The Art of Parties

A story from my youth

I’m newly 15 and have never been kissed - but that may well be about to change. For I, have been invited to a party!

Aneka’s party.

It is THE event of the school year.

Why?

Because no-one has birthday parties anymore. Parties have that lull in a young person’s life, don’t they? You’re either eating salmon paste sandwiches and shuffling to ‘musical statues’ or getting completely off-your-tits shitfaced, and there’s no in between.

Aneka is in my class. She’s a plain, donkey-plod of a girl with no memorable features other than that she pipes up “It’s Aneeeka” whenever someone mispronounces her name as ‘Anneka’, which is often.

Had she been 14 in the early 80’s when Aneka of ‘Japanese Boy’ fame was around, maybe people would get it right. But this is 1989 not 1981 and the only association anyone can drum up upon seeing her name is the jump-suited Ms Rice of ‘Treasure Hunt’ fame.

Aneka isn’t particularly pretty, bright or funny but her announcement of a party catapults her social status to that of school legend. A brief popularity she will never enjoy again.

Teenagers. Fickle as.

Aneka lives on the local council estate, next to our school. She’s from one of those ‘blended’ families. You know, with step mums and half sisters and cousins that are also her godmother’s neighbour’s sons. One of those family trees with more branches than NatWest and more colours than a box of Crayolas.

“So…..this party…..”

I broach, curiously.

“…….are your mum and dad……”

“Step dad”

She corrects.

“Yeah, are your mum and step dad away for the night then? How d’you sort that?”

“No, they’ll be there”

“Oh…”

“But they’re not like ordinary parents.”

Hm.

Ominous.

“They figure whatever I’m doing - drugs and sex and stuff - it’s safer for me to do it with them there.”

“Whatever I’m doing”. I figure the wildest thing this girl ever did was undo the top button of her school shirt.

“They’re very broad-minded”

She continues

“More like friends really.”

Ewww! No! Just stop!

As she explains, I can’t help think this might kill the vibe for me. You know, my parents there in the house whilst I made out or did drugs. Not that I’d actually done either of those things, you understand. Not that she had……

Still, whatever the motives of these ‘progressives’, it pleased me I’d be able to use their loose morals liberal ideas to my advantage. To sell the event to my suspicious mother.

My mum would never let me go to an all night party with no adult supervision, but this - this - could be creatively marketed as a sleepover! Yes, “just some friends getting together for her birthday, her parents will be there.”

I practise saying it as the big night looms, taking time to paint this pair of intriguing bohemians I’d never met, as community stalwarts.  I also use said paint brush to bring to life Aneka, who, to be fair, doesn’t exactly present as a parent’s worst nightmare anyway. I point to her in the carpark as my mum collects me from school so she can see the kind of non-threatening classmate we’re talking about. 

I neglect to mention the boxes of beer I’m assured have been bought, the black mini dress Justine plans to wear, the red one I do along with the sheer, black ‘Pretty Polly’ tights I’ve bought from Superdrug. I make no mention of the fact a lot of much older boys are invited. Boys who are rumoured to be bearing weed and possibly more.

Without any lying whatsoever, just a steady drip drip of tailored PR, the green light is duly given.

Yes!

I’m fairly self deprecating at 15. I don’t see my pretty green eyes, I see only my dad’s - hated member of the family. I routinely describe my hair colour as ‘dog shit brown’, denying its tones of copper and red. I loathe my freckles, yet without a slight tan think my teeth appear too yellow and start to wonder if I have a moustache, my nose is too wide at the end, my nostrils too big…..And let’s not even get started on my body.  The faint stretch marks on my thick thighs remind me of the varicose veins that grannies have, my arse is flat, hips too wide, my arms are hairy.…..  Like most young adolescents, I see myself as little more than a package of physical flaws.

A few days later, I’m in WH Smith’s and spy a magazine aimed at teenage girls. Enticingly, it has a free Rimmel red lipstick on the cover.   I hardly own any makeup - Grandma always comments on how my two cousins wear too much and that it ages them. All I own is a bit of brown/black mascara and one of those glass Constance Carroll rollerball lip glosses that tastes of cherry.

Until now.

There is something about the red lipstick being free on that cover, that validates it, offers up permission for me to wear it. Cause, if I buy the mag and the lipstick comes free with it…….then that’s not the same as buying it, right? Right?

I take it to the checkout and make a bold decision.

Friday night at Aneka’s party, I WILL be kissed and that lipstick is going to be my scarlet accomplice, damn it!

Not that I’m wearing it when my mum drops me off, you understand. No, I skulk sheepishly until she’s safely waved off round the corner out of sight. Then, using my little compact mirror, I gleefully apply it. Gliding it on feels both magical and dangerous. I am Dorothy Gale preparing to land in Oz, my monochrome life about to give way to a blast of much needed technicolour!

I enter the house with my good mate Justine who always looks much cooler than I do.  Her brunette tresses cascade into an enviable ‘bed head’, a ‘come hither’ that doesn’t try too hard. My ‘bed head’ on the other hand, is more ‘Horlicks’. My clothes hang like…….well, ordinary fabric. Justine’s cling in that ‘second skin’ kind of way. That said, both of us look way more ‘event ready’ than our hostess Aneka, who greets us looking like the only party she’s attending is a ‘Young Conservatives’ meet.

“Ooh look at you two! I like your lipstick, Julie!”

“Yeah, alright, innit! Got it free!”

I proclaim. Which of course, is code for;

“I’d never buy it, it’s a bit brazen!”

Niceties out of the way, we enter the living room, taking in the decor. Grey walls, black lacquered tables and framed pictures of albino tigers. Not too dissimilar to a slightly upmarket taxi cab office.

Aneka’s mum and step dad are indeed, there.  I know it’s them because they’re the only ones over the age of 20. There they sit, two slightly creepy thirty somethings grinning beside a mountain of beer boxes and bottles of unopened Thunderbird and Lambrini.

Chart music plays, which is mainly house. Yeah, chart music Aneka, can’t go wrong with that. God forbid you show any signs of developing a personality or anything radical like that. So it’s wall to wall Bomb the Bass, Soul II Soul, Technotronic and the like. At some point one of those risqué tracks about ‘Aciiiid’ will come on and we’ll eye each other with a faux knowing that betrays our not knowing.

“See, I told you they don’t mind”

Aneka says as Ma and Da offer a shifty nod and wave from the couch. Is it me or is there a slight ‘swinger’ quality about them? Not that I really understand what that term means. ‘Charley’s Cat’ has popped up in my head with his wide-eyed companion who relay a message I swiftly interpret as “Stay away from those two dodgy fuckers”.

I can’t help think that Aneka is possibly the sanest, dullest member of her own family and that the party was probably for their benefit rather than hers.

I instantly decide I want to be in another room with…...well, my peer group.

“Aneka, it’s a bit fucking weird, your mum and dad being here……d’you think they’ll be here all night?”

“Go upstairs if you want.”

Her mother says as if she’s heard me.

“Take a ‘Diamond White’ or something”

I accept her offer of a bottle and head upstairs where the cool kids are. Already, small dens are forming on the landing and in bedrooms. The pounding music is conducive to teenage hormones, providing reason to lean in closer. To better hear one and other, of course……

Little more than an hour later, I have the kiss I’d come for. Like many things in life, it does not match my expectations. How could it? I’d actively planned a kiss. Pencilled it in like a library book return. Sat on the edge of a bed in a poky room with some older, random lad named Stu I’d never met before. For him, it’s a base. For me, a first base I certainly won’t be passing. He soon realises this and we part company.

I then spend a large chunk of the night people-watching.

I quickly become acquainted with the accepted scripts and pastimes of teenage parties.

Rule number one is to scan the room commenting how shit it is, how the last party you went to was ‘loads better’.

Rule number two is to be a little more specific, to complain that the music and drink is of a lower quality to what you - discerning teenager - are used to.

Rule three appears to be slagging off other peoples’ outfits.

And somewhere, amongst this unspoken etiquette, we’re all apparently supposed to enjoy ourselves. We must be, because everyone talks about parties, right?

Like an alien, I consider how this enjoyment is displayed. All I see the smiley folk have in common, is that dazed look in their eyes. The look I’ve come to associate with alcohol and pot. Is it possible to feel relaxed with others without such crutches?

Maybe not.

Should I too, be smoking joints, I wonder as I see the ease it seems to offer others. Is that the key to connecting with the opposite sex? I mean, the lipstick got attention, but how to sustain it, have some sort of meaningful dialogue.

Boys must want that too…..I think.

Justine excels in flirting. She smokes B&H, which in itself reveals her as a bad girl, a dark flower to which bees are drawn. Her mature body consolidates this.

Aneka, on the other hand is the opposite. The tiger pictures on the wall garner more attention. She is relegated to waitress, intruding upon established cliques with unwanted bowls of ‘Cheesy Wotsits’.

Damn, the poor girl can’t even do ‘party appropriate’ crisps!

Where do I lie in this newly emerging female hierarchy, I wonder? Somewhere in the middle, maybe.

Around 2am the house is a ‘last orders’ graveyard greening with the final spew of walking zombies, otherwise known as ‘those who didn’t pull yet’.

“Still here?”

A voice pipes up.

It’s Tim from my drama class.

I don’t know Tim that well. No-one does. He always presents as an outsider. Shy, mysterious, talks a bit posher.

Tim with his soft dark curls and cute spray of freckles, his hazel eyes ambering in my tipsy squint.

“Julie!”

He says, as though he’s pleased to see me. Maybe he is.

“I’m gonna sit here with you, alright?”

“Yeah”

Nervously, I make chitchat.

I establish he has two older siblings, lives on the outskirts of town and is a Scorpio.

I’ve no idea what else I say to him, only that he’s stays. I’ve not scared him away.

He rolls a joint and offers me a glass of something piss coloured and sparkly.

“Julie….”

He begins again, birthing my name from his lips like a jewel, as though it’s something exotic like ‘Neneh Cherry’.

“Can I ask you something?”

He looks me up and down, scanning my body before fixing hard on my gaze.

“Have you ever…..”

I hastily prepare my lines for what might be coming.

“…….Astral travelled?”

No, that wasn’t it. Thank goodness!

As he says it, he exhales smoke that add to his mystery.  It cloaks him and he takes on the shape of the carved wooden dragons in my favourite shop ‘Oriental Walk’. ‘Oriental Walk’ is owned by a glamorous, blonde polish woman called Beata. She lets you pay things off weekly and I buy ornaments for my bedroom, surround myself with affordable pieces of fantasy.

“No, what’s that?”

I ask, enjoying the way that, although I can tell he fancies me, he’s talking to me like an actual person.

Half an hour later he is still beguiling me with tales of what he apparently does at night in bed which refreshingly, is not the standard.

“It’s a discipline….like meditation. I’ve been everywhere.”

He says, and utterly mesmerised, I’m inclined to believe him.

“All around the world…….I just ask myself where I want to go and then levitate out of my physical body and go….”

“Oh!”

I gush, enchanted.

“Yeah, Mexico, Japan, Tibet……anywhere”

At some unscripted moment, we crumple effortlessly into the crepe of an unfolding kiss and it’s beautiful, real. Maybe that’s the secret of a successful kiss, I muse.

Talking first. Connecting.

Who knew?

We kiss some more, roll around a little on the manky carpet. Even the empty cans of Special Brew fail to make it seedy. There’s a ‘brakes on’ moment before we finally fall asleep. I awake draped across his body in the hallway, a denim jacket covering my bare arms.

Soon enough, it’s 9 o clock and my mum arrives to collect me. I try desperately to conceal my splitting headache and need to puke. The feelings I will soon come to label as ‘hangover’. Like kisses, maybe the first one is the worst?

I feel blessed to have an ordinary mum, I decide. I don’t want parents who throw me parties and buy me beer. Something tells me even at 15, that’s not what good parents are supposed to do.

As we drive back home, I consider what I’ve observed of human nature at the party. How it mirrors life.

Some dance wildly in the middle.

Some sit alone in corners.

Some wait upon others.

Others are waited upon.

Some, are not invited at all.

Is it a matter of playing the cards you’re dealt or creating your own niche?

Parties, I conclude, are very much like kisses. Varied. They can be vacuous, soulless affairs with no meaning……..or they can sparkle.

It all depends on who’s there. Not who turns up but who’s there there. Actually present and alive in that moment. Who lights you and who you light.

I go to school on Monday and Tim appears different, older. Maybe I do to him. For the next few weeks, every time I hear ‘Mantra for a state of mind’ by S’Express on the radio, I imagine him lying in his bed, astral travelling.

Going places.

Kisses can take you somewhere, too, I want to tell him.

But I don’t.

For when our shy glances cross as black cats momentarily blocking the other’s path, causing our cheeks to blush, it’s clear he already knows.