Learning to deal with parties

Flo held a party at his flat last night "to mark the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall", which is easily the most spurious excuse for a party that I've heard this year. The fact that Flo was leaving for Amsterdam the day after, and was letting out the flat to a friend for the week, is naturally a pure coincidence. Did I mention he's German?

Now unless you are a man or wummun of enormous charisma, or an unashamed attention whore, then chances are you find parties something of an effort. There are occasional instances of me turning into an attention whore, but they are relatively rare and almost exclusively involve either a piano or women's clothing. Purely in a professional rôle, obviously. No, wait, not that kind of profes... I'll just stop.

Anyway, I often find parties something of an effort. Symptom of shyness? Nice idea, but unfortunately this is not the case. Shy people would like to interact more than they do, but feel unable to. Conversely, I feel perfectly able to talk to strangers, it's simply that I can't be arsed. I have a virulent (and frankly totally justifiable) aversion to small talk. It's nothing against the person; sometimes you just have to accept you're not making a connection and move on. Or cop out and stick with those you know already. Nothing wrong about an odd drink with good friends. Or, better, a good drink with odd friends.

Anyway, none of this is a reflection on last night particularly, just a general state of affairs. Last night fulfilled many criteria for a good party - a clearly defined chatter room, dance room, and chillout room, so you could pick which mood suited you. A clearly defined time I had to leave (counterintuitive perhaps, but it's always a good idea to leave the party while you are still having fun). And it also helps when the host is either a stud, or someone who ends up being "just friends" with hundreds of girls. I'll leave those who know him to decide if Flo is one or the other or indeed both. Anyway, to sum up, there was beer, there were friends, there were girls. And that's a decent checklist in my book. Impressively, one girl exacted physical violence upon me only minutes after I struck up conversation. But she was German. Then, in what Mike will interpret as a possible career move, I collaborated with Florence in composing mildly erotic literature out of fridge magnets. That was before she rebuked me for not recognising the opening 3 seconds of Rivers Of Babylon. One could note that she is also German. I got my coat, and left.

If you haven't worked it out yet: yes, the fall of the Berlin wall was very significant. But it very clearly wasn't the 10th anniversary last night.