So it turns out that a number of things are true...I am a fuckin worrywart. It is possible to both enjoy yourself at a dinner party and still indulge in your backup plan. Fourteen is actually too many people for one of J's dinner parties.
It's also true that I totally forgot that yesterday was Talk Like A Pirate Day, and today is J's birthday, hence last night's dinner party (okay, that's only really about the latter, and not at all to do with the former)... even though he actually didn't tell anybody that was the reason, and I had totally forgotten.
Now I'm glad that the Universe (via Sugarmonkey) instructed me to take wine!
And it's also true that J really can't count (he had counted the exact number of guests, but forgot to count himself), and that the only real screwups last night were pretty much logistical (the aforementioned counting mostly but also a lack of a seating plan of any kind).
As usual I was the first to arrive... but while I'm usually a whole world of time planning and "is it too early to go, I think it is to early, so I'll just do this, oh and now it's later than I would have liked and I feel like I'm in a rush", which is pretty much my default setting for everything, last night could not have been cruisier... I finished what I was doing, had a shower, got dressed, packed up my stuff and headed off, getting there almost exactly at the specified time.
What was a little disturbing was that because there were 14 people coming (although J was still thinking it was 13 at this stage), there were actually two tables that had been pushed together to make one freaking giant table... and honestly I think that was a mistake... not the "allowing everyone to have adequate room to eat" thing, but rather having so many people that it became almost impossible to hear a conversation on the other side of the table and everyone seemed to fragment into little groups much more so than at previous parties.
But my general fears about the particular mix of people were mostly unfounded... even though J had rambled on about how there was such a range and mix of people coming, there really weren't... mostly you could boil it down to "skinny little gay boys" (although having said that, there was probably only one of them who was the totally stereotypical ideal of that), "the old queen and partner" (who can be fun, although a little draining after a while... and the partner just bothers me for some unspecified reason), "the woman incapable of comprehending irony or sarcasm" (yeah, marvel in that concept for a second... you're surrounded by gay men and don't get sarcasm), "family" and me. With an emphasis on skinny little gay boys group. Not that they were uninteresting, and not that J's parties haven't often been skewed heavily in that direction, but it was much more manageable than I thought it might have been.
And of course, J's social circle is often slightly biased towards people he's either slept with or attempted to date at some stage. While that did occur last night, it wasn't the worst ever example of that though.
I also really realised last night that very often I know some seriously random stuff... while I wasn't especially Chatty Cathy all night (more on that in a sec), I did manage to pull out some really random pieces of information that, while they were totally relevant to what we were talking about at the time, were still pretty damn random (and it was commented on at one point too). It was also kind of funny that there were two pieces of information that filtered back to me that were like (and just go with me here on the analogy) pigeons that I'd released out into the world and had taken a very long time to return.
One was the "nickname" that Sheba and I gave to a particular little gayboy back at the dawn of time (who wasn't in attendance)... actually it wasn't so much a true nickname as a statement that "he could eat an apple through a tennis racket" (ie bad teeth). And someone at dinner last night called him "Tennis Racket", which I thought was amusing.
The other informational pigeon is one that I usually end up mentioning at J's dinner parties sooner or later, but I never really took on board that other people may have taken it and used it... and that's the concept of the "Seven Minutes Silence". I have no idea where the hell I read or heard about it, but as the concept goes when any group of people are in conversation, there is a natural lull or pause every seven minutes. The larger you scale up the group the less likely it is that all the little subgroups will have 7MS that intersect, but there was a point last night when it did... so, as usual, to break the 7MS I tell people about the 7MS. And it turns out that J's sister has taken that particular little nugget and mentioned it to other people.
People listen to things I say... who knew!?!
The main issue I had with last night was, as I said, the size of the group... usually it's easy enough to switch between conversational groups at a dinner party, and while there was some of that, it was harder than normal due to the size of the table. Added to that was the fact that I was kind of in "The Family Corner" (not intentionally, it just worked out that way and I was fairly happy about it), but there were a couple of times where I was a little bit Robinson Crusoe when people got up to do things between courses, and I did feel like I was being ignored at certain points. Hence the aforementioned lack of Chatty Cathyness at certain points.
It did give me the ability to observe though, which is always fun... but it also meant that I didn't always get to chat to the people I may have liked to. J did admit that he really should have had a seating plan rather than just letting everyone gravitate to wherever they felt like sitting, and it potentially could have been a very different evening if he'd done that... so long as I didn't have to sit next to the woman who didn't understand sarcasm...
I would like, if I may (and it's my blog, so I very much may do whatever I damn well like) to talk about Butch for a moment...
Butch is a contradiction... I don't mean that he's not small-b butch (or at least he was within the context of the group), but he's got this whole constructed persona about him that is very defensive and very standoffish and just a little bit evil, but underneath he's actually a total sweetheart who cares about people and wants to see the good in them. This isn't the first time I've met Butch either... he came to at least one other dinner party some time back, but since then he's been all over the world and done some pretty cool things. And he's almost the last person you'd expect that of... or rather, it's the last thing you would expect from the person he used to be.
I also worked out by the end of the night that in certain situations "I'll break your fingers" is his way of saying he likes you (granted I think there are a number of situations where it actually means "I'll break your fingers", but I don't think last night was one of them)... but even while he was saying that he was making sure I had beer (granted, only when he was getting himself beer, and be brought me even after I told me "no more"... but it's the thought)... actually there was just a range of little tiny things, that sound kinda dumb if I try to explain them, but it was their cumulative effect. And yes, I will admit to a little bit of a crush, even before the very end of the night... but just a little one.
Actually (one of these days I think I need to add up the number of times I use "actually" in a blog post... I have a feeling it's excessive), last night was slightly "crush heavy" as far as J's dinner parties go... possibly just because it was a range of new people, and a much larger number of people, I don't know... but I did find myself having a mild twinkle for three of the guys... one of whom was kind of the prettier version of J (which I don't want to think about too much because the concept of crushing on him is a little disturbing)... and the other (with Butch being the third, obviously) being a guy that J is currently "courting" (J's inference, not mine... since they're dating but not yet sleeping together). He's the person who I wish I'd gotten more of a chance to talk to... he's very reserved but exudes this very classy vibe that I liked... plus I think there's a whole Eurasian/Celtic mix going on with him that I would have liked to ask him about... but alas, the opportunity never eventuated.
The night actually broke up very suddenly... J's parents had wandered off, as had his sister, then the first couple of guests took their leave and suddenly it seemed that the winds had changed and everyone was off to Mars (the club, not the planet or the chocolate). Had I known that was where the evening was likely to end up I might have considered going along... but I also don't know what the ratio of dancers to drinkers would have been, and if I was going to go for the first time in about a hundred million years, I fall firmly into the dancer camp... and if most of the rest of them were going to stand around and not dance, what's the point. And yes that is a massive amount of self justification, but it also happens to have a degree of truth to it. The real reason is that I just didn't want to go.
But because I had to drive through town to get home anyway I offered my services as taxi. And I drew the good straw and ended up with J and Butch coming along with me, everyone else that piled into someone else's car. That was nice actually... although I think that J and Butch were both teetering around the very beginnings of that "I luff youze guys" stage, because there was very much Truth being spoken in my car.
When I dropped them off, Butch, who had been in the back seat was extracting himself from the car but leaned over and blew a raspberry on my cheek, and I kind of expected that to be it from him, but he ended up doing this little butterfly kisses thing on my cheek and giving me a big, if awkward and sideways, hug (I couldn't actually hug him back, and I think I was a little startled by it as well) before they tromped off...
And while I admit I had been thinking about it while the "lets go to Mars" idea first hit, I figured that since it was only midnight (or thereabouts) I could still indulge in my backup plan and swing by the sauna...It turned out to not be a completely stupid idea... although there weren't really that many guys there and that only got worse as we inched closer to closing time, I did have a couple of fairly enjoyable and slightly intense experiences.
Of course, I also ran into Marc right after I got there... but he disappeared within a couple of minutes...
And it was definitely better than standing around a nightclub being prickteased by boys I can't have.
I will admit to being slightly bleary eyed and a touch the worse for wear when I finally surfaced this morning though...
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