Almost every bit of trouble I’ve gotten into has been because I was bored. I’m often bored. James and I recently left a party, and as we were walking home he laughed and said “You just can’t take it.” I pressed him for more — there’s little I love more than hearing about myself, a trait I likely inherited from my dad, who loves hearing stories about himself regardless of how unflattering they are. “You can not cope with a boring party. You have a little devil on your shoulder. You are too full of mischief.”
This insight delighted me.
It was true, I need to be entertained almost all of the time, otherwise I get bored and get into trouble, and some people are not up to the task, so I have to create my own entertainment, and luckily for them I find myself very entertaining. I have a microphone that attaches to a speaker, and every so often I’ll say to James “I need my microphone,” and he’ll say “It’s not hooked up,” and I’ll say, “I think you know what you need to do,” and he gets me my microphone. I walk around the house with my microphone when I’m bored or feeling sassy and say whatever I feel like saying into my microphone. It pleases me greatly.
I spent the boring party we’d recently attended creating little pockets of drama to fill the void, catching James’s eye and smirking every time I got a rise out of someone. I often do this at parties, like the time I told an obnoxious dude-bro golden boy editor from a prestigious publication where we both worked that I liked to wear my dog’s thunder vest to mitigate my anxiety at concerts when the bass was too loud. I don’t, I just felt like saying that to him. I watched him take this information in, clocking his smug reaction, fielding his condescending follow-up questions with deft ease, adding specific and absurd details to make the story more outrageous — one time there was a Xanax stuffed in a doggy treat pill pocket inside the thunder vest and I discovered it at the concert so I ate it to help take the edge off, and bonus it turns out doggy treat pill pockets are delicious! I use them for all my pills now — relishing his assessment that I was a kook, knowing he’d later be talking trash about me, meanwhile I was jerking his chain in real time without his knowledge. A little toy I got to bat around like a cat. I didn’t give a fig how I came off in this story, or what my colleagues would think when they heard it — the important thing was I’d amused myself with my little performance art. He was lucky he got off easily. People have no idea what could happen when I’m bored and take matters into my own hands.
Things I have done to amuse myself at boring parties during my lifetime include: Turned the heat up so that it was blasting and everyone started sweating profusely. Snuck into the host’s bedroom to make long-distance phone calls (back in the late 80’s). Had sex with a U.S. senator’s son, who I did not like (early 90’s). Drugs. Played the same song on repeat every time the host walked away from the stereo. Tucked the back of my skirt into my tights and walked around until someone noticed and discreetly told me and I pretended to be embarrassed. Tucked my upper lip onto my teeth while I talked to someone so it looked like I didn’t have an upper lip. Pinched people on the butt when I walked past them and pretended it wasn’t me and looked around for the culprit. Recited the “Jabberwocky” by heart. Did a dramatic reading of an article in Washingtonian magazine about my eyebrow waxer. Pretended I was a foreign exchange student. Pretended I was a werewolf and ate all the rare roast beef. Pretended I was a vampire and tried to vampire-stupor strangers from across the room. Pretended I was a witch and snuck outside to stand in the driveway and call upstairs to the kid’s window who was supposed to be asleep in there and scared the shit out of them. Stood on a hammock. Other things that I’m not going to tell you about right now.
Some parties are fine and I don’t have to do anything. One time my friend set her hair on fire in the bathroom and we had to break the door down to rescue her and she told us all to fuck off and passed out on the sofa and we swept up the tendrils of her burnt hair, opened the windows, and made pierogis. I enjoyed myself at that party.
It’s a fine line though.
The first year we moved to Amsterdam we attended James’s company’s holiday party on a boat. I was newly sober and didn’t know anyone, and we didn’t speak Dutch yet. It was a full dinner cruise, but there were no chairs, only giant communal white beds and the first course was soup. If you’ve never tried eating soup on a bed on a boat with your thigh pressed against a Dutch stranger’s thigh you are not missing out. Also, there was a mime and the mime caught my eye and was heading straight towards me and I scrambled off the bed and hid in the bathroom, but the urinals were next to the sink so I spent the evening with my husband’s coworker’s naked heinies while they peed and I pretended to wash my hands until I was sure the mime was gone and the coast was clear. That party was not boring, and even though I wanted to jump over the railing and swim back to shore, I did not get into trouble.
I don’t know what it is with Dutchies and soup. They are normally such practical people, but I’ve had multiple experiences with soup that make no sense. Mezrab is a fantastic place for live storytelling in Amsterdam, but there’s a soup situation. It’s a small venue that has become increasingly more popular so the chairs are crammed together — your thighs touch the person next to you (again!), and for some inexplicable reason, they serve soup. The soup is served in a bowl, on a plate, and you have to hold the plate while the bowl of soup slides around, and the sound of the spoon scraping the bowl and the bowl sliding around on the plate and the slurping of the soup distract from the storytelling. Someone always spills their soup and there’s drama. I don’t love it, but it’s not boring and it keeps me out of trouble.
I’m finessing a story that I’m working up the gumption to tell at Mezrab. I’ve never done live storytelling before, except for every day with my friends, and alone in my living room on my microphone, and especially with my physio therapist who has learned that any time I turn to him and say “This one time,” I’m about to launch into a long, convoluted story and do absolutely no exercise, but this will be my first time in front of a live, captive, soup eating audience. My story is about the time I was a kid in Spain and my friends and I were bored and we trapped a lady in a phone booth by pelting her with eggs, and… things did not go well for us. It’s a story that has multiple stories inside it that at first seems like a silly tale about kids getting into trouble, but really it’s about domestic violence and the uplifting power of community. I need to winnow it down and find the beats to make it suitable for live storytelling. Also, I have to work on not crying while I tell it — I almost always cry or laugh too hard to get the words out when I tell stories. I sometimes get my wires crossed and mix up my crying and laughing like my mom does when she has to pretend she’s smelling flowers at funerals to hide her uncontrollable laughter. I don’t know why. It has something to do with our wonky nervous systems. I even cried when I told the dude-bro golden boy the story about wearing my dog’s thunder vest and eating pills stuffed inside dog food. It added to the drama and was very entertaining, if I do say so myself.
P.S. None of you know the people who hosted the boring parties. It’s not you. You don’t know them. They will never read this. Don’t worry.
Gosh you make me laugh! Every damn time. That's just about the most important talent a writer can have in these fucked up times.
My God, you are just the type of lunatic I would love to have for a friend. I’m way too old for that anymore, but thank God you write about it Makes me laugh every time.