August's End & On Throwing a Party
blue-berries-gin-rambling
Fifteen citronella candles sit on the stone wall. Their wicks are buried deep in wax; I must pick them out. Four hours remain until arrival, that is, until people arrive. Throwing a midsummer party does not lend itself to full sentences. The August day is long, and still there is not enough time. Soon this early morning will leach into late night, and like a run-on sentence, a series of sporadic moments will stitch themselves together until, suddenly, fifteen ears of ninety-nine–cent corn are being shucked below the granite step.
By mid afternoon, the sun is hot and I have begun to sweat. The agenda, being mine and mine only exists on scraps of paper and behind my eyelids in the form of lidded pressure which yet to be released requires preparation of the following:
One: Up from the waterfront I hawk the chop backed picnic table into the garden cart. The table was smashed by an old spruce in a windstorm. Across the brickyard causeway I weed-wack three-leafed poison ivy into red confetti. The hem of my pants splatters green by the twist-tie ends of plastic that circulate the ground, waist high ryegrass is cut into a clearing which opens into light.
Two: Drive down Route 1 to Simmons sea food market in Damariscotta. I buy three bagged pounds of mussels; thirty dollars in black mesh can feed ten. I place the shelled creatures into my ice chest in the back of the car. The fogged day has taken on a particular muted quality. A family of tourists marches past me, single file, they wear matching white sweatshirts, nobody in the family answers the father when he asks, “if they want to have salmon for lunch.” I hope that my guests will have things to say. One cannot help but hope that at your party small talk will be avoided, and people will be good conversationalists; and that conversations will move from the familiar to the unexpected—like a sentence that begins only with a sensation, and that ends with that strange link between the father’s square of salmon pâté and middle-aged sadness.
Three: Riverside Butcher’s—at the glass case I wonder out loud about the proposition of feeding people, “eleven, no twelve, fifteen or twenty—well, truthfully I am no longer certain who will arrive," I say to the man at the counter. “Andouille. 2.5 pounds. Seems like quite the event,” He reads me correctly, I want it to be quite the event: he is a touch facetious. I am a touch too sincere. I add sauerkraut to the countertop. Pay. Step across the road where there is no cross-walk.
On the highway I think of parsley, fish sauce, heavy cream, white wine, garlic, shallots, vegetables. I think of feeding people. People will be fed, and the two largest pots must be placed onto the stove when I arrive home.
Four: At the sink, I clean the mussels, pull off byssal threads, tap the shells, discard the dead ones. A paper towel is dampened and slipped over the bowl like pebbles into the back of the fridge. Mussels are to be cooked last, garlic and shallots, 4-6 minutes in steam. My anxious pitted feeling grows. I begin to make wishes: there will be no paralytic shellfish poisoning, people will be cheerful, it will not rain, strangers will become friends, no one will break anything, everyone will trundle home satisfied.
Five: I return to my check list. I must move from sustenance white lace linens, I place them over a cherry rack meant to hold plants - utensils nest into napkins. The slate patio brushed clean this morning needs to be swept again. From the branches of the Ginko tree I stretch a corded set of lights - thirty feet long - it just barely reaches. To light the evening is to determine the space between seating and sky. Chairs are pulled and wiped clean from the barn: antiquey things with wicker backs and nested spiders.
Six: Flowers. Stemmed from the garden: mint, dahlia’s, aster, daisies, ferns, a single lily. Extravagance is acceptable in August- seven vases fill with tumbled head bloom.
Seven: Four friends arrive early to provide last minute assistance. Gin. Limes. Mint. Sugar. Drink making passed into other hands. A series of soft questions: Please. Yes. Perfect. Are these the glasses? Yes. Ice? Would you like one now? Yes. A drink from you - always. Yes. Yes please. I slip into a dress.
Then, there are wheels on gravel in the drive-way and it begins quickly: welcome, make yourself at home, everyone else is on the terrace. Somebody begins to play music. Somebody else starts to shepherd food outside. Pieces move on their own accord. The kitchen is full of bodies. Over the stove, mussels begin to steam beneath the tightly-lidded pot. With each stemmed drink, laughter grows louder like the snap of the shell, ready to be eaten.
By dinnertime there is a sensation of space for our own pressurized openings: white wine is poured like a kiss over the lip of a glass, a tomato is passed from fingers to lips, women are suddenly dancing.
By dusk the plates empty and then re-fill, pockets of people pull apart and re-converge. From a dark corner on the rock wall a conversation has shifted from bosses, to dilemmas, to lovers, and then to dreams.
We are taught that to throw a party is to put oneself on display—that every decision—a vase full of flowers, a dish on the table—is a licked representation of one’s taste (or lack thereof), one’s class (or lack of it), or one’s values (or lack thereof). Somehow, those cut wildflowers from the garden come to represent who I am, that who I am is different than a dozen red roses bought in a plastic sleeve at the supermarket, that this distinction is important.
It is because of this that we so often leave a party, slip into the car, and turn automatically to one’s companion—each having held their tongue for most of the night—only to find a distinct pleasure in opening one’s mouth to say: ‘Can you believe they didn’t… those gaudy napkin rings!’ Sure, sure the table setting was beautiful, but how about the size of those pigs-in-blanket? And their relationship really seems strained…doesn’t it? It does.
And isn’t it true that this particular pleasure is strongest when one senses a certain falseness in the way the host has presented themselves, that their efforts are not really for us, but a display of who they think they ought to be? How much we relish directing our judgment at this pretense, how painfully obvious when the performance overtakes the reality.
And then, how utterly different it is to leave the other sort of party—the good kind—the kind where, by the end, there is nothing more to say: the sort of evening where, in that same dark car, one is led to whisper only of a tongue that burst with flavor, to recall how women disappeared into a corner to divulge a secret, how another saw themself suddenly reflected in the flickering candlelight and felt beautiful, how someone else forgot, momentarily, the shape of their body and ate happily. How now, the energy has transferred into a shared desire for warm bodies in bed, and that road home under blinking stoplights strangely does not feel long at all.
What makes this type of party different? I think that perhaps the trick of it lies in a difference of centrifugal force, an understanding that at a party, nobody, not even the host, should remain squarely at the center. That at some point between dinnertime and the falling of dark, the party became longer yours. That maybe it was never really yours at all.
In fact, that the many deliberate choices one had to take to get here: zinnias and mint, dresses and corn, mussels and heirlooms, blueberry brownies and gin, are less of a display of one’s specific internal world than they are like placing oneself on a platter with a note that says here I am—who are you? A good party relies on each individuals capacity to find a way out of their center, to facilitate the carbonation of other people’s spirits, and to find that the satisfaction comes from sinking into witness, to becoming a passerby amongst the pleated backs of old rocking chairs.
When August night belongs to no one, a party releases itself into presence.
In other words, late into the night, when our young bodies grow tired in the dark and having ripened towards one another and it has become clear that there is a distinction between the sensation of being and the sensation of living—how living requires contact. To throw a party, is to choose contact, to set aside ones judgements for long enough to remember that any effort made with the intention of bringing people together is never wasted - no matter the type of flower one has chosen.
It is also to acknowledge that to extend oneself generously towards others requires practice. Some nights will glimmer, other nights glint poorly, and some nights we won’t know which sort of evening we’ve had at all—people and parties and summertime are confusing after-all. No matter the party, one can only hope, we will return softly to our bodies and in the hungover morning hour find that all is well.