Study Hall With Booze (An Almost True Story)

          One weekend Doug called me up and said "I think we should go to the quiet party."
          "The what?" Everything was buzzing very badly and I was sure I had misheard him. More high paranoia.
          "The quiet party," he repeated. "It's this thing, it's in some hotel in Manhattan, and you can't talk."
          "I beg your pardon?" This time I had heard him perfectly.
          "No, really, everything you want to say gets written on index cards instead. Like at a monastery or something. Oh, and there's drinks too."
          "I dunno. It sounds lame."
          "You say that about everything. It'll be a novelty."
          So we traveled by subway from the Bronx to Manhattan and began our exploration into the seamy world of silence. At the door we each had to pony up five dollars, then on the inside a cheery woman told us "There's a two-drink minimum. Fifteen dollars, please." Everywhere you go there's someone trying to shake you down. I coughed up another three fives and my hand got stamped. Inside the place looked like any bar or club might, except that it was almost entirely silent. Excluding at the actual bar, where talking was still permitted -- bizarre social experiments apparently only go so far.
          "So far this seems like the lame art snob version of a frat party," I muttered to Doug as we entered the room.
          "Ssssshhhh!!!" someone said, louder than I'd been speaking. Then someone else shushed that shusher, even louder. I imagined everyone shushing everyone else, louder and louder, but it stopped there. We sat at an empty taple. On it were a whole slew of index cards, and those short pencils you get on standardized tests. Someone came and took our drink orders. Then we sat in silence, watching everyone trying to maintain the atmosphere of the quiet party. People were shuffling around, passing each other notes. Every once in a while there's be another outburst of "Sssshhhh!!!" in clusters. It was all quite silly: "Someone violated the code of silence so I will reprimand them even louder!" I wanted to laugh but I didn't want to get shushed again. So I wrote HA on an index card and crumpled it up. It wasn't the same.
          Doug passed me a card. "SO."
          "SO WHAT?" I scribbled back.
          "SO WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE QUIET PARTY?"
          "SO LAME."
          "SO TRUE." He took the card back and added "CIGARETTE?"
          Outside it was noisy the way the city is supposed to be. Doug lit a cigarette and handed it to me, lit another for himself. It was chilly, and we basked in the loud and the dissonant.
          "Okay," he said finally. "So the quiet party is lame. It could have been interesting. It still could be. Maybe in the fourth quarter someone goes nuts. It could still get good."
          "Please. It's study hall with booze."
          Then, more smoking in silence. Traffic sounds. People talking -- to other people, to cell phones, to themselves -- as they walked by. Sirens in the distance. Then the cigarettes were done and we returned inside.
          "Oh, you're just in time," the cheery woman said after checking our stamped hands. "They're about to begin the silent poetry reading." Me and Doug exchanged glances, wordlessly turned an about face and left.