We had a monster party planned for the night. It was Halloween and the choicest girl-flesh was coming over in an hour, "So let's get this stupid practice over with, pronto." We ran through the repertoire: Stones, Mott the Hoople, Bowie, Skynyrd, Zeppelin, NY Dolls, etc. We still did "Sunshine of Your Love" and we did it right.

The night was cold and didn't pretend to be fall. The girls sashayed in, resplendent in their winter finery. Alluringly costumed teenage girls removing their parkas and ear muffs are sexier than a boatload of strippers, or so it seemed.

We enjoyed a sophisticated interlude with the babes, then others begin to drag in, and soon the room was full of witches, football players, transvestites, and cartoon figures. I was a urinal: don't pee on me.

The Bogus Basement Band began to play. The dungeon became a swirling miasma of smoke, hormones, elbows, knees, rubbing, jumping, loud noise, mud, blood and beer. The scene resembled the underwater frogman battle from Thunderball: all grand gestures in slow motion enacted by sinuous plasma awash in a muddy sea.

At midnight, a climactic firestorm of guitars heralded the end of Mott the Hoople's "One of the Boys," and chased a cockroach through a crack in the wall. Next came "Sunshine of your Love," featuring yours truly on, um, lead vocals and guitar solo. My voice was shot from the screaming, the metallic heat, and the toxic fog that enveloped the gathering, but I gave it a go.

The guitar solo was much more successful than the vocals: particles of emotion spread before me. I hunted them down and smote them with my battle-guitar, lingering triumphantly over each dismembered corpse. White fire consumed the carnage and chased the ashes skyward into the orange and black night, or select your own similarly hyperbolic metaphor.

After the solo, the band jammed on into the void, somewhat anticlimactically, I might add.

While the others droned on, I maneuvered my urinal costume around with my back to the crowd and took an edifying gulp of glacial brew. I then placed my guitar pick, a thin triangular wedge of plastic, between my teeth in order to tune up amongst the din of the "Sunshine" groove. As I tuned, I felt a satisfied yawn well within me. I opened wide to luxuriate in the yawn when everything stopped dead.

I tried to cough.

Nothing.

I tried to inhale, exhale, Nathan Hale - anything.

Nothing.

I had swallowed my pick and its edges were wedged painfully and emphatically into my windpipe. I whirled around to find faraway faces thinking faraway thoughts behind makeup and masks.