It’s always great to be invited to a house party with all the friends that you adore, alcohol that you can mix according to your own taste and your choice of music. It sounds like a really good time when it’s written out like that but in reality, is it? Let me answer that for you – NOPE, it is most definitely not as enjoyable as you make up in your head.
The socialising: This is a win if you are just heading to a close friend’s gathering where you know everybody but it can be pure hell if you don’t know too many people. The host will try to make you feel comfortable so many times that you become the centre of attention, then you’ll have to tell everyone individually what you do and make mundane conversation with them when all you want to do is grab a drink and chill. If you were out dancing, there would be no conversation and that would be ideal, but you chose this life.
The resources: You best believe that as soon as the snacks come out, they will be gone. Even if you do manage to be polite and get one piece of those seekh kebabs, believe us when we say – that’s all you’ll get. Cherish it. At some point, extremely late in the night, the house will run out of anything that is safely consumable and a resigned panic will settle in. There’s also a possibility that the liquor might end, at which point all you can do is cry in the kitchen.
The music: As much as you’d like to believe you are close enough to the host to be able to play your own music, there’s a higher chance someone has already taken up DJing extremely poorly. The night flies past with a mixture of Honey Singh paired with spurts of ‘Closer’ and ‘Love Me Like You Do’. If you somehow manage to get the AUX to yourself, people will constantly scream at you to change the songs you play or request absurd songs that just kill the flow of your playlist.
The conversation: The odds of being at a house party and having to listen to strange, philosophical conversation that makes no sense, are very high. Worse, you always end up meeting someone who wants to loudly make offensive statements and you can’t do anything but look away unless you want to make everything super awkward. You can’t even walk away from this whole mess. Where are you going to hide? The bathroom?
The exit: This is something that is mostly already strategized in your head before you even arrive at the house – the time, the reason, the goodbyes. But when is it the right time to start leaving? We say’ start leaving’ because it’s a whole process. You will be asked not to go multiple times, or to stay for 15 more minutes and eventually you’ll just have to stand near the door as a subtle announcement. You’re going to definitely leave either too early and look like a party pooper or too late, when you’re too drunk to even know your date of birth. Finding that exact sweet spot in the night when it’s okay to leave is extremely stressful. We prefer being pushed out of nightclubs at closing time to this awkward process.
