wouldn’t you like the eggs a little different today?

This is the eighth entry in our new 10-part nightlife editorial series, produced by Dirt & Elsewhere. Get caught up:

Gates of Hell ft. Samuel Rutter

On shoes ft. Whitney Mallett

Cyber Aztlán ft. Vita Dadoo

I’m on ketamine ft. Megan Nolan

How to dance ft. Michelle Santiago Cortés

Fern and the city ft. Devan Díaz and Fern Cerezo

Bad hang ft. Sophie Kemp

Photos by Ava Williams, words by Daisy Alioto.

As far as first lines go, it’s hard to top “You do not always know what I am feeling,” which begins Frank O’Hara’s poem For Grace, After A Party and lands like a gentle accusation. O’Hara captures the “morning after,” not in the lurid walk-of-shame sense (although there is nothing wrong with that) but in the slightly too-bright-light of waking up a bit changed. He continues, “and isn't it odd? for in rooms full of/ strangers my most tender feelings / writhe and / bear the fruit of screaming.”

We’re always a little different after a party, so why not take our eggs a little different as well? That slim sense of possibility is embodied in this curation of nightlife photography by Ava Williams (whose recent zine with Dirt Media, also named for O’Hara, sold out). Like stolen glassware squirreled away in a handbag, every night out contains a secret hope. Maybe we will encounter twin Pomeranians, or a set of ragged claws, or maybe we will simply split our pants. We may end the night feeling like a sad cowboy, or stay out so long that the dawn bleeds into breakfast—and then can we truly say we ended the night at all? — Daisy Alioto