Post by aviis on Jul 10, 2010 21:02:42 GMT -5
The thing about a makeout party is that there’s always someone who doesn’t know it’s a makeout party.
That person is usually me.
Another thing about a makeout party is that we’re no longer in high school, so what was once an intriguing sociological phenomenon is now an inappropriate orgy with a lot of questionable people approaching their thirties who should be ashamed of themselves. Yeah, yeah, spiritual and carnal freedom and all that, right? Bull. The only reason these people don’t get called out is because no one realizes one simple fact – smart people can be slutty too. There’s no “I’m just living my life, indulging in each moment as it comes” or “I believe in sexual freedom and encouraging my most natural self”. There’s just “I read enough philosophy in college to make myself sound like less of a whore”.
However, I’m hardly in the position to judge anyone right now, because I was stupid enough to go to a party that was not held in a museum or office building. Somehow, an old friend from undergrad convinced me that I didn’t really hate everyone I’d met in those four years; I was just in denial because I missed them so much. This is not true, obviously, but I did consider the possibility that my generalized malaise had spread past its intended targets and muddied the few pleasant memories there were. It is only now, perched on this stool in a stranger’s kitchen, on my sixth gin and tonic, that I remember those good times. And that the only thing they have in common is the lack of other people involved in them. (I can’t stop scratching my left ankle with my right sneaker - can STDs travel by air?). After graduation, a whole year ago, I vowed that I would not get a real job until I found one I absolutely loved. Which means, as of now, I’m still working in a coffee shop. And yeah, lots of people spend their whole lives in the service industry. But if there’s one thing my $200,000+ education taught me, it’s that if you can wear short shorts and take cigarette breaks every fifteen minutes, it’s not a real job. Only when you spend most of your time sitting on your butt and adjusting your pantyhose, is it a real job. So, here I am, still on this stool, on my seventh gin and tonic, wearing a Stones t-shirt and wondering about the last time I washed my hair. Honestly, I’m really, really drunk, so I can’t manage to think of much else.
Glad I’m drunk, though. I can see the living room from here, and at this point, there’s no way I can make a clean break without seeing way too much of these people. Over there, on the couch is a girl from my freshman year sociology class. I know she has herpes. The guy on top of her must not have cared to check. Which is not surprising. It amazes me that people still have one-night stands. As much as men take pride in their junk, they must all have some subconscious desire to see it shrivel up and fall off. It’s like going to a hair salon. I’m not going to walk past a place called ‘Joe’s Hair Shack’ and get a cut and color, and then go home, only to look it up online and find several one-star reviews from people who now have dry, burnt orange hair. I’m not going to go to a restaurant in a foreign country, blindly point to the menu and consume whatever gets sent to my table. I’m not going to blow my nose in a tissue I find on the ground. It absolutely requires more than 1-2 hours of conversation before a sane person can justify putting an important body part into someone else hands. Or mouth. Sure, the rest of the animal kingdom doesn’t do background checks, but if you consider yourself above peeing on your property or eating bugs out of your friend’s hair, you should probably have enough common sense not to fuck someone when you don’t know where they’ve been. It would be one thing if your vagina was a black hole in space, and things that came too close were just sucked into oblivion. Or if your dick only responded to moral, kind-hearted, respectable, healthy vaginas. But it doesn’t. If you got close enough to a donut, you’d probably get an erection. Doesn’t mean you should slap on a condom and go at it. People’s idiocy never fails to astound me.
Across the room, in the chair in the right corner is my first love. With his current love straddling him. Currently, her tongue is so far down his throat, she may be giving him a blowjob from the inside. That’s just… so nice. Awesome. Great. I suppose I prefer this spectacle to the three hours leading up to it, in which they nuzzled with each other’s hands in their back pockets. Which I preferred to the moment I walked into the party and first ran into them.
Ennis was standing in the doorway, no doubt looking for the missing hand down his pants. Instead of her, he slammed into me, mumbling “sorry”, before stopping in his tracks and adding “Holy shit, how are you?”
I stared into his bedroom brown eyes and took note of his perpetual five o’clock shadow.
Oh, pretty good. You know, I was pretty upset when you broke my heart for the eighty-ninth time, showed up several months later only to be my friend again, then yelled at me for not being over you and stopped answering my phone calls, text messages, emails, telegrams, and smoke signals. Bunch of therapy. Some late night crying. Got a goldfish and named him after you. Flushed him down the toilet when he died. Watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 86 times. Haven’t dated anyone since. No biggie. Really, it’s cool. Good to see you.
“I’m awesome. And yourself?”
“Living the life, I must say.”
Right on cue, Siobhan alit next to him, all long eyelashes and soft speech.
“Oh, Hannah - What are you doing here?”
Mentally reliving the jungle fever between me and your boyfriend, actually. Funny, you don’t seem like a fan of being tied up or the occasional back door action. That’s okay. He seems to really love you. So, he’ll probably ask for an open marriage as opposed to just plain ending the relationship. Considering ‘he and I’ were just a pit stop on the road to ‘you and him’, you may have won round one. However, I think next time, I’ll be the one on top. Possibly also on my side. And my back. And a few other positions if he’s up for it. I’ll be sure not to leave my panties in one of your Teflon pans.
“Just passing through. Liz invited me.”
“She’s such a sweetheart.”
After proffering a look that ensured me I was a pity invite, the dashing couple walked onto the patio, clearing my path to the door and gin and tonic numero uno.
That person is usually me.
Another thing about a makeout party is that we’re no longer in high school, so what was once an intriguing sociological phenomenon is now an inappropriate orgy with a lot of questionable people approaching their thirties who should be ashamed of themselves. Yeah, yeah, spiritual and carnal freedom and all that, right? Bull. The only reason these people don’t get called out is because no one realizes one simple fact – smart people can be slutty too. There’s no “I’m just living my life, indulging in each moment as it comes” or “I believe in sexual freedom and encouraging my most natural self”. There’s just “I read enough philosophy in college to make myself sound like less of a whore”.
However, I’m hardly in the position to judge anyone right now, because I was stupid enough to go to a party that was not held in a museum or office building. Somehow, an old friend from undergrad convinced me that I didn’t really hate everyone I’d met in those four years; I was just in denial because I missed them so much. This is not true, obviously, but I did consider the possibility that my generalized malaise had spread past its intended targets and muddied the few pleasant memories there were. It is only now, perched on this stool in a stranger’s kitchen, on my sixth gin and tonic, that I remember those good times. And that the only thing they have in common is the lack of other people involved in them. (I can’t stop scratching my left ankle with my right sneaker - can STDs travel by air?). After graduation, a whole year ago, I vowed that I would not get a real job until I found one I absolutely loved. Which means, as of now, I’m still working in a coffee shop. And yeah, lots of people spend their whole lives in the service industry. But if there’s one thing my $200,000+ education taught me, it’s that if you can wear short shorts and take cigarette breaks every fifteen minutes, it’s not a real job. Only when you spend most of your time sitting on your butt and adjusting your pantyhose, is it a real job. So, here I am, still on this stool, on my seventh gin and tonic, wearing a Stones t-shirt and wondering about the last time I washed my hair. Honestly, I’m really, really drunk, so I can’t manage to think of much else.
Glad I’m drunk, though. I can see the living room from here, and at this point, there’s no way I can make a clean break without seeing way too much of these people. Over there, on the couch is a girl from my freshman year sociology class. I know she has herpes. The guy on top of her must not have cared to check. Which is not surprising. It amazes me that people still have one-night stands. As much as men take pride in their junk, they must all have some subconscious desire to see it shrivel up and fall off. It’s like going to a hair salon. I’m not going to walk past a place called ‘Joe’s Hair Shack’ and get a cut and color, and then go home, only to look it up online and find several one-star reviews from people who now have dry, burnt orange hair. I’m not going to go to a restaurant in a foreign country, blindly point to the menu and consume whatever gets sent to my table. I’m not going to blow my nose in a tissue I find on the ground. It absolutely requires more than 1-2 hours of conversation before a sane person can justify putting an important body part into someone else hands. Or mouth. Sure, the rest of the animal kingdom doesn’t do background checks, but if you consider yourself above peeing on your property or eating bugs out of your friend’s hair, you should probably have enough common sense not to fuck someone when you don’t know where they’ve been. It would be one thing if your vagina was a black hole in space, and things that came too close were just sucked into oblivion. Or if your dick only responded to moral, kind-hearted, respectable, healthy vaginas. But it doesn’t. If you got close enough to a donut, you’d probably get an erection. Doesn’t mean you should slap on a condom and go at it. People’s idiocy never fails to astound me.
Across the room, in the chair in the right corner is my first love. With his current love straddling him. Currently, her tongue is so far down his throat, she may be giving him a blowjob from the inside. That’s just… so nice. Awesome. Great. I suppose I prefer this spectacle to the three hours leading up to it, in which they nuzzled with each other’s hands in their back pockets. Which I preferred to the moment I walked into the party and first ran into them.
Ennis was standing in the doorway, no doubt looking for the missing hand down his pants. Instead of her, he slammed into me, mumbling “sorry”, before stopping in his tracks and adding “Holy shit, how are you?”
I stared into his bedroom brown eyes and took note of his perpetual five o’clock shadow.
Oh, pretty good. You know, I was pretty upset when you broke my heart for the eighty-ninth time, showed up several months later only to be my friend again, then yelled at me for not being over you and stopped answering my phone calls, text messages, emails, telegrams, and smoke signals. Bunch of therapy. Some late night crying. Got a goldfish and named him after you. Flushed him down the toilet when he died. Watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 86 times. Haven’t dated anyone since. No biggie. Really, it’s cool. Good to see you.
“I’m awesome. And yourself?”
“Living the life, I must say.”
Right on cue, Siobhan alit next to him, all long eyelashes and soft speech.
“Oh, Hannah - What are you doing here?”
Mentally reliving the jungle fever between me and your boyfriend, actually. Funny, you don’t seem like a fan of being tied up or the occasional back door action. That’s okay. He seems to really love you. So, he’ll probably ask for an open marriage as opposed to just plain ending the relationship. Considering ‘he and I’ were just a pit stop on the road to ‘you and him’, you may have won round one. However, I think next time, I’ll be the one on top. Possibly also on my side. And my back. And a few other positions if he’s up for it. I’ll be sure not to leave my panties in one of your Teflon pans.
“Just passing through. Liz invited me.”
“She’s such a sweetheart.”
After proffering a look that ensured me I was a pity invite, the dashing couple walked onto the patio, clearing my path to the door and gin and tonic numero uno.