Party Weekend Quotes

You guys didn't really think you could go off on a party weekend without me, did you? Especially here of all places—" He froze and it was one of those rare moments when Adrian Ivashkov was caught totally and completely off guard. "Did you know," he said slowly, "that Victor Dashkov is sitting on your bed?" "Yeah," I said. "It was kind of a shock to us too.

My relationship with my father had been on the proverbial fritz since the time I was fifteen and called the police to report him for child molesting. He had never molested me, but I wanted to have a party that weekend and needed him out of the house.

Well … Zeus approves, Aeolus muttered. ―He says … he says it would be better if you could avoid saving her until after the weekend, because he has a big party planned—Ow! That‘s Aphrodite yelling at him, reminding him that the solstice starts at dawn. She says I should help you. And Hephaestus… yes. Hmm. Very rare they agree on anything. Hold on

We've got to make change our national pastime and hold protests more regularly than weekend parties.

Marc had grown up, gotten away from the partying lifestyle that made him feel as if his mere presence was a gift to those around him and knew himself for what he'd truly been back then. A fool. Hopelessly in love with a friend who'd never wanted more from him than he'd already given. This weekend, Marc hoped to change that.

I’ve noticed she doesn’t wear designer clothing or preppy getups like most of the females at this school, or the trashy party clothes you see on Greek Row and at the campus bars on weekends.

I remember how Sebastian and I met in study hall, how the first time I saw him he was reading Pride and Prejudice, and how I thought that was really sexy. Of course, I would come to find later that it was the only book he'd read, like, ever, and the only reason he was reading it was to impress some college girl he'd met at a party the weekend before. That should have been a sign that maybe he and I weren't going to be the best match.

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.

When I say I want to possess a woman for a day, maybe a whole weekend, it’s like I’m inviting her to a dinner party. I’m making exactly the food I want, serving the drinks I like, planning everything. But she’s the guest. Just because I’m in charge doesn’t mean I won’t serve her a damn good meal.

Lady Waggon Says That Any Bodies Found During A Weekend Party Should Be Disposed Of Discreetly, In Case Of Scandal.

Good-bye, dearie," said Mrs. Bertram. "Take care of yourself, now." (For if half of what you read in the papers were true, you never could tell with these house-parties.)

I hadn't slept with anybody in Vermont except a little red-haired girl I met at a party on the first weekend.

They talk about politics, art, the Labour Party, London, and during those marathon conversations, Phil feels as if he is living his actual life, and everything that came before was a dry run.

He found something grisly in the inevitability of the pattern of each affair. The conventional parabola – sentiment, the touch of the hand, the kiss, the passionate kiss, the feel of the body, the climax in the bed, then more bed, then less bed, then the boredom, the tears and the final bitterness – was to him shameful and hypocritical. Even more he shunned the ‘mise-en-scène’ for each of these acts in the play – the meeting at a party, the restaurant, the taxi, his flat, her flat, then the week-end by the sea, then the flats again, then the furtive alibis and the final angry farewell on some doorstep in the rain.

These parties were informally known as “Saturday to Monday” events instead of “weekend” parties. This choice of words was used, as “weekend” may give the idea that the invitees had work to go to on weekdays.

Lady Sylvia McCordle: Mr Weissman -- Tell us about the film you're going to make. Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It's called "Charlie Chan In London". It's a detective story. Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London? Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one, actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for the weekend, everyone's a suspect. You know, that sort of thing. Constance: How horrid. And who turns out to have done it? Morris Weissman: Oh, I couldn't tell you that. It would spoil it for you. Constance: Oh, but none of us will see it.

Wasn’t I proud of all we accomplished–the prestigious home in the Hudson Valley, the apartment in Manhattan, the eight phone lines, the friends and the picnics and the parties, the weekends spent roaming the aisles of some box-shaped superstore of our choice, buying ever more appliances on credit? I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life–so why did I feel like none of it resembled me? Why did I feel so overwhelmed with duty, tired of being the primary breadwinner and the housekeeper, and the social coordinator and the dog walker and the wife and the soon-to-be mother, and — somewhere in my stolen moments–a writer…?

It makes sense; we’re all dealing with the looming trauma of graduation. Any weekend is a good excuse for a party, and any party is a good opportunity to create a memory. There’s something new ahead, of course, but life as we all know it is in countdown mode.

Sara, hi. It’s Samson Long. We met at the party last weekend.” “Um, hi,” I replied, trying to hide my shock. How on earth did he get my number? “I hope you don’t mind. I got your number from Roland. He said it was cool.” Note to self: kill best friend. “No, it’s fine.” Samson

Don't get caught in the trap of "Waiting". When I retire.... When I get off work When I go that party this weekend When this happens then I can live. People miss the present and then wonder where time went. Allow life unfold in its divine sequence by being utterly present.

Piece of cake," she said. "Your mother's just lonely." I was dumbfounded. Malabar had dinner parties almost every weekend; she had been juggling two men for years. "My mother's not lonely," I said. "You're wrong," said Kyra. "Loneliness is not about how many people you have around. It's about whether or not you feel connected. Whether or not you're able to be yourself." I was at a loss for words. Was Malabar not being herself when she was being Malabar? "You know what I mean," Kyra said, breaking it down for me. "The lonely feeling comes from not being known.

I thought leaving home would be a liberation. I thought university would be a dance party. I thought I would live in a room vined with fairy lights; hang arabesque tapestries up on the wall. I thought scattered beneath my bed would be a combination of Kafka, coffee grounds, and a lover’s old boxer shorts. I thought I would spend my evenings drinking cheap red wine and talking about the Middle East. I thought on weekends we might go to Cassavetes marathons at the independent cinema. I thought I would know all the good Korean places in town. I thought I would know a person who was into healing crystals and another person who could teach me how to sew. I thought I might get into yoga. I thought going for frozen yogurt was something you would just do. I thought there would be red cups at parties. And I thought I would be different. I thought it would be like coming home, circling back to my essential and inevitable self. I imagined myself more relaxed—less hung up on things. I thought I would find it easy to speak to strangers. I thought I would be funny, even, make people laugh with my warm, wry, and only slightly self-deprecating sense of humor. I thought I would develop the easy confidence of a head girl, the light patter of an artist. I imagined myself dancing in a smoky nightclub, spinning slackly while my arms floated like laundry loose on the breeze. I imagined others watching me, thinking, Wow, she is so free.

She says 'there will be other parties, sera, durrr,' only the next thing will be the thing at J's next weekend and even if I was invited I will be at Dad's. When I will have to be Princess Sera all over again. Which will be quite confusing for him what with Evil Witch Sera of Betchistan usually being the one who comes to stay.

The benign narcissist may be the self-obsessed mother who rarely asks you how you are feeling (but cares deeply about what you are wearing), the vapid coworker who wants everyone to know the provenance of her handbag, the life-of-the-party partner who is incapable of having a conversation much beyond the events of the weekend.

Outgoing President Bush, who had served briefly as CIA director during the Ford administration, had been the agency’s most attentive White House patron in decades. He invited senior clandestine service officers to Christmas parties and to weekends at Camp David. He drew agency analysts and operators into key decision-making meetings.

I don't want to be married anymore. In daylight hours, I refused that thought, but at night it would consume me. What a catastrophe. How could I be such a criminal jerk as to proceed this deep into a marriage, only to leave it? We'd only just bought this house a year ago. Hadn't I wanted this nice house? Hadn't I loved it? So why was I haunting its halls every night now, howling like Medea? Wasn't I proud of all we'd accumulated—the prestigious home in the Hudson Valley, the apartment in Manhattan, the eight phone lines, the friends and the picnics and the parties, the weekends spent roaming the aisles of some box-shaped superstore of our choice, buying ever some appliances on credit? I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life—so why did I feel like none of it resembled me? Why did I feel so overwhelmed with duty, tired of being the primary breadwinner and the housekeeper and the social coordinator and the dog-walker and the wife and the soon-to-be mother, and—somewhere in my stolen moments—a writer...? I don't want to be married anymore.

Reese was pretty sure that this weekend was a recipe for disaster. He could just see it now. Mix one junkie pop star with a do-gooder billionaire who’s hiding a secret crush on her. Add in the lonely twin sister crushing on the billionaire, and make all three parties completely unaware of the other’s interest. Stir with that giant stick up Audrey’s ass. Watch fireworks explode.

I'm gonna take all my sadness, frustration, anger and energy and channel it into becoming the best possible student. I am going to become a learning machine... Go ahead, go to all your parties. Go ahead and go home to your families and friends every weekend. You are probably smarter than me. But it doesn't matter. While you are goofing around, I'm gonna be studying, and I'm gonna catch you.

We journeyed from different corners of the country to be there. We came together for her. Because we loved her. In a hundred different ways we adored her. We wanted her light to shine on us. We wanted to make it special for her, so she’d see how much we loved her. At a hen party, the bride-to-be takes on an almost celestial, golden status. That weekend, she was the celebrity, and we were her fans and paparazzi.

Taylor intervened, gently extracting Val’s hand from Jason’s. “I tried to get us reservations at Koi, but they were booked this whole weekend. We’ll come up with something else.” At this, Jason rolled his eyes. He whipped out his cell phone, unable to suppress his smile. “You never cease to amaze me, Taylor.” Despite herself, she felt her cheeks blushing. Jason held Taylor’s gaze as he spoke into his phone. “Yeah, Marty, it’s me. Get me a table at Koi tonight. Party of . . .” He looked at her questioningly. “Is this a girls-only night, or are guys invited, too?” “Oh my god, guys are so invited!” Valerie cried out, practically barreling Jason over in her excitement. Over Val’s head, he looked at Taylor teasingly. “I guess that means you’re stuck with me again, Ms. Donovan.” He grinned at Valerie, to explain. “She thinks she hates me.

The third Friday favourite was fried meatballs. This was a meal my parents would make together, my mother preparing the meatball mixture, rolling them, and my father frying them slowly in olive oil. […] The work and school week had ended, and a weekend spent with friends and the inevitable Friday or Saturday night sleepover lay ahead for me and my sisters, while my parents looked forward to dinner parties at home or away.

I come from the heart land of New Zealand. A place where men are men and there is no such thing as a latte. Where a day’s work is only done one way. THE HARD WAY. Where the vehicle you drive doesn’t symbolize who you are. A place where a beer is a beer and it comes only one way, ICE COLD. Yes the great land I like to call home the Waikato but yes all this beauty comes at a price obviously where men actually act like men not knob head; makeup wearing, tight jean wearing homos there will always be a shortage of real women. So just as the last generation of real men, almost every weekend we head into every bar, club, party or music festival we can in the hopes of finding a real women. Don’t get me wrong, bars clubs a music fests are the best fun ever. And I drink alcohol like it’s going out of fashion not that we care about fashion round here. See you in the heart land

He got into the tub and ran a little cold water. Then he lowered his thin, hairy body into the just-right warmth and stared at the interstices between the tiles. Sadness--he had experienced that emotion ten thousand times. As exhalation is to inhalation, he thought of it as the return from each thrust of happiness. Lazily soaping himself, he gave examples. When he was five and Irwin eight, their father had breezed into town with a snowstorm and come to see them where they lived with their grandparents in the small Connecticut city. Their father had been a vagabond salesman and was considered a bum by people who should know. But he had come into the closed, heated house with all the gimcrack and untouchable junk behind glass and he had smelled of cold air and had had snow in his curly black hair. He had raved about the world he lived in, while the old people, his father and mother, had clucked sadly in the shadows. And then he had wakened the boys in the night and forced them out into the yard to worship the swirling wet flakes, to dance around with their hands joined, shrieking at the snow-laden branches. Later, they had gone in to sleep with hearts slowly returning to bearable beatings. Great flowering things had opened and closed in Norman's head, and the resonance of the wild man's voice had squeezed a sweet, tart juice through his heart. But then he had wakened to a gray day with his father gone and the world walking gingerly over the somber crust of dead-looking snow. It had taken him some time to get back to his usual equanimity. He slid down in the warm, foamy water until just his face and his knobby white knees were exposed. Once he had read Wuthering Heights over a weekend and gone to school susceptible to any heroine, only to have the girl who sat in front of him, whom he had admired for some months, emit a loud fart which had murdered him in a small way and kept him from speaking a word to anyone the whole week following. He had laughed at a very funny joke about a Negro when Irwin told it at a party, and then the following day had seen some white men lightly kicking a Negro man in the pants, and temporarily he had questioned laughter altogether. He had gone to several universities with the vague exaltation of Old Man Axelrod and had found only curves and credits. He had become drunk on the idea of God and found only theology. He had risen several times on the subtle and powerful wings of lust, expectant of magnificence, achieving only discharge. A few times he had extended friendship with palpitating hope, only to find that no one quite knew what he had in mind. His solitude now was the result of his metabolism, that constant breathing in of joy and exhalation of sadness. He had come to take shallower breaths, and the two had become mercifully mixed into melancholy contentment. He wondered how pain would breach that low-level strength. "I'm a small man of definite limitations," he declared to himself, and relaxed in the admission.

He did not know exactly when to thank his hostess after attending a dinner or a weekend party. In his uncertainty, he would thank her over and over again. It was as though he hoped to achieve through the effect of accumulation what one speech alone could not accomplish. Wassilly was puzzled by the fact that these social responses did not come naturally to him, as they evidently did to others. He tried to learn them by watching other people closely, and was to some extent successful. But why was it such a difficult game? Sometimes he felt like a wolf-child who had only recently joined humanity.

We find, therefore, Lowell and Mailer ostensibly locked in converse. In fact, out of the thousand separate enclaves of their very separate personalities, they sensed quickly that they now shared one enclave to the hilt: their secret detestation of liberal academic parties to accompany worthy causes. Yes, their snobbery was on this mountainous face close to identical—each had a delight in exactly the other kind of party, a posh evil social affair, they even supported a similar vein of vanity (Lowell with considerably more justice) that if they were doomed to be revolutionaries, rebels, dissenters, anarchists, protesters, and general champions of one Left cause or another, they were also, in private, grands conservateurs, and if the truth be told, poor damn émigré princes. They were willing if necessary (probably) to die for the cause—one could hope the cause might finally at the end have an unexpected hint of wit, a touch of the Lord’s last grace—but wit or no, grace or grace failing, it was bitter rue to have to root up one’s occupations of the day, the week, and the weekend and trot down to Washington for idiot mass manifestations which could only drench one in the most ineradicable kind of mucked-up publicity and have for compensation nothing at this party which might be representative of some of the Devil’s better creations. So Robert Lowell and Norman Mailer feigned deep conversation. They turned their heads to one another at the empty table, ignoring the potentially acolytic drinkers at either elbow, they projected their elbows out in fact like flying buttresses or old Republicans, they exuded waves of Interruption Repellent from the posture of their backs, and concentrated on their conversation, for indeed they were the only two men of remotely similar status in the room. (Explanations about the position of Paul Goodman will follow later.)

Text from Mimi to Caroline: So I’m thinking we should have a game night—you know, play Pictionary and stuff like that? I’d love to, but I’m slammed. When were you thinking? Maybe the Saturday night before Thanksgiving? Can you spare a few hours over the weekend? I can spare a few hours, yes, that’s about it. You guys wanna come out to Sausalito? Be nice not to have to go back into the city. We can do that. I was thinking we should invite Sophia. Of course we should. And Neil. Oh boy. Trust me. There’s an entire wall of windows in Jillian’s house, Mimi. The last thing I need is someone throwing things. Trust me. Think Barry Derry sells party insurance?

A late arrival had the impression of lots of loud people unnecessarily grouped within a smoke-blue space between two mirrors gorged with reflections. Because, I suppose, Cynthia wished to be the youngest in the room, the women she used to invite, married or single, were, at the best, in their precarious forties; some of them would bring from their homes, in dark taxis, intact vestiges of good looks, which, however, they lost as the party progressed. It has always amazed me - the capacity sociable weekend revelers have of finding almost at once, by a purely empiric but very precise method, a common denominator of drunkenness, to which everybody loyally sticks before descending, all together, to the next level. The rich friendliness of the matrons was marked by tomboyish overtones, while the fixed inward look of amiably tight men was like a sacrilegious parody of pregnancy. Although some of the guests were connected in one way or another with the arts, there was no inspired talk, no wreathed, elbow-propped heads, and of course no flute girls. From some vantage point where she had been sitting in a stranded mermaid pose on the pale carpet with one or two younger fellows, Cynthia, her face varnished with a film of beaming sweat, would creep up on her knees, a proffered plate of nuts in one hand, and crisply tap with the other the athletic leg of Cochran or Corcoran, an art dealer, ensconced, on a pearl-grey sofa, between two flushed, happily disintegrating ladies. At a further stage there would come spurts of more riotous gaiety. Corcoran or Coransky would grab Cynthia or some other wandering woman by the shoulder and lead her into a corner to confront her with a grinning imbroglio of private jokes and rumors, whereupon, with a laugh and a toss of her head, he would break away. And still later there would be flurries of intersexual chumminess, jocular reconciliations, a bare fleshy arm flung around another woman's husband (he standing very upright in the midst of a swaying room), or a sudden rush of flirtatious anger, of clumsy pursuit-and the quiet half smile of Bob Wheeler picking up glasses that grew like mushrooms in the shade of chairs. ("The Vane Sisters")

The other thing, the thing that sucked to talk about, was the secret lurking worry that other people were using them. Using them for their weekend homes, their good alcohol, their big apartments, their parties, their internships, their closets, their, well, their money. Darley saw it all the time to varying degrees—guys who bought their girlfriends jewelry and laptops and paid for expensive vacations, only for them to realize the guys were essentially bribing their way into a relationship; guys who amassed crowds of hangers-on when they paid for bottle service or houses in the Hamptons. There was a difference between sharing your good fortune and being taken advantage of, and sometimes discerning the difference could break your heart.

Janitorial" All morning he drifts the spacious lawns like a gleaner, picking up this and that, the summer clouds immense and building toward afternoon, when the heat drives him under the shade of the oak trees in the quad and then along cool corridors inside to pull down last term's flyers For the chamber recital, the poetry reading, the lecture on the ethics of cloning, the dinner with some ambassador, the debate between Kant and Heidegger, the frat party, the sorority party, the kegger, the weekend Bergman festival, the Wednesday screening of Dumb and Dumber. He says hello to fine young ladies, and tries not to dwell on their halter tops, their tanned thighs, shorts up to here. At five he climbs into an old, dumpster-colored olds, lights up and heads home across the barge-ridden river in its servitude to East St. Louis, where you know this poem—glib, well-meaning, trivial-- grows tongue-tied, and cannot follow.

Little Brother, an aspiring painter, saved up all his money and went to France, to surround himself with beauty and inspiration. He lived on the cheap, painted every day, visited museums, traveled to picturesque locations, bravely spoke to everyone he met, and showed his work to anyone who would look at it. One afternoon, Little Brother struck up a conversation in a café with a group of charming young people, who turned out to be some species of fancy aristocrats. The charming young aristocrats took a liking to Little Brother and invited him to a party that weekend in a castle in the Loire Valley. They promised Little Brother that this was going to be the most fabulous party of the year. It would be attended by the rich, by the famous, and by several crowned heads of Europe. Best of all, it was to be a masquerade ball, where nobody skimped on the costumes. It was not to be missed. Dress up, they said, and join us! Excited, Little Brother worked all week on a costume that he was certain would be a showstopper. He scoured Paris for materials and held back neither on the details nor the audacity of his creation. Then he rented a car and drove to the castle, three hours from Paris. He changed into his costume in the car and ascended the castle steps. He gave his name to the butler, who found him on the guest list and politely welcomed him in. Little Brother entered the ballroom, head held high. Upon which he immediately realized his mistake. This was indeed a costume party—his new friends had not misled him there—but he had missed one detail in translation: This was a themed costume party. The theme was “a medieval court.” And Little Brother was dressed as a lobster. All around him, the wealthiest and most beautiful people of Europe were attired in gilded finery and elaborate period gowns, draped in heirloom jewels, sparkling with elegance as they waltzed to a fine orchestra. Little Brother, on the other hand, was wearing a red leotard, red tights, red ballet slippers, and giant red foam claws. Also, his face was painted red. This is the part of the story where I must tell you that Little Brother was over six feet tall and quite skinny—but with the long waving antennae on his head, he appeared even taller. He was also, of course, the only American in the room. He stood at the top of the steps for one long, ghastly moment. He almost ran away in shame. Running away in shame seemed like the most dignified response to the situation. But he didn’t run. Somehow, he found his resolve. He’d come this far, after all. He’d worked tremendously hard to make this costume, and he was proud of it. He took a deep breath and walked onto the dance floor. He reported later that it was only his experience as an aspiring artist that gave him the courage and the license to be so vulnerable and absurd. Something in life had already taught him to just put it out there, whatever “it” is. That costume was what he had made, after all, so that’s what he was bringing to the party. It was the best he had. It was all he had. So he decided to trust in himself, to trust in his costume, to trust in the circumstances. As he moved into the crowd of aristocrats, a silence fell. The dancing stopped. The orchestra stuttered to a stop. The other guests gathered around Little Brother. Finally, someone asked him what on earth he was. Little Brother bowed deeply and announced, “I am the court lobster.” Then: laughter. Not ridicule—just joy. They loved him. They loved his sweetness, his weirdness, his giant red claws, his skinny ass in his bright spandex tights. He was the trickster among them, and so he made the party. Little Brother even ended up dancing that night with the Queen of Belgium. This is how you must do it, people.

But without Emily, Greg would feel—paradoxically for such a social creature—alone. Before they met, most of Greg’s girlfriends were extroverts. He says he enjoyed those relationships, but never got to know his girlfriends well, because they were always “plotting how to be with groups of people.” He speaks of Emily with a kind of awe, as if she has access to a deeper state of being. He also describes her as “the anchor” around which his world revolves. Emily, for her part, treasures Greg’s ebullient nature; he makes her feel happy and alive. She has always been attracted to extroverts, who she says “do all the work of making conversation. For them, it’s not work at all.” The trouble is that for most of the five years they’ve been together, Greg and Emily have been having one version or another of the same fight. Greg, a music promoter with a large circle of friends, wants to host dinner parties every Friday—casual, animated get-togethers with heaping bowls of pasta and flowing bottles of wine. He’s been giving Friday-night dinners since he was a senior in college, and they’ve become a highlight of his week and a treasured piece of his identity. Emily has come to dread these weekly events. A hardworking staff attorney for an art museum and a very private person, the last thing she wants to do when she gets home from work is entertain. Her idea of a perfect start to the weekend is a quiet evening at the movies, just her and Greg. It seems an irreconcilable difference: Greg wants fifty-two dinner parties a year, Emily wants zero. Greg says that Emily should make more of an effort. He accuses her of being antisocial. “I am social,” she says. “I love you, I love my family, I love my close friends. I just don’t love dinner parties. People don’t really relate at those parties—they just socialize. You’re lucky because I devote all my energy to you. You spread yours around to everyone.” But Emily soon backs off, partly because she hates fighting, but also because she doubts herself. Maybe I am antisocial, she

YOU ARE THE BOSS. Hosting is not democratic, just like design isn’t. Structure helps good parties, like restrictions help good design. Introduce people to each other A LOT. But take your time with it. Be generous. Very generous with food, wine, and with compliments/introductions. If you have a reception before people sit, make sure there are some snacks so blood sugar level is kept high and people are happy. ALWAYS do placement. Always. Placement MUST be boy/girl/boy/girl, etc. And no, it does not matter if someone is gay. Seat people next to people who do different things but that those things might be complementary. Or make sure they have something else in common; a passion or something rare is best. And tell people what they have in common. Within each table, people should introduce themselves, but it must be short. Name, plus something they like or what they did on the weekend or maybe something that can relate to the gathering. For dessert, people can switch, but best to have it organized: tell every other person at the table to move to another seat.

was no one else there to comfort her. There was only him. The real him. She stepped forward and laid her head against his chest. Samantha: I’ll never forget the moment when Perry and Celeste walked into the trivia night. There was like this ripple across the room. Everyone just stopped and stared. 23. Isn’t this FANTASTIC!” cried Madeline to Chloe as they took their really very excellent seats in front of the giant ice rink. “You can feel the cold from the ice! Brrr! Oh! Can you hear the music? I wonder where the princesses—” Chloe had reached over and placed one hand gently over her mother’s mouth. “Shhh.” Madeline knew she was talking too much because she was feeling anxious and ever so slightly guilty. Today needed to be stupendous to make it worth the rift she’d created between herself and Renata. Eight kindergarten children, who would otherwise be attending Amabella’s party, were here watching Disney On Ice because of Madeline. Madeline looked past Chloe at Ziggy, who was nursing a giant stuffed toy on his lap. Ziggy was the reason they were here today, she reminded herself. Poor Ziggy wouldn’t have been at the party. Dear little fatherless Ziggy. Who was possibly a secret psychopathic bully . . . but still! “Are you taking care of Harry the Hippo this weekend, Ziggy?” she said brightly. Harry the Hippo was the class toy. Every weekend it went home with a different child, along with a scrapbook that had to be returned with a little story about the weekend, accompanied by photos. Ziggy nodded mutely. A child of few words. Jane leaned forward, discreetly chewing gum as always. “It’s quite stressful having Harry to stay. We have to give Harry a good time. Last weekend he went on a roller coaster— Ow!” Jane recoiled as one of the twins, who was sitting next to her and fighting his brother, elbowed her in the back of the head. “Josh!” said Celeste sharply. “Max! Just stop it!” Madeline wondered if Celeste was OK today. She looked pale and tired, with purplish shadows under her eyes, although on Celeste they looked like an artful makeup effect that everyone should try. The lights in the auditorium began to dim, and then went to black. Chloe clutched Madeline’s arm. The music began to pound, so loud that Madeline could feel the vibrations. The ice rink filled with an

Saying goodbye to everyone, I picked up my bag and began walking away as a deep husky voice called my name. I didn’t stop walking, but looked over my shoulder in time to see Brandon walking around the table toward me, and Chase holding the brunette’s head away from his as he watched us, she just continued onto his neck. Falling into step with me, he held out a hand, “We haven’t met yet, I’m Brandon Taylor.” Dear Lord that voice could warm me on the coldest day of the year. “Harper Jackson, nice to meet you.” He smiled as he held the door open for me, “You too. You seem to know the rest of the guys pretty well though we’re just meeting, they said you’re Bree’s roommate?” “Uh, yeah. I am, but I don’t really know them well. I’ve only talked to them for a total of about ten minutes before today.” “Really?” The corners of his mouth twitched up, “You seem to make quite an impression in a short amount of time then.” “Oh I definitely made an impression with them.” I muttered. He looked at me quizzically but I shook my head so he wouldn’t push it. We stopped walking when we got to the path that would take me to the dorms and him to his next class. I turned towards him and shamelessly took in his worn jeans resting low on his narrow hips and fitted black shirt before going back to his face. I hadn’t realized how tall he was when we were walking out, but he had to be at least a foot taller than me. His height and muscled body made me want to curl up in his arms, it looked like I’d fit perfectly there. I nervously bit my bottom lip while I watched his cloudy eyes slowly take in my small frame. It didn’t feel like the guys at the party, looking at me like I was something to eat. His eyes made me feel beautiful, and it thrilled me that they were on me. Thrilled me that they were on me? Get a grip Harper you just met him two seconds ago. “Come on PG, let’s go.” Chase grabbed my arm and started dragging me away. “Chase! Stop!” I yanked my arm out and shot him a dirty look. “What is your problem?” “I’m taking you and Bree to the house, and you need to pack for the weekend so let’s go.” He grabbed for me again but I dodged his hand. “The weekend, what?” “You’re staying with me, go pack.” I narrowed my eyes and started to turn towards Brandon, “Fine, hold on.” “Harper.” “Go away Chase, I’ll meet you in the room in a minute. Go find Bree.” He moved to stand closer behind me so I just sighed and gave Brandon a lame smile. “Sorry, apparently I have to go. I’ll see you tonight?” I don’t know why I asked, he actually lived there. A sexy smile lit up his face as his hand reached out to quickly brush against my arm, “See you then.” With a hard nod directed towards Chase, he turned and walked away.

The Magic of Goulash “The trip down the aisle [on a bus or train, during his travels] was where all the stakes were. Because as I’m going down that aisle, I’ve got to look for an empty seat next to somebody who seems interesting. Somebody I can trust, somebody who might be able to trust me. The stakes are high because I know that at the end of that ride, wherever it was going, that person had to invite me to their home. Because I had no money to spend night after night in a hotel.” The clincher question Cal used to get free room and board around Europe as a poor traveler was: “Can you tell me: How do you make the perfect goulash?” He would purposefully sit down next to grandmas, who would then pour out their souls. After a few minutes of passionate pantomiming, people would come from around the train to help translate, no matter the country. Cal never had to worry about where he was spending the night. “During [one dinner party a grandma threw in Hungary to feed me goulash,] one of the neighbors says, ‘Have you ever tasted apricot brandy? Because nobody makes apricot brandy like my father. He lives a half an hour away. You’ve got to come to taste the apricot brandy.’ That weekend, we’re tasting apricot brandy, having a great time. Another party starts, another neighbor comes over to me. ‘Have you ever been to Kiskunhalas, the paprika capital of the world? You cannot leave Hungary without visiting Kiskunhalas.’ Now we’re off to Kiskunhalas. I’m telling you, a single question about goulash could get me 6 weeks of lodging and meals, and that’s how I got passed around the world. 10 years. 10 years.

The girl circled in my arm was clean and fresh, and her sleeping breath was humid against the base of my throat. Something stirred in me in response to her helplessness, and yet at the same time I resented her. I had seen too damn many of these brisk and shining girls, so lovely, so gracious, and so inflexibly ambitious. They had counted their stock in trade and burnished it and spread it right out there on the counter. It was all yours for the asking. All you had to do was give her all the rest of your life, and come through with the backyard pool, cookouts, Eames chairs, mortgage, picture windows, two cars, and all the rest of the setting they required for themselves. These gorgeous girls, with steel behind their eyes, were the highest paid whores in the history of the world. All they offered was their poised, half-educated selves, one hundred and twenty pounds of healthy, unblemished, arrogant meat, in return for the eventual occupational ulcer, the suburban coronary. Nor did they bother to sweeten the bargain with their virginity. Before you could, in your hypnoid state, slip the ring on her imperious finger, that old-fashioned prize was long gone, and even its departure celebrated many times, on house parties and ski weekends, in becalmed sailboats and on cruise ships. This acknowledged and excused promiscuity was, in fact, to her advantage. Having learned her way through the jungly province of sex, she was less likely to be bedazzled by body hunger to the extent that she might make a bad match with an unpromising young man. Her decks were efficiently cleared, guns rolled out, fuses alight, cannonballs stacked, all sails set. She stood on the bridge, braced and ready, scanning the horizon with eyes as cold as winter pebbles. One

You see Matt and Anthony every week. You see everyone every week.” “Not everyone, Nick,” his mother said pointedly. Then her voice changed and turned warmer. “Well, except for this upcoming weekend.” Nick paused at this. It could’ve been a trap. Perhaps his mother suspected something was up with her birthday and was fishing for information. Although it was surprising that she’d come to him—she usually went after Anthony, who had the secret-keeping skills of a four-year-old. “Why? What’s happening this weekend?” he asked nonchalantly. “Oh, nothing much. I just heard something about a sixtieth birthday party your father and you boys are planning for me.” Fucking Anthony. “And don’t go blaming Anthony,” his mother said, quick to protect her youngest. “I’d already heard about it from your aunt Donna before he slipped.” Nick knew what her next question would be before the words left her mouth. “So? Are you bringing a date?” she asked. “Sorry, Ma. It’ll just be me.” “There’s a surprise.” He pulled into the driveway that led to the parking garage of his condo building. “Just a warning, I’m about to pull into the garage—I might lose you.” “How convenient,” his mother said. “Because I had a really nice lecture planned for you.” “Let me guess the highlights: it involved me needing to focus on something other than work, and you dying heartbroken and miserable without grandchildren. Am I close?” “Not bad. But I’ll save the rest of the lecture for Sunday. There’s going to be a lot of gesturing on my part, and the phone doesn’t quite capture the spirit.” Nick smiled. “Shockingly, I’m looking forward to it. I’ll see you Sunday, Ma.” Her voice softened. “I know how busy you are, Nick. It means a lot to me that you’re coming home.” He knew it did. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

She picked through the bits of jewelry, the stud earrings and ruby ring that belonged to their mother, Shirin. There was something almost meditative about this ritual of hers, combing through the photos and small keepsakes, even if she touched on some painful memories. It was as if her fingers were actually tracing the milestones each piece represented. Her hand closed on a smooth, round object, something resembling a marble egg. It was a miniature bar of lotus soap, still in its wrapper, bought on their last trip to the 'hammam'. The public bathhouse had been a favorite spot of theirs, a place the three of them liked to go to on Thursdays, the day before the Iranian weekend. Marjan held the soap to her nose. She took a deep breath, inhaling the downy scent of mornings spent washing and scrubbing with rosewater and lotus products. All at once she heard the laughter once again, the giggles of women making the bathing ritual a party more than anything else. The 'hammam' they had attended those last years in Iran was situated near their apartment in central Tehran. Although not as palatial as the turquoise and golden-domed bathhouse of their childhood, it was still a grand building of hot pools and steamy balconies, a place of gossip and laughter. The women of the neighborhood would gather there weekly to untangle their long hair with tortoiseshell combs and lotus powder, a silky conditioner that left locks gleaming like onyx uncovered. For pocket change, a 'dalak' could be hired by the hour. These bathhouse attendants, matronly and humorous for all their years spent whispering local chatter, would scrub at tired limbs with loofahs and mitts of woven Caspian seaweed. Massages and palm readings accompanied platters of watermelon and hot jasmine tea, the afternoons whiled away with naps and dips in the perfumed aqueducts regulated according to their hot and cold properties.

Creating “Correct” Children in the Classroom One of the most popular discipline programs in American schools is called Assertive Discipline. It teaches teachers to inflict the old “obey or suffer” method of control on students. Here you disguise the threat of punishment by calling it a choice the child is making. As in, “You have a choice, you can either finish your homework or miss the outing this weekend.” Then when the child chooses to try to protect his dignity against this form of terrorism, by refusing to do his homework, you tell him he has chosen his logical, natural consequence of being excluded from the outing. Putting it this way helps the parent or teacher mitigate against the bad feelings and guilt that would otherwise arise to tell the adult that they are operating outside the principles of compassionate relating. This insidious method is even worse than outand-out punishing, where you can at least rebel against your punisher. The use of this mind game teaches the child the false, crazy-making belief that they wanted something bad or painful to happen to them. These programs also have the stated intention of getting the child to be angry with himself for making a poor choice. In this smoke and mirrors game, the children are “causing” everything to happen and the teachers are the puppets of the children’s choices. The only ones who are not taking responsibility for their actions are the adults. Another popular coercive strategy is to use “peer pressure” to create compliance. For instance, a teacher tells her class that if anyone misbehaves then they all won’t get their pizza party. What a great way to turn children against each other. All this is done to help (translation: compel) children to behave themselves. But of course they are not behaving themselves: they are being “behaved” by the adults. Well-meaning teachers and parents try to teach children to be motivated (translation: do boring or aversive stuff without questioning why), responsible (translation: thoughtless conformity to the house rules) people. When surveys are conducted in which fourth-graders are asked what being good means, over 90% answer “being quiet.” And when teachers are asked what happens in a successful classroom, the answer is, “the teacher is able to keep the students on task” (translation: in line, doing what they are told). Consulting firms measuring teacher competence consider this a major criterion of teacher effectiveness. In other words if the students are quietly doing what they were told the teacher is evaluated as good. However my understanding of ‘real learning’ with twenty to forty children is that it is quite naturally a bit noisy and messy. Otherwise children are just playing a nice game of school, based on indoctrination and little integrated retained education. Both punishments and rewards foster a preoccupation with a narrow egocentric self-interest that undermines good values. All little Johnny is thinking about is “How much will you give me if I do X? How can I avoid getting punished if I do Y? What do they want me to do and what happens to me if I don’t do it?” Instead we could teach him to ask, “What kind of person do I want to be and what kind of community do I want to help make?” And Mom is thinking “You didn’t do what I wanted, so now I’m going to make something unpleasant happen to you, for your own good to help you fit into our (dominance/submission based) society.” This contributes to a culture of coercion and prevents a community of compassion. And as we are learning on the global level with our war on terrorism, as you use your energy and resources to punish people you run out of energy and resources to protect people. And even if children look well-behaved, they are not behaving themselves They are being behaved by controlling parents and teachers.

Earth (481-640) People with this personality type are likely to become successful leaders. You tend to be more disciplined and careful at planning tasks. Loyalty and trust are important equations in your relationships hence they prove to be your strength in hard times. You respect others and keep people united which makes people flourish under your leadership. Earth signs are efficient decision makers hence always remain firm on the step they took. Fire: (400-300) Fire people are smart enthusiastic and energetic to be around. You are very competitive and curious, and more often very passionate about your goals and desires. Trusting people with a job or any important personal task is hard hence making emotional connections are difficult for you. making friends or getting a lover, your life is full of drama and there’s always a lot happening around you. You are intelligent and always find new ways to do things Water (160-320) Water people are kind and empathetic but sensitive. And you sometimes tend to become people pleasers. being quite impulsive and always in a hurry, you make decisions haphazardly. Water people are shy and introverted while partying around with friends on a weekend would be the last thing you want to do. You dread small talk and expressing yourself to a group of people is quite a demanding job. People feel relaxed in your presence you bring out the best in them. Decision-making can be demanding and you are sometimes regretful of overthinking and hence not capable of finding a firm decision. Air: (0-160) You have quite an entrancing personality. People are naturally drawn towards you and find your company comforting and friendly. Air signs are naturally smart and quite efficient in their workplace. While using your challenges and opportunities wisely you are likely to have great careers. you are good at advising your colleagues. But being bound in a relationship sometimes doesn’t seem to help you, rather you respect open free yet intimate emotional connections. Air people who are artistic and creative always look at things from a unique lens. So now you know your element.

Betsy didn’t want to be at the party any more than Cole did. She’d met the birthday girl in a spin class a couple of years earlier and had been declining her Evites ever since. In an effort to meet new people, however, this time Betsy replied “Yes.” She took a cab to the party, wondering why she was going at all. When Betsy met Cole there was a spark, but she was ambivalent. Cole was clearly smart and well educated, but he didn’t seem to be doing much about it. They had some nice dates, which seemed promising. Then, after sleeping over one night and watching Cole wake up at eleven a.m. and grab his skateboard, Betsy felt less bullish. She didn’t want to help another boyfriend grow up. What Betsy didn’t know was that, ever since he’d started spending time with her, Cole had regained some of his old drive. He saw the way she wanted to work on her sculptures even on the weekend, how she and her friends loved to get together to talk about their projects and their plans. As a result, Cole started to think more aspirationally. He eyed a posting for a good tech job at a high-profile start-up, but he felt his résumé was now too shabby to apply. As luck would have it—and it is often luck—Cole remembered that an old friend from high school, someone he bumped into about once every year or two, worked at the start-up. He got in touch, and this friend put in a good word to HR. After a handful of interviews with different people in the company, Cole was offered the position. The hiring manager told Cole he had been chosen for three reasons: His engineering degree suggested he knew how to work hard on technical projects, his personality seemed like a good fit for the team, and the twentysomething who vouched for him was well liked in the company. The rest, the manager said, Cole could learn on the job. This one break radically altered Cole’s career path. He learned software development at a dot-com on the leading edge. A few years later, he moved over and up as a director of development at another start-up because, by then, the identity capital he’d gained could speak for itself. Nearly ten years later, Cole and Betsy are married. She runs a gallery co-op. He’s a CIO. They have a happy life and gladly give much of the credit to Cole’s friend from high school and to the woman with the Evites.

If you’re still not sure where you fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum, you can assess yourself here. Answer each question “true” or “false,” choosing the answer that applies to you more often than not.* ______ I prefer one-on-one conversations to group activities. ______ I often prefer to express myself in writing. ______ I enjoy solitude. ______ I seem to care less than my peers about wealth, fame, and status. ______ I dislike small talk, but I enjoy talking in depth about topics that matter to me. ______ People tell me that I’m a good listener. ______ I’m not a big risk-taker. ______ I enjoy work that allows me to “dive in” with few interruptions. ______ I like to celebrate birthdays on a small scale, with only one or two close friends or family members. ______ People describe me as “soft-spoken” or “mellow.” ______ I prefer not to show or discuss my work with others until it’s finished. ______ I dislike conflict. ______ I do my best work on my own. ______ I tend to think before I speak. ______ I feel drained after being out and about, even if I’ve enjoyed myself. ______ I often let calls go through to voice mail. ______ If I had to choose, I’d prefer a weekend with absolutely nothing to do to one with too many things scheduled. ______ I don’t enjoy multitasking. ______ I can concentrate easily. ______ In classroom situations, I prefer lectures to seminars. The more often you answered “true,” the more introverted you probably are. If you found yourself with a roughly equal number of “true” and “false” answers, then you may be an ambivert—yes, there really is such a word. But even if you answered every single question as an introvert or extrovert, that doesn’t mean that your behavior is predictable across all circumstances. We can’t say that every introvert is a bookworm or every extrovert wears lampshades at parties any more than we can say that every woman is a natural consensus-builder and every man loves contact sports. As Jung felicitously put it, “There is no such thing as a pure extrovert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum.” This is partly because we are all gloriously complex individuals, but also because there are so many different kinds of introverts and extroverts. Introversion and extroversion interact with our other personality traits and personal histories, producing wildly different kinds of people. So

Between 2003 and 2008, Iceland’s three main banks, Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki, borrowed over $140 billion, a figure equal to ten times the country’s GDP, dwarfing its central bank’s $2.5 billion reserves. A handful of entrepreneurs, egged on by their then government, embarked on an unprecedented international spending binge, buying everything from Danish department stores to West Ham Football Club, while a sizeable proportion of the rest of the adult population enthusiastically embraced the kind of cockamamie financial strategies usually only mooted in Nigerian spam emails – taking out loans in Japanese Yen, for example, or mortgaging their houses in Swiss francs. One minute the Icelanders were up to their waists in fish guts, the next they they were weighing up the options lists on their new Porsche Cayennes. The tales of un-Nordic excess are legion: Elton John was flown in to sing one song at a birthday party; private jets were booked like they were taxis; people thought nothing of spending £5,000 on bottles of single malt whisky, or £100,000 on hunting weekends in the English countryside. The chief executive of the London arm of Kaupthing hired the Natural History Museum for a party, with Tom Jones providing the entertainment, and, by all accounts, Reykjavik’s actual snow was augmented by a blizzard of the Colombian variety. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in late 2008 exposed Iceland’s debts which, at one point, were said to be around 850 per cent of GDP (compared with the US’s 350 per cent), and set off a chain reaction which resulted in the krona plummeting to almost half its value. By this stage Iceland’s banks were lending money to their own shareholders so that they could buy shares in . . . those very same Icelandic banks. I am no Paul Krugman, but even I can see that this was hardly a sustainable business model. The government didn’t have the money to cover its banks’ debts. It was forced to withdraw the krona from currency markets and accept loans totalling £4 billion from the IMF, and from other countries. Even the little Faroe Islands forked out £33 million, which must have been especially humiliating for the Icelanders. Interest rates peaked at 18 per cent. The stock market dropped 77 per cent; inflation hit 20 per cent; and the krona dropped 80 per cent. Depending who you listen to, the country’s total debt ended up somewhere between £13 billion and £63 billion, or, to put it another way, anything from £38,000 to £210,000 for each and every Icelander.

So,” I cleared my throat, unable to tolerate his moans of pleasure and praise any longer, “uh, what are your plans for the weekend?” “The weekend?” He sounded a bit dazed. “Yes. This weekend. What do you have planned? Planning on busting up any parties?” I asked lightly, not wanting him to know that I was unaccountably breathless. I moved to his other knee and discarded the towel. “Ha. No. Not unless those wankers down the hall give me a reason to.” Removing his arms from his face, Bryan’s voice was thick, gravelly as he responded, “I, uh, have some furniture to assemble.” “Really?” Surprised, I stilled and stared at the line of his jaw. The creases around his mouth—when he held perfectly still—made him look mature and distinguished. Actually, they made him even more classically handsome, if that was even possible. “Yes. Really. Two IKEA bookshelves.” I slid my hands lower, behind his ankle, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, I prompted, “That’s it?” “No.” He sighed, hesitated, then added, “I need to stop by the hardware store. The tap in my bathroom is leaking and one of the drawer handles in the kitchen is missing a screw. I just repainted the guest room, so I have to take the excess paint cans to the chemical disposal place; it’s only open on Saturdays before noon. And then I promised my mam I’d take her to dinner.” My mouth parted slightly because the oddest thing happened as he rattled off his list of chores. It turned me on. Even more so than running my palms over his luscious legs. That’s right. His list of adult tasks made my heart flutter. I rolled my lips between my teeth, not wanting to blurt that I also needed to go to the hardware store over the weekend. As a treat to myself, I was planning to organize Patrick’s closet and wanted to install shelves above the clothes rack. Truly, Sean’s penchant for buying my son designer suits and ties was completely out of hand. Without some reorganization, I would run out of space. That’s right. Organizing closets was something I loved to do. I couldn’t get enough of those home and garden shows, especially Tiny Houses, because I adored clever uses for small spaces. I was just freaky enough to admit my passion for storage and organization. But back to Bryan and his moans of pleasure, adult chores, and luscious legs. I would not think about Bryan Leech adulting. I would not think about him walking into the hardware store in his sensible shoes and plain gray T-shirt—that would of course pull tightly over his impressive pectoral muscles—and then peruse the aisles for . . . a screw. I. Would. Not. Ignoring the spark of kinship, I set to work on his knee, again counting to distract myself. It worked until he volunteered, “I’d like to install some shelves in my closet, but that’ll have to wait until next weekend. Honestly, I’ve been putting it off. I’d do just about anything to get someone to help me organize my closet.” He chuckled. I’d like to organize your closet. I fought a groan, biting my lip as I removed my hands, turned from his body, and rinsed them under the faucet. “We’re, uh, finished for today.

He stared at it in utter disbelief while his secretary, Peters, who’d only been with him for a fortnight, muttered a silent prayer of gratitude for the break and continued scribbling as fast as he could, trying futilely to catch up with his employer’s dictation. “This,” said Ian curtly, “was sent to me either by mistake or as a joke. In either case, it’s in excruciatingly bad taste.” A memory of Elizabeth Cameron flickered across Ian’s mind-a mercenary, shallow litter flirt with a face and body that had drugged his mind. She’d been betrothed to a viscount when he’d met her. Obviously she hadn’t married her viscount-no doubt she’d jilted him in favor of someone with even better prospects. The English nobility, as he well knew, married only for prestige and money, then looked elsewhere for sexual fulfillment. Evidently Elizabeth Cameron’s relatives were putting her back on the marriage block. If so, they must be damned eager to unload her if they were willing to forsake a title for Ian’s money…That line of conjecture seemed so unlikely that Ian dismissed it. This note was obviously a stupid prank, perpetrated, no doubt, by someone who remembered the gossip that had exploded over that weekend house party-someone who thought he’d find the note amusing. Completely dismissing the prankster and Elizabeth Cameron from his mind, Ian glanced at his harassed secretary who was frantically scribbling away. “No reply is necessary,” he said. As he spoke he flipped the message across his desk toward his secretary, but the white parchment slid across the polished oak and floated to the floor. Peters made an awkward dive to catch it, but as he lurched sideways all the other correspondence that went with his dictation slid off his lap onto the floor. “I-I’m sorry, sir,” he stammered, leaping up and trying to collect the dozens of pieces of paper he’d scattered on the carpet. “Extremely sorry, Mr. Thornton,” he added, frantically snatching up contracts, invitations and letters and shoving them into a disorderly pile. His employer appeared not to hear him. He was already rapping out more instructions and passing the corresponding invitations and letters across the desk. “Decline the first three, accept the fourth, decline the fifth. Send my condolences on this one. On this one, explain that I’m going to be in Scotland, and send an invitation to join me there, along with directions to the cottage.” Clutching the papers to his chest, Peters poked his face up on the opposite side of the desk. “Yes, Mr. Thornton!” he said, trying to sound confident. But it was hard to be confident when one was on one’s knees. Harder still when one wasn’t entirely certain which instructions of the morning went with which invitation or piece of correspondence. Ian Thornton spent the rest of the afternoon closeted with Peters, heaping more dictation on the inundated clerk. He spent the evening with the Earl of Melbourne, his future father-in-law, discussing the earl’s daughter and himself. Peters spent part of his evening trying to learn from the butler which invitations his employer was likely to accept or reject.

Isn’t this the weekend of Xander Eckhart’s party?” “Yes.” Jordan held her breath in a silent plea. Don’t ask if I’m bringing anyone. Don’t ask if I’m bringing anyone. “So are you bringing anyone?” Melinda asked. Foiled. Having realized there was a distinct possibility the subject would come up, Jordan had spent some time running through potential answers to this very question. She had decided that being casual was the best approach. “Oh, there’s this guy I met a few days ago, and I was thinking about asking him.” She shrugged. “Or maybe I’ll just go by myself, who knows.” Melinda put down her forkful of gnocchi, zoning in on this like a heat-seeking missile to its target. “What guy you met a few days ago? And why is this the first we’re hearing of him?” “Because I just met him a few days ago.” Corinne rubbed her hands together, eager for the details. “So? Tell us. How’d you meet him?” “What does he do?” Melinda asked. “Nice, Melinda. You’re so shallow.” Corinne turned back to Jordan. “Is he hot?” Of course, Jordan had known there would be questions. The three of them had been friends since college and still saw each other regularly despite busy schedules, and this was what they did. Before Corinne had gotten married, they talked about her now-husband, Charles. The same was true of Melinda and her soon-to-be-fiancé, Pete. So Jordan knew that she, in turn, was expected to give up the goods in similar circumstances. But she also knew that she really didn’t want to lie to her friends. With that in mind, she’d come up with a backup plan in the event the conversation went this way. Having no choice, she resorted to the strategy she had used in sticky situations ever since she was five years old, when she’d set her Western Barbie’s hair on fire while trying to give her a suntan on the family-room lamp. Blame it on Kyle. I’d like to thank the Academy . . . “Sure, I’ll tell you all about this new guy. We met the other day and he’s . . . um . . .” She paused, then ran her hands through her hair and exhaled dramatically. “Sorry. Do you mind if we talk about this later? After seeing Kyle today with the bruise on his face, I feel guilty rattling on about Xander’s party. Like I’m not taking my brother’s incarceration seriously enough.” She bit her lip, feeling guilty about the lie. So sorry, girls. But this has to stay my secret for now. Her diversion worked like a charm. Perhaps one of the few benefits of having a convicted felon of a brother known as the Twitter Terrorist was that she would never lack for non sequiturs in extracting herself from unwanted conversation. Corinne reached out and squeezed her hand. “No one has stood by Kyle’s side more than you, Jordan. But we understand. We can talk about this some other time. And try not to worry—Kyle can handle himself. He’s a big boy.” “Oh, he definitely is that,” Melinda said with a gleam in her eye. Jordan smiled. “Thanks, Corinne.” She turned to Melinda, thoroughly skeeved out. “And, eww—Kyle?” Melinda shrugged matter-of-factly. “To you, he’s your brother. But to the rest of the female population, he has a certain appeal. I’ll leave it at that.” “He used to fart in our Mr. Turtle pool and call it a ‘Jacuzzi.’ How’s that for appeal?” “Ah . . . the lifestyles of the rich and famous,” Corinne said with a grin. “And on that note, my secret fantasies about Kyle Rhodes now thoroughly destroyed, I move that we put a temporary hold on any further discussions related to the less fair of the sexes,” Melinda said. “I second that,” Jordan said, and the three women clinked their glasses in agreement

Thank god for Vegas. Seriously. A lobotomy wasn’t as effective as a weekend three hours of Red Bull away (from LA, not Pismo) where I wore the thinnest pinned stilettos, gambled like a sweaty degenerate mobster in black loafers, drank like Amy Winehouse and Charles Bukowski’s baby, and snorted throat-dripping lines of coke in a Hard Rock Hotel bathroom with four new best friends. I’d giddily rub off any one of those from the to-do list I wrote in eyeliner on my hotel bathroom mirror.

GEOMETRY CLASS: “Mrs. Grier gives us pop quizzes once a week. But only a total loser would spend their weekends studying for them instead of hanging out and partying. I just copy answers from Hannah Stewart. She sits in front of me and always gets straight As. Just remember not to copy her NAME on your test. I did that once, and Mrs. Grier completely FLIPPED OUT and failed me! That lady is CRAZY!!

When you’re pursuing a wide breadth of experience, there are diminishing returns to each new adventure, each new person or thing. When you’ve never left your home country, the first country you visit inspires a massive perspective shift, because you have such a narrow experience base to draw on. But when you’ve been to twenty countries, the twenty-first adds little. And when you’ve been to fifty, the fifty-first adds even less. The same goes for material possessions, money, hobbies, jobs, friends, and romantic/sexual partners—all the lame superficial values people choose for themselves. The older you get, the more experienced you get, the less significantly each new experience affects you. The first time I drank at a party was exciting. The hundredth time was fun. The five hundredth time felt like a normal weekend. And the thousandth time felt boring and unimportant.

She stopped when, on the vanity by the sink she used, she saw the glossy cream box with the frosty-blue satin bow. This was sitting on top of what looked like the white linen shirt Stellan had worn at the pool party last weekend. And both of these were beside a full mug of coffee that was resting on one of those individual coffee warmers. She moved toward it and saw there was a thick-stock notecard sitting on it embossed at the top with STELLAN PETTER LANGE. Of course the man didn’t just dash something off on a scratch pad. Always class with Stellan. She smiled before she even picked the thing up. Written on it, it said, S–Come down wearing this, darling. I want you adorably fuckable. –S

June 2: Filming of Niagara begins in Buffalo, with Marilyn playing Rose Loomis, the femme fatale murdered by her co-star, Joseph Cotten. Marilyn stays at the General Brock Hotel in Niagara Falls. Joseph Cotten arranges a cocktail party for cast and crew in his hotel room. Marilyn arrives in a terry cloth robe and drinks orange juice. When a guest observes that “Sherry Netherlands Hotel, New York” is embroidered on the robe, Marilyn replies, “Oh, that. I thought I had stolen this robe, until I paid my bill.” Cotten is amused with her and calls her a “pretty clown, beguiling and theatrically disarming.” On this occasion she is charming. On weekends Marilyn goes to New York City to be with DiMaggio.

Speaking of great apartments,” McKenna said, “are you ladies up for watching the Blue Angels at Davio and Alessandro’s annual roof deck party this weekend?

Mom! It was so awesome,” Maggy enthused. “Me and Roo had our own hurricane party. The seagulls were, like, flying backward. And the clouds are so thick, you can’t even see Big Belle.

They party all night Friday night, straight through Saturday and Saturday night, and then they sleep enough on Sunday to go to work on Monday. That's what people do when they don't have a direction or passion in their life. And then sooner or later they fuck up, get a chick pregnant, and then they try to grow up and deal with that. That's what the forgotten children of the world do. Your average suburbanite who isn't born rich or supersmart [sic]. A guy who will maybe learn a trade, but he won't like his job. He'll be angry about it. He'll get wasted to block it out, make bad decisions. And with a little bad luck, maybe even go to jail. Or you've been doing OxyContins every weekend, and so someone gives you some heroin, and at that moment it doesn't seem like that bad of an idea, so you stick a needle in your arm. One thing leads to another, and you die. It's that easy.

Every house needs a party to break it in, make it feel loved." "She's a crazy person," Luc informs me with a grin that says he wouldn't have it any other way. "But if you don't plan one, she'll plan it for you." "I'll have one, but I can't this weekend," I explain. "I'm attending a fund-raiser tomorrow and besides, I don't have any furniture other than a bed. I could still have a party with just that, but it's not a party I'd invite old married people like you to.." Luc laughs. Rose turns pink and shakes her head. "You single hockey players are the worst.

His lips were warm against hers, and she breathed in his bravery, stole his steadiness, and pressed her forehead to his.

I'm not going to pretend this isn't enjoyable, but I'm not sure if this is foreplay or if you're trying to buy fruit.

Who the fuck does she think she is? I’m Home? I AM Home? I’ll tell you what she is. She’s done. She’s fucking done. Come the end of this weekend, come the end of this party, Annie Spark is fucking history at this company . . .

She woke that morning to his nose bumping her own, wide awake as she blinked blearily.

It didn’t matter if she was bratty and over-privileged, or too naive and trusting and foolish; didn’t matter if she felt invisible in her life ninety percent of the time, positive that she could be replaced with an automaton and no one would notice, because she was seen when she was with him.

This is a big one. One of the most prominent sources of stress in peoples lives is the worry of things which MIGHT happen. We can all recall times when we have lost sleep over seemingly menial things. Will my new work colleagues like me? Will I fail my exam next week? What if bad weather ruins my garden party this weekend? The list is endless. However, continually fretting about things does us no good. It will only result in anxiety and unnecessary internal suffering, which in turn will affect our daily lives in a negative manner. Instead, and as

At weekends we went to Jewish parties, where Jewish teenagers shuffled past Jewish bouncers and drank Jewish fizzy drinks and danced to drum ’n’ bass, waiting for the drop like accountants waiting for April.

I don’t want to hear your chirping wee voices or see your precious fucking faces. Do you understand?

I have no doubt I will, but this doesn’t feel like we’re going camping, Khash. This feels like you’re either taking me to a pre-dug grave in the woods, or we’re going to impose on a woods witch, and I am surprisingly not okay with either scenario.

I would always show up on Sunday morning, looking like hell after having partied all through the weekend without sleep. When I arrived, they would prime my inebriated carcass for church and drag me with them. And I’d prime myself by taking some sort of upper. Sometimes I’d still fall asleep on the pew, but luckily, I was not the only one. After church, I would smile and strut my charm with the doting church mothers. I was so cunning about my addiction that most of them didn’t have a clue, other than the occasional rumor of an arrest, but those could easily be blamed on bad company. When I got home, I would sleep through the rest of the day and night until I finally awoke for school on Monday.

I was beginning to think there was no adequate reason for our existence. I realized that so long as the main pursuit of my life boiled down to hedonism that I was more like the hamster on the wheel than I cared to admit. As I watched the people around me chase different things, I realized I wasn’t the only one on a hamster wheel. Many college students think that partying on the weekends and filling their lives with one-night stands is the path towards satisfaction. Many adults think that education, success, luxury, vacationing and wealth are better paths. I had hoped so as well, but they were proving to be just as empty. The harder I ran towards success, the more burnt out I felt.

One family described their core value of hospitality, lived out as they cleaned the house together each Friday for the express purpose of welcoming people over the weekend. They wanted to be able to spontaneously invite others over, knowing their space was ready to receive them. All this was explained to their kids by connecting the dots between the practice of keeping house and the immense welcome of God. They talked about their apartment as a gift and a refuge, and how important it was for it to feel inviting. Hosting people was not about living some Magnolia life; it was how they loved their neighbors. Thus, Friday night cleanup was a faith practice. One family used the tradition of a summer road trip to visit relatives as a means to support being who God uniquely made each of them to be. Each family member got to design the itinerary for one day of the trip. On that day, everyone else went along with that person’s choices for restaurants and an activity. They talked about the wonder of God’s image in each person and how this was a fun way to see each member of the family just as God made them to be. Thus, a family trip was a faith ritual. What about your family? What unique characteristics need to be accounted for as you craft a vision for faith? • Who makes up your family? List the members. You may share a living space with them or not, live in the same town or not, be relationally close or not. • Next to each person on the list, jot down a few distinguishing key traits of that person. What are they like? What are they interested in? • What are some of your family’s strengths and loves as a group? Do you love a good party? Cheer for a certain team? Love a particular place or meal? • What are some of your family’s unique challenges right now? Do you have a child who doesn’t “fit the mold,” for whatever reason? Are finances tight? Have any of the relationships been strained or broken? • List anything else that feels important to you about who your family is and what they are like. What other traits make you, you?

You should come with me to a party this weekend." I like the way she says it. Like an answer to our family trauma. It's not a question. "For the charade?" I ask in an exaggerated British accent. But she surprises me. "No.Because it's fun.

. The Itinerary Friday 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.: Arrivals 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.: Cocktail hour/hors d’oeuvres 7:00 p.m.: Dinner on the deck Saturday 8:00 a.m.: Yoga by the pool/continental breakfast 10:00 a.m. to noon: Shopping in town Noon to 5:00 p.m.: Beach, lunch, pool 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.: Get ready for dinner; cocktails and snacks 7:30 p.m.: Dinner at Nautilus (suggested colors: black and/or white) 10:00 p.m.: Maxxtone at the Chicken Box! Sunday Free morning, continental breakfast Noon: Lunch at Galley Beach (suggested colors: hot pink or orange) 2:00 p.m.: Sail aboard Endeavor 7:00 p.m.: Pizza party 8:30 p.m.: Ice cream truck and fireworks on the beach Monday Departures

It started as a mere village, so several of its early inhabitants have written, and in some respects it has remained one to this day. ‘The atmosphere of Hollywood both resembles that of a village and differs from it,’ wrote the anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker after spending a year there in the late 1940s: There is the same extroverted cordiality, but more stress on status as determined by income and power… As in villages, the same people are at the same parties, the same restaurants, the same clubs and the same week-end resorts. But again there is more emphasis on financial status. With rare exceptions, the people at a party are all in the same income bracket, and there is very little association with private people. The stimulus of contact with those from other fields of endeavour,

When we talked about mushrooms, to my delight, I learned that Duncan saw psychedelics as a tool, not just a party drug, and he told me that most if not all religions have ties leading back to hallucinogenic plants. While some people might be spending their weekends drinking beer and going to escape rooms, Duncan was using mushrooms or LSD to break out of the escape room you and I call reality. He was regularly flying his kite into a black hole, yanking it back, and collecting what had stuck to it, using his podcast to share what he learned.

Here are the six Revenue Dials you can use: Average order value: Increase the amount someone purchases. Frequency: Increase how often someone will buy your service. Price point: Increase or decrease your price point to affect total sales. Customer type: Approach a more lucrative/wealthier customer segment. Product line: Add additional products to make the business more attractive to start. Add-on services: If you’re selling a product like cookies, can you offer a service like setting up birthday parties or cooking at the person’s home?

Text from Mimi to Caroline: So I’m thinking we should have a game night—you know, play Pictionary and stuff like that? I’d love to, but I’m slammed. When were you thinking? Maybe the Saturday night before Thanksgiving? Can you spare a few hours over the weekend? I can spare a few hours, yes, that’s about it. You guys wanna come out to Sausalito? Be nice not to have to go back into the city. We can do that. I was thinking we should invite Sophia. Of course we should. And Neil. Oh boy. Trust me. There’s an entire wall of windows in Jillian’s house, Mimi. The last thing I need is someone throwing things. Trust me. Think Barry Derry sells party insurance?

Guy between boyfriends #6 and #7 Paul Diaz, Twenty-Something He was in her watercolor class, so cute and the sweet kind of shy. They obviously clicked, the attraction thrilling between them, inspiring her to relish the infatuation freshman-style and write his name in her notebook in curvy, flowery script. She gave him openings but guessed he was too timid to ask her out. The day after finals, she ran into him at the deli on campus and thought she had nothing to lose. “My work is having this fancy dinner party next weekend, the food’s supposed to be great. Would you like to go with me?” “Oh, uh, maybe, I’ll have to check,” he said. Then, “What was your name again?” There’s always something to lose.

As you get past the first few weeks of your travel experience however, you’ll discover that partying on the road is different from partying at home. At home, partying is a way of celebrating the weekend or taking a pause from the workaday world. On the road, every moment is a weekend, every day a break from the workaday world. Thus, falling into a nightly ritual of partying - as can easily happen in traveler hangouts anywhere on the planet - is a sure way to overlook the subtlety of places, stunt your creativity, and trap yourself in the patterns of home. Granted, you can have plenty of fun in the process; but if you travel the world merely to indulge in the same kinds of diversions you enjoy at home, you’ll end up selling your experience short.

Primer of Love [Lesson 50] There will be trouble if the cobbler starts making pies. ~ Russian Proverb Lesson 50) Don't give or take advice about something you don't know about -- consult the experts. If you're having a serious problem in your relationship don't only consult friends -- they are not disinterested parties and will only reaffirm your misgivings -- after all, what are friends for -- sounding boards to bounce our premature conclusions off of. Go to the experts -- Meinecke Mufflers. Seriously, avoid divorce lawyers -- their sole job is to exacerbate things between you so they can milk you until you moo. I mean therapists, marriage counselors, social workers and clergymen. If you're anti-let's-talk-about-it, i.e., any man, then start by taking some new age intimacy workshop -- even if you have to fly to Taos for the weekend. Even if you break up you'll wind up with some cool turquoise jewelry and a banded agate Bola tie to wear at court.

You know what you were and it wasn’t a job.” His words taunted me, offering a glimmer of hope. Yet, his words on the driveway less than two months ago lingered in my thoughts. “Why are you bothering me?” “You’re not to go around Mac again. Do you understand?” “I don’t have to listen to you.” Judd narrowed his eyes at me. “Fine. I’ll tell him to stay away from you. He’ll listen if he wants to keep both eyes.” “Whatever. He’s one guy and the college is full of them. Bailey and I are going to a frat party this weekend. Can’t take all of those guys’ eyes.” “Is that a challenge?” “You got me here safe,” I said, trying to look away, but unable to. “You did your job and I’m sure you got paid. What more do you want?” Judd glanced at approaching Harleys then focused on me. When he erased the space between us again, I shivered at the feel of his breath on my cheek. “You know what I want.” “To fuck me because I’m hot.” Judd stared in my eyes and I saw the walls come down. Even staring into those pained baby blues, I remembered how coldly he discarded me. Over a month passed with no word from him. Yet, one guy sniffed around me and Judd was suddenly interested. “Is your birthday present to me to make me a woman?” I whispered, holding his gaze. “You have to know I’m not a virgin and you’d do nothing someone hasn’t done before. There’s no prize between my legs. Maybe you outta stop threatening random men and go find yourself a real woman.” Judd opened his mouth to speak until he heard Cooper’s voice from inside the house. When the arriving guests called back to their boss, Judd stepped away from me. Sighing, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his brown leather jacket. “I see a prize when I look at you,” he said softly as he walked past, “but it’s not between your legs.” He pressed a little wrapped box into my hand. “Happy birthday, angel.” Appearing on the porch, Cooper lost his smile when he saw Judd and me. The men gave each other a little nod before Judd stepped off the porch and past the men who also did their male hello gestures. The men disappeared inside, but Cooper remained next to me as I watched Judd drive away on a black Harley.

Did you remember my tennis-themed Halloween party this weekend? Yes. Not really, no. Where is it again? My house. Well, my dad's house. Should I feel bad for hosting it while he's out of town? Not when he still owes you for a lifetime of disappointment.

What about after? Getting back through the lobby, I mean. Assuming you’ll need to leave at some point. For the bachelorette party, if nothing else.” “That’s not until the weekend.” He grinned. “Your point being?” “You know,” she said, tipping up on her toes and kissing his cheek, “I like it when you do the thinking.” “Well, I was going to mention that, but--” She pinched his butt, making him laugh. “Careful or I’ll swing you up and carry you up to my room over my shoulder.” Kerry spluttered a laugh, then said, “You know, it’s almost worth doing, just to blow everyone’s minds.” He pulled her closer. “Don’t tempt me.” She batted her lashes again. “But I thought you liked it when I tempted you.” Now he slid his hand behind her and gave her a little pinch, making her skip a little step but laugh at the same time. “I guess I had that coming.” “There’s a lot I’d like to do that has coming in the description.” “Okay, okay, so assuming I will have to leave your pirate’s lair at some point, then yes, how to do that without being the front-page story of the gossip gazette.” She looked up at him, her expression serious. “I could always come down the ramp carrying a box of tiddledywinks. Then no one would suspect for sure.” “A real funny one, you are,” he said dryly. “I was revisiting the whole black spandex cat burglar idea. Maybe you could sneak out under cover of darkness, shimmy down a rope from my window.” “Okay, you’ve given that particular scenario way too much thought.” They were still laughing when they reached the end of the pier.

I went to this party for Francis Wheen’s book [on Marx]. I went and sat on a chair—at these places I can’t stand up and so I sat there and a woman came up to me—I gather from the Telegraph. It was just the day before Princess Margaret had died ... The woman said something like, “What do you think about [Princess Margaret’s death] and I said, “I don’t give a bugger about such things. I’m not giving any interview to you and she printed it. I should have been more careful. But there’s some truth in that. The bloody Sunday Times reprinted it. But Jill was very shocked by Princess Margaret—when we went down to Windsor for a weekend when they had a do [when Callaghan’s government fell]. Jack Jones was there and Princess Margaret came out and said, “Who is Jack Jones?” He was the most prominent labour union leader in the country. She didn’t say, “Can you tell me who is Jack Jones?” Dreadful, you see. But I shouldn’t have said that.

Sophie gazed wistfully at their cutoff shorts and tank tops. Once upon a time she, too, had lived in grunge wear. She didn’t miss the clothes so much as that time in her life, when she’d had nothing more to do than go to keg parties on weekends and cut class to hang out with her boyfriend. Now both those pursuits seemed worse than trivial—they seemed wasteful. How could a few short years make such a difference in her outlook? She

again, don’t you?  God, that’s irritating.  Anyways, Matt and I are hosting a party this weekend and you have to come.  Dillon will be there, he

H.L. Mencken once said that Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having a good time. As she looked down at her dead child, Mary Beth realized that the unbearable sense of loss she felt was tempered by gratitude and a kind of relief. There would be no more boyfriends now, no more weekend parties. Ruby would remain pure forever, and for that her mother was deeply grateful. Catholicism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be having a good time . . . with your daughter.

She didn’t really fuck with Quincy’s mom anyway, but with Madison coming to New York on the weekends and being that it was summer time, Chanel asked Quincy’s mom to watch Madison for a few hours while she set up an all-white party.

During the weekend she drove to nearby Cowdray Park to watch the Prince play polo for his team, Les Diables Bleus. At the end of the game the small house party trooped back to Petworth for a barbecue in the grounds of the de Pass’ country home. Diana was seated next to Charles on a bale of hay and, after the usual pleasantries, the conversation moved on to Earl Mountbatten’s death and his funeral in Westminster Abbey. In a conversation which she later recalled to friends Diana told him: “You looked so sad when you walked up the aisle at the funeral. It was the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen. My heart bled for you when I watched it. I thought: “It’s wrong, you are lonely, you should be with somebody to look after you.’” Her words touched a deep chord. Charles saw Diana with new eyes. Suddenly, as she later told her friends, she found herself overwhelmed by his enthusiastic attentions. Diana was flattered, flustered and bewildered by the passion she had aroused in a man twelve years her senior.

Partying on the Malecon One of the most exciting areas in Havana is the Malecon, a protective sea wall which buffers the northern edge of the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, from the Straits of Florida. Busiest during weekends, it is the most popular place to stroll and is an unrivaled meeting spot for guys and dolls. For this activity the primary party area is the corner of the Malecon and La Rampa, and for a country as poor as Cuba the Malecon offers a reasonable form of entertainment and people watching. Although there are nightclubs in Havana, spending an evening along the Malecon, is probably the best way to enjoy the pulse of Havana and offers visitors a chance to interact with friendly locals.

Let’s get married and have kids so instead of doing fun stuff on the weekend we can go to a kid’s birthday party where everyone coughs.

PART1: To say Sean felt stressed was a huge understatement. Give him a cliff to scale or a bar brawl to break up. Hell, give him a freight train to try to outrun, anything but having to pull off being the best man for his brother Finn’s wedding—including but not limited to keeping said brother from losing his collective shit. It’s not like Sean didn’t understand. Getting married was a big deal. Okay, so he didn’t fully understand, not really, but he wanted to. He really did. And how funny was that? Sean O’Riley, younger brother, hook-up king extraordinaire, was suddenly tired of the game and found himself aching for his own forever after. “We almost there?” Finn asked him from the backseat of the vehicle Sean was driving. “Yep.” “And you double checked on our reservations?” “Yep.” “No, I’m serious, man,” Finn said. “Remember when you took me to Vegas and when we got there, every hotel was booked and we had to stay at the Magic-O motel?” “Man, a guy screws up one time . . .” “We had a stripper pole in our rooms, Sean.” Sean sighed. “Okay, but to be fair, that was back when I was still in my stupid phase. I promise you that we have reservations—no stripper poles. I even double and triple checked, just like you asked me a hundred and one times. Pru, I hope you realize you’re marrying a nag.” Pru, Finn’s fiancée, laughed from the shotgun position. “Hey, one of us has to be the nag in this relationship, and it isn’t me.” Sean held up a palm and Pru leaned over the console to give him a high-five. “Just so you know,” Sean said to Finn, “I didn’t pick this place, your woman did.” “True story,” Pru said. “The B&B’s closed to the public this entire weekend. Sean booked the whole place for our bachelor/bachelorette party weekend extravaganza.” “I superheroed this thing,” Sean said. Finn snorted and let loose of a small smile because they both knew that for most of Sean’s childhood, that’s what he’d aspired to be, a superhero—sans tights though. Tights had never been Sean’s thing, especially after suffering through them for two seasons in high school football before he’d mercifully cracked his clavicle.

So here we are, glad that the doorbell never rings, staring down at the phone in horror when it occasionally does, letting the machine answer. As writers, pursuing a solitary profession, we hole up silently in different corners of the house. Mean as it feels to admit, each of us secretly applauds when the other goes out on errands, leaving the whole house empty save one, though neither of us wants those errands to last long. On holidays it is just us. Weekends, just us. To extraverts, this might all seem so inhospitable, so isolationist. But we have gone to great lengths to make our lives this way, on purpose.

Sales is the worst paying 9-5 job on the planet. Want to know why? Because it’s not 9-5. Salespeople are asked to work nights, weekends and major holidays, and sales warriors use that time to make worth-it money, not 9-5 money. Worth-it money means you can justify missing all those happy hours with friends. It means missing weekend birthday parties or family gatherings and feeling like it’s worth it. In order to do that, you need the right programming, beliefs, emotions, motivation, and behaviors. You can’t make worth-it money until you have warrior programming and warrior beliefs