Have you been to the carnival?
I would like to see you
There’s a whole lot of people there
Who would like to be you

Wolfmother, “The White Unicorn”

“They say the Eskimos have a hundred words for snow,” I’m telling Jen as I watch Seattle scroll by from the passenger seat of her little sports coupe. “You people must have a thousand words for rain.”

I’d heard there were beautiful mountains in the distance. Not that I’d been able to catch even a fleeting glimpse—ever-present clouds shifted and tumbled above us, menacing rain when they weren’t already making good on the threat. The main purpose of the daylight hours here is to soften the transition into night—it doesn’t bother me, really. I am a midnight marauder: everything interesting in my life happens under cover of darkness.

Jen’s blasting Wolfmother through the stereo. The White Unicorn. We’ve both taken a shine to this song. “They sound a bit like Rush,” I remark.

“I call ‘em White Sabbath. The song’s about a party, you know.” I watch as Jen peers over the dashboard, her blonde locks cascading over her arms and shoulders, her manicured nails clicking, in tune with the music, against the top of the steering wheel. She seems a bit too small even for this compact chassis.

Speaking of parties, I have big plans for tonight, a promise to make good on; it’s something I’ve been thinking about since this trip was just a sparkle in my eye. I think of the ecstasy we’d acquired. Wonder if the timing will work out?

After we slip into the shower together Leslie rises to her toes and grabs her buttocks, backing up slightly and letting my twitching cock splash in the rivulets running down the small of her back. I want to fuck her but there’s little room to maneuver, leaving me with only one convenient point of entry.

“Up—up your ass?” I ask, my legs trembling a bit.

“Yeah baby.”

We’re lacking lubricant. I’ve found that a dab of conditioner will do in a pinch, regular soap being too irritating. I slip in easily. I can hear the muffled voices of our friends carrying on in the kitchen. “That’s right—keep ‘em spread you little slut,” I hiss.

My girlfriend growls, the bathroom echoing with wet smacking noises as I crash into her cheeks over and over again. I lean into her for leverage and she places one arm against the curved shower enclosure. We’re both breathing heavily. A barely audible squeak: “I’m gonna come.”

“Me too,” I grunt in response. “Right up your tight ass.”

“Ohpleasedoitplease!”

When we uncouple my semen leaks out of her, mixes with the running water, runs down her leg. Down the drain.

“I dunno if we’re gonna roll tonight,” Roger’s telling me. “Well I don’t know if Dana wants to, anyway.” Roger and Jen go way back; he and his girlfriend are also staying at the house with us. As he says this Dana, a sweet, easygoing chick, reaches into her backpack to fetch something and the room fills almost instantaneously with the green stink of quality Northwest weed. She has a ton of the stuff but she’s been working on the same joint for two days.

I know everyone will roll, though, simply because it sucks to be the odd man out when everyone else is seriously fucked up. “It’s been a long time for me but, you know, it is New Year’s Eve.”

Like most places in the US, Cloud City is a driving town. The car services are struggling to keep up with demand tonight, the one night people really ought not drive. Naturally, our driver fucks us over and never shows. Fortunately Nikki’s boyfriend Seth swings by and we all pile into his station wagon. I’m already familiar with the route: around the bay and over the massive bridge, along the viaduct past the dreary sodium lamps of the port, past the rail yards and the hundreds of container crates that line the highway, then down the clean streets of downtown Seattle, past the marquee of the Lusty Lady (‘Out with the auld, in with the nude’) until we arrive at Nikki’s high-rise apartment complex. It’s nice to not have to worry about where to go or what to do—to just drift along toward an unknown fate.

“Close your eyes; I have a present for you,” Seth sez before I’ve even had a chance to tour Nikki’s large, postmodern bachelorette pad. I know there’s a punch line coming.

Something heavy and plastic settles into my upturned palms. Seth snickers. I open my eyes to find I’m staring at what must be a ten pound tub of mayonnaise. “What the hell is this?”

“Don’t you remember? Last night you said you like mayo so much you want to bathe in it with a couple of strippers.”

“Oh yeah. That. Well, I was sleep-deprived; I can’t be held responsible for anything I might have said.” I set the mayo down on the marbled kitchen counter, smiling. “Still, I notice you conveniently forgot the strippers.”

There are some pretty women here though. I shoulda known—being babes themselves, Jen and Nikki have never suffered for lack of lovely girlfriends (or girlfriends). Les pairs off with a fetching, short-haired lass and retreats to the balcony to smoke hand-rolled cigarettes. I mingle with the pre-party crowd, everyone cool and, at the same time, a little freaky. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Some time after the ball drops in New York I find myself in front of a tall, skinny brunette, Elise. Shoulder-length hair. Sparkling eyes. Married though. She tells me she’s a vegan. I tell her my girlfriend eats meat but doesn’t swallow—a tired joke, perhaps, but it’s always good for a laugh. “We always try to get the hell out of New York for New Year’s,” I’m telling her. “It’s fucking amateur night over there.”

Her enunciation is crisp. “Oh, where do you go?”

“Let’s see, ah, we’ve been to Mexico, Morocco, Vegas—”

“Vegas? My husband and I travel there all the time. I’m a big gambler.”

There’s something about her laugh, something about the way she brushes my arm to emphasize a point. Is she flirting with me? Are they somewhat less than monogamous?

Part dance club, part neighborhood bar, part trendy lounge—home to weirdoes of every stripe—Noc Noc is what the Hole would have been had it substantially more space and a substantially larger budget. There’s a life-sized demon with wings perched upon the wall behind the bar—a fallen angel on a cross. I snap a series of pictures. Rumor has it everyone’s dropping at 11:30. I swallow my bitter pill. The club staff ignores the approaching hour so Seth and Nikki start the countdown. I grow a little lightheaded and sweaty; something in my heart burns bright.

Leslie sits next to me on the edge of the elevated booth. It’s time. I drop to my knees. In an instant my girlfriend’s pretty, dark eyes well with tears. I say the words. No one else appears to understand what’s going on.

We’ve done everything ass-backwards, as always. It’s frightening sometimes.

And a few minutes later she says, “I’m not feeling that well. Will you come with me to the bathroom?”

“I’d do anything for you.” I take her hand and lead her through the crowd of people and I realize it’s hitting me hard as well, that all I can do is focus on the now, putting one foot in front of the other, realizing, too, that this is exactly how I wanted it to be. We’re engaged. We’re committed. We’re in this moment together, with our friends, and it’s all that matters. Just gotta get over the hump and everything will be brilliant.

One moment blurs into the next. We lose some people, pick up others, and wind up back at Nikki’s deluxe apartment in the sky (“You movin’ on up, girl,” I quip). I promptly open my shirt, revealing the porn king underneath. My orange sunglasses color everything the perfect shade of groovy. “Touch my neeples!” I say. People laugh. Someone snaps my picture.

I slip my arm around Nikki’s waist. “I’m so glad we made the trip. Your friends are great.”

“I’ve missed you guys.”

“We’ve missed you too.”

Dana approaches me, smiling. “Hey, you wanna smoke some weed?”

“You still rolling hard?”

She laughs. “Oh yeah.”

“Let’s wait then. There’s a magic moment and if you smoke at just that moment you give yourself, like, another hour.”

I notice Elise’s husband is making out with a pretty, curvy curl. Interesting, I think. Perhaps I was right about them. She frees herself from his embrace and makes a general announcement: “I bet I have the finest ass here!”

I laugh. “Oh I think my girlfriend will take the Pepsi challenge against that shit.”

Les comes strutting out from wherever she was, a great big smile planted upon her face. “I don’t think so bitch! C’mere.” Everyone watches, dazed, as the girls lift their dresses and press their asses together. I must admit, the curvy girl does have a nice rump. I smack it just to be sure.

“I think Leslie wins,” says Seth. The room erupts in laughter.

Naturally the two babes end up with their lips pressed together. Somehow Leslie passes the girl off to me. “I don’t think we should,” the girl whispers in my ear, nodding in Elise’s husband’s direction. “He might get jealous.” I’m not sure how to process this new information. I laugh anyway because I’m fully in the grip of the drug and procreation seems a rather quotidian concern.

“So it’s all bullshit,” Elise’s husband is telling me later on, referring to the kinds of conversations druggies have.

“Yeah, but hopefully it’s all good bullshit,” I say. The conversation turns to other subjects. I turn to Elise, who’s sitting on the couch next to me. “So what’s the deal with the two of you? You’re non-monogamous right?”

“She and my husband are into each other,” she responds, nodding toward the curvy babe, “but I’m not really involved with her.” Elise slips her arm around my waist. Arousal tears into me like a knife through the gut. It’s the drug again, I’m sure, pulling me in yet another direction: urges strike suddenly, painfully, from nowhere. I take a deep breath and talk about my relationship with Leslie.

“You know, I’ve never done ecstasy before,” Elise says. Her face moves infinitesimally closer. Now or never. I close the gap between our lips. Release the pressure now. Slowly. The girl smells nice. “You’re a good kisser,” she remarks. I repay the compliment with another kiss.

Time passes. The curvy girl lies passed out on the couch. I’ve been interacting with the guests, snapping pictures here and there. Jen’s already removed most of her clothing and she’s complaining, good-naturedly, that everyone else isn’t nearly naked enough. Elise emerges from the bathroom and our paths collide. We embrace each other. Her husband shuffles by.

“I want to have sex with Lex,” she says to him.

For a moment I’m really not sure whether I’m hallucinating. Wait; did she actually just say that? Her husband rolls his eyes and laughs. Her statement confirmed by a witness, I’m sputtering now, “Ah, I’m pretty high and I’m not sure there’s much I can do right now and—well, let me check in with Leslie.”

My sweetheart shrugs and joins us in the immaculate gay bedroom of Nikki’s immaculate gay roommate. We probably shouldn’t be in here, I know, but I’m a creature of convenience. I sit perched on the edge of the bed with my newly-minted fiancee next to me. Elise stands. I reach up the back of her dress and grasp her small ass cheeks, pulling her between my legs and against the edge of the mattress. She lifts the velvety fabric and I pull her thong down part way, letting my fingers settle between her legs. Elise closes her eyes, sighing. Watching us, Leslie purrs and parts her lips, inviting me to lean over and fill her mouth with my tongue. People wander from room to room, shadows in the periphery of my vision, but the three of us remain frozen here, something holding us in the moment, our shared ecstasy trip bathing us in sensory bliss. Elise’s husband joins us for awhile, wrapping his arms around his wife and kissing her as she stands there with her dress up.

Everything is weird, trippy… and yet perfectly normal.

After what seems to be an eternity I summon the energy to rise, then fish my surprisingly erect cock out of my trousers. The women alternate between me, their lips gliding over me slowly, slowly. “Th-there’s no way I can possibly come right now,” I hear myself say, “but this feels wonderful.” I close my eyes and concentrate on the feeling, trying to block out the world.

I’m cold and my limbs are heavy, my reflexes shot, the reserves of my wit nearly depleted. Stumbling into the living room I find Dana and Roger quietly huddled together like sullen refugees. Dana looks up at me, kinda spaced out. I nod: “Feel that?”

“Wha?”

Oh but I know she’s coming down like I am, all the wear and tear of the evening finally catching up to her, the bone-chilling cold of Cloud City settling in again (even indoors!) like an unwanted houseguest. Funny how a judicious pull at a joint can bring you back from the brink—I always feel like I’ve put one over on god.

“Our moment has arrived. Let’s have that smoke, shall we?”