Running Naked

Saturday night I hosted another party at my apartment. This was the second one I've hosted in a month.

It was a very different party.

This time it was mostly Flyers running club members. Like my last party, I struggled with the guest list. I invited close friends in the club, and expanded it to to others that I like and saw more often at events. There were still about ten others that I'd have really liked to invite (at least three of those were fellow bloggers) but unfortunately, due to concerns for crowd size in my place, I had to make the cut-off somewhere. And I can always have another party, right?

So most of the people at the party knew each other, or at least had met before, for the most part. That was different from my last part. And my relationship with these people was also different: the longest I'd known anyone in the room, with the exception of Medley, was about 18-20 months. A big chunk of people at my previous gathering I'd been friends with for 4 or 5 years. But this was also a good crowd of people I liked.

Anyway, me and a fellow Flyer friend organised the event, and we decided it would be a theme party. We wanted something that people cold really get into, and came up with doing a 70s theme...

The evite itself was a piece of work. In fact, this is what I wrote:

Alright you cool cats, it's time to get down and get freaky. Dust off the bell-bottoms and break out that tie-dye, cuz you're headed to funkytown, USA! That's Harlem, baby!

Just some chillaxin' at the pad with my main dudes and chicks! We'll have some groovy tunes, mellow munchies, and some dynamite drinks! Bring some of your own, too - maybe it's Blitz; maybe it's Tab - pick your poison, cats!

And speakin' of cats -- if my little disco-feline gives you a little disco-fever, you might want to pop a little disco-benadryl before you swing by to partay!

Peace out babes. I want to see you decked out in the hippest of 70s styles (It is a theme-party, kids! Dress appropriately.) and ready to sizzle on a Saturday night. Let me know if you can dig it, '70s style!

But the kicker was that I made up nicknames for each individual within the seventies theme (e.g. Skylight the Stoner), and also linked the words Blitz and Tab to their old 70s ads. If nothing else, definitely click on the word Tab. It is a total throwback.

I got 100% response rate to the evite, which has never happened to me before. Yes, every single person responded, and only one person replied with a "no". That said, I did have three couples who answered "yes" bail on the day of the party. I probably could've invited the other ten that I wanted. Damn!

Nonetheless, the party was a total cosmic success. We had a beaded curtain, disco balls, tie-dyed-coloured ballons, and John Lennon-esque glasses. We served cheese doodles, pop tarts, mallomars, brownies, and pig-in-a-blankets, and people brought more treats like cookies and cupcakes. The signature drink of the night was a vodka/orange Screwdriver, but we also had Tab and Schlitz (Blitz isn't around anymore). The Screwdrivers were a huge hit -- I actually didn't remember them tasting that good before, but I may actually order one more often in the future.

I also asked people to dress up, but really thought there'd only be a few that actually would. I was so wrong. In fact, I just wore a tie-dyed shirt and cut-offs with the Lennon glasses and had the lamest outfit of them all (I admit it was more 60s than 70s, and some people called me on that). There was glam outfits everywhere. sequined tops, Farrah Fawcett hair, short shorts, and guys with shirts so ugly they were brilliant. It was a great crowd. Some friends even contributed an awesome, ultra-tacky Starsky and Hutch Mirror. Trippin'!

And it turned out to be an awesome, rockin', disco party, if I do say so myself. How do you know when you've had a great party? Well, here are the three signs:

1. At least one person gets sick.
2. You manage to blow the amp on your stereo receiver.
3. People get naked.

Alright, so someone got sick (I'll never tell). This is merely the first sign of a good party. It means that people had a lot to drink. Like I said, the vodka and OJ was a hit, and guests also brought plenty of beer and wine. Good times, good times!

And the stereo? It was cranking out the likes of the BeeGees and Abba like it (literally, believe me) never had before. I walked into my living room and the furniture was all pushed aside, and the crowd was dancing to YMCA on the hardwoods. Unfortunately, the poor old receiver could not handle this disco inferno that had once been my apartment, and after not very long, just crapped out. The volume wouldn't go above 3.

I spent the next half hour or so trying frantically to get it back functioning. My stress level went through the roof. It's amazing how fast you can sober up when your adrenaline skyrockets... It's just that I was hosting the party, and I thought without the groovy tunes, people are going to have a lame-ass time and, well, just leave. I tried everything to get the receiver to function again, but nothing worked. Almost all the men in the room, as loaded as they were, had suggestions on how to get the music going again, but nothing was effective in reviving the system. Finally, I searched and searched for the cable I needed to plug in my auxiliary speakers, but after rummaging through a multitude of electrical components, I realised I was using that particular cable for my computer at work. It was no use. No music for the rest of the night.

And yet, when I looked around, everyone was still having fun. How curious... Yes, it was true: the party was going on just fine without window shattering tunage! My stress subsided, and I started enjoying myself once again.

Yeah, I know, you didn't care about reading any of that. You wanted to know about the naked people. Well, in fine seventies fashion, there were streakers. Yes, I had streakers at my party Saturday night. These were disrobed, bare-assed, not-a-stitch-of-ugly-seventies-clothing, streakers. Two of them: male and female. One naked lap around the room, and away they went. Enough said.

Apparently, you just can't keep runners from running, in any decade.

And that's when the party truly had begun. A very good time was had all. We did stupid things like see how many people we could fit into my 24 square-foot kitchen (all of us, which was seventeen at the time). We even played drunken 70s charades ("Disco Inferno", "Free Love", etc.). Let it be known that NYFlygirl is really bad at drunken 70s charades...

I have to add that not only was the crowd very different from my last party, but Medley was like an entirely different cat. Between the streakers and the dancing, she was totally freaked out. She sat in the kitchen or in the bathroom for much of the time, either avoiding, or observing from a distance, the sheer calamity of it all. Even the next morning, chaos ensued when she found out the hard way what happens when a claw meets a balloon. Poor cat'll never be the same...

By the time the last group staggered away, which included my co-host, it was around 2 PM. I cleaned for over an hour, and took out the recycling. One thing I thought was interesting: I had a six pack of Schlitz as a throwback to that decade. Five people had taken one each, and while cleaning up, I discovered that not a single Schlitz had been drunk more than a quarter of its volume. Apparently this group, however inebriated, still knew that 70s beer sucked. I was still stuck with one more left in the fridge, though.

But there was also some good stuff leftover. Although the vodka was gone, there was still unopened wine I could save for later. And a few cupcakes, pop-tarts and brownies.

And Sister Smile even made cookies. They were really good. I'm not sure how many she brought, but there were about eight or ten remaining when everyone left at the end of the night.

I ate every last one before going to bed.