A Party

The measure of a good party is the morning after.

How desperate you are for an ocean of water, the things you would do for a bucket of chicken, the geriatric ache in protesting knees after a night spent forgetting you’re 30.

The day after a certain singer’s birthday party, I’m in the market for an ambulance.

I’ve drank like a woman recently found wandering the Sahara. I’ve defiled my body with two service station King Pies and I’ve forsaken the ability to walk after dipping lower than the Limbo Stick Champion of 1979 because DJ Khadijah wants us all dead.

It’s the first time I’m in the house for one of her sets but I’ve seen her name popping up more frequently on posters advertising big parties at popular spots and I’m officially a fan.

Her hip-hop is old skool, seamless and includes Eve’s ‘Tambourine’ and that’s when I wonder whether I’ll live to see morning.

In the meantime, I live to see everyone else.

A gaggle of Windhoek’s young and ascending come to life from newspapers and social media casually drinking, dancing and pretending not to recognise each other.

For a professional spectator comme moi, it’s Mardi Gras.

Like Outkast’s Big Boi who famously proclaimed “I like the way you move,” I like the way people move so I watch as a féted beauty I’ve only ever seen on Instagram slides in wearing a gold dress, a face beaten for the gods and nursing a small glass of red wine with zero interest in eye contact or doing anything but waiting for her friend.

A former Big Brother Africa contestant is just as elegant, less aloof and is flanked by the most stylish gay men the city has ever known. One a new MC, the other NAMAs’ fodder for The Weekender’s Paparazzi but whose fashion sense I couldn’t fault on a laundry day.

Holding up a corner of the bar is an off-duty pilot making the most of being on terra firma.

The man seems to know and greets everyone who jostles his elbow as he makes a play for the bartender’s attention and I ask him whether he’ll be flying me to Cape Town the next week.

Though he’ll have to check his schedule, my junior school friend assures me the evening preceding my flight will be totally devoid of hand grenades.

A Frankenstein’s monster of a concoction my sister Mon keeps lining up on the bar because some inebriate with a death wish thought it wise to partner Red Bull and tequila with Jägermeister.

One of the stars of Namibia’s most celebrated feature film joins us for the stew.

She’s recently wrapped another, does an adorable little dance of joy because the DVD for her last one is finally ready for purchase and she asks me to watch her handbag before disappearing into the crowd.

Past her previous movie director just in from Germany, Windhoek’s most glamourous and socially responsible artist trying out The Loft’s new menu down below and right past the host himself looking positively royal in a black vest and plastic crown.

The night goes on.

Namibian Theatre and Film Award nominees swan in and out, socialites middle finger the cold in short shorts and thigh high boots and boutique wine sellers let loose next to famous economists, fashion writers and designers, comedians and the Twitter famous.

As visual artists, writers, bloggers, poets and singers keep augmenting the pulsing throng, the idea that sticks isn’t so much “The Loft is making a killing tonight” as it is the notion that this is creative Windhoek right now and at its most vibrant.

Though it’s just a party, it’s also a gathering of plenty of the people we admire.

The bright minds who traverse the city and channel all they see into their art, their music, poetry, businesses and soul.

The inspiring assembly reminds me of the Gene Spatz photographs of Studio 54.

Those black and white images which captured Eartha Kitt, Andy Warhol, Robin Williams and Mick Jagger just letting loose in-between being great.

And that’s what the evening is.

Sure we’re often broke, separate and hustling for an all too tiny piece of the underrated, often unpaid pie but sometimes we’re just out dancing and trying our best to look like our Instagram selves.

It’s a break and from the look of things we all need it.

Halfway through the year, after two of the biggest industry evenings Namibia has to offer and facing the rest of a year sure to be plagued by blocks, bills and imposter syndrome occasionally quelled by those fleeting, galvanising minutes of creative success.