Party

Originally Posted Wednesday, December 18, 2013

I went to a company party last night, one I helped sponsor, though it was at a bosses house and not many people knew of that.  In truth, the party had been my idea.  I wanted to be with the people I liked and to help improve morale.  But as plans progressed, I was left increasingly out of the scene so that by the time of the party, I was no more than a mere appendage.  I showed up early, though, and helped prepare the food as the caterer had flaked.  Even then, things did not seem to me to be in synch.  There was no "vibe." 

When people began to arrive, I took up my place by the poolside bar.  I figured everyone would have to come to the bar, or at least the best people.  The two hired bartenders and I chatted.  The fellow knew me from a restaurant/bar that we often go to for lunch or after work.  He remembered what I drank and said I had gotten him into scotch.  "Oh," I said, "you don't want to go there."  I kept it to myself, though, my secret that I have recently stopped drinking.  The girl bartender was pretty and her eyes seemed to light up in conversation so that I thought it might be a flirtation.  It was on my end, I know.  The boy bartender was ready to pour me a whiskey, but I said, "Oh, no, I'll just have a ginger ale for now."  He looked at me as if I was a party pooper.  "I can't begin yet," I said, "or I'll be the first one in the pool."  The late afternoon was already turning cool.  It was an unpleasant thought.  The girl bartender was looking at me with bright eyes again.  I was a mythological creature, a larger than life hero.  It was true, too.  I am that.  It is a creation, a fiction, or, at least, an exaggeration, but what best parts of life are not?

"I am going to have people coming up to you all night with strange drink requests," I told her.  "Do you know how to make a Pencil Sharpener?"  I really hadn't thought about the sexual innuendo there. 

"A what?"

"With two olives." 

Really, that is what I said.  It turned out, though, that the girl bartender was the boy bartender's girlfriend, so rather than surrender my status with someone willing to propagate the myth of me, I demurred a bit in my flirtation.  Her eyes, though, continued to glow when she looked at me.  Perhaps she merely had new contacts.  Who knows?  But I know that the smile was real. 

People began to arrive en masse now, and I was drawn into several conversations that were odd and painful for me.  They were just stilted.  Perhaps people do not know how to behave at a bosses house. I told them that what the party needed was a good scandal.  Something bad had to happen.  "But wait," I pondered, "does a scandal have to be bad?"  "Not if you're just looking on," one of my talking partners said. 

Just then, a fellow from the factory, a junior member, showed up with his incredibly long-legged girlfriend, a blonde of about twenty wearing a mini-skirt.  She was definitely working class, but she had talent.  He came over to say hello and introduced me to his girlfriend.  I'd met her, sort of, at the bar where the bartenders worked one night, but she looked skittish and stayed at the other end of the room all evening.  "I think you've met before," he said, but I shook my head and said, "No, I don't think we have."  She smiled then and looked me dead in the eye.  "Well, we sort of did, but we were at opposite ends of the bar."  I knew then where the evening's scandal might come from.  I knew I was capable of such a thing. 

At that moment, a woman who had gotten drunk at the last work function and who had enjoyed my upper thigh environs too much beneath the table at which we were sitting with a bunch of colleagues walked up and sat next to me.  I like her a lot.  She is smart and sweet and has a ton of moxie, and I would never hold her attraction to my mythological character against her for a moment, so I was glad to see her.  But she had already been drinking at a pre-party and she had that whimsical look in her eye.  Just then, someone called me away to come see something.  "Hold my seat," I told a friend.  "I'll be right back." 

And then I got caught up in a conversation with some new employees, and being the veteran, I had to do much of the talking.  Too much, I felt, and the oddity of the evening's vibe got worse.  At least for me. 

Talk talk talk, talk talk talk.  And when they got the opportunity, with surreptitious glances,  I felt, they slipped away.  I wanted to yell after them that I was the one wanting to run, but I was not drinking, and so I internalized the emotions that, if I had been drinking, would have culminated in some mythological behavior.  In truth, though, at that moment I wished I was drinking and acting out even though later I knew I would regret it, but sometimes regret can be as great a thrill as the actual act itself. 

I moved into the house to get some food.  There were crowds of people there.  And out of the blue, a woman, an author of two heavily researched books, a woman I've known for many, many, many years, a woman my own age who has always been serious and academic in her demeanor, a woman with little tolerance for the kind of foolishness I enjoy, a woman, in fact, who has been vocally critical of my behaviors albeit in a friendly fashion. . . began to engage me in an atypical way.  She was being flirty and girlish.  It wasn't until she dropped her plate on the floor that I realized she was drunk. 

"Do you remember that time we went to D.C. together?" she asked.  I did, of course, for it got me into trouble with her boyfriend.  He thought I was after her, but I was merely the beard as she was beginning a courtship with one of my friends.  There had been no romance between the two of us, though while walking in Georgetown after a fabulous dinner, I spied the "Pleasure Chest," a porno place with lots of devices.  At the time, they were much rarer than they are now, but knowing what it was, I cried, "Oh look, let's go in here and see what this is."  I just wanted to see how she would react.  I didn't know her all that well at the time, and I considered it a test of character, of sorts, a grading of how friendly we might become.  She walked in and looked around for about a full thirty seconds before things began to dawn upon her, at which point she let out an involuntary, "Oh my!" before quickly turning around toward the door her face a Toltec mask.  Outside, of course, I was in tears.  "Did you know what kind of place that was?" she asked me with incrimination.  "Of course not," I said.  "How could I know?" 

Now, it seemed, she felt it a fond memory.  I knew I needed to make a getaway without pissing her off, but I couldn't find an escape route.  But just then the woman I was sitting with by the pool about an hour before beside whom my friend was saving a seat walked up.  I smiled sheepishly, I think.  "Look at you," said the first drunken woman.  "You were like that in D.C.  I really enjoyed being with you, but oh, boy, all you did was look around at other woman.  You're still the same.  Look at you flirting." 

I was stuck in some cartoon, some ridiculous scene from a Woody Allen movie.  Across the way an ex-girlfriend was staring.  I realized, of course, that if I had been drinking, I could have handled this with legendary aplomb, but stone-cold sober, I was faltering.  I looked around the kitchen and saw a bottle of wine sitting on the countertop.  It was a Beaujolais Nouveau.  I grabbed my plastic cup from where I had placed it half an hour before and helped myself to a glass.

"That's a Beaujolais  Nouveau," said a female friend of the host who began to explain to me like a country cousin what that was.  "I know, I know," I said impatiently, but I saw a lane opening in the crowd and I dashed through before it closed leaving the kitchen scene behind.  As soon as I stepped outside, one of my co-workers had me by the arm.  He is one of the nicest fellows in the world, and I adore him.  Every time I have been out anywhere I am, he picks up the tab.  He has gotten me good scotches in bars that do not serve them, sending runners out to buy it to bring back to the bar.  He has paid without my knowing even when I have ordered expensive meals.  He is a champ.  And he always drinks just one thing--Bud Lite.  But tonight, he had a plastic cup full of a brown liquid. 

"Come on, man, let's get drunk.  Have some whiskey!"  My whiskey drinking, I realized, had become legendary around these people who got carried away by two glasses of wine.  "You don't drink whiskey," I said.  "You drink Bud Lite."  "Not tonight," he said.  "Come on."  He was pulling me toward the bar.  But just then another co-worker stepped up,loud and brash, and she was immediately accosting me with a litany of some sort. . . "So how ya' doin', boss?  Blah blah blah blah blah. . . ."  I smiled and tilted the Beaujolais to my lips.  I've never really enjoyed the Beaujolais Nouveau which is good, I think, because it helped me make a quick decision.  I was not enjoying the night, and I certainly didn't care to drink this Beaujolais, so as soon as I could excuse myself, I headed for the car.  Just as I stepped into the street, though, another floor manager from the plant yelled over the hedge, "Are you leaving?"  I held my finger to my lips and opened the car door.  I knew it was wrong.  I knew it was right. 

It felt good to be moving through the crisp night through downtown neighborhood streets, the brick roads and overhanging oaks, then a bit of major roadway in the Asian part of town, storefronts lit up, a little bit of Viet Town, then through another neighborhood, then another, the trees getting heavier and richer, the roads narrower as I got closer to home. 

The cat was there to greet me.  "Let's have some tea," I said, "and sit outside.  I think I will smoke a small cigar."  I put on the water and scalded some milk.  We would have a cup of chai. 

I am too much a loner, perhaps.  Whiskey makes me more gregarious, but it gets me into trouble eventually, too.  I had avoided trouble this night, perhaps, but I had a lingering suspicion that something would come back to bite me.  I heard my phone bip, and looked at the screen.  I had a text from a woman at the party.  "You left without saying goodbye?"  I would leave answering until morning.  It was better to leave the mystery, perhaps.  I could not live up to my reputation that night in person.  Perhaps in abstentia, however, it could flourish.