Celebrating New Year’s in August at a Secret Underground Supper Club
8:30pm
Haven’t run into anyone who seems like a host yet—just guests that proclaim to be friends, or friends of friends. One of them attended the “Christmas in July” event the preceding week—but when pressed for info on just what made it Christmassy (sleigh bells? Carols? Santa handing out presents?) lamely referenced a dish of mussels and green beans in white wine. My visions of noisemakers, flutes of champagne and reenactments of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve are beginning to go up in smoke—along with the pack of Marlboros I’m starting to work my way through in earnest.
9:15pm
There are a few platters of nibbles on the table—dolmades, smoked fish crostini, ricotta fritters—all of which look delicious, but no one seems to be eating them. Are they an art installation, or is everyone just being dainty and polite? I discreetly shove a salted shishito pepper into my mouth and flee the broiling basement once again for the rain-cooled backyard. Beginning to run out of Marlboros, but evidently, one of the hosts’ friends has been commissioned into alternately spinning Beatles records and passing around a Tupperware container full of hand-rolled cigarettes—both herbal and, ahem, non. Vinegar Hill House this ain’t.
9:45pm
Besides being a licensed driver and a suitable vessel for midnight kissing, there’s another reason I’ve brought my husband along—his remarkable gift for leading strangers in impromptu foosball games in the laundry room while gamely chatting about the homeless problem in San Francisco, the premature cancellation of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, and the recent discovery of the Higgs-Boson. Although the room is full of incredibly kind, sparkling, and interesting people that I’d be glad to meet again sometime over pizza, I’m in clear and present danger of forfeiting my already limited ability to engage in idle chitchat… my stomach is beginning to eat itself from the inside out.