2012-11-16 - 7:11 p.m.

age of innocence

it's the kind of party where everyone's parents are there, and they have names like jingles and skipper and chappy and bunny. you've never quite been able to see how these houses with a soda counter in the rec room and at least eight pinball machines could possibly be so boring.

you check the bathroom for product, but there's only cetaphil and coconut-scented suave. there's a chance you might happen across a razor-sharp fourteen-year-old who quips like the intertitles from a silent flapper feature, but that's never something you can count on. if you poke around, though, you know you'll eventually find a floating cooler that is also an ipod dock, and a tiny radio-controlled helicopter, and a bottle of laphroaig or maybe lagavulin. ah, there we go. you've been doing this since high school.

a copita, and a few drops of water. you've learned better than to stay by the booze; just as surely as the nitrate decomp sends "flaming youth" straight to hell, it will bring on a red-faced, tipsy dad or a gaggle of little shits who have just snorted someone's vyvnase. so you find a volume of chekhov, maybe, and you curl up on a couch corner with a very old dog named monty or scout or ruggles.

and you're not even sure why you're at this party anymore, because you are an adult and not a child, and you could just get in your car and drive away.

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