Last night, after changing out of my nutcracker outfit and getting off work, I went to meet Ben at a house party somewhere on Bleecker street. It was a Jewish party. It was a gay party. There were bottles of booze all over the place, some snacks, and some cute boys, some very cute boys scattered around. Just about every person I talked to made some reference to Jewishness, asked if I was Jewish. The Jew envy I used to have a few years ago would briefly resurface with these questions.

There was this boy in a scarf, always the boys in scarves, that I was attracted to. His name was Eric. Ben, him, and I peed together, squeezing past some religious singing to get into the bathroom. The boy was pee shy. I touched his penis slightly and watched it react, rise a bit. Both Ben and I were hitting on this boy and that made me feel slightly uncomfortable - feelings of competitiveness, insecurity, etc. I started talking to this other boy, Adam, who was very attractive, who shined in his eyes, and who I was having a lovely conversation with before some crazy person stepped between us to start talking to me about spirals. Adam escaped the spiral conversation and I wasn't so lucky, was stuck for a while trying to be polite and listen, meanwhile silently cursing this speaker for ruining the interaction, something sweet and intelligent, that I had been desiring for the past week or so.

I found myself making out with some boy, a yoga instructor, because he wanted to and I thought I needed something that could be got from making out with a stranger, some feeling of desirability. I did so for a bit before I realized it wasn't what I wanted and pulled away from his lips. And there in front of me were Ben and Eric making out, which was a bit of a discouraging sight, though if I were a better human, free of pettiness, envy, and jealousy [cue Joni Mitchell's "All I Want," which addresses this theme perhaps better than any other song], then I would be happy to see my friend happy.

It was time to flee. Yoga instructor was very confused that I was leaving, gave me his card. I wrote my number on some slip of paper found in my bag and gave it to Adam. It was drizzling as I left the party. I tried unsucessfully to read The New Yorker on the train ride home; various predictable strains of thought instead kept on distracting me.