The Best Party I Never Went To


In which our narrator gets a little snappish about people who make unreasonable demands on his time.

This is my own fault. I know it. I'm going to great lengths to make myself very amenable here in Australia, open to all comers. (Read that as you will.) So part of that involved my agreeing to speak at the FUTUREPROOF symposium, part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival, on this coming Monday. I agreed to do the speaking gig, and was then informed that I would be flown out at 8 AM on Sunday morning, and flown back at 6 AM on Tuesday morning. That's two and a half days of my time taken up so that I can speak on a 90 minute panel in the middle of Monday afternoon.

Why? As near as I can figure it out, the FUTUREPROOF organizers could only afford very cheap plane flights; therefore I'm flying very much off-peak hours. The fact that I'll be in Adelaide for a few days is neither here nor there to them; my time is less important than their budget.

This wouldn't be such big deal, but, as I write this, the big Mardi Gras party is going on. Now, about two weeks ago, in a fit of pique - or perhaps just good judgment - I made the decision that I wouldn't go to the Mardi Gras party, because I'd have to leave it early (it doesn't really get going till after midnight - about right now, actually - and goes until 10 AM) and I wouldn't be able to enjoy myself - entheogenically - the way I might like to, because, well, I'd rather not board an airplane with a brainpan of still-leaking-out substances. It wouldn't be pretty. I'd have been up all night, etc. I've done it before, and I don't really want to do it here, right now. Not that I'm too old for such excesses, but I have noticed that my recovery time isn't what it used to be. Which probably has something to do with the fact that I am 41. (Even if I do look years younger, there's no fooling the DNA.)

So I didn't put my foot down. I'm being a good boy, but I am seething with rage at the missed opportunity - I'll have to wait another year for another Mardi Gras - and I have a feeling that this will come out, in some classically passive-agressive behavior, while I'm in Adelaide. Which isn't going to do my reputation one bit of good, either way.

Damned if I do, damned if I don't. And right now, I'm just damned pissed off.

Of course, there's another root to the problem: I don't know anyone who *is* going to the party tonight. I've never been good at making "gay" friends. Most of my friends are and have always been heterosexual. I've always had a few close friends who happen to be gay, but that's always been an accidental sort of thing, nothing very planned or methodical. And I have always resisted getting methodical about it, because, well, it's just not a good enough basis for friendship to pique my interest. "Oh, you like to suck cock? So do I! Isn't that terribly amazing?" Feh.

And so I stew, in a steamy Mardi Gras Sydney, basting in my own juices.

Posted: Sat - March 6, 2004 at 12:09 AM        

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