Category: Parties

The Introspective Ferret’s Guide to Parties

The quiet introspective ferret feels he has only been to two kinds of parties: those where people assess each other from behind smokescreens of shallow small talk and those where people get as drunk and as high as possible to avoid being aware of such assessment.  Office / department parties tend to be a blend of the two, with clever coworkers staying sober so they can capitalize on the rare opportunity to interrogate / insult the drunkards or make time with someone normally uninterested in them.  This is not misanthropy on the part of our gentle introspective ferret. He has simply learned that he likes individuals way more than groups.

Staying home is nearly always a better choice.  It keeps our ferret from having to dwell on the loathsome behavior that inevitably comes out in people after a few hours of drinking and frustration.  It’s way better not to see it, not to have to recall it, in those the ferret would prefer to otherwise respect.  But if he must attend, our ferret prefers to bring his own non-alcoholic beverages and disappear after about 90 minutes of watching people force smiles and reposition themselves feverishly around a room.  Also, having a palette-cleansing activity lined up, like a movie or some other distracting event, helps an introspective ferret shake off the bad vibes.

No one cares about what a ferret does at a party anyway. No cares that his drink is non-alcoholic.  In fact, they probably don’t even notice.  And no one really cares that he left after 90 minutes, unless they came to the party on a mission with the poor ferret in mind, in which case he should definitely scamper out with a quickness after no more than an hour and preferably by the back exit.

In the following days, the drama and innuendo about what happened between various drunkards at the party will become known.  But our gentle ferret will be an innocent child of the earth, oblivious and free, a wild polecat in the grass amid the butterflies. For he will be able to tell the simple truth: “I’d already left when X-horrible-thing happened between Bleary Mule and Angry Snake.  So I really have no idea.”  And people will turn their boredom and obsessiveness on someone more entertaining—Squawking Rooster, perhaps.

Another Year Over

I’ve never found New Years Eve to be a very festive occasion.  The regrets of the past—not just of the previous year, but all the wreckage, sorrows, and mistakes that have thus far shaped the path behind—tend to be far more compelling.  It’s no use trying to plaster over such introspection, as most people do, with alcohol and shouting.  Fireworks are fine and I like them as much as anyone, but the feverish, almost desperate, partying people engage in so as not to have to confront the realities of the previous year, is pathetic.  I’d rather face my pain with a clear head.  This, of course, makes me unpleasant company at a New Years Eve party.  It’s a good thing I don’t go to them.

Party, like love or truth, can mean whatever we want it to mean.  Sometimes love means like or desire or the lesser of evils.  Sometimes truth means a better, more tolerable, sort of lie.  Often party means compulsive self-distraction.  I can count the number of parties where I’ve had fun on one hand.  Most have been dreadful and tedious, whether I was sober or not.  And, though I know the natural response is, “you are such a wretched, misanthropic, introverted son-of-a-bitch that you don’t know what fun is,” I think I do know.  At least, I know what it isn’t.  It’s not a night of forced cheer and denial, for one thing. 

Woo.  Happy New Year.  Now get back in your cage.