Last night I attended a houseparty, an excrutiating little event to which Jay, my roommate, had invited me. While he isn't exactly boon companions with the hostess of said party, Jay is certainly on more intimate terms with her than I, who had only met her once before. It's always difficult to go to a houseparty when you don't know the host or hostess directly, when you're there as the "friend of a friend." You see pictures of your mutual friend on her strange walls, maybe the two of them are laughing and drinking. But the worst is that you're surrounded by strangers, though they are not at all strangers to your mutual friend. He works the crowd easily. He nods to his acquaintances, greeting them with a "What's up?" and navigating smoothly through this solar system of friends that you knew nothing about. Meanwhile you're fumbling to and fro, wondering if it's okay to put your drink on the table without a coaster, wishing your picture was on their strange walls, too.
So I woke up from a terrible dream this morning, which I attribute in no small part to my experience at the houseparty. This dream was so fantastical, it will blow your mind. ENTER THE DREAM SPACE. I was invited to a rehearsal dinner (at the very same apartment where last evening's party was held). The real-life hostess--let's call her Babette--was getting married to her real-life boyfriend, whom we wil call Josephus. Because Babette and Josephus had expressly requested the pleasure of my company, I was asked to sit at the star table during the dinner, right next to the happy couple. Babette's parents, I remarked, were fawning all over me. They had "heard *soooo* much about me," "were desperate to meet me"--these and other kindnesses were doled out in a sickly saccharine tone of voice, but for some reason I lapped them up like a love-starved puppy.
Babette's mom had heard I loved oatmeal, so she took me by the arm and led me into her kitchen.
"I have something to show you," she beamed. "You will go ga-ga. Oh, you're such a dear!"
She produced from behind her back a small kitchen appliance that looked not unlike the coffee-makers that grind your beans right before you brew.
"What do you like in your oatmeal?" she asked,
"Lots of stuff. Sugar, apples, nuts, chocolate."
She proceeded to empty a scoop of oatmeal, some sugar, apples, nuts and chocolates into the bin atop the oatmeal machine. When she hit the rocker switch to "on," the machine began whizzing, chopping the apples, dicing the nuts, boiling the oats and so on. The contraption made a kind of "ding" sound and she pulled the bowl of piping hot oats out from under the hopper, just as if it were one of those brokeass Nescafé machines you find in office break rooms. She bid me eat.
"Don't you just love it? Oh, I'm so glad you came!"
I don't remember if I enjoyed the oats or not, I don't think that the sleeping brain can register the taste and texture of dream foods. Though John David Stutts would have begged to differ, for his alter dream ego was colorblind, yet he was able to ascertain that he was eating lime jello during a dream because of its taste.
The oats were just one of many marks of appreciation that Babette, Josephus and their parents bestowed upon me over the course of the dream dinner. I swelled with pride and self-satisfaction as they continued to express how wholly they accepted and adored my presence.
At some point I stepped out into their foyer to stew alone in the warmth of their compliments. That's when I saw my dad, sitting in an overstuffed chair and looking forlorn. He was wearing a big, billowy polka-dot blouse.
"Aren't you having a good time, Dad?"
"Je suis l'invité d'un invité," he said in French. (I was invited by another invitee.) "It's not much fun when you're not intimate with the bride and groom," he continued, still in French. (This was perhaps the funniest and most curious part of the whole dream sequence. My dad doesn't really manipulate language very well, so it was hilarious to hear him speaking French so perfectly. In real life he can't even properly imitate Homer Simpson's "Doh!" Though not for lack of trying, I might add. He says "Duh!")
Anyway, I protested. "But they're lovely people. See how they're treating me? You'd think I was some sort of Danny Thomas!"
"I don't get that reference."
"Me neither. But look, they love me!"
"They HAVE to be nice to you," Dad explained. "That's the rehearsal dinner custom. If you're invited personally, they're obligated to dote upon you obsequiously. Those not invited directly get shat upon."
So that's how I found out that the wedding party wasn't really captivated by me, but that they were merely obeying some odd tradition. I felt ill all over, partly because I had been duped, but mostly because my big billowy dad was sad. I don't know what happened after that, but I like to think my dad and I left together to go get ice cream.
I didn't intend to record that dream, but I suddenly feel that it will serve as a good prologue to the present entry: The Post-Speed-Dating Recap.
In the afternoon preceding the event, I prepared my toilette as I normally do. I makeuped, blow-dried, and then tossed my hair into a messy up-do. As for my attire, I wanted to appear as if I was coming straight from my job, from some kind of classy urban workplace. I put on a dressy sweater, black hose and a smart skirt. Then for the pièce de résistance, a pair of thickly-rimmed, disturbingly vintage bifocals that I rented from Palo Alto's "Trappings of Time." I also bathed myself in Clinique Happy, for if someone is quirky in one aspect of their self-presentation, it's likely that they're quirky in another. So I decided to be that girl with the weird glasses who stinks of too much perfume.
Jay and Jon Jones drove me to San Francisco's University Club, a lovely building in downtown reminiscent of the Toledo Club. I clip-clopped up the stairs and entered the venue. They had a nametag prepared. I slapped it on, checked my look in the mirror and ambled into the bar area.
When I took my first sip of Sierra Nevada, I heard the unfamiliar sound of glass-on-plastic as the beer mug clicked against the frames of my unfortunate spectacles. This was real. I was really wearing goofy glasses in a speed-dating venue. "Don't get scared now!" Kevin McAllister m'a soufflé.
How are they perceiving me? I wondered, scoping out the crowd through the top half of my specs. Lots of pretty little Asian girls and dapper-looking men. The men were standing with their hands in their pockets. Were they thinking about boning? I think it would be awfully telling of male nature--to its detriment, I might add--if they had already been thinking about bedroom things. It was such an eccentric situation, there was a flurry of activity, no one quite knew where to stand or what to say. What with all that chaos, you'd have to be a real nympho to have bonin' on the brain at that point.
A young guy (of 27, as I found out later) approached the bar and engaged me in conversation.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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