A Horrible Gonzo New Year: Part 2
And thus the adventure continued...

The light-rail is probably one of the greatest city works to date in the San Jose metropolitan area. Five bucks gets you from the dregs of Milpitas to the uptown shops of Mountain View and back again all day, which is a good deal considering it being cheaper than by car and faster than by bus. The entire thing, for me at least, hearkens back to the days of yore in Los Angeles, when one could hop on a trolley for a nickel, never having to care about owning a car in the god-forsaken town.

Bet you wished it was still around NOW, don't you smog-breathers?

The entire thing also has a good aesthetic to it. Run on pure electricity, the thing hums and glides like something out of a sci-fi novel, with no real front of it so you feel comfortable no matter where you sit. I can only really liken the experience to the monorail at Disneyland, half-expecting to get off at Tomorrow Land when it stops and I'm half-awake. At night, the thing takes on a certain resonance, carrying its own private supply of light in its cabins through the city. I would hesitate to call it anything as fanciful as "magical", but it can be quite a damn fine thing to sit and watch.

The trip to downtown for any celebration is almost always the quiet leg of the trip. People are not nearly boozed up enough yet to be good and rowdy. Everyone seemed almost subdued, as if we were space marines in our futuristic conveyance, about to be dropped on some god-awful swamp world filled with alien menaces. A shared thought passes through such participants, as if to say, "Jesus fuck, are we all really doing this? Really?" But it's all the same, swamp or downtown; when you get there, you hump that pack and get moving.

We filed onto the fairly empty streets, Blynken narrowly avoiding the train hitting him after failing to notice the sidewalks shared the road with the rails at points. Nod, being of a different state of existence than the rest of our minds, was not concerned about which club to frequent.

"I'm hungry," he said, scratching at the scraggly chin-fuzz. The boy was in a perpetual state of beard, even when he shaved.

"We just got here," Blynken voiced, busily flipping off the retreating train that had nearly snagged his foot. I would have said it, but I was too busy sighing, figuring it was going to be the previous year all over again. "Besides, we just went to 7-11. Why didn't you get anything there?"

"I wanted a meal, not a snack. Besides, 7-11 is unhealthy as shit."

I wanted to argue with the boy and point out the number of times I had seen him consume, not eat, CONSUME food from the famous French restaurant Jaques-un-le-Box. Ultimately however, he had a point. 7-11 may serve one well for wake up juice, but if you want a goddamn meal with any nutrition at all, it cannot be found there. Still, Nod is not the easiest person to get food for.

We wandered past a Johnny Rockets, only to find it closed early, no doubt to have the employees join up at whatever club we were going to. I thanked god when I saw a Subway, twisting the head of my companion to face it.

"Nah," he said, "I kinda wanted something hot, y'know.?"

I looked on at the picture of a five-buck meatball sub on the window, cheese melting over the bread and piping hot marinara. I wanted to hit him.

"Fresh hot, not microwaved hot," he added quickly, seeing murder in my eyes.

"Oh for fuck's sake, Nod," Blynken threw in, moving his glasses up to massage his temples. "We're getting good and fuckin' blitzed tonight. We don't need you puking like a firehouse full of chowder after walking around three hours for a diner."

Nod's complaints eventually led to an ultimatum of bar food on my part, saying that it was "nutritious and plentiful, and goddammit, I will skull-fuck you if I miss the ball drop again." Nod seemed to find this a fair compromise, and off again we went. Our efforts to get into the club before 9 were sidelined however.

"Taqueria!", he shouted, in the same tone as a kid who spied an ice cream truck. His spindly little legs pumped as he dashed across the street, cars honking as he played what looked like a human version of Frogger to get inside.

"Son of a bitch," I said, watching drivers shake their fists futilely at the departing college boy. "It's like trying to walk a cat, I swear to god."

"We could always brain him," Blynken offered. His violent tendencies were remarkably lower than in the first days since I'd met him, but they could never really die, a fact I'm often grateful for.

"Nah, he'd just wake up and ask why we didn't bring back his burrito. C'mon."

$7.83 and thirty minutes later, we were finally en-route to our destination without anyone having been rendered unconscious. Unfortunately, by then the early bird admission fees had dropped, making me rethink the braining option at the apologetic-looking Nod.

The club area of San Jose is an odd beast to describe with any accuracy. There's no one set of people who frequent a particular club. Unlike San Francisco, there isn't a rap club, or a rock club, or a preppy club. All forms of scum frequent all locales, it's just dependent on how much cash they happen to have in their pockets at that given moment. Cholos and bangers hit up the local club Toons as much as frat boys and off-work secretaries. It was the great equalizer, with five-dollar drink specials.

Lately, the city has been trying to put condos in the area, trying to gentrify the few square blocks where the clubs lay. It's a pitiful attempt at a land grab, the city zoning board trying to say that the clubs cause too much of a disturbance for the residents who live near them. The only problem is that the clubs are the only reason the people moved into the condos in the first place, so beyond the zoning board, no complaints have been filed with any great majority. And sometimes the city wonders why they ended up getting a serpent statue shaped like a dog turd for their main park.

As we wandered into the place, it became far too clear that we were all way too sober for the place. But we were no cowards. We rectified the situation, glass for glass. After all, being in a club while sober is one of the most banal of experiences. You end up talking to people who think locking in a good mortgage rate is something Jesus wants you to do, or some shit.

I do believe that the club scene serves a purpose. It's not much of a purpose, but then what is? The club scene is where people go to express their subconscious, to let their id roam free with strangers in micro-tight dresses and gelled hair. Folks can do well enough without it, but they'd go insane if it were never even an option on a Friday night. It doesn't matter if you go home with somebody or don't have a great time. You went out and you simple Were. That's the sort of thing that keeps bank tellers from shooting up the place on a Wednesday afternoon, and it's good enough for me.

Repression being what it is, it comes as no surprise that sex is a big part of the club scene. Granted, we call it dancing, but that's what casual sex is in a society where you have AIDS. It's physical, involves two or more people, and generally requires at least a modicum of rhythm, no matter how laughable. Penetration may occur behind the closed doors of the bathrooms or in the alley outside, but the sex is happening out on the dance floor.

That being the case, Blynken was the first of us to assaulted by one of the womenfolk, a thing maybe a third his size in a red dress that leaped onto him like some kind of drop-bear, legs wrapping around him before her hands even got to his neck. He fell backward into the crowd, screaming for us to go on without him. It wasn't long before even Nod and I were beset upon by women in dresses they would never admit to having, though while I had quality, Nod had quantity. Get the man liquored up enough, and he became CassaNod-O, ladder salesman and burrito enthusiast.

I talked awhile to the one who was dancing in a way that could only be called illegal in six states, though admittedly given the noise factor, it was hard to know if she or I heard the actual responses. For all she knew, I was talking about butchering a small family from Macon I had met on the interstate.

ME: So what do you do?!?
HER: I used to be a bank teller! Now I work at Wal-Mart though!
ME: Helluva vocation change!
HER: Yeah, fuckin' economy, man! (slurps drink) Still, could be worse!
ME: How so?!?
HER: I could be sober!

That seemed to sum up the sentiment of the crowd for me. Sure, the economy's in the shitter, and our next president has the highest risk of assassination in the past two decades. So what? We have booze, we have people who like booze, we have people who dance with booze. You can bend us, but we do not break. We are wet bamboo, rest of the world. Wet bamboo slick with bourbon.

The same can't be said for the criers. You've all seen them at the bar during festive events, bawling their eyes out, with mascara running down their cheeks while a group of friends who'd rather be partying try to failingly console them. I must admit, I have never understood the motivations of a crier. Perhaps they are people starved for attention, desiring to be the center of the universe and feeding off the pity of those around them like some kind of emotional nosferatu. Or maybe their boyfriend just decided to be a dick and break up with them when the ball dropped, who knows.

I eventually found Blynken covered in lipstick watching Don Juan de Nod-o getting a final dance with three women at once around 1:30 in the morning. He mentioned to me that the vixen had gotten thrown out for dancing on the pool tables, and admitted such a person would've probably thrown up on him mid-coitus. Eventually dragging Nod away from the goodnight kisses, we tugged him behind us by the collar and began the long, satiated stumble home.