by Lindy West
How to Be a Guest at a Party
Bring something! Always bring something! (Unless it’s a keg party. That is the only exception to the rule. The keg is all the party needs, and the keg will already be in attendance.) A bottle of wine is always welcome (or sparkling cider, if your friends are 13-year-old girls), or a nice wedge of cheese (or fake cheese, if your friends are mannequins). A six-pack (or more!) is completely acceptable. If you’re close with the hosts and/or it’s a small affair, call ahead and ask if there’s anything they need. (Note: If you’re a host and you receive such a phone call, KEEP IT REASONABLE—no “Oh, could you just pick up some kimchi, eight small frozen chickens, and a jar of silver dragées?”)
Most importantly, be gracious. If you go over to someone’s house and they offer you a drink, take it. Don’t poop all over their hospitality by being like, “Oh, no, thank you, I COULDN’T,” over and over again, like that’s some sort of altruistic gesture. Like you’re the Gandhi of not-making-people-get-you-a-gin-and-tonic. These people are hosting you. Let them host. Don’t make them beg. That said, don’t get too drunk. Don’t become the Gandhi of slurring “the proof is in the pudding” while groping for Melissa’s pudding (vagina). Don’t do that. Nobody wants that.
Smile! Chat (see How to Have a Conversation)! Talk to people you don’t know. If you know the hosts well, offer to stay and help clean up (they’ll probably say no, and you’ll look good just for asking). Otherwise, leave before it starts to get weird. Don’t be the last one there unless the host(s) have very specifically asked you to stay to help clean up or have sex.
How to Host a Party
First, resign yourself to spending some money on your party. No, wait: CELEBRATE SPENDING SOME MONEY ON YOUR PARTY! YOUR PARTY’S GOING TO BE FACTUALLY THE BEST PARTY EVER! In order to have the best party ever, you will need bounty—bountiful snacks (they can be simple, just: BOUNTY!), bountiful drinks, some napkins. You could deploy decorations, but why bother when you know the second secret to the best party ever, which is GOOD LIGHTING!? Good lighting is dim and makes people look like they should be kissed immediately. No one’s going to be doing surgery at this party (um, right?)—kill the overheads. Get some candles (not scented—too stinky). Now, to populate your party universe: Invite humans! Invite those you really like—people who are capable of having conversations, people who are capable of drinking, people with mouths. Invite people from different parts of your life; they will enjoy to meet each other. Invite a few randoms, too—people you don’t know especially well but who you’ve noticed have excellent shoes or a funny laugh or whatever. If these people ask whether they can bring anything, the only truly polite answer is “Oh, no! Of course not! Just come! Bring a friend!” If they are a truly polite person and/or have read this book, they will know to never, ever show up without bringing something.
Ding-dong! PARTY TIME! Wait, before this: Don’t drink too much before your party starts, because (a) you want to enjoy this thoroughly, and (b) passing out at your own party is gauche and people might draw on your face. Okay, ding-dong! PARTY TIME! Welcome your guests heartily and give them a beverage! Keep your guests in beverages and snacks at pretty much all times—encourage them to help themselves, and sometimes say, “Do you need anything?” My, you are an awesome host. Also: Introduce the guests who don’t know each other to each other, providing one hilarious fact (or fiction! Let them sort it out!) about each person when you do the introducing. Don’t let them huddle in cliques or stand alone facing walls. Maybe two people you introduce will get married someday! Maybe it’ll be the first legal gay marriage on the moon and they’ll thank you all across whatever the internet is then! Sweet.
The same basic rules apply to a dinner party, which is REALLY fun. Have one! (For some recipes, see What No One Else Will Tell You About Food.)
On Toilets
You’re young, which means you’re probably still all weird about pooping. That’s okay—you’ll get over it, and the sooner you do, the easier your life will be. Pooping is not that big a deal. If you have to poop in a department store, just go into the bathroom and do your poop. You can try to keep your poop quiet if you like, but don’t sit there and sweat all day waiting for the bathroom to empty out, because that is both creepy (you are sitting there with your pants down listening to strangers pee!) and a waste of time. Just do it. Own your poop. Did you know that literally 100 percent of the other people in the department store bathroom have also, at one time or another, pooped? It’s true! Probably that very day! If you have to poop at a party and there’s only one bathroom, just do it. Flush as quickly as possible, light a match, turn on the fan, open a window, and walk out of that bathroom with your head held high. You have pooped with integrity. (Side note: If some of your poop sticks to the side of the toilet bowl even after you’ve flushed, grab the toilet brush and scrub that shit off. It takes two seconds and it’s the right thing to do. Don’t leave it there like a tiny brown hostess gift.) Because here’s the thing about pooping: NO ONE CARES. Not one person in the history of buttholes has ever turned to their friend and whispered, “Did you hear about Kevin? He pooped. IN THE BATHROOM. Tell everyone. Let’s make sure he never has sex again.” The only person thinking about your poop is you.
DO NOT PEE ON THE SEAT.
If you do, wipe it up.
If you use the last of the toilet paper, don’t just get a new roll out of the cupboard and leave it on the floor next to the toilet. Actually put it on the thingy.
Ladies, as a general rule: Don’t flush tampon applicators. They can really fuck up old plumbing. But don’t put your used applicator all loosey-goosey in the trash can. Wrap it demurely in toilet paper. Nobody needs to see your womanly essence. (Also: Nobody needs to see plastic tampon applicators washed up on the beach, nor do we want them to be the main artifact left from our civilization after we are all extinct. Get the other kind, or the kind with no applicator, which are actually not gross.) (Also-also: Men, get over ladies’ periods. Your body does things that are just as gross, and the ladies are very understanding about them.)
Most importantly, wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. FOR GOD’S SAKE, WASH YOUR HANDS. NOBODY WANTS TO TOUCH YOUR PEE-HANDS.
Always knock.
10. HOW TO DO LAUNDRY
BY BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT
My father is congenitally incapable of doing laundry. When I was a child, this deficit in his knowledge, in his complete understanding of all the things in the world and how each of them worked, was little short of shocking. He would try to do laundry, and he would fail, abjectly, a high percentage of the time. He knew, for example, to check each and every pocket of every clothing item before consigning it to the washing machine, and yet he consistently laundered ballpoint pens—consistently as in pretty much every time he did laundry. He always carried a pen (a grown-up thing), and a pen would find a way to sneak in. Safely inside the washing machine, inundated and churning around, the pen would work its way out of its pocket, divest itself of its cap, then have its way with all the garments in the load—inking up stuff in a seemingly celebratory way, freed from the dull, controlled world of words into a glorious aqueous spree. That this would lead to the end of the pen—its lifeblood spilled and its shell consigned to the old bucket that acted as the basement trash can—concerned the pen not. While it lived, it truly lived. It ruined clothes.
My father, back before he was banned from doing laundry, also had a small but calamitous problem with sorting the light clothing from the dark. While segregation in general is to be very much avoided, in laundry it is a hallowed principle; it keeps your lighter clothes from slowly turning gray fro
m the leaching dye of the darker clothes. My father could sort lights almost completely—his white dress shirts and T-shirts and underpants, mom’s unmentionables and blouses, our smaller white socks and so forth—but, more often than seems believable, he would accidentally put in something bright red. It always seemed to be a T-shirt. Why did we have so many red T-shirts? The result: pink. Pink underwear, pink undershirts, pink everything in that load of laundry.
To be fair, my father is color-blind. This was a source of endless fascination to us when we were kids. Was the world like a black-and-white movie to Dad? How was, for example, the banananess of a banana compromised by such a deficit? What did he SEE? We were given to understand that it was a genetic thing, and that it only happened to men (the arbitrary mysteries of science). My brother was not color-blind, or so it seemed—but how could we, in truth, know how any other person saw anything? The mind reeled.
Meanwhile, there were many practical matters to be addressed. How did Dad know whether a traffic light was red or yellow or green? (Answer: The colors on a traffic light are always the same, top to bottom.) How could he get dressed without looking like a clown? (Answer: My mother arranged—she still does—the clothes hanging in his closet in sections according to what went with what, so he could dress in a kind of multiple-choice manner; same with the socks in his sock drawer. Somehow he still ends up with mismatched socks from time to time, and the sight of one of his ankles dark blue and the other brown fills me with a kind of tenderness I find difficult to describe.) We would badger him with tests: What color is this? What about this? Some weren’t so much of a problem for him—orange, yellow—but still he always seemed like he was guessing, answering gamely but with a question mark at the end. With purples and maroons and forest greens and darker colors down to black, he was certainly guessing, and he often guessed wrong. It never occurred to us that this was a minor but real disability, and that he might not enjoy entertaining our questions about it; he was invincible, a superhero, even if he didn’t know what color anything was.
Most bizarrely, my dad was unable to grasp the nature of bleach. Bleach was bleach; it said what it was, right in its name. My father, having sorted lights from darks, would splash in a healthy amount of bleach. With the dark clothes. He did this more than once. Having discovered his latest travesty of laundry, my mother would wail his name—Dan—mournfully from the basement: “DAAAAAAaaaaaan!” Bleach removes color. If you add a little bleach to a load of whites you’re washing in hot water, it makes them whiter. If you put bleach on anything colored, it makes indelible spots of no-color-anymore. My father’s difficulty with this basic principle was confounding. I asked him once about this: Why did he put bleach in with colors? “I thought it would brighten them up,” he said sheepishly.
My father was barred from laundry, and when I was around 9 or 10, my parents contracted me to be the family’s laundress. For this, I received the princely sum of $10 a week (which was more money back in the last century). I sorted lights from darks; I checked pockets (and got to keep any change or bills left behind); I used bleach on whites only; I folded clothes still warm from the dryer in the cool dim of the basement. (I got less afraid of the basement.) Dad’s briefs were big enough to fold over into fourths. Mom’s blouses and Dad’s dress shirts went on hangers, hung on the edge of the ironing board. I laundered without incident, and with a small amount of pride.
Laundry has remained likable—and like most things, it’s even more fun when you’re not a kid anymore. In college, my roommate and I would have laundry parties: Along with the quarters and the detergent, you just need a jug of wine, which you drink to while away the laundry time. (We washed our whites together, and the pile of nice fresh socks commingling afterward was called the Sock Party, which is funnier when you’ve had some jug wine. Still: There’s something funny, something sweet, about the clean socks of two friends in a pile.)
When my roommate went to France for a year, I did laundry with my goth friends Curtis and Elsa. They always seemed to have hash, and along with the washers and dryers in the dorm basement, there was a stove, so we’d do hot knives. It was weird and fun, just like Curtis and Elsa.
And in a situation where you have to go to a laundromat, you can get some good reading done and maybe make friends with the old guy who runs the laundromat and learn about all the potted plants he’s got growing there. Or your laundromat might have the name Tiny Bubbles, which is something you can think about with a little glow of joy for the rest of your days: Tiny Bubbles.
How to Actually Do Laundry
WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
• Dirty clothes (machine washable—check the labels)
• Laundry detergent (powdered, in a box, means one less thing for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch)
• Bleach, maybe (See Note)
• Quarters, as required
Separate light-colored dirty clothes from dark ones. (Red counts as dark.) Launder lights and darks separately, unless you want all your clothes to converge on a uniform grayness.
Fire up the washer. Cold water is fine, in general, on normal cycle. Let the water start to fill the bottom of it, then sprinkle in your laundry detergent. (You can use a little less than is recommended on the box. They want you to use more than you need, because: $.)
Add the clothes loosely. Do not cram. (Crammed-in clothes or an overfilled washer means nothing really gets clean.)
Close the lid. Enjoy a book or something to drink or both. (If you are at a laundromat or using other nonprivate machines, it’s sad but true: You never know when someone might steal all your clothes. You probably want to stand by.)
You say the washer is done? Clean out the lint trap on the dryer (this prevents annoying fire and improves dryer performance). Put the clothes in the dryer. Make it go (medium temperature should be fine). Enjoy a book or something to drink or both.
Ding! That’s it. For added niceness, fold while still warm, unless you’re in Arizona or something.
A NOTE ABOUT BLEACH
Bleach is added, a quarter cup or so, along with the laundry detergent to the water in the washer before the clothes go in—white or very light clothes only. Use hot water for more whitening/brightening power, but be warned: Stuff that’s new that’s washed in hot water may shrink.
11. WHAT NO ONE ELSE WILL TELL YOU ABOUT FOOD
BY BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT AND CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE
How to (Not) Be a Foodie
Seriously, you do not want to be a “foodie.” You do not want to even use the word “foodie,” because it sounds so pretentious and stupid. And give up on finding a good substitute: There isn’t one. Here’s the thing: You are NOT a foodie—you are merely a person who has a modicum of knowledge about, and enjoys a variety of, different foods. (This is very fashionable right now, and for good reason: It’s healthier than a fast- and processed-food diet, and being willing to put almost anything in your mouth is hot.) Where should you begin? Eat food! Try all different kinds! Colleges and universities are places where cheap and interesting restaurants naturally congregate—there’s a whole world of strange, delicious, inexpensive food out there. Look for places that are full and/or that have high ratings online, and go get some!
If you’ve never had dim sum (or even if you have), go with a bunch of friends. This is where you choose all kinds of crazy dumplings and noodley things and you-know-not-what from carts-on-wheels. The cart-wheeling ladies might be brusque, but don’t be afraid to say yes to lots of stuff—it’s all usually remarkably cheap, and the more you try, the more you’ll like. (There may be chicken feet, which are actually kind of gross, but they’re easy to avoid: They look like chicken feet.) Find a sushi place or a restaurant that serves oysters on the half shell (there’s no law that says you have to order a full meal), and take a date. Taking someone to a place with interesting food makes you seem even greater than you already are, and eating raw seafood together is a bonding experience. (And if your date is adventurous about this, it bodes well for what e
lse they might want to try.) Eat Indian food, Ethiopian, Latin American, pho, vegetarian, whatever—pizza’s good, to be sure, but there’s ALL THIS too. Find all-ages happy hours; it’s a cheap way to eat at great places. Be ready with a wish list when someone else is paying or when you have some cash.
Always tip 20 percent when you eat in a restaurant, unless the server literally tells you to fuck off. Then you tip 10 percent. This is not a joke; servers work hard, and your tip is a large part of their pay—in some restaurants, it’s all they get paid. Tip well or stay home.
If you start to get into it, you can read up on the foods of different cultures (Wikipedia is a fine start). Read some food writing—restaurant reviews in local papers and magazines, the dining section of the New York Times online, the food section of The Stranger online, food blogs, books by M. F. K. Fisher and John Thorne …
If you get super into it, you might find yourself reading cookbooks just for fun, whether you make a lot of stuff out of them or not—among the most awesome are Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and anything by Marcella Hazan.
Marcella Hazan’s prose, embedded right in her cookbooks, is like your bossy but amazing and funny grandma—she knows everything about Italian food and wants you to DO IT RIGHT (and she also smokes tons of Marlboro Lights and drinks lots of whiskey).
Julia Child was a very tall woman with a warbling voice who devoted years of her life to making a French cookbook for Americans—you also HAVE to read her memoir, My Life in France, and watch some of her old cooking shows on YouTube (if you can find the one where she drops a duck on the floor while trying to prepare it, you will learn that being uptight is just not where cooking’s at—she pretty much invented the five-second rule). Oh! And you have to watch the parts of the movie Julie & Julia with Meryl Streep. In order to play Julia Child, Streep ate Kermit the Frog: The voice—the chortle-yodeling, the vowels—is perfect. Streep’s physical embodiment of Child is perfect, too, both graceful and ungainly (Child towered, thick through the middle, over almost everyone). The moments in which Streep-as-Child masters the art of French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu are comedy nonpareil. And Streep-as-Child is sexy: When she looks down into Stanley Tucci’s eyes and pulls down his suspenders in a scene that stops just before their daily Paris nooner: hel-LO. (Tucci, as short, shiny-domed, bespectacled Paul Child, is weirdly, completely hot.) Every scene with Streep in it is endlessly engrossing. She opens an envelope on a porch, glancing slightly wildly over her shoulder, and it is magic. (But you should fast-forward through the Julie parts of Julie & Julia, because they are pretty terrible.)