To: A Male Friend

From: Shaun Landry

cc: My Realization

Date: The Holidays 2007

Re: Evite to a Party

So, when I was younger, I basically picked up my husband at a party like this. We sat on the porch and talked for hours in a drunken state of what the hell. He was quiet. When he talked, he said really funny things. I put a dollar down his pants. He in turned put a dollar bill down my cowl-neck sweater (it was a long hanging cowl neck). I took him home. I have been with him ever since.

<rant on>

Last night, I looked at that list on the Evite. It is a virtual cornucopia of people 15-20 years my junior who I don’t know, don’t really care to know, or don’t wish to be in the same room with.

I wish I still had the patience to make small talk or ask some 22-year-old when they are going to graduate from college. To hear the tedious conversations in the “Ladies Room” about who the “Grand Prize Guy” winners are. (The ones who will indeed get laid that night) and me smiling saying “Good for you” like some deranged mother and in my mind going “Kill me.”

Going into the "Stoners Room" and seeing people lay out on a bed doing bong hits and weakly saying “Wanna Hit?” when they are too stoned to do what two women and three guys on a bed SHOULD be doing.

I no longer need to get all dressed up and walk in to see the dating dance, sending me out on the porch and smoking too many cigarettes and not having much to say. That is not the meaning of Christmas for me.

I don’t want someone’s crumpled-up theater flyer because that is the only reason why they are there. I don’t wish to be jammed like a lemming in an apartment with music that is just as bad as if I was listening to Hungry Like the Wolf back then. I don’t need at my age to try to desperately hold on to these types of parties. Feeling like the creepy “mom figure” of the party, while some 24-year-old thinks they are going to play Mrs. Robinson this evening.

I scored twenty plus years ago at a party like this. It’s their turn now. </rant off>

Now I get age. I GET IT. What makes people want to cut their hair short and wear clothes that cover their bodies. I get the idea of being wonderfully oblivious to new slang.

I now get cats. It's not that I don’t like these gatherings. It’s just that I don’t have the *time for them*, as I realized last night, I have nothing to prove any longer at my age.

Also I realized something looking at that list of people on the Evite. The only person I would seriously have any fun being around is you. I can ask you out for drinks and dinner anytime of the year.

You fine young man … you can kill me and rape me later, as usual.

xo -s