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The Wildcard

10/2/04

The routine was the same as it always was when I speak to Wim about the weekend.

J:  What's up, man?
W:  Nothin', man...what's crackin'?
J:  You got anything for tonight?
W:  My man Jon Lamb's puttin' this thing together...

Oh, shit, I say to myself.  Is this a good idea?

Back in January, after getting back from San Francisco, I spent much of that first month or two re-establishing relationships with many of my friends from school, THE University of Virginia.  Mandy & Wim Taylor, two people I got to know well while in Charlottesville and while we were out in California together (we were in SF for about a year concurrently), were instrumental in getting me back out in the club scene here after doing mostly barhopping with my friends out west.  Maybe the third or fourth time out with the Taylors, I met a friend of Wim's.

"Justin, this is Jon Lamb."  I still remember the moment, because since then, I'm pretty sure that meeting Jon Lamb is either the best thing or the worst thing for my social life in the last few years.

We all have, or have had, that friend--The Wildcard, if you will--that for one reason or another always seems to have a hand in some of your best party experiences...and, a couple of those stories that end with five people bombed on a backroom sofa.

I used to have this friend, who has a first name but to many of my circle of friends is just known as Rosenwinkel, that was The Wildcard in my life.  Nearly every time I went out with this girl and any of her wicked associates, somebody ended up telling one of those

"So, it's 5:45 in the morning, and everybody's getting laid, and that married guy Bob is in skivvies on the couch with that 18-year-old, and--here's the REALLY crazy part--..."

stories.  As an experiment, I invited Rosenwinkel on the 2002 South Beach trip, and while I can't say the trip was a 100% success, I do know that somehow Rosenwinkel befriended some local model named Pablo that got us into about seven VIP rooms and made meeting hot women a contact sport...plus, this also led to a couple of Rosenwinkel disappearances and Pablo eventually stalking me during our last 36 hours in Miami.  Rosenwinkel also popularized the phrase "There are no good men in Washington" a few years ago, and she's the only person I know that can honestly say she has dated enough men here to speak from a significant survey sample.  She might be the only woman I know that I can really say was (and maybe still is) a "hellion": hot, knew she was hot, got a myriad of otherwise normally sane, innocent people in trouble, and never seemed to be home before 4 AM, including the times she went out during the week.  Only person I have ever known that was good at holding a cigarette in one hand, a drink in the other, and being able to show off on the dance floor.  My friend Gordon and I used to always say that Rosenwinkel was a walking time bomb...you just wanted to be around to see when it really went off, despite the danger, because the wild times were guaranteed with that girl and it almost made sense to take the plunge.

So, in an interesting twist, when Wim told me that Jon Lamb was putting together a night for Wim's wife Mandy at the new club FUR in Northeast, you can imagine who I ran into while at the nightspot last week...Rosenwinkel.  (At least, I think it was her; I haven't seen her since South Beach, but given the time and place, it almost had to be Rosenwinkel!)  FUR itself is a good time, complete with your requisite main dance room, bangin' new sound system, host of VIP rooms, thick-looking bouncers with earpieces that scream "Secret Service dropouts", and a stable of staff dancers that populate any raised platform available.  But, naturally, a club is one thing...a club with Jon Lamb's name attached is a whole fuckin' other.

Jon, also known as "JL" to the powers that be, doesn't seem to know how to just go to a club on a Friday night and hang out...no, once again, this involved getting to FUR a little early because we had use of a VIP room that overlooked the main dance floor (a rarity that was a smoke-free lounge) and had multiple bottles of champagne and vodka cycled into the mix.  Complements of management, there were also four women who, for no reason that made sense to anyone in attendance, were gyrating to the pounding techno in not much more than panties and black t-shirts cut in half, curiously exposing more breast than Perdue.  I looked over at Dan Yu--another member of the JL posse--and smirked not at the fact that faux strippers were already working hard at 11:30 PM, but because this seems to always happen when JL is involved.  (I kept thinking, Isn't this supposed to be a birthday or going-away party?  Those girls are essentially dancing for singles!!)

Even now, as I think back to the other parties I have been to with JL or his assorted 'mates, almost all of them seem to have the same themes.  Much like a party at Hugh Hefner's (I have to use my imagination here), the parties of JL always seem to have the 50 most beautiful people in the city at them (writing company excluded) and Wim and I almost always talk about how strange it is that any one man seems to know so many hot men and women.  It's like they came out of a factory; everyone seems to be 29, a professional, college-educated and friendly, with that United Colors of Benetton-like diversity mixed in...at one of the parties, I really did spend time counting the diversity mix, and I distinctly remember a hotel party thrown by another friend of JL's that amongst its 40-or-so guests, the guests were a quarter black, a quarter Asian, a quarter white and a quarter..."other."  And then we go out and everyone is dancing and getting lit up like a Christmas tree.

It reminds you of a social club, if you believe in that kind of thing, and I'm convinced that continuing to hang out with these people might be the end of me.  Although I still love going out all the time, even long-time friends of mine are starting to worry that my drinking has curbed out of control, which for some people might mean getting wasted every weekend, but for me, it's normally having four drinks instead of one.  I am beginning to see the end of the social tunnel, the proverbial end of the line for someone that just can't seem to get enough of the nightlife.  I can still go all night once or twice a year--usually in South Beach--but in general, I sometimes look around and see the kids doing 4 or 5 AM stints and wonder why I can't hang like that any more...I can still see nights like that even a year or two ago, but that person just seems a little different than the guy that writes this column.

So, you can see my dilemma, then...JL and his various compadres make this life a consistent reality, but is it an opportunity I can continue to play along with?  I'm having a ton of fun...but, will this make me miss the nightlife more when it's gone?  If I live in the now, will I come up the loser later?  Am I setting myself up for a life of 40-year-old club hopping?  Is that even a bad thing?  I don't know if I have the time to think about all of this...my cell phone's ringing.

It's JL.

 

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell and Longer Community Trust:

• "Just, can I invite my friends over for the Bacon Party?":  Opening Weekend

• "Do you like homemade cobbler?":  $9.50 Show

• "That's got to be tough for fat people, don't you think?":  Matinee

• "Sorry I can't pick you up, Just...I've got a tee time to worry about.":  Rental

• "What's up now...bitch?":  Hard Vice

 

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