Parties are fun…right? People that aren’t social debate that thirty minutes before every party. I was standing at the mirror in the bathroom. Shimmery brown powder colored my eyelids as I looked on at my reflection, doubting. I pulled out the mascara. Regular looking lashes turned into long, elegant black crescents, but stiff—more beautiful, less comfortable. My mind drifted back to Christmas parties of the past.
Shimmery brown colored eyelids, long mascara stiffened eyelashes, and the rest of me stood in my tiny office in a state of shock. Instead of files and paperweights on my desk, Christmas had vomited on it, and so forcefully that it extended out into the lobby. There fifty old people were shuffling past each other in sparkling garb. My boss, the seventy-year-old ambulance chaser, was holding a microphone in the middle of the crowd. Have yourself a merry little Christmas was coming out of his mouth, while his heavy good-old-boy Georgia accent was hanging on tight to each word, dragging them down into a place no lyrics want to go. The sort of place where listeners that aren’t drunk squint their eyes. I’d been at the job two months—I hadn’t seen this coming.
I had a challenging relationship with the seventy-year-old ambulance chaser boss. He talked down to everyone; he was highly unlikable. He was a bachelor and lived above my office. He liked to cook repulsive smelling food and saunter down the stairs to give me instructions in his undershirt. He’d leave twenty sticky notes on my computer screen overnight in scrawling handwriting with requests that were not in my job description—take cat to vet, call my doctor, pick up wine…
Worse still, there was no way to ever do anything right. That’s the way he wanted it, so that he could always have the upper hand. And there he stood before me, smiling like he was one bottle of wine down already, and looking very happy to see me.
I stared at him, trying to force out a smile, but really struggling to fake it. I felt guilty then, like I was the jerk for despising him while he wasn’t acting outright despicable. He invited me to head over to the bartender as he passed onward to greet some old frilly lady. Drink on the boss's dime, brilliant. I remembered then why I had come.
Why does he even want me here? I wondered as I looked around the room. It was full of people in their late sixties and above, mostly men. They all had airs of pretension, what wasn’t lost to the alcohol anyway. Then I made eye contact with one of the boss’s cronies, and I had my answer. At that party any young woman was like prime real estate. I searched the room for fellow young people, but we were few and far between. I was standing in a sea of grandpa bachelors.
The sea, minus the grandpa bachelors.
The crony approached and began a conversation of pleasantries, smiling flirtatiously. His belly hung over his belt a bit, semi disguised by the button-down shirt. There was a way he moved his mouth that made his words all sound simpering—sickly sweet. While his voice continued on in that way, all I could hear were the words he had used the day before to describe to my boss his ‘special trips’ he made alone to the Philippines. I smiled politely, nodding blindly to whatever it was he was saying, while my mind sought release. Where the fuck is a fire alarm I can pull?
And then Prince Charming came to rescue me from the bile that was rising in my throat—the seventy-year-old Prince Charming. He was another one of the boss’s cronies. His thick white mustache twitched as he moved his lips. He picked up my hand and kissed it in a gesture that was intended to be humorous, and it was, and I almost liked him—almost. Then I had an image of that mustache near my face and it all came rushing back, a pile up of thoughts. Oh-my-god-never-going-to-happen-not-enough-money-in-the-world-hell-no-grandpa. And that was the year I learned to never go to an old person party without a date.
I came back to present and smiled at my reflection. Whatever this Christmas party brings, I welcome the adventure.