The Cocktail Circuit - Kill Them Before They Eat

There is not much to be learned on the cocktail circuit these days unless you have a special interest in abnormal psychology, vacuous chatter, or alcoholism (other than your own).

It also helps to have a good recollection for names of those who mean nothing to you and never will.

“Hi, Jim. Welcome!” effused the hostess whose name I couldn’t remember and didn’t try.

“Is this your new girlfriend,” she asked, not because she was interested but because the pause became uncomfortable when I didn’t introduce her.

The truth was I couldn’t remember my girlfriend’s name. I mean I recognized her face but in that propitious moment I couldn’t put a name to it.

It might have been the pre-party whiskey.

“No,” I replied. “This is a hooker I see regularly whose name I don’t remember.”

“Fuck you, Jim, you drunk bastard!” my girl snarled as she gave me quick punch to the kidney doubling me over.

“Don’t pay attention to him,” she said politely. “He’s a drunk and a sex addict. I only stay with him for the money.”

The hostess nodded, knowingly.

As they wandered away arm in arm, I said, “Sorry I don’t remember your names, but you’re in luck. You both go both ways.”

They pretended not to hear and kept walking.

I looked for the bar, passing the usual has-been’s, never were’s, cons, cripples, and cunts and I thought to myself, “I hate cocktail parties. Not the booze. I like the booze. It’s free.”

What I despise about cocktail parties are the people who go to cocktail parties: Social climbers. Amateur drunks who laugh at the wrong time or who laugh all the time for the wrong reasons. The rich. The pretend rich. The poor who make a meal out of the appetizers. Name-droppers. Personality gazers. Those who remember when things were different. Those who don’t remember shit.

At the end of the day, cocktail parties have one purpose: to drink. Someone else’s booze. But they complicate the simple act of drinking by inviting others and adding alcohol.

That is not to say there aren’t lessons to be learned from these swillfests. There are, and here are a few of the big ones:

There is only one thing people enjoy more than their own success, and that is your failure.

“I heard about the bank fraud. Did you lose ALL your money?”

They hate anything they don’t understand.

“The two parties have basically reorganized themselves around whether to become a more multiethnic, egalitarian democracy or go back in time to when white, Christian men were at the top of the social heap and everyone accepted that as being right. There doesn’t seem to be much room for compromise. What do you think?” I ask.

Dull-eyed stare followed by, “They should leave well enough alone.”

I stumbled at the stupidity and went to the bathroom where I considered hanging myself but returned knowing it would be over soon.

But not soon enough.

They are desperate to be different, just not too different.

I stumbled into a conversation. Topic was the long and painful details of Melanie and Bryan’s last “trip abroad.”

I have wondered for years why people travel. It’s an in-your-face shitty experience. Besides, the world is mostly homogenized. Listening to Melanie drone on about the difficulties of travel leads me to believe people suffer the ignominies of humping airplanes not because there is much difference between Jackson and Jakarta, but because it makes them feel special in cocktail conversation.

“You were in San Francisco, Jim, and didn’t go to the new textile exhibit at the ‘da Young’ museum in Golden Gate Park? Why not?” Melanie asked as if I had left without wiping.

“Not that into fabric,” I replied. “Did you go to the O’Farrell Brothers theatre in the Tenderloin district?”

“Never heard of it,” she sniffed. “Is it avant-garde, epic, commedia dell’arte?” she asked, pandering the proles.

“No. Porn. Jim and Artie Mitchell filmed ‘Behind The Green Door’ there with Marilyn Chambers in 1972 and started an industry bigger than Hollywood. Then it became a museum of sorts. Short loop porn you could watch for 25 cents a minute, live sex shows, free lube and plenty of dark corners to jack off. Clean, too. They mopped the floors every morning. Never had my shoes stick to the floor there. Never.”

Bryant and Melanie’s faces were masks of terror.

I had shit in the punch bowl.

“Well,” Melanie huffed, “I have never in my life . . . “

“I believe that, blondie,” I nodded and then patted her boy on the back, shook my head and walked to the bar, ordered a triple and walked out the front door.

This is the cocktail party in modernity, war in the dreamscape, and like most wars, it is not worth fighting.

I won’t be invited back.

It doesn’t hurt my feelings.

I would rather drink alone.

Epilog: On the way out, I found my girlfriend and asked a bartender if he could hook me up with a couple of paper bags. He obliged and I palmed him 200 pesos and emptied a cheese tray into one and two bottles of the better wine into the other.

I called it even.



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