Friday 13 June 2008

The System At War With Itself

In the vein of working hard and playing hard, it occurred to me last night that every term has ended with a bombastic night which I might immediately regret but eventually remember fondly. This term, the boat party was that night.

- I ate a ridiculous amount of canapes, if only because we were told not to eat anything because a meal would be served and then boarded to find that the meal was tray upon tray of hors d'oeuvres. And while I probably ate a meal's worth of tiny quiches and salmon toothpicks, it wasn't much of a firewall against an open bar of cheap wine. (We also had a smoothie bar, which I made a beeline for early in the evening for a banana, raspberry, and strawberry smoothie, then toward the end of the night for a pineapple and grape smoothie, mostly because everything seemed like a good idea at that point.)

- After being there for five minutes, Erika and I realized that after a year of doing this at most events, the two of us had either voluntarily or involuntarily ended up talking to each other in a corner. I pointed out that at we deserved some credit for branching out and taking our anti-social tendencies to sea, since we usually confine them to bars and bops. As she sighed, it's a different genre, but a familiar theme.

- It took all of ten minutes for someone to spill red wine on somebody else. James lost that game.

- We managed to stay above deck and hang out with Abby, James, R. Dave, and Daniel for the first hour of the trip, and then it started to sprinkle and became freakishly cold and everyone crammed into the cabin underneath. It looked like a hurricane had swept across the canape table. Dan responded by cleaning up after people, while I helped by eating the sad, misshapen eclairs that everyone else left behind. I like my kind of helping better.

- If inclement weather is a British staple, so is bitching about inclement weather:
R: "If I wanted to drink and get wet, I could have just stayed home and sat in my shower with a bottle of wine."
D: "Naked, with mascara running down your face, crying."
R: "Basically, a typical Thursday."
D: "TGIT!" (They toast.)

- You have to be having a very, very good time (and be at the point where you're completely oblivious to social conventions) to attempt to dance to "The Girl from Ipanema." I was unstoppable.

- A boat party ending at 10:30pm is awkward, because it's not quite early enough to catch any other parties, but not quite late enough to call it a night. Instead, we all just crashed into the Head of the River, because we were at the point where proximity trumped expensiveness. Luckily, one of the perks of playing gay wingman for a female friends is that men who hit on them and know what's up will buy you a free drink, too.

- Somehow, the hardiest of us ended up at the Purple Turtle - and by the hardiest of us, I guess I mean myself, Erika, Ambika, and a bunch of the MBAs. About twenty-four hours after skipping Dwayne's birthday party, I ended up in a basement rocking out to "Gimme More" with pretty much that exact group of people. And it was a blast. I think the trick is that I need to get MBAs on my turf, so I'm going to start inviting them to some queer theory lectures and socialist rallies to see if we become BFFs.

- In a nasty case of being careful what you wish for, I woke up this morning to a bright, sunny day, and proceeded to mash my head between my pillows and silently curse the heavens for not being cloudy and overcast. I also not-so-silently cursed the people doing recycling outside my window, who were throwing garbage bags of glass bottles into a dumpster and shattering them. I need to be more specific when I make requests of God.

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