Partaaaaaaay

I went to the neighbour’s party on Saturday, though I tried not to. Anyone who knows me will also know that I regard big parties as a form of slow torture, rather like having your toes chewed off by anaemic rats, especially when I slightly know just one person there and everyone would be speaking a language in which I still lack confidence. I was actually dreading it for a few days beforehand, and wondering how I could get out of it without causing offence.

When Saturday came round I hoped that nobody would bother to knock on my door during the evening and force me out to ‘have a good time’ or to ‘relax’ or to ‘just chill out for once, what’s your problem, jeeez’. I was literally prepared to run a mile not to go to this party. In the end I ran ten miles, up to the Helfenstein and back, returning home at about seven in the evening. I took a shower and was about to make some dinner when Deric knocked on my door. Crap. “John, come on,” he said, “the party’s already started, there’s lots of food and beer, everyone’s waiting.”

“Do you want me to come right now?”

He stared at me as though I’d just asked the most absurd question imaginable. “Yes!”

Not having any genuine excuse to refuse - and I’d been trying to think of one for days - I went. And, as usual, it wasn’t so bad once I’d jumped in. The first hour or so I was oppressed by the usual misfit agony, but I kept myself busy by wandering from the food stall to the marquis to the beer stall and back again, drinking until I felt able to interact like a normal person. Then the hostess dragged me into to a gaggle of ‘young people’ (i.e. under 40), including two work colleagues of her daughter who also didn’t really know anyone else at the party, so we could all be misfits together, which was nice. I chatted with them for most of the evening.

Things started to wind down about 11pm - one disadvantage of having a party out in the country is that people have to drive home sober, I suppose. It seemed like a good opportunity to escape, but I was physically prevented by another friend of the daughter, who made me drink schnapps. Lots of schnapps. Then the dancing started, and became more ferocious the fewer people remained. The band were indeed playing out of a horse box - rock ‘n’ roll classics mostly, with painfully heavy German accents.

Things get blurry after that. The band packed up around midnight and were replaced by a CD player. I remember I was part of a nine-person conga line (which was 100% of the remaining guests), and when a waltz came on I tried to dance with the daughter’s friend, but my drink-addled brain couldn’t string more than two steps together. I thought it was hilarious. The daughter’s boyfriend came up to me afterwards, very drunk, and started assuring me that when I danced with a girl I liked I should look in her eyes, not at my own feet, which was very helpful of him.

Luckily I wasn’t quite drunk enough not to realise that he and the daughter were surreptitiously trying to hook me up with her friend. By then I was ready to leave anyway, since it was one o’clock and there was only a handful of people left milling about on the shadowy patio. “I think if you stay,” the boyfriend said, nodding across the patio to the friend, “you’ll stay here a long time.” Now in a German accent that sounded rather creepy, almost threatening, so I finally said my farewells, thanked the hosts and stumbled down the grassy verge home.

I spent all Sunday in bed. The whole day.

Waaaay too much schnapps.