How to Crash Parties in PB

Katelyn does whatever the fuck she wants. So I really shouldn’t have been surprised when, after we’d spent most of the night at a friend’s house party, instead of letting me make a beeline for Jack in the Box and Disneyland Bed* she told me to turn North on Ingraham: “We’re going to crash parties in PB.”

We drove around the neighborhoods slowly, windows down, listening for the sounds of revelry.

Anyone who attempts this should definitely work in pairs. For optimum crashing teamwork, one person should be hopped-up on energy drinks but otherwise sober (me), and the other should be teetering between well-buzzed and fully drunk (Katelyn). Sober teammate can keep us out of the danger zone, and drunk teammate can manage the brazen introductions that are necessary.

I have to acknowledge the fact that what we’re doing isn’t possible for everyone. It probably helps that we’re two attractive (white? that might help) girls. I think it could be done by guys but they’d face more rejection.

But, my god, getting to wander around the streets at night as a woman is exhilarating. I don’t need to be afraid — the world isn’t always full of predators, I can fend for myself, I can be the intruder for once.

Technically, of course, we made sure to get permission before entering a person’s home. They may or may not have assumed we were invited anyway, but we let them open the front door for us. At party #1 we hovered near the neighbor’s door until they motioned for us to hop on over the back wall. “You’re the neighbors, right?” And that’s the story we stuck to when a new housemate came home from a night on the town and asked us, “Who are you?”

Party #2. She found this hat and had to wear it. Every time she went outside to smoke a cigarette they made her take it off. They were on to us.

I met an incoherent philosopher. He made us give him really long hugs, but they were more drunken than amorous so I was fine with that. Maybe because he shared so many gooey-ooey thoughts about humanity I stole one of Katelyn’s cigarettes and traded it with a stranger who wandered up to the back wall for a high five. I met shitshow-dancing-guy who stood up on a chair and fell ass-first onto an iPad on a glass table. He knocked a taco plate on the ground but miraculously didn’t break anything. I also helped a girl roll a joint because even though I don’t smoke I really wanted to feel skilled at rolling joints for a minute.

Nearly everyone went home or to bed, and we were left with incoherent philosopher and girl with a joint and no desire to help them smoke it. So we exited the same way we came and followed our ears across the street. We found The Jungle.

This group of people all live in close proximity to each other in the same condo complex and share a courtyard. They’ve named the sluttiest guy in the group, “King of the Jungle.” Fucking romantic. I plopped myself in a lawn chair like I belonged there and peered at the attractive strangers through palm fronds. I mostly had to introduce myself, and when they asked how I knew everyone: “Neighbors.”

Later Katelyn and I went into the house. A cluster of people sat on a large L-shape couch around an ottoman and two women sat on the opposite wall on bar-stools like cross-armed sentries. Next to them: a huge In-N-Out wall hanging. I felt very welcomed because Cindy or Cynthia or Kathy or whatever put me in a barstool in the middle of the room and told me I look like a mermaid (my hair was down and I had on green tights).

Katelyn and I had to have a pow-wow in the bathroom because “holy fuck we are crashing a party.” We heard a sharp knock on the door, “Hello, I’m the owner of this house. Do you need help in there? Because I would really like to help you.” That was the only tense moment of the night. After we came out of the bathroom all was forgiven.

I want to say we made new friends, but we really didn’t. I think that’s the side-affect of joining a group of people at the bitter drunken end of their night. I did make the mistake of giving my number to a guy I shouldn’t have given my number. He is in love with me and sang me a song and wants to 3-way kiss with my girlfriend and me. I really want to text him back and say his messages are improving (fewer Ys in his heyyyys, yay!) but I don’t want to give him false hope.

*We have a new bed & new pillows. It is perfect. It is like sleeping in the Disneyland hotel. We’ve spent the last 2 years on a 7-year-old full size mattress so this is a big deal.

What did I snap last night? I will never know…

I am hangover As I am writing this, I am hungover. I am hangover. Hangover is a philosophy, a way of being, in which fears and anxieties are either muffled, too heavy with the poison in your blood to run rampant over you, or they are amplified with the urgency of vomit.

Currently, luckily, it is the former right now.

I have missed this inner peace. My mind is quiet, because the party monster’s reign is now over. I move slowly, I am dim. I no longer rage with the fires of the night and the overwhelming need to make out with women who are probably very straight but like the attention, I can tell, because you are laughing too loud and you keep looking at your friends and you’ve only felt me up like once this last hour.

BUT I am plagued by one thought. And that is, What did I snap last night?

Yeah, I went to Flick’s last night. I only had 3 drinks! 3 very “my bartender missed me and also I am at Flick’s” drinks. Also I think they were running out of orange juice.

This is what you already saw today if you are my snap friend.

Aside: You guys, you guys, you need to make #whatdidisnaplastnight a thing. I am begging you.

I am telling myself that the majority of my snaps looked like this:

Actual snap. Sorry my sweet snapchat bestie, I know I made this just for you, but it is the only evidence I have. Because I clicked the download button. Because I am a narcissist.

But I know in my heart there was at least one like this:

Disclaimer: This is a snapchat re-enactment. That is not my drunk handwriting. I always write that bad.

I am forced to contend with the realities of having Facebook at my drunken fingertips. I am now part of the reality where my work life and my social life intersect in one device. I am an idiot who thought it was a good idea, while drunk, to delete the threads from my boss and my coworker so that I wouldn’t accidentally text them, and now have only black holes rather than hard evidence to appease the anxious feeling that I may have sent one of them something at 3am. I didn’t. I’m just paranoid. So very paranoid.

FYI Handcent SMS has a privacy box that forces you to enter a passcode before you can view texts by specific people, and I DEFINITELY had the time to get around setting that up TODAY.

The hangover is not my only consequence. What happens in my Vegas doesn’t stay in my Vegas when I always have an internet-connected camera in my pocket.

I have also chosen to put my real name on my writing. I have to hope this choice will make sense when I reflect back on my life, that I am right that society will continue to grow toward more honesty as privacy becomes harder to protect and more and more people add to the digital scrapbooks of their lives. Privilege check here (femme, financially secure, white, thin, etc.): it’s easy for me to be ok with decreasing privacy because I have the luxury of being able to live life openly — I have support networks and quite a lot of societal approval for my lifestyle, even with me being gay. Not everyone is so lucky.

I teeter between the reality that my personal experience is lost enough in the fire hose that is social media that I am safely invisible, with the fantasy that I’ll be so famous my “wild” behavior will be permissible. I have to balance the assumption that my boss doesn’t have the spare time to Google my name with the belief that she wouldn’t care if she did anyway. She was young once. She knows.

I used to think (and still kind of do) that my “hangover anxiety” comes from all the dopamine and serotonin and other fun brain chemicals I “used up” the night previous. I am worn out so I am too weak to fight off the anxiety. I also realize I am worried about what I may have done, how I may have bulldozed over someone else’s feelings because I desired the drunken spotlight. “You have no regrets if you never remember,” might be true, but I have a vivid imagination. I know myself, what I can do. So, I chase after the tails that squirrel away from me in the darkness, that disappear into the void like snapchats.

I have to admit, though, a smartphone can be very helpful for my lifestyle.

If this seems particularly lazy, please know that I meant to say freezer, but under the pressure of having to talk continuously into the mic thingy or else it cuts you off I slipped up and said fridge.

In my new tradition, here is your Flower the Skunk moment of the week:

Flower the Skunk Wish He Said (but Didn’t)….

No, your friend is right. You do not get to say the N word. You do not get to say it in a joke, you do not get to say it with a “z” at the end. Nope. You are a white girl and I am a white girl and neither of us get to say it. This is not a freedom of speech issue, this is a you are making yourself look fucking ignorant issue. No one is commenting on your post because you have made us all feel uncomfortable.

Flower the Skunk

Meet Flower the Skunk. Flower has lived his life by the aphorism, “If you can’t say somethin’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.” This wasn’t so hard of a statement to live by when he lived a mostly solitary lifestyle in the meadow and met each wandering critter with a stoned bashfulness meant to disguise his wretched desperation for critter contact in his lonely neck of the woods. I mean, how do you think he got the name “Flower” — did you think he was trying to fuck the gender binary? Cuz he’ll pretend that’s what he’s doing if that’s what’s punk rock and cool these days but he really just let some deer-in-the-headlights type give him the wrong name at some kickback Thumper was throwing and was too timid to offer a correction.

ohmigosh forget blog posts I should just draw cute skunks all the time

Anyway, his pathetic approval-seeking habits didn’t have him feeling so worthless about himself until right about the time social media and Facebook came out. He fit in for awhile until Upworthy and Buzzfeed became so painfully popular along with things like Reiki-pet-healing and conspiracy theories about the water. He wants to be respectful about a diversity of beliefs, and hell, he used to smoke a ton of weed when he was young, but he’s into the scientific method, dammit, and is he just a soft-bellied phony because he’s too afraid to really speak his mind??

And actually, Flower, yes I would like to fuck your gender binary because I feel like a lot of my self-censorship comes from my performance of a resiliently feminine personality. I say resiliently because I fantasize about chopping off all my hair and/or tossing all my sequin dresses for white button-downs and bow ties.

I just really want to be Claire Moseley but my voice isn’t ~~sexy~~ raspy enough. Seriously how many cigarettes do I have to smoke before I can sound like that? Oh, fuck, guys I think I realized why I am fatally attracted to trying to smoke cigarettes.

Anyway.

I’m wondering how many of the posts I abandon are due to:

My own insecurity about my grip on reality as an ex-alien princess, ex-christian, and ex-heterosexual
Trying to act like a friend around my so-called Facebook Friends and avoiding needless negativity and criticism. And of course, to keep getting invited to parties. Um, I need to write a post on FOMO paranoia because is it just me or am I not being invited to everything there is to be invited to??
Gender fuckery telling me my opinion is less valid than my conformity to to feminine ideals, lest I get labelled a Mean Girl.

One of my most recent attempts to speak my mind got sparked by an article share on the ol’ newsfeed by some guy who throws pretty awesome parties. I don’t know if my snark-level registered as high to him as it did to me, but I’d like to give you some insight into the spiraling self-doubt that occurs for me whenever I say something remotely divisive on these social media channels. Here’s my personalized paraphrase of the exchange:

I’m left feeling like I didn’t get my point across, I caused unnecessary conflict, I don’t know how to express myself when I have an opinion that does not match the rest of the thread, and if I say what I really think people are going to label me a bitch and not invite me to parties. The last fear is true insanity, because I know plenty of jerk-dudes who say rude things all the time and still get invited to parties, but it’s something I really do worry about when I’m posting.

While regret whorls inside me like a wet pile of snakes, I’m also thinking of all the things I would have liked to say. All the things I would have liked to say if Facebook didn’t live inside a briar pit of social layers in a format which collages baby pictures with instagram food photos with rape culture blog posts with Masaru Emoto water studies with beach trip photos with radiation scare articles. How can I begin to fit my thoughts in alongside that mess?

Don’t read all of this, but here’s an example of all the things I’d like to say.

..But I daren’t write these essays and hit “post” on actual Facebook. It’s strange, as a young’n I did pretty well with being one of the “too smart” ones, but I’m letting anxiety over that get to me today. Back in middle & high school I was made less aware of how such intellectualism in girls is generally put down by society and more aware of how awesome it is to get me in your group for class projects. Nowadays, I find myself biting nails over whether people will be annoyed if I go on a diatribe both on and off the webpage.

I think it’s because I’m finally in the attractive league. I was always cute as a little ginger could be cute, but as soon as I got taller and longer in all the right ways, my first serious boyfriend snatched me up and took me out of the social awareness of being a hottie for 4 years — meaning I wasn’t paying attention to all the attention since I was a super monogamous relationship and I’d never even had the chance to learn how to flirt.

So now, I’m meeting people; I’m learning how to fit this “beautiful” thing into my understanding of my self. What there doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for in my new, feminine, pretty persona is this rude little bulldozer that lives inside me and tells me to chew on people’s feelings for a snack. Ok, no, it’s not evil, it really just wants me to honor the truth and the strength of my own intellect. Yet my self-doubt prevents me from ruffling feathers.

I am going to honor this self-censorship to some extent until I fully understand it. If nothing else, it’s useful to avoid facebook comment wars because it’s a fucking pain to unfollow a thread on mobile and, while I tried to turn it off, the green, pulsing, never-ceasing LED on my phone pierces my skull with each new notification. I hate that thing more than I hate not being invited to parties.

I asked my brother to draw a real fucked up looking skunk for me. He didn’t get to it, so I drew about what I expected he’d draw anyway.

I will need an outlet, though, where I can learn the risks and rewards of speaking my mind. Therefore, meet Flower the Skunk. I will create a place for him in this blog to share all the things he wish he shared. I will take screencaps of the nasty just-woke-up I-hate-everything thoughts. I will gather evidence of my drunken malcontent, my late-night lust, my frustration with the unspoken. Let us start a trend of acknowledging these thoughts, and laughing at them together when we realize how common they are. Why were we so afraid, why did we say nothin’ at all?

1 year of SDSurvivalGuide

This Saturday will mark the 1 year anniversary of SD Survival Guide.

I’ve worn a few 2-dimensional identities in my life — the kind people use when they’re trying to describe you to a friend. They’ve varied from “Anthony’s girlfriend,” to “redheaded lesbian” and at least one unpublishable moniker in-between. Slowly, over the past year, “writer” has been taking over.

For that, I am calling this a success. The encouragement and feedback I receive make my fucking day, ya’ll, because I constantly think about how happy I would be if I had an audience for a book, and if I could write one that is worthy of them.

Many of you lament that you’ve gotten behind in my posts, so this week I hope you enjoy an excerpt from each one. And pretty, pretty please write me a comment, text me, or send me a snapchat with any thoughts about my writing.

Simulation

Cutesy post introducing SD relationship with the weather: Hypo-manic with fear, we discuss rain and sun and fog in a tone that is easy to confuse with eagerness. Oh, we’re not pleasant or easily amused; we’re terrified.

Nausea-filled regret at first post + epic tale of misogyny: Trapped in a bar stool between smokers, a railing, and his body, I felt like a cornered animal. Even as I chewed him out for what must have been at least 20 minutes, he stood alternatively with his face so close to mine I could feel his breath or with his crotch against my leg.

Attempt to draw in San Diego Googlers using keywords: There’s sort of an ennui in happiness and stability, and this is not the best town in which to forage for chaos. In this heaven, we’re a bit oblivious to evil and all the fun it brings.

Party story about violence against inanimate objects: The bear arm results from the potent combination of three things. Me, alcohol, and unrequited lust.

Examining appropriation of LGBT culture: I thought of the trendiness of swinging, straight couples hunting for that perfect bisexual woman who will love both of them in a harmonious triad, and 1-dick-per-relationship policies. I thought of dudes who ask me to sleep with their girlfriends, but insist that they at least be allowed to watch.

Party Monster Kill Switch + I freaking love Sour Cream: “Fluffy bear got me through a lot of hard times, too.”

Thrift shopping primer for San Diegans: I still thrift primarily to impress people at parties. I try to be selective, but having a conversation starter is more valuable to me than closet space.

My embarrassing familiarity with hangovers: But then everything is too loud so I sit in a dark room. Everything is too dark so I move to a dimly lit room. My blood is uncomfortable.

The “Gay Gambit” + map I found: “Gossip Gril is Vagina Stronghold?” I said, unimpressed. “More like where I go to remember I hate lesbians and cigarettes.”

I wanted to remember how bad I am at math and make it about alcohol: Ok, I lied, sometimes we feel poor and we drink piss water. Can I find a drink that doesn’t cost more than my student loans?

Blaming orange juice for my problems: I’ve been living off gatorades and cheese-foods since Monday. Cheese comforts me. Katelyn, I said, I want something like chicken fingers or macaroni n’ cheese. Something little kids eat.

Carpe diem for stupid people: I just want to know, how is throwing on a trucker hatt, getting smammered, and drooling on a young woman while she gyrates against your crotch seizing the day?

Reviewing a little SD rave: It felt like being in a kindergarten where you’re allowed to eat the crayons.

What is our civil duty to interfere in bad situations?: Pro-tip: pretending to be my “boyfriend” in order to “rescue” me from some asshat is going to annoy me almost as much as the dude telling me I’ve got pretty teeth 10 times in one night.

I fell in love with a stripper: “No,” I said in her ear, “I don’t care if he gets off. I want you and he has the money.”

Lame short post b/c I procrastinated getting ready for SCA War: Each fight could represent their last day on earth, so at night we party.

Katelyn told me to blog about pocket cheese: . After getting off work at 7 and taking your pre-party nap and laboring over your costume, there is no time for food. You can’t chop a salad, you can’t toast a sandwich and juice a carrot. You have to eat on the go. So we have this thing called “Pocket Cheese.”

Saga of my christian-phase closeted love-triangle: I hadn’t had an orgasm since I found Jesus.

Some 35-year-old said something I didn’t like, so I blogged about it: Ah crap. I’m that stubborn young woman who doesn’t like to be told what to do with her life and doesn’t have respect for people’s personal beliefs.

I got the slut strep: How do you tell your doctor that you may be responsible for spreading a nasty disease with a Jameson fueled make-out binge? (Forgive me, for there was a dimly lit bounce house on premises.)

An ex-boyfriend said something I didn’t like, so I blogged about it: An expired apology is one that is so old in respect to its crime that it’s completely missed its window and should stay in a deep basement to rot with the rest of your baggage.

I got the slut strep AGAIN: I can barely stay awake, and when I do manage, I’m confused and vaguely nauseous.

Artsy thing I wrote about a warehouse party: She liked me. I shouldn’t have been surprised; wives always like me, come on to me, kiss me. Yet, she focused on me so quickly, when my irises were just starting to quicken again.

I missed Pride because I was sick and I examined my coping strategies for FOMO: Do you realize how many strains of new and exotic viruses are flying in from around the country, world even? No thank you, spawn of swine flu.

Audio interview (I procrastinated so I never transcribed it): For my very first local celebrity profile interview, I’m featuring a very close friend and source of my inspiration, Xanadu Rocketship.

Buncha theme ideas for parties: I have been throwing theme parties since I was 7. I would plan for my next birthday just as soon as the last one passed, brainstorming ideas in my journal.

Almost missed a deadline for a post, but my brother called and I was inspired: Other people don’t sound like themselves on the phone, but I just hear my brother in the hot piece of plastic against my ear. He mentions how the Illuminati or maybe the overlord lizard-brains are monitoring our call, trying to intercept it, how he’s been really into conspiracy theories…

I attempt to forgive myself for not knowing enough about pop culture: Due to my delusional escapades as an alien princess, a Christian, a heterosexual… my connection to reality is a bit flimsy.

I learned that Sprint has tricksy awful sales-hobbits: Katelyn needs a new phone as well, because it never seems to work when I need her immediate attention and dammit why doesn’t she ever text me back?

I spent 3 hours making an OkCupid manifesto: You are meeting a stranger. Off the internet. You do not need to invest heavily in this date.

Benefit of being a writer, life lessons are now blog fodder: But when I checked my bank account Monday and discovered my wallet was stolen I wasn’t sure if I felt more like a victim of crime or a victim of my hangover.

6 monthiversary is an excuse to analyze keywords!: I know there’s plenty to do, I know there’s stunning and quirky and intelligent and sexy people in this city. I am making it my mission to connect these people together.

Delirious with new technology: I’m relentless. I won’t stop. The smartphone eats my dreams. I don’t need to sleep. I have 7 years of technology to absorb.

Sometimes I kick people in the butt and I have to leave the party: Now I’m no stranger to butts in my face, but I don’t like stranger butts in my face, and this guy didn’t even know my name.

Boobs: There are basically two ways to be a feminist at a party. One is to stand up for your beliefs and counter any bullshit the best you can, whether through reasoned quips or belligerent screaming, as is necessary. The other is to realize you are outnumbered, down another drink, and to instead store up your dismay and upset for an angry blog rant.

I struggle with coming up with something so you get to read my diary: If only, if only, I can become such a celebrity that people will want to read my diary.

Cutesy post about tourists: This weekend I met a woman from Chicago who awed at the mountains, and yes they were very effective at blocking my cell reception but I stopped cursing T-mobile and also spun in a slow circle. Ok, yes, I’m looking at them. Wow.

Lame last-minute blog post about Halloween costumes: I’m down to 15 minutes before I need to start assembling my own costume, and I realized if I really do want to provide a service through this blog, I can at least share some last-minute, cheap and lazy, DIY Halloween Costumes that I found / imagined.

I’m so full of myself I ask people to tell me something I don’t know when they say I’m beautiful: Make yourself memorable with a fraction more thought given to the compliments you choose…

I often leave parties without saying goodbye and why you should do it too: Immediately a man I didn’t know put his arm around me, people were dancing barefoot in the backyard to no music at all, and worst of all, I realized, everyone was dry as paper. Sober.

An introvert said something I didn’t like so I wrote a blog post about it: Yes, the Eysenck test divides emotional instability by introversion/extroversion. But I won’t accept cherry-picking the emotional problems you identify with as a valid “diagnosis” of introversion. Perhaps, like I did, you have a secret extrovert inside of you who is trapped by feelings of moodiness and pessimism.

I played a game of Cards Against Humanity and I was bored so I wrote a blog post about it: In general, just realize that nobody is paying attention to you because this game is designed for narcissists.

Got lost. Doesn’t matter, had waffles: As you probably already heard, I scooped chicken and waffle alike with my hand shovels into my mouth bucket, and then wiped all with individually packaged moist towelettes, and felt sated and warm.

Too much upworthy pissed me off: If I don’t know the person too well, such breaches have me reaching for the “hide” or even “unfriend” buttons. Facebook only lets me see you in one-dimension, and the one you’re giving me is ugly.

I whine about not wanting to go to work: I know that when I have to go back to work, the night previous I will be a restless mess of reluctance. I will do something pathetic with my time, like watching cable television and playing solitaire on my iPad. I don’t know why, but I waste every moment that is my last, simultaneously berating myself for not doing something more valuable with what I still have.

Bar story about a guy being nice to me: The “wrong” bar and my general lowered expectations for birthdays should have set me at unease, but maybe I just feel like I can do anything in a pair of Jeffrey Cambell’s and 1000 square inches of electric-grape leather. Maybe I could even accept free drinks from strangers.

Mean Girls don’t actually exist: I find it immensely rewarding to get people to come out of their shells, even if it is a shell made out of gender shenanigans.

Cigarettes are like little puke torpedos: Luckily drunk-sami became a smartphone photographer so I’ve managed to reconstruct memories of Jenga and flogging.

Don’t read this when you’re drunk; trust me I’ve tried: I’m beginning to identify two major structures in which a party group can operate. I’ll call them the Creatives and the Nostalgics.

Another attempt at Google traffic, but it’s actually a decent read if you ask me: Those kinds of conversations, about how SD is so nice and the weather is fucking rad, are immensely boring to me.

Thank you again for reading (I fucking mean it) and please tell me in the comments below which posts are the SD Survival Guide “must reads.”

San Diego Survival Guide

Sami navigates and examines being young, gay, and weird in San Diego. Updates (every other) Taco Tuesday. Now with more activism.

Monthly Archives: February 2014