Swelter 14

The weekend bringing a quiet dinner at Cafe Ma*ana with Murray, our thoughts drifting back to the whirlwind of New York. A party at Casa La Femme hosted by Tony Theodore, the exiled Sinatra Bar principal, party girl Ingrid Casares chafing under the yoke of Madonna: "She's always working; she doesn't know how to enjoy life." Michael Alig at Manhattan's USA, reveling in punk star GG Allin's media-savvy heroin overdose demise, occurring shortly after a televised pledge to rape and kill teenagers at downtown gas station. A dinner at Boom, lingerie designer Francis Smiley cruelly rising and falling in the hype merry-go-round, a party of big p.m. columnists suddenly mourning the triviality of their lives. Cable TV cult figure Ugly George prowling Fifth Avenue, looking for women amenable to stripping on camera, George remaining resolutely ugly: "What are you A some sleazy free weekly paper guy? Let me tell you, it's easier than ever to find women for my show, especially those bubbleheaded Florida blondes. There's no set plan to my work; you just have to take what happens."

Miami, on to the jungleland of clubs, marked by increasingly nasty violence and sloppy behavior, squalid public groping, frat boys openly pissing on carpets and such. Tiring of the animals and sick at heart, and then, a moment of grace. Running into the girls at Twist, all of us dancing madly. Swept up in the whorehouse red walls and the pervasive air of gay carnality, briefly moving beyond time and all earthly constraints, transcending the mundane. In dark world, no one is saved and no one is totally lost.