a fighting match with him outside, yelling "I hope you get arrested" as she left. He repeated the same words at her on a loop at the top of his lungs, almost like a weird dance song. We tried asking him what all happened. When drunk, his talking is always mathematical. "A whore B whore C whore." "A + B + Kenmore." "I was on the corner of Kenmore and heroin." (Kenmore is the next street over.) All this as Alex said nothing, and I listened while mopping still to the Klezmer. He's still mourning the boots he lost that night, perhaps both his most valuable and valued possession.


Tod tracking blood on my freshly-mopped floor.

On Sunday Alex and I gathered around Tod like parents, and trying diplomatically to represent one drunkard and two exhausted friends, I called for a substance-free household, like something out of a pamphlet or a morally themed 80s sitcom episode with the cast sitting together looking serious at the camera at the end. That afternoon we went to a friend's birthday gathering in a park; I climbed trees. Andrea called Tod; he looked at me; I told him, "answer it." He took the Gold Line to the Red Line to her house. From what I heard later, they got drunk, physically fought, and she called up some big GI-Joe-tough-guy anonymous friend of hers at four in the morning to have him remove Tod from her premises. Tod awoke around eight half-drunk leaning on her locked front door. He came home and pounded on the apartment door here to wake me up to let him in. I always tell him to carry a key... Anyway, I could barely sleep after that, and spent the whole day exhausted. In my fatigued seething I drove home from school talking to my father; he said I was Tod's enabler, that my putting up with him has been a huge waste of time for everyone involved, and he would be surprised if I could bring myself to get Tod out of there now. I told Tod he had to go. The next day I woke up and his key was left on the coffee table.

That evening, I talked to Tod's mother on the phone for twenty minutes, and she was completely understanding and happy with my decision. Tod later came home to grab some belongings. Tod was to spend a week in San Diego with his sister, after which he would move back in with his mother and family in Parachute, Colorado, population 1,186, and attend rehab or AA meetings with mountain miner men.

I wasn't angelically sober this whole time myself. On the real Halloween, we carpooled to West Hollywood with Huan (our fourth roommate who's never around) because there was no way I would find parking any closer than our apartment six miles away anyhow. He played us pirated unreleased demo tracks from Madonna's new hiphop album, and they were the worst thing ever. I hope Timbaland fixes that shit up. Trudging through the drunken gay cattle of Weho, I had to call a friend to sign on to my MySpace to get the address to find the party we were headed to. When we got there, they had Jägermeister and Wild Turkey and I was instantaneously drunker than I've ever been in my life (first time I suffered the next day from alcohol). Then the party dispersed out into the Weho cattle. I must have made out with like fifteen people in under two hours. I still remember most of their names, due to the fact that I apparently exchanged numbers with all of them. I had a certain fondness for a fellow named Zoran, an attractive-at-the-time Serb who moved to the US and now styles hair for a living. His Polish friend was going mad as Zoran and I made out, and demanded that Zoran had a boyfriend. Zoran and I kept in touch and met again the following week back in Weho. It was one of the only times I've had any sort of "date" arranged with a person I initially met in real life. We really had nothing in common. He gabbed on and on about Britney Spears' new album, and the others who were there got very interested and knew all the song titles, and I couldn't believe I was the only one who didn't care. Zoran was also kinda ugly. I see no stigma in meeting people through the internet. Obviously. It's easier to root out the ones with entertainment industry affiliation or who don't speak English enough to understand my jokes. In person I'm quickly inhaling store-bought alcohol in the car to avoid the expense of bars as well as the awkwardness of approaching or being approached by strangers.


Surrounded by drunken demons.

Back to the Tod story. Andrea called me up a few days ago, told me she missed Tod, that she called him, forgave him, cried for hours with him as he watched The Ring, admitted she acted too hasty. His new plan was to go to a rehab facility in Acton where he would live for three months; it was near Andrea and not Nowhere, Colorado. The next day, Tod was back, and I agreed to let him and Andrea stay here for a night. Upon their arrival, I learnt that he wouldn't be going to Acton after all, because the facility would not allow his cell phone. They would make him be disconnected from the world for sixty days. At 5 AM, I heard the fridge door open and a cabinet door shut. I knew it was my liquor. I got out of bed and found Tod about to pour my Caxaça pure and on ice. I could tell he was honest when it wasn't what it looked like. He was really embarrassed and followed me to my tooth brushing and almost had a panic attack at my feet. He said Andrea was desperate for a drink and couldn't sleep. He couldn't ask me for a drink because he didn't think I would believe him. She then came up to us bawling and told me she hadn't gone to bed without a drink in ten years. I poured her the drink myself. The next night we went out to a bar, and Tod was sober and the designated driver of Andrea's car.