Out tomorrow, the memoir “Notes from the Night: A Life After Dark” (Crown/Random House), follows author Taylor Plimpton (and best friend Zoo, master of nightlife negotiations) through 24 hours of mayhem in the city that never sleeps. Below, an excerpt from the chapter “The Big Dream: Women in the Night.”
GODDESS WORSHIP
Truth be known, women are the only reason men like me even go to these ridiculous nightclubs, anyway. They are the reason I do this shit to myself, night after night after night.
In fact, women might just be the reason I ever do anything at all.
Yes, women are the thing that drives the night as well as the thing it is driving toward–they are the horizon. And it’s not even their choice–women are the evening’s grand focus, whether they like it or not. Men’s eyes are drawn to them, to their glow, to the way they seem to float through and somehow above the crowd, as beautiful and untouchable as ghosts. (Actually, women, too, probably spend more time looking at each other–scowling and judging and comparing–than they do at men.) Yes, the rest of the evening is shadowed, but beautiful women shine. You can see the way the whole night orbits around them, bends and tilts their direction, as if seeking out their light. You can even see men circle them like doomed meteors, their hopeful orbit getting closer and closer, till they almost inevitably break into their atmosphere at the wrong angle and burst into flames. Oh, there’s no doubt about it: Women rule the night and, in return, the night bows down to them with a kind of quaking reverence.
It may be an old cliché, equating the feminine with night and moon and darkened hours, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Unlike the day, a time supposedly ruled by man, and where even in the modern age a woman is somehow still likely to get paid less simply because she’s a woman, everything is reversed at night. Here, it is the women who reign. Or as Zoo puts it, “Dude, hot chicks out at night get away with murder.” They will wait in no lines, pay no fees. They are attended to hand and foot; any desire they have, they need merely beckon. Grown men can be seen scurrying away and back, quick as eager little mice, fulfilling their requests. Yes, in the end, the night in New York is indeed a kind of goddess worship–offerings are constantly being made to them of flesh and food and drink.
And all for good reason. The night needs women. Their presence can make a time out on the town, their absence can ruin it. This, in the end, seems the very reason door policies were invented, and why it’s so hard to get into a club if you’re a guy, and so easy if you’re a beautiful girl–because when the delicate balance of male and female gets skewed, so does the party. Indeed, one of the few times you will ever see Zoo actually sulk is when there’s a paucity of women. “Yo, dude,” he will say, glancing around with narrow, sullen eyes, “this shit depresses me, yo. Let’s break out.” And I feel the same way. When there are no women, there are no possibilities. It’s like the night has been drained of its life force, like there’s almost just no point.
But when there are beautiful women afoot–especially the tall all-American blondes with sunshine smiles, a little preppy but with a hint of porn star in their eyes–Zoo can be heard saying things like, “God bless beautiful women, dude. They just put me in such a good mood.”
And I will say, “Me too, dude,” and he will say, “Mad prospects, dude,” and I will say, “Given, dude, it’s all about the possibilities.” And we will both stand there with that faraway springtime look in our eyes and that happy warmth in our hearts and drink our drinks, feeling pretty good.
Yes, when women abound, it makes a difference for everyone concerned. Females themselves, sensing safety in numbers the way exotic antelope might, can let loose a little bit, relax into the night, have their own good time doing their own thing without the constant threat of ambush. And the men, well, suddenly all the men are happy, almost goofily so. We are giddy little kids in a candy shop–we hardly even know what to do with ourselves anymore. We are glassy eyed, struck with wonder, overwhelmed to sedation, the beast in us finally soothed.
A man can ask for little more than this, than to be surrounded by the fairer sex. At this point, you almost don’t need to do anything anymore. You can kind of just sit back and relax. Sometimes it hardly seems to matter if you hook up with any of them or not, it’s just about being around them, this bounty of beautiful women, their soothing presence, their shining calm. It’s an odd thing, that some creatures have the power to do this–to soothe you with their mere existence–but it is this way with beautiful women. It’s enough to simply know that they are there.
Well, almost enough. Supposedly, I am a man, and I am supposed to do something about this. I am supposed to approach one of these mythical, fleet-footed creatures and somehow convince her not to run away.
Taylor Plimpton’s previous pieces for TFT concerned the search for a hairless coyote and an expedition to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Taylor Plimpton
Taylor Plimpton is the author of Notes from the Night: A Life After Dark, a nonfiction account of New York City nightlife, which ...
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