I was dreading Initials' holiday party for a long time. He's full of complaints when he gets home from work, or at least he used to. Lately, when I ask how work was, he just grunts, sighs depressively or says something noncommittal, like "It was." Sometimes he does all three.
So when he asked if he could RSVP for two for the company Christmas party, it was a begrudging yes. It was more of a begrudging if you want, to be honest. The days before the event, he really stepped up his happy, optimist game-face, out-of-the-blue saying things like "It'll be fun to introduce you to some of my co-workers" but by the day of the event, he was down to saying "At least it's free food."
I could tell RSVPing in the affirmative was a terrible idea as we checked in, got our nametags, and our two drink tickets, and the middle-aged woman at the table explained there was a two-drink maximum. That's right. Maximum. Apparently five years ago the CEO got a little tipsy and crashed into a telephone pole on the way home from the party, and ever since then, it's been only drink tickets, no cash allowed. Which pissed the shit out of me. I needed an open bar, and I needed it now.
We walked into the hotel confrence room and found our table, near the speakers for the band. We tried mingling a little bit, but everyone was old enough to be my parents, and most were old enough to be Initials' parents, which made things more than a little awkward, as topics generally kept to the hope that it wouldn't snow while we were at the party. Initials kept the small talk going, but I'm a miserable failure at polite pleasentries. I kept things interesting by playing the Office matchup game, in my head identifying everyone in terms of their Office counterpart; there were a lot of Stanleys, Phyllises and Tobys, and absolutely no one cute enough to justify Pam or Jim. It was not a pretty sight.
When I said before that everyone was old enough to be my parents, I may have been exaggerating a little bit. The guys from the workroom showed up a few minutes after we did, with hilarious results. They were still older than me, probably late twenties, and were minorities, which didn't really surprise me. They, like everyone else at the event, didn't know the meaning of the phrase "dress casual," and they showed up in oversized striped polo shirts and baggy jeans. One wore baggy shorts, exposing two inches of calf before the socks and shoes hit. There was bling all up in there as well. One of their dates dressed in matching baggy polo shirt and baggy khakis, but the two others dressed as if they were in a "black rapster video," to put it in the words of the people we were making small-talk with at the time: black tank top that didn't quite reach their bellybuttons, tri-color weaves and high heels, to say nothing about the hot pants with words on the seat (BABY on one, and HOT STUFF on the other).
The guys from the workroom were asked to leave before dinner after harassing the bartenders for not serving them more than two drinks.
I should probably mention that no one really understood the phrase Dress Casual, given as how the attire ranged from a full-on tux to a tuxedo tshirt, which was totally worn by a Michael. More than one couple wore matching cowboy hats to the dinner, which was just confusing. We just had to talk to one middle-aged woman wearing a shiny purple Prom dress with sequins, complete with sparkling shawl and white bouquet, who said "After I saw my daughter wearing one to her prom last year, I just knew I had to buy one for me. You should see us together when we're wearing our dresses---we look just like sisters!"
The food was bad, of course, but the dinner conversation was worse. Everyone was polite enough, except for one conservative couple who felt the need to bring politics into the mix. Their two best lines of the evening.
He said that the federal deficit was dwindling to the point that the United States would be out of debt by this time next year, no matter who we bombed next, and anyone who can't read the signs of our fiscal security should be medically classfied as retarded and not allowed to vote.
She was talking to a Kenyan at our table, who had just returned from visiting her sisters in Africa, one of whom works with the Red Cross's education platforms, when she said, and I quote, "What you people don't realize is that before there were abstinence-only programs, there was nothing, and they should be happy with whatever they can get. Besides, they need religion, not education, to bring them out of the dark ages or whatever."
The Kenyan woman studied at University here and has been alternating back and forth between Kenya and her husband ever since, and seemed to be a little out of the loop when talking about pop-culture and uncommon phrases, in the way that many foreign-speakers of English have problems with slang. She didn't seem to realize just how offensive the remark was, but everyone else at the table did, which pretty much killed off conversation for the end of the night.
The after-dinner entertainment, a dueling pianos act, was ludicrously awful, and the crowd wasn't feeling it, thanks to their two drink maximums that most had used for wine at dinner. So Initials and I high-tailed it out of there and caught the last showing of The Golden Compass of the night, which was terrible for the first 75 minutes, before POLAR BEARS BEAT THE SHIT OUT EACH OTHER, which is when it became the highlight of my night, if not my week.
