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The Satirical Grown-Up Party I threw at my house last night wasn’t in celebration of my birthday. (I was a little surprised that two of my friends greeted me with a “happy birthday” when they got to my place–considering that they had attended my 21st joint bash last March. :P) It was a part two to Kristel’s Pearl Girl Picnic last December (where my friends and I went to school in frilly white dresses and had a wine and cheese picnic at a field in campus) except a little more specific and gender-neutral. The occasion? Well, no real occasion in the Hallmark greeting card sense. I really just wanted to spend time and have silly fun with my friends from college and friends from work at one place and one time.

Let the snootiness begin!

The idea behind the Satirical Grown-Up Party is this. I realized that I’ve never planned a party at home before. Since my friends and I are already legal adults everywhere, it seems fitting that my first party should be a snooty grown-up party, a satire of adult life where we’d discuss our business ventures, the ex-wives of our husbands, and our messy divorces with bored faces, up-turned noses, and glasses of red wine in our hands. When I was a kid, grown-ups always struck me as strange creatures who were well-dressed, well-mannered, and extremely bored with their lives. I suppose that’s why I went through a lot of angst after graduating from college; I lived in dread that I would turn into a boring grown-up myself.

I need some fine wine
and you, you need to be nicer

Everyone was game enough to be in theme and show up in dresses (the girls), shiny pants, shinier leather shoes, and polo shirts (the guys). Of course a good chunk of my friends were fashionably late and missed the snooty indoor dinner of cold cuts, pasta, cheese, and wine. They did, however, make it just in time for the part where we were obliterating the wine at the garage. Bunch of alcoholics.

Sobering up for the camera

People pretty much dropped the satire at that point and started guzzling down wine the way kids our age should - messily, noisily, and happily. Girls started camwhoring like mad and chasing the token gay guy, trying to turn him straight. The garage was ringing with alcohol-infused, brain-breaking discussions on gout, the availability of ponies as presents from daddies to their grown daughters, and whether or not a guy who’s nice enough to remove a guy friend’s clothes after the latter passes out after a night of drinking makes the former gay, bisexual, or just an extremely thoughtful friend. Everyone’s low-batt meters started blinking sometime 2 or 3 am, and apparently some interesting things occurred in the guest room while I was spending the wee hours of the morning trying to balance umbrellas and monobloc chairs on the palm of my hand. Don’t ask.

The morning after

I thought my hostess duties were mercifully over by the time I crawled into bed around 5 am, thinking that everyone would be dead til late in the morning after all that booze. Oh boy was I wrong. An hour and a half later, my mom was knocking at my bedroom door, telling me that my friends were already up and in need of caffiene. I burrowed myself deep into my comforter and mumbled something about how they’re perfectly capable of making their own bloody coffee. But then Responsible Grown-Up Instincts kicked in and I reluctantly dragged myself out of bed and into the kitchen. I had forgotten this tiny detail about hosting parties at home - you gotta take care of your guests the morning after and try to deal with surprise drama as best as you can.

Despite the lack of sleep, minor accidents that involved a broken pot and a broken dish, and my having to clean up the garage at 5 am, I had a great time at the Satirical Grown-Up Party. I’m already planning next month’s gathering in my head and the theme in itself should make the whole party a very interesting affair. I’m really, really looking forward to it.

More photos of the Satirical Grown-Up Party here. Thanks to everyone who came! Friendship over to those who can’t make it to the next one.

These days I make it a point to learn as much about life as I can by talking to all sorts of people and doing things I would normally never do. This system seems to be working fine because all the out-of-the-box experiences and mad socializing is helping me rid myself of my prejudices. But some prejudices will always remain, and for good reason, I think.

Embassy has a reputation of being the place to party in Manila. Anyone who is Someone in the Philippines can be found in that club, mingling with the country’s socialites, wannabe-socialites, and the just plain filthy rich while sipping 800-peso cocktail drinks. For months I proudly swore that I would never set foot in that place because I would instantly suffocate in a roomful of conyo party people. But when the idea to go to Embassy randomly struck my friends sometime early Saturday morning, I shrugged and went along with the plan. My excuse is that at 2 am, the intelligent part of my brain stops working.

I immediately regretted agreeing with them when we were ushered to line up outside the club. You know how sometimes you think that a certain event is going to suck, but when it actually happens it turns out that it isn’t as bad as you thought it would be? Embassy for me is not one of those things. As we stood in line, I tried to convince myself that maybe I’ll actually have fun, but I immediately erased that thought with, “Seriously, Lauren. Who are you kidding?” I was surrounded by the kind of people I used to make fun of in college–the ones who spoke in valley-girl Taglish and jock-boy English. We were lining up on the open air but despite the wind, I was choking on the strange stench of mixed expensive perfume. You could tell that the girls spent days picking out the perfect outfit to wear for tonight and hours doing their hair and putting on their makeup, in the hopes of attracting the eye of a hot male celebrity or at least, a photographer from the newspapers’ society pages. The guys were delicious eye candy, but did I really have to shell out five hundred bucks to see pretty faces when I can easily do that for free on the Internet?

From where I was standing I could see what was going on inside, and what was going on inside was…nothing. Just a bunch of gorgeous people standing around with their drinks, taking pictures of themselves, and talking about god-knows-what. Everyone was smiling and laughing, but no one looked like they were really having fun.

I didn’t want to be a brat and kill everyone’s plans, but as the line grew shorter and we approached the entrance of the club, I was desperately trying to think of a way to change their minds. I made eye contact with my friends and wanted to jump up and down when the looks on their faces said that maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea after all.

“Do you really want to go in?”

“NO!” I replied, giddy with relief. We were almost at the front of the line.

We ended up at Jaipur next door where the cover charge was cheaper and where we can actually enjoy ourselves and dance the rest of the night away. I might have changed my mind about going out dancing and feel no shame in gyrating to hip-hop. But I still maintain that the only way I can be found in Embassy is if I get dragged in kicking and screaming. Standing around like a dolled-up social robot trying to get noticed by other social robots is not exactly the way I like to spend my evenings.

Since a person only graduates from college once, I’ve been spending the past few days attending all the graduation festivities available to me. Some weren’t worth my time but for those that were, I’m so glad that digital cameras exist because I’d like those moments frozen in zeroes and ones forever. I have never laughed so hard and I have never felt so exhausted in such a long while.

Blue Roast

Blue Roast is the closest thing to a big party that I’ve been to in years. It’s this barbecue held on campus for graduating seniors and it was basically a popularity contest where awards were given to good-looking people who weren’t smart enough to graduate with honors. I shit you not. We were only give one free beer and one tiny serving of roasted calf. I wouldn’t have gone at all if I had something better to do and if my friends weren’t there. I left the event fairly early because I was beginning to suffer serious social claustrophobia and the environment wasn’t particularly conducive to conversation and general emoness about graduating and corporate slavery.

The graduation ceremony

Oh God. If I had my way I wouldn’t have bothered showing up for this one at all, but my parents insisted that I humor them so I attended the ceremony. I would rather have spent those three hours retaking my Literary Criticism final exams. Up until now I still don’t understand how Ateneo could have stuffed us in the high school covered courts–which was not air-conditioned–when we have a nice, comfortable, air-conditioned auditorium that will more or less seat all the graduates and their parents. To think that our graduation fee costs two thousand pesos or so! I spent three horrible hours in the middle of the afternoon, cloaked in Hogwarts gowns made of 100% synthetic material, sitting on uncomfortable plastic chairs as speakers spoke and honor students got honored. I was extremely disappointed to find out that the “diploma” that was handed to us was just a blank piece of paper. I didn’t even get to have decent pictures taken with my friends because it was too fucking crowded and too fucking hot.

On the bright side, graduation gave me the best excuse to make my parents splurge on a fine dining restaurant. Since my mom’s going to cut off my allowance very soon, my meal at Hossein’s will be the most expensive one I will have in a very long while.

Jef’s graduation inuman

I spent a good part of yesterday debating with myself on whether or not I should go since my friend Jef’s house is on the other side of the world and I had no idea as to how I would get home. I am so glad I went, though. Not only was it wonderful seeing my friends again so soon after graduation, but I was able to catch up with friends I haven’t seen since they were still in college. A very expensive cab ride brought me to my bedroom just as the sun was rising, which made it rather difficult for me to fall asleep.

Time flies so fucking fast. To say that college was one of the best years of my life wouldn’t be a very accurate statement, because a lot of bad things happened to me within that time period as well. My only regret is that I let my shyness and a rather posessive ex-boyfriend keep me from making friends and getting to know people. All the friends that are closest to me now are people I have only gotten to know within the time span of six months or less. I know that I’ll still see my friends in between corpse dissections and newspaper deadlines. But gone are the days when we could meet each other up anytime we want to (even if we have deadlines to meet within the hour), emotional conversations in soccer fields and hotel rooms, and all that time wasted in coffee shop balconies.

Congratulations, Ateneo class of 2007! We are now officially unemployed assholes.