Parties

Got me thinking we didn't really have any parties

Like I remember my stepmother One year she was trying to have a party I want to say it was a New Year's party and she was working at that time at the telephone company I think so she invited a bunch of people from work and I think my father might have been supposed to invite people from work but maybe not I don't know if he did if he was supposed to I don't think he actually invited them so Deborah invited all these people

And you know we cleaned the house up real good and she put non-smoking signs on every single surface and this was at a time when there was no place telling you you couldn't smoke you smoking movie theaters you know it was like I don't know 1975 1976 something like that

But she was an early adopter of the non-smoking so she put non-smoking signs on every conceivable surface and so I mean assuming that people came they wouldn't feel very comfortable but only two people showed up I think it was somebody who was really new at the company and didn't know that you know nobody liked Deborah they just thought it was a party and they came and they brought a bottle of pink champagne and you know they sat around for I don't know an hour or two but there was like no music I don't think there was no I mean there was nothing there were some you know like maybe chips and dip or something but there was nothing at all if there weren't people wandering around talking and nobody came so after a couple of hours they like took their champagne back and left

That was the only party that any configuration of my parents ever had I mean my mom had gallery openings and we went to some other parties

I know Jason had birthday parties I don't know if he had them every year or not but I think I only had three birthday parties while I was a kid well I mean

Let me qualify that I have never had a birthday party that I threw for myself as an adult or whatever

I have worked for places that threw me birthday parties and I've certainly done things for my birthday

But I mean you know no one's ever thrown me a party that was a non-work party nor did I ever want them to I never wanted to have a big party

But in the time I was a kid I had a party for my fourth birthday I guess or my aunt Edith dressed up like a clown and I had some friends over I don't know exactly who I had over I know I had Ian who was my best friend when I was little his parents were Edith's friends and they had a health food store and they moved away when Ian was maybe four or five but he was still I think they went to Boston actually but he was still around and I think my mother had probably just met Cholla who wasn't yet Cholla so Gigi was there but I don't know who else was there I must have been some random neighborhood kids that they scraped up from somewhere or children of friends of somebody and I don't know

And then I had a birthday party with other kids when I was I'm not sure how old I was I had to probably been like eight or nine I know we didn't have it when we lived at the nice apartment it was after we moved to the trashy apartment but I had chicken pox when we were in the nice apartments so and besides I remember it being at the trash department it was when Jaws was like a huge thing though and I thought up this game and I think this was like pivotally part of the reason why I wanted to have a party cuz I had thought up this pin the girl in jaws's mouth and I thought that was just hysterically funny and cool

And so did Deborah and so she made the you know poster board with the painted shark and the little you know I think we probably used some kind of a paper doll Barbie or something to be the girl but maybe not I don't remember exactly but anyway her rich sister the one whose husband had a company of some sort they lived in the trailer with the foundation she thought it was a cool idea and she managed to get it into the paper somehow so she talked to somebody at the newspaper and then maybe Debra also talked to them and so there was this whole thing in the paper about my game but I got no credit for it at all Deborah just totally said she thought it up and I was so pissed I mean on the one hand it didn't really matter but on the other hand I mean come on

And I don't really remember who was there I mean just people in which school with I guess I don't even really know that I had that many friends at that point

And then when I was going to the patch school so I don't know my 11th or 12th birthday I guess and that we didn't have a party at my house because I mean my mother would have had to clean up or let people in the house with it the way it was one or the other neither of which were acceptable so we had a party that was like we went out to eat at Baba yagas and then we went to the River oaks theater and saw movies we saw I know we saw the 7% solution at least I'm pretty sure but I don't remember what the other movie was that makes me sad that I can't think what the other movie was because I really think that the other movie was the movie that I specifically wanted to see because I don't think I'd seen the 7% solution before so I think that was like new I just don't know I don't think it was Sherlock Holmes smarter brother but it might have been

Anyway I don't remember maybe I'll remember later but I actually got some sort of public reprimanding at patch school from the principal about it because it was too lavish or ostentatious or expensive or something and I was like you know we all had sandwiches and we went to a movie and you know I haven't had a birthday party for like the last 4 years

But for some reason I had to justify it I don't remember I think she decided that I was too status conscious which was ridiculous because I was wearing like hand me down polyester double knit with pressed in sewn in pleats and some of the other kids were wearing designer clothes you know I mean it just doesn't make sense to me but she decided I was bad probably because the first year I went to school there she asked me where we were going on vacation for the summer and I'm like oh I don't think we have money to go on vacation I don't think we're going anywhere and so she was going home to visit her family and so she told my mother that you know her son was taking his best friend along and she wouldn't mind having another kid along so did I you know want to go

And I told my mother no I didn't want to go because I really didn't want her to know that much about me I really didn't feel like it was going to serve me well to have the principal be all up in my business but my mother made it very clear that if I didn't go I was going to regret it for the rest of my life and she meant like oh this is a great opportunity you'll see lots of good stuff and you know you'll regret not having gone but that was a really what she meant what she really meant was she would go make me regret it for the rest of my life so I figured I may as well go and suffer the consequences

And you know I think the point at which she decided she hated me was when we went to see the Mayflower museum and I was like oh I bet this is the person I'm related to and she was Portuguese and I gather from things that I've learned way way later that there are some tensions there but I was in no way trying to activate any of that Plus I think I said something about we went to see a bunch of the rich people's mansions in Rhode Island

And I think I said something about you know how much would a house like this sell for and she said well you know this is a historical landmark and there's no way it would ever be sold and I think I probably said something like oh if you waved enough money in front of them I'm sure they would sell it

Which I kind of halfway standby still but I mean I was very young and I feel like that probably was more representative of things that I had heard my mother say than of actual thoughts I had really thought through

But so she decided that I was some kind of rich person I guess I don't know I really don't understand but she really did not like me and the whole rest of the time I was there she like had it out for me

which is not to say that she persecuted me most of the time it was fine but anytime there was something where she could air on the side of I really needed to be taught the way things were then I was going to have some kind of an intervention

And you know I probably did need to be taught the way things were but that wasn't really the way to teach me You know I mean really that had no positive effect on me

Now I mean I did have birthdays

But it would usually just be you know some configuration of immediate family and a cake

And the parties that my family had were always just you know like holidays get together kind of things and they were always kind of a fiasco

And I know I went to a went to a few parties

My mother went to a party that was thrown by somebody we knew from the Renaissance festival and they had a punch bowl that was a champagne punch I think it was pink champagne with strawberries in it

And I wasn't drinking the punch because you know it's alcohol and I was I don't know probably probably for that party I was not yet 11 that was probably the same like new year that I would have turned 11 after but I wasn't quite 11 yet and it was in like her you know condo or something and I wasn't drinking punch because it was alcohol and I was a kid and I wasn't supposed to drink alcohol but I was taking the strawberries out of it and eating the strawberries and you know I didn't know this and my mother didn't know this but if you put fruit into alcohol it soaks up the alcohol so by eating the strawberries I was actually getting more alcohol probably than if I had just drunk a little bit of the champagne Plus I was eating a bunch of strawberries cuz you know they were good and so I got kind of dizzy and fell over and it was humorous quite humorous I had to go lay down

But I've never ever had a party that I threw

Did your parents actually have parties and they wanted you to do things for their guests

Is it like a real thing

I wasn't even really allowed to have people for sleepovers

Like maybe twice

Maybe not though maybe I went to other people's sleepovers but even that not very often

Hi heard about something today it's called like BFF bumble or BFF bumblebee or some s*** like that I don't know it's some app where I think a part of it might be a dating app but the BFF part is for making friends

And I was watching this thing in the sky said his therapist recommended to him that he uses app and try to make some friends and I'm like I'm kind of like why would you want to have friends

And I don't know That's probably not fair most people like I've had friends that I work with but they're you know they're like work friends and some of them I've gone and done things with and you know like I know Misty when I was friends with Misty if I would say that I had done something like oh I went and saw a movie or I went and did XYZ on my day off she would be like what didn't you call me

And it never would have occurred to me to call her because a I would probably rather do it by myself You know if you're going to do something that isn't really something that the other person would want to do then you're going to have to change all the stuff you want to do so that it's something that they want to do and then you're not having a good time you know I did go to the Renaissance festival with her one time and we had a really good time so I'm not saying I couldn't go someplace with her and have a good time I'm just saying that you know if I'm going to do something by myself it doesn't occur to me to think who could I involve in this activity with me

Because I'm a person who you know I'd really rather do it alone because then I can go at my own pace and think my thoughts and write my inner dialogue and whatever stuff that I do that's freaky and other people don't do but I interact with the world in a different way and if I'm interacting with another person I'm not really doing that and I enjoy my process I guess so I mean if it's something that they would like to do and I would like to do and we're going to do it together and it's going to be a fun thing and we're going to plan it in advance and whatever okay

But I would not want somebody to call me at the last minute and say hey you want to go do this because I'm not prepared you know I got to psych myself up for that s*** I'm not like just leaving at the spur of the moment I mean not even before I became an agoraphobic or whatever I am now

But Misty is the kind of person that apparently most people are where they don't like to be alone it makes them unhappy to be alone they're lonely when they're alone and so they're trying to fill their time with other people

But I was thinking about the BFF bumble or whatever the f*** and I was like you know it would be great to have somebody who was you know really intellectually stimulating that I could go see a museum show and talk about it you know or go see a foreign film and talk about it I've never really had a friend like that

So I was curious about the BFF thing and I looked it up on YouTube and I just scrolled through like I didn't read any of the the titles or anything I just scrolled through the ones that were about the BFF thing and looked for a person who looked like somebody that I might want to be friends with

And I know that sounds terrible because it's you know all external and visual-based and whatever but I mean you know it wasn't like I was looking for the prettiest one whatever the f*** that means it was just like oh no I could tell from that person's makeup and clothes that they are just on a different wavelength in me through like almost the whole list and then I saw one person who looked like I mean almost exactly like a blonde Shoshanna actually and I'm like wait her

She probably too young she wouldn't want to be friends with me but I want to let her explain to me about the BFF thing right

So she's from Austin and she's an illustrator and she makes bras like you know bootleg homemade bras or something right so I mean she's probably semi interesting but she was talking about it and she was like you know you have to make your thing and really what people tend to do is is write something like hey I'm looking for some girly to hang out by the river and drink beers and go to brunch and she's like but you know everybody likes to drink beers by the river and go to brunch so you know that's not differentiating yourself and I'm like yeah I would never say that because I wouldn't want to do that but I get that you know and she's like and it also doesn't help to put things like I like movies and music because everybody likes movies and music you need to specify what kind of movies and music and I'm like yeah yeah I get that and she's like you know and don't put stuff like I love the office because everybody loves the office and I'm like oh yeah well I guess everybody does love the office but I don't love the office I just watched it because everybody loved the office and I was afraid I might be missing a cultural moment so I watch it like 10 years after everybody else watched it

And so I was like well you know this is not work this would probably not be the way for me to meet friends actually I've thought if I was going to try to make friends probably what I would do maybe well one of the things I thought I might do involves the Unitarian universalist universalist Church which is just around the corner not so much going to church but they have a lot of weird fringe culture groups that I thought you know well maybe I could meet some weird people but

I'm not sure I'm really prepared to do that and I'm not sure that would really work anyway

So I was thinking you know

My my thing would have to be something along the lines of look I'm not really looking for a BFF I'm just emotionally scarred from the quarantine and I want to ease back into human interaction

So really what I'm looking for is somebody who would enjoy to go to an art museum see a show and discuss it somebody who would enjoy to go to a foreign film just like once or twice a month

Well I mean you know who's going to go for that not the kind of people that are going to use that kind of app I think

And she was talking about having pictures that weren't posed but have pictures of you you know roller skating or painting or something and it's like how is that not going to be posed I can't take those pictures myself so that means somebody's going to have to take them of me

I mean when I used to work with people who wanted to do things with me I was always trying to explain to them that you know when I have finished working I have had as much human interaction as I can handle for the day I have to go back home and recharge I can't go out and have more human interaction it's too much

And I could absolutely go to the museum by myself and I probably will end up doing that it just would be nice to have the option to like have a person who could talk about it with you and I mean I could go to the museum with my mom and theoretically we could have a conversation about it but I don't feel like in fact my mother has a very intellectual philosophical viewpoint on art I don't feel like that when we went to see the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit in Washington DC which we did and it was fun I don't remember how old I was I was in high school maybe 16 maybe 15 you know it was fun but I don't believe we had any intellectual discussions I mean I guess we could have had a discussion about paint usage but I'm not even sure that we did that I think it was more like who were seeing the show

But it recommends this BFF app for people who are new to a city and want to make friends I don't know I mean I can't see it working out but I'm intrigued