Bethany Paige had beautiful huge round wine glasses. They were fish bowls with stems. Not only were they enormous, but there were so many of them. There had to be twenty-five people stuffed into her Williamsburg loft and every guest held one of these goblets. Plus there were a few dozen more perfectly arranged in a square on the butcher block topped island in her kitchen.
It was a weird thing to get hung up on, but I often got hung up on weird things. Did she rent these glasses? Did she buy them all at once?
I swirled the blood red wine in my glass and wondered what level of adulthood one had to attain to make a glassware purchase of that magnitude.
The wine was good. Someone said it was a juice Super Tuscan. Separately I knew what those words meant, together I wasn't so sure.
"Henry!" a shrill voice called from across the room.
It was Bethany's husband. A man who called himself Charlie. He was tall and ginger and bearded and the kind of person who would prefer Charlie over Charles.
His nasal voice mixed with the tannins in the wine was enough to start me on the way to a serious headache. That was until I saw who Charlie was dragging over to meet me.
She was about the same height as me or at least she was in heels, but she had the presence of someone taller. She wore a simple, but very well made, black slip dress with a white peter pan collar and short sleeves that were capped in white as well. She had that split-endless expensive looking hair. The color of single origin chocolate, that was at least 94% cocoa. It was short with side swept fringe. Her eyeliner was winged and her lips were matte red.
"Gretchen, this is Henry. He writes for food magazines, just like you!"
We flashed the brief smiles of the introduced and then started comparing resumes. It always disturbed me when worlds collided. I liked being the only magazine writer in the room.
She had a slightly breathy voice though it wasn't to the point of affect.
She was slightly younger and slightly better educated than me, but we had written for some of the same books. Food & Wine. Savour. Travel.
She had thick thighs and a her dress was somewhat short. I was trying to maintain eye contact, but part of me needed to know if she was wearing pantyhose or proper stockings.
Although I couldn't get a real read on her I very much wanted to kiss her. She held the drama of a business woman in control but mixed with the faux innocent yet deeply jaded aesthetic of a French cinema ingenue only physically thick where they were thin.
I had drank enough wine to feel charming. But as I started to turn the conversation I was once again beckoned by Charlie.
He was holding court by the fireplace, talking with his hands and when he signaled for Gretchen and me, he nearly knocking over Leslie, a yoga instructor.
"Adam, Leslie, Hamilton, Luisa, Gretchen," Charlie went around the little circle introducing us all.
"This is who I was just talking about! Henry, what were you saying about oral sex the other day?" Charlie asked, grasping my shoulder.
I sighed deeply.
Charlie was one of those people that I dislike greatly but constantly found myself in deep conversation with. Mostly because he never shut up and I was often bound by some sense of politeness.
"Henry has this theory, about sex and fetishes and things. How you can completely lose yourself in a the physical to the point of-what's it called again?"
The yogi was suddenly interested. Gretchen raised an eyebrow, but not in a particularly positive way.
"I don't think I remember what you're talk about," I lied, but Charlie waved away my hesitance.
"What was it? Ego destruction?" Charlie said, rubbing his beard and trying to remember the exact phrase.
"Ego death," I corrected.
"Right, right, you're just eating pussy and you're so into it, you completely lose yourself. Every fiber of your body is focused on the pussy, it's just pussy," Charles stopped, laughing as he looked at the various people at the party turning to listen to the popping Ps of his punctuated pussies.
Adam, a professor in a suit with a turtleneck, straightened his glasses.
"Ego death has been well chronicled. Campbell had some serious thoughts on what he called 'self-surrender and transition,' which is an important step in the hero journey."
"Joseph Campbell wrote about oral sex?" asked the confused yogini.
"No, no-" Adam started, shaking his head.
"I thought ego death was a Denis Leary thing," added Hamilton, a tall be-dredded fellow who was also confused.
"I think you mean Timothy Leary," Luisa corrected.
"Right, with the LSD!" Hamilton remembered with a snap of his fingers.
I didn't particularly want to talk about it. It's not that I didn't like these people or that I didn't enjoy red wine and locally grown and or ethically raised foods. I enjoyed them all. It's just that my sexuality was deeply weird or at least it felt so and I had spoken perhaps too freely to Charlie fueled by a sweat and just slightly smokey single barrel bourbon the weekend before.
