[Newspoetry] newsparty

[William Gillespie]

This was sitting on my computer, it's a group prose poem from a November
meeting at which newspoets gathered to examine the mainstream media...

Exquisite Corpse written by, in order of appearance (although some
people wrote more than once):
William Gillespie, Mike Lehman, Dirk Stratton, Maiko Covington, Anne
Bargar, Joe Futrelle, Bob Porter

...

May this war end, we Newspoets hoped, so we can throw a huge end-of-year
party.

A newsparty.

Guiliani would be looking for a party. Bill Clinton is always up for a
party. Nader would probably be looking for a chance to unwind, before
gearing up to seize the election in 2004. Amy Goodman would certainly
come, yes, and William would give her a foot massage while Mike kept her
champagne flute filled. Bill Gates might show up, or Ross Perot, but in
Urbana we are very open-minded and probably would not ask the
controversial figureheads of the wealthy private sector to leave,
provided they behaved themselves.

The one person who would not be showing up would be Ari Fleischer. Still
smarting from "Ari week" at Newspoetry.com, he had threatened to call
the Secret Service on us if the Unknown limo pulled up at the White
House looking for him. Joe assured him that the Newspoets had no
intention of complicating his life any more than his opening his mouth
already had.

The first problem was finding a place to have the party. Mike had
instituted a ban at the Compound on parties larger than three people
ever since "The Unknown: At Long Last, Finally on CD. Really." CD-ROM
Release Party. In a Red Bull-fueled paranoid fit of destruction, Dirk
had broken into the train room and begun frantically tearing up the
tracks with his Swiss Army knife, screaming the whole time that the
tracks were the antennas used to broadcast lies about him to his
enemies, but, goddammit, he sobbed, where's the fucking transmitter?

But, over a case of Dinkel Acker, William finally managed to talk Mike
into having the party, and Mike even relaxed the restraining order.

The transmitter, at this party, would not be hidden. It would be
outdoors under the awning next to the keg at the perimeter of the warmth
thrown by the bonfire, and as party-goers refilled their cups with a
frothy blast of Germany's Purity Act, they could discuss their feelings
about the proposed post-democracy era on pirate radio, on a station
which, throughout the rooms of the party, FM radios would be tuned to.
The whole thing was also Web simulcast through Joe's laptop's cellular
modem. Those jerky images of Barbara Trent slow-dancing with a pickled
Noam Chomksy conveyed the warmth the Newspoets all felt.

The party began at eight with a round of serious folkin' music by Paul
K., who gave the crowd a rendition of "God Save the Queen" rewritten to
describe Tony Blair's recent drag incident in a lesbian bar with Chelsea
Clinton (that he tried to excuse as simply "a clumsy attempt to initiate
a new venture in . . .in creative foreign policy." As we all know now,
Chelsea's dad beat the crap out of Tony, who remains on good terms with
his new friend, George W. Bush (who, it turns out, phoned frequently
during the Prime Minister's recovery and offered to authorize a cruise
missile attack on Harlem.)

Later, a massive spliff made the rounds, filling the house with so much
smoke the alarm system was activated, spilling the party into the
backyard. At that point, Kord talked everyone into doffing their clothes
in the spirit of liberation (of course), despite the 20 degree
temperature. Although the more modest among us wore togas made out of
the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Gooseflesh became the common
uniform, though arguments broke out over which was the proper term:
gooseflesh or goose pimples. Unfortunately, everyone was in a dogmatic
mood, and no one was willing to concede that it was okay to have two
terms for the same phenomenon. After one combatant insulted his
adversary by calling him a "fucking narrow-minded, diversity-phobic,
codependent, baby-seal-killing copulator of the KKK and a spineless
Logical Positivist who secretly lusts after Dr. Laura to boot," the
melee broke out.

The fighting, though, quickly turned into moshing, and then just
dancing. The ska music that Chef Ra had put on was unbearably exuberant.
But no one thought Mike was serious about the AK until the hour of
midnight approached. Half-passed out on the couch, he fumbled around and
mumbled "Where's my clip" several times, then slowly started snoozing
away again. As everyone counted down the last few seconds until
midnight, he awoke with a start and knocked over his beer, soaking a
pile of herb and making a sodden, unpalatable mess. That was when Ra had
the idea for beer-batter brownies. He scraped the soggy pot into an
empty pizza box and disappeared into the kitchen. "The future will be
hallucinized," he proclaimed, "if the oven works." He cackled.

Somehow, the coming of the new year took the luster out of the party. It
only took a few seconds for everyone to realize that nothing had changed
and there wasn't much hope anything would be changing any time soon.
"We're all morons, you know that?" someone said to no one in particular.
"We greet every new year as though this time, this time, things will be
different. We'll finally give up our bad habits, develop new virtues,
watch with smug satisfaction as the rest of the world follows our
sterling example of self-reformation and begins solving poverty and
disease and greed and war, and before we know it a history of suffering
has been erased. Could we be any more deluded?"

"Lighten up, man!" demanded another anonymous reveler, "Geez, send your
hairshirt to the cleaners once in awhile, why doncha?"

The party's mood dropped into an abyss.

Oblivious to the vibe, Giuliani and Hillary were basically making out
with no subtlety at that point, political differences apparently
overcome.  What with the bid to extend his term as mayor having pretty
much tanked, and his spare change going toward the mounting medical
bills ("Damn! if only I'd supported that single payer health plan!"),
Giuliani'd be needing a room, and the pad up at Chappaqua--well, it
wasn't exactly rent controlled, but hell, it was worth a trick or two,
as long as Bill was away on business.

The entire room suddenly broke out into well-choreographed song and
dance.  It was all that the people could do, singing some happy Gilbert
and Sullivan number to keep their spirits up in these trying days.  Some
had argued for years that the best way to revive a party was to put on
some Prince and replenish the beer supply.  Tonight that was proven to
not necessarily be the case.

Then Janet Reno burst through the fence, leaving a Janet-Reno-shaped
hole and letting William's cats in.  Clinton abruptly extinguished his
joint, Scalia and O'Connor pulled the beach towel over their heads.  In
the distance, every toilet was heard to flush.

"What's going on here?" Reno barked.  Her pearls gleamed in the glow of
the patio-level lighting.  Her eyes were weirdly distorted behind her
coke-bottle glasses.

"You're having a party and I wasn't invited?"

She was quickly handed a White Russian.

"What the hell are you people doing in my house?" bellowed Bob, who'd
been dozing in the bathtub.  Covered in sweat and shaking, he staggered
into the kitchen, accidentally kicking Rumsfeld in the head.  "Where'za
President?  I wanna get some of those juicy malaprops!"

The sudden silence in the room was part shock, part relief. We all
looked around at each other and smiled in the festive red glow coming
from the blinking Christmas tree lights and the squadron of squad cars
on the street as the cops rang the doorbell.