Our Karen was all excited.
You should have seen her.
She knew where the whole lot of us were who had come out together and she was around insisting we be together at midnight. As soon as they began with the ball drop on the bar flat screen, the cow was galloping around finding every one of us, the whole lot.
Long as it took for the big moment, nothing would do but that we all gather with her near the corner of the bar and the front door of the Pub.
That was the Big Thing!
The ball hadn't begun to move and you could hardly hear anything being said any longer, the screen being way the hell down at the back of the place, but excitement was mounting and there Krazy Ass Karen was frantically waving those tight little fists of hers and grinning like the gargoyle she is, gathering us even nearer to her.
"C'MON, C'MON, C'MON!" she was urging us.
Leaning down and laughing, she wanted all our heads together with hers.
There was something she just had to tell us and, of course, you could only hear about half of what the ugly elderly elf had to say with all the horns blaring and everybody beginning to shout.
We should all get...
"...CLOS'T...DOOR!"
We had to all...
"RUSH OUT..." on to the street as the..."...BALL DROPS!"
Her fists shaking adamantly, excitedly, she was insisting,
"'AT'SWAY Y' DO IT!"
We all had to go out on the street...
"SHOUT HAPPY NEW YEAR!"...as 2010 was erupting behind us.
The lot of us would lead the orgy of celebration out into the night.
Boss Lady said,
"'AT'S HOW'S DONE!"
Because, being older than sin itself, Mother Monster had seen more decades in than any of us kiddies had fingers and toes, y' know?
"ALL'A US, EVERYBODY, EVERYBODY!"
So, as usual, we all had our work assignments.
Alright, enough, Kathy Griffin, you wanted to say to her fool face.
Some how having the Old Lady out with us, smashed and making an ass of herself, wasn't nearly hoot it was supposed to be even if she was as stupid drunk and uninhibited as we'd hoped she'd be.
She was still givng the orders, wasn't she?
Blah, blah, blah!
The elderly evil bitch was still in charge, wasted or not.
"She's enjoying herself!"
"WHAT?" Melinda took her eyes off the big screen, made annoyed looking brows beneath that cock-eyed silver tiara planted in her hair.
"SHE'S ENJOYING HERSELF!"
That brightened her fat face.
"YEAH, ISNIT A HOOT!"
"Oh, it's a riot, alright!"
"WHAT?"
"IT'S A RIOT!"
"YUH, AHOOT!"
I swear...!
So, then, anyway, the ball was coming down. The menopausal ding-bat, stunted as she is, couldn't possibly see it but some one must have shouted in her ear or, maybe, she just got it from the whole bar's uproar beginning to come together like it did, because she started in screeching,
"GET READY! GET READY!"
The louder it got in the place, the more spastic those two tiny fists of hers got over her shriveled ttits and, when the count got down to eight, seven, six - off she shuffled for the door.
"GO, GO, GO...GO, GO, GO!"
Your could see from the looks we were all giving one another every one was on the same page. We all thought this proved it, what we'd known all along about the hag, about her being a dork too dumb to be real. Our Karen was a real seniority clown, too ugly even to have slept her wrinkly butt into that cubbyhole office of hers.
Still, everybody went with her, the whole lot of us barging along behind her. She looked, with her head down and her elbows in at her sides, like she expected the whole place to collapse on her as she shuffled and jiggled toward the door laughing and shrieking...
"...GO, GO, GO!"
And you know - it was just us out there!
You never saw Monroe more deserted.
Nobody else went. There probably wasn't another bar the length of the Avenue with a gangling gang of fools out front dancing around and shouting in 2010. Just us. Just Krazy Karen's Krew dancing around on the sidewalk, blowing horns and making asses of ourselves.
Some one should have got video.
Madame Karen going round and round, hand in hand and jumping up and down getting everyone to join her, adding one after the other to her circle of satan.
And, yeah, that should have been a hoot and a half! Except that she'd got us all doing it with her.
All of us kiddies, as she calls us, who'd asked her to come, to meet us for New Years so we could see what the bag looked like soused and, maybe, get a few good pics to post of her passed out in a doorway or head over a toilet barfing. There we were, instead, out playing ring-around-Rosie with T Rex, herself.
Talk about your disgusting!
The whole thing would have been a total disaster - only there was this guy there.
After a while people did start coming out to smoke and get out of the hoopla for a bit, out if for nothing else to make those calls they make just after midnight. In a bit the sidewalk in front of Oxfords had sprouted quite a crowd, after all. Traffic on the Avenue was flowing big time, again, like you would expected it to on one of the choice party nights of the year and there was a black stretch pulled up to the curb about to pile out a party.
Our Karen, the Management Mummy, was in the middle of it all trying to organize a chorus line and get them all to kick on command. And, wouldn't you know, she was having a blast doing it, being all instructive like she always is and flitting from one end to the other corralling this one and that. Half the faces weren't our lot at all any longer but just any one she could grab. And half our lot had wandered off back into the bar, maybe, or they were here and there in the crowd hooking up with other people, again, or just staggered about silly stoned on their own with drinks in their hands they shouldn't have had out on the street.
Tristan and several of the staff were busy retrieving the bar's glassware and reining in the losers.
Grandma didn't seem to notice or care that none of it was going according to plan.
"Now, on three - kick!" the cadaverous old choreographer would holler out in front of her soused section.
The half of them would fall over to one side or the other or somebody would kick the wrong way.
Mommy Mummy would just giggle.
"No, no, kiddies," she'd say. "It's left kick, right kick!"
And she'd sway showing them,
"One, two - THREE kick up street; one, two - THREE kick down street. Let's try it again."
Our Missy was looking most cock-eyed and had got in with this lot gatheed together at the corner of the Pub. Half were sitting on the window ledge and all of them wore smug sneers and relaxed attitudes like they weren't part of everything that was going down. Under her auburn bangs she was watching all their faces closely and seemed to be trying to follow what they were saying, their intimate, superior little conversation.
There was this gang out in the middle of the street trying to cross to Oxfords from the Standard Lounge up the street and not getting any where with the traffic that was trying not to run them down. And there were late arrivals hustling around to Oxfords from the alley way up the street. The door in the rear of the limo at the curb opened and some woman in a gorgeous dress was climbing out.
This great guy was standing there, off to the side. He was standing even further off to the side than that little gang Missy may have thought she was in with.
He had stepped out from the other side of the doorway next to the Pub in this sweet brown leather jacket. He looked a little like that Vin Diesel guy's shorter cousin only darker - maybe caramel.
Oh, he was fine! Dressed fine; looked fine. You could see him driving off in a BMW. Very exec but kind of kick-boxer, too.
And he says, in this very mature voice,
"I wonder if they know how young they all look."
Missy with her baby-doll bangs and the lot she was with - the guy with the goatee that is supposed to make him look older than twenty-two and his big Seth Rogin pal. His other friend out on the street in shirt sleeves and holding onto a bunch of party balloons, very apple cheeky and gangly thin. Limo girl dressed for the prom and accompanied by her ball cap date in the striped shirt and corduroy sports jacket. The porky crowd of black leather clad rappers with their shades after midnight and their exclusive attitudes on that were passing arm and arm.
The whole lot out there, actually.
Oh, yeah!
"Such kids," I had to agree.
