Wash your mouth out, Village People

Maybe it was because there were so many dirty stories blueing the air that night that Chris decided that he needed to sanitise The Bitter End.

You could see his point. The story of one wife's twenty-six minute birthday treat to her husband (think TiVo, whipped cream and a seriously craned neck) was nothing compared to the profanities being spilled between the acts. This was New York's most popular story-telling night, but after some of the lasciviously-charming hostess' tales I'm sure not all the audience members were sitting entirely comfortably. After all, the bare-brick bar is only just round the corner from NYU, and the collective adolescent hormones were bucking and grinding despite the cool-shower effect of the fierce air conditioning. I sipped my coke and watched the room flirt. It's scary how quickly after graduation that students become just a punchline to you.

The jokes of the tellers were landing and missing and getting stuttered over, but it was the stories with - and I can only type it with an apologetic smirk on my face - heart that really worked. There was the girl whose deaf, scrappy father ratted her out to the prison warden after she smuggled him some birthday Juicy Fruit. There was the Jewish kid who wondered over to his neighbour's house drunk, and got mistaken for a "dangerous little Mexican" loose in his upper-middle class suburb. Best of all, there was the red-bearded, musical-obsessed guy remembering how on his sixteenth birthday the guy of his dreams told him he only thought of him, "as a little brother - one who I let give me blow jobs".

It was after Red II won that Chris gave a shout of disgust. His back pocket bloomed dark. The hand sanitiser that was meant to ward of swine flu had been busy sanitising his boxer shorts. When he reached for it, the slippery little customer fell through his hands and squirted out across the club's floor, spraying the feet of the twittering girls at the table in front of us. Quietly, he picked it up, wiped it down, and put it back in his pocket. It was nice to think that we, too, had at last shared something intimate with the good people at the Bitter End.

Oh, those Summer Nights

Today I wake up with myxomatosis eyes. I smile askance at the reflection that zombied back at me, for the redness augers that summer has finally come to Brooklyn. If anyone asks: I'm taking one for the team.

Up until this weekend there have been flirty spells of sunshine, but nothing strong enough to take the puritan chill out of the evening air. But suddenly it happens. The sun ups its game, and the air above the sidewalks begins to waver.

This weekend Central Park became a Glastonbury crowd - with the sun the headline act. There were queues to get in and queues to leave. There was, admittedly, less ostentatious drug-taking and mud-wallowing, but the jostling for elbow room was no less fierce for all that. It was competitive recreation at its animal best.

But on that first festival day of summer we're not in Central Park. We're stuck in traffic on the wrong side of the Lincoln tunnel and the sun streaming in the back window is broiling us. Then I'm sitting outside working my way through my fourth bottle of Miller(the champagne of beers)and my jacket is still bundled up in my bag, although darkness has well and truly fallen. It feels like a personal victory, and looking round,I see that I'm not the only one with a triumphant gleam in my hay-feverish eyes.

All the nice girls love a sailor

In the Pernod-sodden pages of Kerouac's and Burroughs' And the Hippos were Boiled in their Tanks the guys talk about the young sailors who ride the subways with their legs splayed and their eyes wide open. This being New York, where the happy hours keep truth and fiction pleasantly indistinct, no sooner had I finished the chapter than I realised that I had a real, mouth-breathing specimen splayed out on the seat next to me. He was out of uniform, and in the mood for conversation.
"So do I get off here for Broadway Lafayette?"
"No, you need to wait til we get across to Manhattan. Couple stops."
"Gotcha. I thought that since it was Broadway Junction, maybe... I don't know. Maybe all the Broadway trains crossed here or something."
"Nah, doesn't work like that. Don't take the A-train much then?"
"Never taken the subway before."
"Where you from boy?" (I never said that it was me he was eager to talk to)
"Texas originally. But I've been in boats in this district for the past five years. Know New York like the back of my hand. Just, y'know, not the subway. Know all the harbours though."

Turns out our man is in the merchant navy, "the fifth arm of the armed forces" as he put it. The phrase was meant to be grandiose, but just made me think that the US military sounds like a fairly grotesque body politic, a lopsided god of war. It's one thing to be in a branch of the services so elite that you can't really talk about it, quite another, I imagine, to always have to explain that what you do is y'know, really just like being in the army, navy or airforce. Same, same but different.

But even after he waved goodbye at Broadway Lafayette, I couldn't stop thinking about this other New York that the sailor knows. My Gotham must be a place apart from the one this man navigates, where it's not blocks, but shipping lanes that matter, where the city limits are marked not by Bronx Zoo, but by the ports of the Catskills, and where Jersey is not a joke but a port of call like all the rest.

Outdanced

The joint only opened its doors a few minutes ago but already the floor is full of couples. These are hardcore hepcats, and their moves put me to shame. Now I know my Charleston kicks from my Lindy turns, but these kids have the sort of swing that god just didn't give me. There's one red-head, long and lithe, who should be on the stage. Perhaps she's on a night off from high-kicking her way through Chorus Line. The thought doesn't make me feel any less like I were all elbows and lumber. Clutching my five buck coke I shrink into the shadows, and try to take notes.

The band strike up a slinky jazz number and the dance floor empties. Red stands her ground. So would I if I could dance like her. You wouldn't be able to drag me out of that moody spotlight for love nor money, whatever the moony lyrics say. Red's partner keeps it loose and easy, dipping her and spinning her in a lazy swing which has a tango-sensuality and a bluesy syncopation. I'm trying to enjoy the show, but it's hard when I hate them so.

Thing is, in the world of Lindy-hop, no baby can stay put in her corner for very long. I've almost worked up the courage to try a little spinning in the shadows with Chris when a hand comes out and pulls me out into the glare of the lights. Now I'm whirling past Red, trying to make my feet behave. She's still out there in the centre, passed from one eager partner to another, lighting up the dance floor. I wonder if she's this elegant, this sought after, in everything she does. I imagine waiters arguing over who gets to serve her coffee; business men laying their suit jackets down in puddles to keep her feet dry - anything to watch her trip the light fantastic down Broadway way.

The Dollhouse Dash

I'd scarfed down the bacon-cheeseburger and the dive-bar-stiff Jack-and-cokes and now I was pounding the pavements of Adams Morgan trying to make it back to the hotel room in time. It was the first night warm enough to sit outside and eat, and on either side of road lazy sun-addled punters glanced up at us curiously as we sprinted past them, hands clutching our sides.

Now I'm betting that Paula Radcliffe doesn't load up in Maccy D's before a big race. But what we lacked in style, skill and tactics we definitely made up for in determination. It was 8.45 Friday night. If we got back up to our fraying Pop Art room in the next fifteen minutes we'd get to watch the next installment of Josh Whedon's trash-fest on a fuck-off big screen. Having made do with Hulu and a dodgy internet connection ("Wait! It needs to buffer. Again") for the last three months, it felt like a bloody red letter day.

We stopped for nothing. Except liquor stores. Every time we passed one we desperately scoured the shelves for screw-top bargains. The minutes were ticking by. My stitch was getting worse. Chris started singing "nhah nhah nhah naaaa naa, nhah na na naaaaaa" to keep our spirits up.

With over a minute to go, and a bottle of overpriced Californian Syrah stowed in my volumunous handbag, we made it back to the hotel. I drummed on the faux snakeskin walls of the lift as it climbed teasingly slowly to the fifth floor. Finally we were back in the room.
"Turn on the main lights. I need to find the remote."
"There are no main lights."
"Sod it, I've found it. What channel again?"
"Fox. Hurry!"
"Can't be Fox. It's Prison Break."
"What'll we do?"
"You flick through the others. I'll look it up on the internet."
"Shit! It'll be starting..."

Turns out that Dollhouse was taking a break that week. Our epic dash had been in vain. Instead we spent our Friday night in Washington DC watching a film about kids watching bands in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side.
"We really should see more live music."
I nodded placidly, and took another slug of the Syrah.

Monday to Sunday Best

Now I love a good renounce as much as the next girl, but since the days of compulsory boarding-school chapel I prefer not to spend my Sundays on my knees.

I'm guessing it wasn't a chore for her though. She was climbing the stairs ahead of me in that deliberate way that people do when they come to realise that they can't take their movements for granted. Usually I gently squeeze past those careful climbers, offering up a quick, silent prayer for eternal health and youthful legs as I stride past.

But even from the back she was arresting. Her suit was a soft purple, and her pillbox hat echoed the shade exactly. One hand gripped the banister, but the other held a gold bag just as tightly. The same gold was woven through her shiny high-heeled sandals and jangled from her wrists. Fashion vampires may warn us against the allure of matchy-matchy, but this was one lady who was not buying what they were selling. She was put together. She had an outfit. She was heading back from Church with her head held high and her gold bag in a death-grip.

This lady in purple and gold made me think of the frocks languishing in my own wardrobe, waiting for a Sunday Best that never comes, or squandered on some Tuesday whim. For once I don't hurry past. Instead I wait until she's swished up the final step and watch her head back to her workaday week.

The Flip-cup Chronicles

It's ridiculous how pleased I am with my new-found flip-cupping skills. I should have guessed really - the only games I've ever been able to win have generally involved either international drinking rules, treble word scores or a cunning combination of the two. Imbibe = 36 points. If only I'd had a D, and I'd be wiping the beer-sloshed floor with you, my worthy opponent.

On the court it's a whole different ball-game. This week I don't get the full-face, jaw-jolting shot, but I do suffer a lot of smaller hits to my person and my dignity. The stinging slaps to my arms and stomach which are already blooming a royal purple. The soft balls I throw and they catch, when I should have been the one catching and keeping my team in the game. The dodges I shoulda woulda coulda made. I do make one catch - from a girl who throws like a girl - and for a second in my head it's glory and tinsel falling from the sky and I'm a Mighty Duck being slapped on the back by a grinning Emilo Estevez who is a Sheen in all but name. Then it's a dull thud to the thigh and the glory is over.

Not so in the bar afterwards where the beer is cold and cheap and smells like acrid lemonade. Round after round I flip that cup like a pro. I discover that my Peter Pointer has just the right combination of strength and agility to do the job quickly and without incurring the half-joking wrath of my team-mates. For once, I am not the weakest link.