by Alida Nugent
Comedian: The other day, I found a joke book I wrote in when I was six and in it, it said, “JOKES: How did the elephant climb the ladder? With great difficulty.” That’s. Not. Funny. Yet my parents laughed their checkbooks away.
Writer: In fourth grade, we had to write fables for our final projects. I wrote one entitled “How the Chow Chow Got Its Blue Tongue.” Chow chows are fat dogs that have blue tongues, in case you didn’t know. I knew, as a kid, because I had a magazine subscription to Dog Fancy. The story I so carefully crafted was a tale of terrible child abuse—a cruel dog-father who, when his son “acted out,” would shove him in a freezer. One day, when the dog-child did something that I don’t remember but probably was something like “protecting his mother,” the dad left him there to freeze. The dog emerged with a blue tongue and became an expensive toy for very rich people.
That story is pretty fucked up. What is more fucked up is that I named the puppy’s father after my dad, because I couldn’t think of another name. My dad has never laid a hand on me, which is something that my fourth-grade teacher could never quite believe.
Hallmark card girl: You know those jokey birthday cards that wives give their husbands when they secretly hate them? The ones with the picture of a “hot” girl on the front that says something like, “This girl wants a BIG part of you on your birthday,” or whatever else insinuates that this lady wants a penis, and then when you open the card it says, “Kidding, you’re a fat, disgusting slob,” or whatever else insinuates that the lady who gave you the card wants a divorce? I remember being a kid and looking at one with my mother while she was looking for a card for hopefully not my father. On it was a girl who had a white one-piece bathing suit, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen hair, and harlotlike makeup. I wanted to be her so badly, because she looked very worldly and special to me. I thought I would look good on those kinds of cards, helping a husband and wife continue down their dark road of marital hell. I went home and smeared makeup on my face like Buffalo Bill.
Witch: This is pretty self-explanatory, but I wanted to be a witch when I was younger. I was never sure which side I was on. Good-witch-wise, I wanted to be Sabrina and travel through linen closets and date a guy with one earring and talk to a cat all day. Bad-witch-wise, I would have enjoyed being Sarah Jessica Parker in Hocus Pocus and killing children all day.
Can we say, “Headed toward a liberal arts degree and also writing a sign about how I have a degree as I beg for change on the subway”? Yet, throughout the years of these absurd dreams, my parents were incredibly supportive. They liked my “little stories.” They liked them so much they gave me the chutzpah to like those stories, too, and to chase that dream of becoming a writer. Screw you, Mom and Dad! (I love you, Mom and Dad.)
* * *
When I got older and realized that my life was built around the idea that my career would be something I wanted to love, to strive for, to be proud of, I was scared. I know I’m not the only one. A lot of my friends had passions, too—they wanted to be filmmakers or brain surgeons or fashion designers, and all because nobody told them no. Well, friends, here goes a whole lot of years of trouble. There’s no time machine to go back and make us into reasonable creatures. We’re romantic. We’re hopeful. We’re done for. The worst part of this all? The idea of struggle and compromise seems exciting to us—that’s how stupid we are. There’s no stopping fools, I say. We’re still kids at heart. Those dreams are still there. Now we just have to go chase them.
And now, we’ve started running.
If You Want to Keep Your Dignity Intact, Stay Away from Tequila
One day, I will become the kind of adult who can throw a real party, I think as I take my top off in front of a small group of friends and acquaintances.
One day.
How did I get to that moment? No, I was not trying out as an extra for Showgirls 2: Also Not Sexy Boogaloo. Nor was I so angry at my dad I used his credit card to go to Cancun for spring break.
This is a story of girl meets tequila.
Let’s rewind. A week before this sad striptease, I had marched into the kitchen with the kind of idea that stemmed from summer boredom and reading Good Housekeeping at the doctor’s office. My roommate Brittanie sat eating her signature salad of June 2010: this slop thing of tuna, black beans, raw onions, and shredded cheese. To me, it posed the question, Is a salad simply a salad because it is cold, healthy, and disgusting, or does it also need to have lettuce and be disgusting? Brittanie looked at me expectantly, her adorable cheeks marred by the demon’s lunch food.
I stood in front of her, eyes blazing defiantly, stubby little legs doing a weird jig that only comes out whenever I have true moments of genius.
“BRITTANIE. Let’s have a party. A really CLASSY, ADULT party.”
I waved my arms wildly, words racing a mile a minute, saying things like, “We’re gonna go all out” and “Let’s see what Martha Stewart has to say on the subject of decorative napkins.” I explained my plan with a level of enthusiasm that would make you think nobody had ever hosted a party before. I was a genius, a revolutionary on par with whoever invented those low-calorie wedges of cheese.
I had hosted many a shindig before, but those seemed to serve only as warnings to insubordinate youth, with me as the ball-and-chained apparition: the Ghost of College Parties Past. Imagine me, wearing the standard college uniform of UGG boots and a North Face jacket, haunting your local bar that doesn’t ID—“Hey, kid, you think college is all fun and games? I’ll tell you what, it kind of is. But watch what happens when you host a party in your decrepit, mouse-ridden apartment, the one that houses eight people and constantly smells like your roommate’s cooking mistakes. Yeah, and because you’re so smart, have everyone guzzle down Four Loko, the type that has both caffeine and alcohol. You wanna hear what happens? You gotta clean twice. Once before the party, and once for the vomit afterward. Good times, though.”
The last fete I had hosted descended into the type of debauchery that even a “cool mom” who lets you have wine coolers at barbecues would warn her kids against. By the night’s end, the following things may or may not have happened:
A bunch of guys who were really into metal music showed up uninvited and drank inhuman amounts of beer, leading one to piss in the corner of the living room.
One of my usually very responsible roommates tried coke (drug, not soda) and ran around the house until I had to chase her with a broom. (KIDS: DON’T DO DRUGS.)
More than one couple ended up having sex in the bathtub; no fewer than three people were found crying in closets.
The birthday girl’s iPod got stolen and my roommate had his hookah smashed to pieces. Who would smoke there now?
I drank so much caffeinated alcohol that I began to collect and count all of the beer bottles, until finally I had had enough and pretended that the cops were coming. (Note: Do this at a party where everyone is heavily intoxicated and watch the chaos that ensues.)
Needless to say, much like my collection of various bodysuits I own and never wear, I had no idea how to pull off a party. However, as a newly minted college grad, I was feeling the pressure to enter Adult World and envisioned this party to be a “coming-out ball” for my latent maturity. Frankly, living alone without electrocuting myself sounded daunting enough. (I mean, really, you’re looking at someone who barely passed Latin American Culture Through Film aka movie watching 101.) But I reasoned that I could tackle hosting a mature party more easily than, say, trying to make conversation with a guy who had a job in finance over small plates of garlic shrimp (the most mature thing I can think of). So a party it was. That’s what I would do in my slow climb to owning pairs of smart heels.
After hearing my passionate defense of how we had to grow up and live life without doing keg stands, Brittanie agreed to be my cohost for this elegant affair. We carefully selected the friends who we deemed most deserving of this shindig that was meant to be remembered “fondly but not epically.” This was not a woooo, what-a-crazy-night kind of
party; this was meant to be a wasn’t-that-a-nice kind of evening. Yeah, I said evening. We settled on men who were fashionably gay or considered gay by society because of their sharp sweater collection, and ladies who had never thrown up rum in front of us.
In light of the whole “making this an evening and not a frat party,” gone were those days of inviting people to parties via Facebook invitations with a picture of a girl flat down on her panties. No, instead, I made the bold choice to call our esteemed guests, with a Madonna-British accent, and cordially invited them to our place on Saturday at 8 P.M. sharp. It was clear to everyone that this was going to be “cat eating out of glass goblet in those cat food commercials” fancy. To really push the point home, I made it clear that the requested attire was “Look good enough to get laid, but really, this isn’t that type of party. Come on, can’t you have fun without having to have sex with somebody? Jesus.”
After getting several enthusiastic yeses from our gals and gays and not-quite gays, it was time to dream up how our fancy-ass party would look. This was my time to shine, to put Martha Stewart to shame. I imagined immaculate canapés, the kinds that were featured on the Triscuit box. I would walk well in said smart heels, serving said canapés on a silver platter. My cohost, thankfully, had more realistic expectations. After living together for three years, Brittanie was both my partner in crime and the one bringing me back down to reality when I needed it. And she did not hold back when it came to stomping on my party-planning dreams, as evidenced by a snippet of our pre-party debates:
Me: “How about we try to make ice sculptures? Like, if we bought a block of ice and got a hammer, we could hack at it until it resembled the Empire State Building. Maybe ice sculptures of each of our guests in various patriotic poses?”
Brittanie: “Do you even own a hammer?”
Me: “All right, all right, all right. How do you feel about real silverware?”
Brittanie: “I feel fine about it. Do you have any?”
Me: “What about having a fondue fountain?”
Brittanie: “You know we’re going to use that once and then it’ll sit under the sink with hardened cheese on it. You know we’re not going to clean that thing.”
Oh yeah, speaking of cleaning. This was a step I was trying to avoid. Having a neat house to reside in should have probably been a logical part of getting my shit together, but just thinking about the act of cleaning makes me want to take a nap with a Brillo pad as a pillow. There wasn’t anything in the rule books that said mature people were supposed to have clean houses, anyway. I’d seen Hoarders enough to know that lots of adults didn’t clean. But on the other hand, I’d also seen Hoarders enough to know I didn’t want to be the kind of adult who had only cat skeletons for friends. We would have to spruce up the place up before we had everyone over. So two days before the party, I put on my best impression of the action hero rallying the group of criminal misfits to save the day and said, “Hey, let’s do this!”
Do you want to know the easiest way to tell if somebody is a human being who can function well in society or is an idiot baby who lives in a state of filth? Open up their fridge. Specifically, look at their vegetable drawers. Go on, do it, but put on a hazmat suit first if you suspect it of being less than sparkling. I know this because I made the unfortunate decision to examine mine and was surprised to find gunk at the bottom of it. It looked like soy sauce, but given its location, it was more likely from the red peppers that were bought approximately one month ago. I had planned on making a hearty stir fry, but all things must pass. Now, the peppers were fermenting into some sort of noxious mold that was probably attacking and eating my brain for days on end.
And it wasn’t just the vegetable drawers. This is something that I probably should have learned at an early age, but apparently condiments have expiration dates? I’m just as surprised as you are to know that something as delicious as ranch dressing could expire. Maybe it’s because I usually just put a straw in my ranch dressing and slurp it down in one gulp before the light of the next day can hit it. Regardless, kids, do yourself a favor and check those salad dressings.
After hours of using all of the Swiffers and scrubby things we had available, the kitchen actually looked kind of decent. Brittanie and I threw up our arms in victory, until we realized that we couldn’t make our lunch in there or else it would destroy everything. We marched to our bedrooms to ride the cleaning high, which is, I assume, like a meth high, if doing meth makes you feel like a housewife who has inhaled all of the fumes of her cleaning products.
Slowly but surely, our shit was coming together. The afternoon of the party, Brittanie went over all of the details. Semiclean house? Check. Decorations? One lone candle and a throw pillow for the win! Food that wasn’t just chips poured into a bowl five minutes before guest arrivals? Check, but only because Brittanie made stuffed mushrooms, which I wouldn’t touch because, let’s be real, mushrooms taste like dirt. Now, for the drink making. We were going to be providing guests with libations because I wanted to be the kind of person who doesn’t squawk BYOB into the eardrums of everybody for at least one night. I wanted to seem generous, kind of like the bird lady from Home Alone 2, but instead of dumping birdseed in front of pigeons, I would be providing alcohol to pour down the mouths of my friends. So in the spirit of that, I bought cheap-ass tequila and steeped jalapeño peppers in sugar syrup for hours, trying to make true to my promise that we would have jalapeño-infused margaritas. Looking back, I guess we technically did. But I didn’t own a blender or buy any ice, so we had a lukewarm something or other that I put too much Triple Sec in because I was proud that I had bought Triple Sec. That shit is expensive and you can’t even drink it in shot form, but “SO IT GOES.”
Right before everyone arrived, we added some final touches to make this get to Giada De Laurentiis-elegant-but-still-a-mini-meatball-platter level. We sprayed Febreze almost everywhere. We had a record player that didn’t work, so instead we put some Billie Holiday on the computer and put that behind the record player. It was all ambience-and-fancy-Christmas-lights awesome, and I was pretty sure I deserved a Nobel Peace Prize or Time’s Lady of the Year for it. And because a hostess has to look sexy, I had put peacock feathers in my hair, for “Westchester Technical High School Presents A Midsummer Night’s Dream” chic. I looked like the fanciest of idiots—an idiot who was growing up!
Ten people showed up, which is the perfect “not a rager, just a nice get-together, with you know, the group” size. Everything was going so well. Witness a conversation that just screams “mature partygoers.”
Me, standing in the corner in heels, because I continued to wear heels in the house for the sound they made on the tiles: “Brad, as a vegetarian, do you know that you almost certainly have a B12 deficiency? I hope you’re taking supplements.” I push a plate of mushrooms toward him.
“Not as often as I should….” Brad munches on one of the provided mushroom caps, hoping that these three bites will make up for his dearth of nutrients.
“Yes, you’re probably dying at this very moment because you don’t have enough B12. Or it might just make you lose your hair. I’m too short to tell if that’s starting to happen already, even with these heels on. Here, come to my cabinet. I keep vitamins in the same cabinet I keep my spices, but don’t worry, I’ve almost never gotten them confused.” We walk across the kitchen, and I put vitamins in a small Ziploc bag.
“Why thank you, Alida. Would you like to talk about global politics? Or some literature, perhaps?” He adjusts his smart cashmere sweater as the music changes to Ella Fitzgerald. I take another small sip of tequila.
“Brad, that would be lovely!”
End scene.
Setting aside the fact that my mature conversational attempts made me sound like I was the kind of pretentious ass who says she watches films and not movies, there was one glaring problem with that scenario: tequila, and my sipping on it. Tequila is God of Throwing Up Everything Ever Stored in Your Intestines Ever and Also Making
You an Insane Person. It knows no age, race, gender, religion. It is an equal-opportunity, ruin-your-night alcohol. And we were all drinking it.
Let’s face the facts: Nobody right out of college is used to handling their liquor. Up until then, we were accustomed to the evolution of college drinking—going from very obviously sneaking sips of vodka out of water bottles to drinking two-dollar beers at whatever bar wouldn’t card to actually being legal age but still stupid enough to make a fool out of yourself no less than 50 percent of the time when out drinking. We were not yet at the point to be responsible enough to bring a bottle of wine to somebody’s apartment to be consumed by at least three people. We were still amateurs. This became abundantly clear when we went from casually sipping on my margarita inventions to doing rounds of shots. I’m sure they were dignified shots. I’m sure we did them in real-glass shot glasses, and I’m sure we toasted to economic upturn. But once you start doing shots of tequila, you’re entering a vortex from which you will never return.
After the third shot, Brad dropped a mushroom cap. I swear this happened in slow motion—the mushroom spinning slowly on the floor like a top or dreidel, depending on your faith. From that point on, the mood of the room started to change. The adults were gone, replaced with the childish monsters we really were. Somebody changed the old-timey music to something more hip. The Christmas lights started flickering ominously. It’s eleven o’clock, do you know where your children are? They were right here, ready to have the kind of Saturday night where twentysomethings would act like their natural selves: animals.
The lot of us reconvened to the living room, where somebody pulled out a deck of cards. Who pulls out a deck of cards at a party? Answer: either very old people or very young people. This thing was taking a Slip’N Slide right into the Dane Cook depths of a college party, and I could do nothing to stop it.