Vampires, whips and firedancers

Achieved a Personal Record (PR) in yesterday’s Four on the Fourth race in Carrboro – the fastest I’ve ever run. The prizes were special athletic socks, complete with cartoon American flags. The weather wasn’t even too hot. Twelve of us went out to breakfast at Elmo’s afterward.

Last night I went to one of the craziest parties ever. The evening started off a bit poorly. I had to carry a 30-lb container of banana pudding to the Ringside, all the way from the police station on Chapel Hill St. (approximately a half a mile away) in a pair of 3 1/2 inch heels. It was a humid 95 degrees. We finally arrived at the place. Four floors of a rickety old dance club. Grand piano, bald unclothed mannequins and pictures of men boxing naked. A different DJ on every floor, potluck on the third floor, right next to the dancefloor for the industrial house music. The entertainment included a 7-ft tall Goth girl singing and playing piano, accompanied by a zoned-out guy on bongo drums, also a troupe of very provacative firedancers (the whole rear courtyard smelled of kerosene) and muscled, shirtless men cracking whips. That was not even the half of it.

Our fellow partiers included Latino gangster types, a group of little old men in straw hats, hipsters in glasses reading the paper, leather and metal stud-wearing S&M folks, an overweight tourist family from Florida, lots of gay black men, random assorted children, loads of Goth people, long-haired bikers wearing sunglasses (how ever did they find their way around?!), pale dreadlocked artists and Asian pole dancers in pigtails.

And then there’s Dykki, the oh-so-mysterious person who was the whole reason for the benefit event. In case you didn’t know, his house burned down one month ago and he lost everything.

We all finally got the nerve to approach Dykki and introduce ourselves, during pretty much the only 2-minute period of time in which the coven of wraithlike women was not draped over him, stroking his hair. I swear they had little pointed teeth. We were a bit nervous because we had heard SO much about him. Everyone seems to know Dykki or knows someone who knows him. As Kelly put it, “It’s kind of like talking to God.”

He shook our hands and told us how glad he was that we were there. We totally believed him. He’s certainly got some kind of magnetic presence.

The fireworks were great. We ended up on the rooftop of a luxury loft apartment building downtown – the apartment of my friend’s friend Shawn from San Francisco – and I called my friend Dan to come up because he lives in the same building. By the end of the night, we’d figured out that while almost all of us had just met, we are all connected. Spooky! Turns out Shawn’s brother dated my friend Sally from the Peace Corps for four years. Also, Dan thought he might have had Kelly as a patient (yikes!) during his gynecology rotation back in N’awlins. Is it a coincidence?

If nothing else, I have something in common with Dykki: a certain obscure sci-fi pilot TV show stole his heart (or so he says on his MySpace page).

Also, those crazy party-goers ate every bit of my potluck contribution (“Crystal’s Famous Barely Legal Banana Pudding”). Happy Birthday, USA!