Things Are Picking Up In The Ambient Room-You Are There!
By Aimee Spanier

It's 2:30 a.m. and the Ambient Room is picking up speed. The once-empty dance floor is packed with dancers. The DJ seems inspired. And the bar is making bank.

Yes, people are drinking quite a bit here. Near the DJ booth, a young man and woman are talking. The man is smoking. The woman covets his cigarette. Before he bestows upon her the tobacco, she must fulfill a task: sing some of the words to a Hall and Oates song. She complies and storms off after he explains that he's fresh out. This is apparently not enough to entertain the man. He joins the small group of people at a table where you're sitting and entertains you by singing H&O songs to the tune of the techno songs being spun behind him. "Oh, now this one is 'I Can't Go For That' he says," breaking into song. "I can't go for that, no-oah-oah..."

He introduces himself. His name is Curtis. It seems Curtis had a rough time in kindergarten, and now is as good a time as any to work through the trauma.

His teacher, an abusive psychotic, had a broken arm for a year. If that wasn't rough enough, he was the only kid in class who didn't have milk with his lunch; instead he had Hawaiian Punch. Not only did this make him an outcast, but one time he drank so much punch he woke up right in the middle of naptime! And it didn't help that once, he went into the lavatory to relieve himself of the punch, but there was a little girl in the stall who didn't lock the door, and he walked right in on her! "It was like early childhood date rape," he laments.

Wow. Well, heck, it's a party. People are here to have fun, sometimes a little too much. And that's OK. That's what makes it so important to have friends like you around.

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