I attend, but am not present at, a party

Have you ever been at a party where you just wanted to ask somebody if maybe they had something for you to read off in a quiet corner until it was over?

I went to one of those this weekend. It was actually nothing to do with the party itself, this rising desire to be Away From Everyone, somewhere dim and quiet where things happened at a measured pace, preferably to other people and on paper, so that they go away when you close your eyes. As parties go, this one was well-equipped. It was in a club, the club, on a nearby base next to the water, which meant the night was humid, windy and dank-smelling, and the little glass airlock hallway that leads to the main doors was covered in condensation and smeared footprints.

I'd never been to any of the clubs at any of our previous bases, but this one was about how I imagined them-- an older building with many layers of paint on the baseboards, respectable floral carpeting, quaint little restroom doors and brass plaques on the walls, but lively, thrown open, and completely given over to the party in progress. Kind of like your grandmother's house if she routinely hosted frat parties. The bar was in full swing, lit like a cathedral with personalized mugs and patches and emblems all over it and a giant brass bell bolted to the countertop-- supposedly anyone dumb enough to ring it buys a round for the whole house.

Who knows why I wasn't feeling it, but I wasn't. I found myself thinking about frat parties I used to go to in college, and how bizarre all of their various paraphenalia looked hung on the walls next to pictures of men long dead but neatly arranged, looking just as arrogant and intent as the ones standing in front of me with jello shots, their fingers down inside the lips of the cups to hold five or more per hand.

The female cast seemed familiar as well, skillfully styled just like something out of a magazine with their war paint, sequins, and violently flattened hair. Considering the humidity, the hair was quite impressive. As always, the unattached ones looked the best and also the least comfortable. One in particular caught my eye. Actually it was less that she caught my eye and more that she stumbled into my chair, because she was already well into her evening before most of the party even arrived. Amazingly, she appeared to be drinking with her father, which is something I just don't get.

I've had friends who claimed to have gotten drunk with their parents, or even smoked weed with them, and this is a barrier I just can't imagine crossing. A few drinks with your folks, sure, a looser evening where everyone gets a little loud and tells stories, why not?-- but this girl was hammered. One eyelid was at half-mast and she reached out to steady herself on passing landmarks, living or inanimate, as she shuffled from table to bar and back, carrying on the conversation as she went and just adjusting her volume. Several men came to the table over the course of the evening, and I couldn't tell if they knew the girl or her father, but she slumped towards each like the passenger in a swerving car. I started calling her Stumbles McTitties for the impressive valley of flesh she had on display. Just watching her I felt like I was already experiencing some of the rocketing headache and landslide of dazed regrets she was bound to wake up with the next day-- and there was her dad, absently swirling his drink in one hand as he joked with another of the young men stopping by the table.

I'm no saint. I've had my moments-- hurling someone's plastic reindeer, which had just been named Uncle Buck, off a balcony and into a swimming pool, tiling someone else's refrigerator door with white bread, using peanut butter as mortar. I just haven't had these moments in front of my parents, with their consent or aid. I think my father's or mother's face, rendered in the flickering reel of utter drunkenness, would be enough to set me screaming in terror. Or at least get me to focus every last atom of my energy on sitting up straight. They're not hardasses, they're just my parents. Some people shouldn't have to see you clinging to a kitchen counter making muppet faces into the reflective side of the toaster because it's funny looking.

The rest of the evening was long, and seemed to get longer as the hours went by. I spent most of my time wandering around outside in the foul-smelling humidity, trying to avoid surprising anyone hidden off in the shadows. This is something you learn after a few frat parties-- approach inviting corners of solitude loudly, with much theatrical coughing and stomping, and then if you find them unoccupied, stake your claim and guard the perimeter with your own carefully measured warning sounds. The darkness was thick, though, and there were ants, and I had to see an older man gruffly vomit near his shoes, like it was an annoying inconvenience, so I took regular loops back into the shocking coldness of indoors to make a lap or two around the party before heading back outside.

My husband was having a good time, so I was trying to be inconspicuous about how utterly separate I felt from the current of energy that seemed to run through everyone else. I felt an eerie calmness when I was outside, savoring my silence like hard candy-- it was a separate pleasure not to have to explain to anyone what I do, where I'm from, where I went to school, how my husband and I met-- but after a while it got old and I wanted very suddenly and very sharply to leave. Luckily he and I have developed matching piercing gazes for these occasions. When one of us catches the gaze from the other, we know a countdown has begun, and social disentanglement must commence forthwith.

Handily stone sober, I enjoyed ferrying him first to Whataburger and then along the black expanse of rectilinear country roads home. All the roads back home are marked out along the property lines of large fields, and you get the disorienting sensation that you're traveling straight the whole time but the faint pinpricks of distant city lights are making 90 degree shifts around you.

Mostly, though, I enjoyed talking to him, and knowing that even though I'd had an off night and nearly every other human had set my teeth on edge and I felt all tangled, I still got to go home with this one, easily the best by my estimation. Sometimes it seems like all the parties I go to, people are engaged in a focussed and active search for someone, like a bunch of radio towers blasting off in a all directions at close range. This weekend I enjoyed casting my needle back into the haystack and then reaching out for him and finding him, true as any magnet without any digging at all.