Winter '92 semi-formal

Let me tell you again how psyched I am for you to be back in Chapel Hill and living with us all in...The Pink House! Just this past month we threw a semi-formal party for only our close friends, and it was a big success. There were about seventy-five guests all of us housemates knew really well, and another seventy-five or so who were friends of those friends. We were so scared that word had gotten out about the party and the whole town was going to show up, but they didn't!

The living room was the "cocktail" area, suitable for small talk and assorted deep conversations. The dining room and kitchen were converted into le area de discotheque, complete with flashing strobelights and other essential visual effects, plus booming stereo with lots of authentic techno and disco music for the masses to amuse themselves to. The bedrooms were private hideaways and cool chill-out rooms open only to a few, such as the infamous "Club Caroline," where Ms. C. Rivers Hall played hostess to a steady stream of elite guests. A party within a party, if you will.

Sorry I didn't find much time to write to you this fall while you were in Prague. Did I tell you I was taking this past semester off in order to work on voter registration? Ohmigod, and the last time we talked was probably before the election! Isn't it great that Clinton won? He narrowly lost North Carolina, by about 26,000 votes. But it didn't matter.

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Today, Chris Pedigo and I were re-admitted to UNC-CH for the spring semester. He eventually returned home last month, after drinking most of his scholarship money over a period of several months, never leaving Paris, and eventually falling sick. He was living in a fucking chateau with all of these rich Parisians who he met somehow, hanging out with Russian poets and princes, formerly exiled types who saw no reason to go home even now that they could. Then he came down with some awful disease that you usually get from drinking feces-contaminated water, and spent the next three weeks in the American Hospital there, in Paris.

He's in Chapel Hill and over at the Pink House right now, in fact. He says he's really sorry he never made it to Prague, and is looking forward to working on our magazine for the sheesy set.

Guess who else will be hanging out for a week or so at the beginning of the semester? Dana Lumsden, the man, the myth, the legend! Did I tell you he was accepted at Columbia Law School? Well, he's still seeing Erika, and is coming down from the 9th til the 19th to see her and also to hang out with me, N'Gai, and other friends.

Speaking of Dana, I'm going to be driving him back to New York from Boston over the holidays, probably on December 26th. This is before we leave to come back to Chapel Hill the first week of January. He's got exams right around New Year's. Then, I'm going to be staying with him and going out clubbing a couple nights, maybe the 26th and 27th. If you'll be around, you have to come out with us!

(Note from 2009 - on one of those nights, we hung with Kyle at various spots around Manhattan, and ended up at Nell's in the early hours, where the ladies were almost as decadent-looking as the ornate, gilded decor and expensive antique furnishings.)

Also, I need to mail our landlord the rent check for January around the 1st of the month, so if you could send me $215.00 I can have it deposited before the rent check clears. Caroline and N'Gai have already paid me for January, but Jay and Lydia are both sending me money over break.

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Can't wait to see you, chicky baby! Au revoir, and as the froggy disco patrons say, "Que tes chausseurs de "boogie" continue a dancer."

p.s...there was an article in the Times last week about how the seventies craze is over and now the rage is early 80s parties. And it's true, they are...but only among trendy buzzkills who are desperately looking for something new to do. The really hip set are into ultra nineties techno music right now. Just thought you'd like to know!

- Letter to Kyle