[Editor's Note: Ian Ippolito won Holiday Auction Item #06, "Pimp your party," for which CL's Sex & Love Editor Shawn Alff promised to "immortalize your bash with photographs and a sweet-ass writeup." Ian's party took place New Year's Eve at his home near Lake Magdalene in North Tampa, and the theme was The Roaring '20s — a theme that Shawn, in his sweet-ass writeup, clearly took to heart.]
It was one of those timeless nights — somewhere between 1920 and 2010. The big daddy boss man himself, Ian Ippolito, turned his pad into the swinging speakeasy Elysian, hosting an open bar hootenanny to rival The Great Gatsby.
Just as the Jack at the door was about to throw me out on my ear for being a crasher, I spit out the password: Love. The big cheese bossman couldn't have picked a better word for the night. The whole mad crowd was gassed about how Ippolito had just proposed to his best gal, and the club's namesake, Elise, days before.
Now I believe in buying a dame flowers or chocolates now and again, but Ippolito put the rest of us fellas to shame. He drove Elise around the city on a day-long scavenger hunt to find presents, poems and clues that led her to a diamond ring. And man, what a ring. I couldn't get a word in with any of the broads without them asking if I'd seen Elise's ring. Three carats, they'd say, challenging my feeble attempts at romance and offers to buy them free drinks from the open bar. With a ring like that, Elise might as well have been wearing a Studebaker Big Six on her finger.
But to be honest, when you meet Elise, jewelry is the last thing you notice about her. The gal is pure gold, and now she has a man to match. That night she was dressed to the nines in a glitzy gold number with a red feather boa, but she wasn't flaunting it. She personally greeted everyone, and even said my name every time she waltzed by, though she'd just met me that night.
I made a beeline for the bar to stock up on charm, but got sidetracked: The screened-in patio had been turned into a movie house, projecting reels of Charlie Chaplin goofing on a screen over the pool.
"Someone's going in the water tonight," a broad told me, sucking gin through her sinister smile. "That is, if he's not careful."
I had to watch myself. These people weren't playing around when it came to playing around. They were all mad with life, especially considering Ian had installed a poolside bar fit for a casino, stocked with servers and enough spirits to fill the pool twice over, at least with heavily sauced guests.
There was no place else to be for New Year's Eve. The Elysian had it all. The gals were dolled up in slim sequined dresses, vibrant feather boas and unending strings of pearls, while the the fellas were suited up in pinstripes and fedoras, looking like a classy Chi-town gang celebrating a successful moonshine run.
Inside, the chandelier-lit cocktail lounge steamed with tins of heavy hors d'oeuvres: bacon-wrapped scallops, crab-stuffed mushrooms, fish — grub so fancy the only way I could pronounce most of the foreign delicacies was "mmmm." A photo booth occupied one backroom for you to snap a picture in your best duds while squeezing your gal. There was even some old bird dressed as Father Time, who set up a racket in the coat-check room, reading futures for free, as if everyone forgot they'd be necking in an hour.
A drunk magician tried to keep his pants up while guessing cards, but by this time the crowd was heavily jazzed on the free booze and having too good a time to sit still for parlor tricks. Desperate for the crowd's attention, Heavy Houdini pulled out a .38 Smith & Wesson and had one of the boys start plugging away at his pack of cards. The party roared so loud the BANG hardly made a dent. Then Trixie, Houdini's tall blonde assistant — by far the most dazzling thing about the magic act — fell dead. But the crowd went on roaring like nothing happened, stepping over the body to get to the hors d'oeuvres. It was a gas.
Before you knew it, the servers were passing out Champagne as everyone packed into the house to hear the broadcast from the countdown in Times Square. I swear that house was jammed tighter than those New York streets, and the women were wearing much less than anyone daring that frozen Square. Then everyone started counting down in hot, heavy breaths. You could feel the electricity beating in your chest like the rumble of horses coming down the home stretch, the energy rising up your throat until you couldn't hold it in anymore, then, POP, POW, BANG — the New Year exploded over us like Champagne showers and streaming confetti. The whole crowd folded in on itself, kissing and hugging and screaming "Happy New Year," then turned and found another mug to smooch.
Taking Ippolito's lead, his buddy Scott Bernstein got down on a knee and made an honest woman out of his gal, Amber Williamson-Slusser. That love-drunk daddy couldn't go another year without being married to his baby. With a gal like that I could understand the fever to get hitched, but at the same time the whole scene had me spooked. It seemed all the best girls were getting swiped. But then I thought, hey, this is one of boss Ippolito's parties, where the broads are as endless as the booze. I tipped back my hat and returned to the bar to get further buzzzed on free hooch and classy company. It sure was the bee's knees.
