Champagne arrived in flûtes on trays, and we emptied them with gladness in our hearts... for when feasts are laid and classical music is played, where champagne is drunk once the sun has sunk and the season of summer is alive in spicy bloom, and beautiful women fill the room, and are generous with laughter and smiles... these things fill men's hearts with joy and remind one that life’s bounty is not always fleeting but can be captured, and enjoyed. It is in writing about this scene that I relive this night in my soul.
By drinking, a boy acts like a man. After drinking, many a man acts like a boy.
While watching the revelry in the Barn, I'd had an epiphany. Parties weren't just about who was who and being seen. It was about letting go. About celebrating that we all made it through one more boring week. Everyone came together in one place, and for a while, it was as if nothing mattered except the music and the energy and being away from all of the adults in our lives. These parties were about freedom. And friendship. They were about friendship too.
As the nation divided into Federalists and Republicans, each group called the other the worst name possible: "party". Most Americans feared the idea of party; believing that a society should unite to achieve the public good, they denounced parties as groups of ambitious men selfishly competing for power. Worse, parties were danger signals for a republic; if parties dominated a republic's politics, its days were numbered.
The problem is politics is made a sport, almost as much a sport as football or baseball. When it comes to politics, adults and politicians do more finger-pointing and play more games than children ever do. Too often are we rooting for the pride of a team rather than the good of the nation.
America's industrial success produced a roll call of financial magnificence: Rockefellers, Morgans, Astors, Mellons, Fricks, Carnegies, Goulds, du Ponts, Belmonts, Harrimans, Huntingtons, Vanderbilts, and many more based in dynastic wealth of essentially inexhaustible proportions. John D. Rockefeller made $1 billion a year, measured in today's money, and paid no income tax. No one did, for income tax did not yet exist in America. Congress tried to introduce an income tax of 2 percent on earnings of $4,000 in 1894, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. Income tax wouldn't become a regular part of American Life until 1914. People would never be this rich again.Spending all this wealth became for many a more or less full-time occupation. A kind of desperate, vulgar edge became attached to almost everything they did. At one New York dinner party, guests found the table heaped with sand and at each place a little gold spade; upon a signal, they were invited to dig in and search for diamonds and other costly glitter buried within. At another party - possibly the most preposterous ever staged - several dozen horses with padded hooves were led into the ballroom of Sherry's, a vast and esteemed eating establishment, and tethered around the tables so that the guests, dressed as cowboys and cowgirls, could enjoy the novel and sublimely pointless pleasure of dining in a New York ballroom on horseback.
Performing magic in the live show thrills me. Just get me a deck of cards and some attentive audience, and I have made my day and theirs too
When this reality, the one and only power that checks and disciplines man from within, vanishes because belief in it is slackening, the social domain falls prey to passions. The ensuing vacuum is filled by the gas of emotion. Everyone proclaims what best suits his interests, his whims, his intellectual manias. To escape the void and the perplexities of his own soul, a man will rush to join any party standard that is being carried through the streets. With society gone there remain only parties.
Prom night can be a special night, if you let it be. I know you think it's for losers and something that popular kids do because they are boring people with porcelain hearts who don't know what it means to be lonely. But you're wrong. Prom is a chance for everyone to try oral sex. Go for it.
In the morning you were never violently sorry-- you made no resolutions, but if you had overdone it and your heart was slightly out of order, you went on the wagon for a few days without saying anything about it, and waited until an accumulation of nervous boredom projected you into another party.
All men have parties and are pals who never let each other down. A pal can say terrible things which are forgotten the next day. A pal never forgives, he just forgets, and a woman forgives but never forgets. That's how it is. That's why women aren't allowed to have parties. Being forgiven is very unpleasant.
Driving down deserted early morning roads. Round and round. Round downtown. Through naked streets. Lips pursed on two litre bottles of beer, but pursuing the lips of freedom's night. Swapping cars. Winding up at karaoke bars or Bolsi- the best place in town. For the food. For the folk. For the service. For the crema de papaya. And for that late night dawn's whiskey coffee.
Introverts may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.
Can you imagine the reaction of a British tabloid newspaper if they found a small school in rural England hosting a party like this? A party? In a school? With children present? Where marijuana is openly smoked? And comdoms are given away at the door?Imagine the headlines! How much would the Daily Mail hate this? How much would the Daily Mail love to hate this?!
It’s just a party. You eat some food and drink a beer and pretend you don’t want to be crawdad fishing,” Angie said. “No, it’s an echo chamber of sycophants and I can’t listen to some bimbo recite her newest purchases while pretending I don’t want to throw myself from the roof.
Why can’t I do it?” [Isabel] asked….“Do what?”“Just forget about everything. Just go somewhere and get smashed and pretend like there are no problems or consequences. I know why. Because there are still problems and consequences. And going and--and--partying doesn’t make them go away. I feel like I’m the only sane person in the world. I don’t get why this whole world runs on stupidity.
I'm not much for parties. Sometimes you have to wear a funny hat, sometimes they expect you to eat sushi, which is like eating bait. And there's always some totally drunk girl who thinks you're smitten by her, when what you're really wondering is if she'll vomit on your shirt or instead on your shoes.
High school parties exhausted me because I always felt like I was the only thinking person in a room mostly full of morons obliterating precious IQ points with every gulp of whatever booze they managed to steal out of their parents' liquor cabinets. College parties are exhausting in a diametrically opposite way. They are full of smart, funny people who are all used to being the smartest, funniest person in the room, so they spend the whole party talking over one another, overlapping and overtaking the conversation to prove that they are the smartest, funniest person in the room, if not the entire planet.
Colt, you’re going to be a nurse, not a cop. If anything happens, I’ll pay the fines for you.”“Still don’t need it.”“Why?” She paused for a moment, thinking. “Because you’re still trying to get into Daddy’s good books?”“Shut up,” I muttered, blowing my frustrations into another balloon—it grew between my palms. This had nothing to do with my father.“From what you’ve told me of the guy, he’s a jerking dick, Colt. I don’t know why you’re seeking his approval.