The Party

This story is not to be confused with the famous, yet inappropriate Peter Sellers movie of the same name. This, is the story of a young lad, out of his depth, which is usually where humor begins.

I often think about the first time I went to a high school party. I was never really much of a keener for social events outside of school. I have always been more introverted than a social butterfly like some of my friends. But it was grade 11 and I had not been to a single get together. I will admit that the stories my friends shared about hooking up with girls, were quite intriguing. I was known as “the kiss-less virgin”. This was a moniker I did not take pride in.

I wanted to shed this beta male title and have a kiss. The party was at a house of one of the rich kids. I think this was a ploy to remind the guests of how plebian we all were in comparison to the elites. Like we forgot… 

I ate dinner with my parents and couldn’t tell you a single thing we talked about. A bomb could have gone off in the kitchen and I wouldn’t be able to notice- I was so fixated on the pre-party scaries. This was the nerves doing their things like whispering about how ugly I was and how my clothes resembled that of a derelict. I was also pumped to drink and be seen. Pathetic I know.

I met up with my two friends around 9:30 and had a couple lukewarm beers out of our backpacks before heading into the higher end neighbourhood where the party was. We could hear noise from a block away. The house was huge, which made my confidence (or lack thereof) shrink. There was about 60 people from my school there. Lots of girls too. Here we go.

I started to feel tipsy from the pre-party beers. I became slightly less ugly and slightly more confident. The more drinks I had the sexier and cooler I became. This is what I had been missing out on? I thought to myself. I should have tried this earlier. We mingled with kids we knew and stood around to watch the socially elite males play each other in beer pong. I even played a couple pathetic games against two of them. My friend and I did a great job at sinking one out of 6 cups our first couple of throws.

The alpha males put us in our place by getting three consecutive double sinks in a row. My manhood felt like it was going to fall off… It didn’t make it any better that this girl Samantha, from my biology class, was watching. Well, there goes another name to the lists of ‘forget it’ and ‘never happening’. But she came over to me after and said that we “did good”. 

I smiled and cracked a lame joke about how we should have gotten a participation award or something dumb. I don’t know, I was pretty drunk at this point. And I needed to say something other than stare at the future mother of my children. She threw me a definite pity laugh. But I took it and held onto it like the golden snitch. A female was giving me attention. This was unheard of!

I asked if she wanted to sit and talk. She said yes?!!! I mean…she said yes…cool. I had to pee so badly. I was holding in 6 beers worth of liquid courage, but I couldn’t blow this or leave her to a taller and more threatening potential partner. So, I pretended I didn’t feel the titanic-like pressure in my bladder. We sat and talked about class and what assignments we failed. Pretty romantic stuff I know. We must have talked for over an hour. My bladder couldn’t take it anymore.

I saw a cops of trees at the back corner of the yard that was a makeshift latrine. “I’ll be right back. Duty calls”, I said to excuse myself. And as I tried to stand up...the flood gates opened a little. Yes, I peed about a half-pint into the front of my jeans. Absolute terror, as I would later describe this to my therapist.

Oh well, I guess trying to be cool with booze has its costs. I only had one year left of humiliation…….