By Saturday night of Winter Party Festival, you actually heard New Yorkers complaining about not being able to keep up with the Miami boyz; as someone put it, “They’re insane.” And the testament of that remark was the scene at Mercury Rising at parkwestnightclub: nothing less than a big hot sweaty mess of boyz working it out to local legend Eddie X who kept the floor packed—with South Americans and all those others for whom heat is second nature.

And just when you thought the room couldn’t get any more sizzling, along came Alyson— That would be Mistress Calagna. She wound up that room with her signature sound of Latin-based percussion and rhythmic sampling, leaving those New York boys no choice but to submit—to the heat and the unadulterated joy surrounding them. Everywhere you looked—a plethora of hotties. It’s one of those givens about Winter Party Festival: the abundance of hot boyz with hot names like Silverio… Even the omnisexual Danes leave Miami impressed.

With lasers by Laseronics and excessive décor by Visual XS, the usually warehouse-like parkwestnightclub became a funhouse of mirrors and steamy silhouettes. The traffic jams were crazy; the gridlock impassable—it was all one big hot sweaty mess—and exactly as the boyz wanted it.

Because one thing about our beloved LGBT community, we get closer when we get sweaty. We don’t pull out the guns—unlike events that transpired next door on the next night. And no matter what you might say about our community—maybe a little messy now and then, in which case we reach for the MedEvent boys; we don’t reach for guns.

And therefore, it was a joy to be at Mercury Rising and see us doing what we do best: dance close and dance hard. Or as Alyson plated it, “Lemme see you work, goddam it.” It was the perfect Saturday night release for the myriad Winter Party Festival committee members, volunteers, and party producers—and small wonder to see a beatific Chad Richter, and a perfectly glowing Hilton Wolman, and host Flavio as gallant as Sir Gawain. In short, Mercury Rising sent the temperature of Winter Party Festival soaring—just the way we like it.