french fries in the dark. Astroglide is no substitute for ketchup.)
I’m just assuming I didn’t make any hors d’oeuvres for this party and that is why I’m biting a condom. Whore d’oeuvres, anyone?
Everyone got rip-roaring plastered within the first hour, and I couldn’t have been happier. As things tend to do, the rest of the night got a little blurry. Thank God we had all those disposable cameras lying around so we could piece together the evening. Twila Falstaff made several trips to the CVS photo counter the following week.
A few things were obvious in the light of day: My roommates each had their crushes in bed with them, my friend Stacey ended up on my couch with a UNC basketball player, and I have
no
idea how he got word of the party. And this twenty-one-year-old birthday girl was the only party guest who didn’t get laid.
Ping-Pong Tourney
I am a fiercely competitive person, which might seem surprising considering I don’t give a shit about sports. I do, however, give a major shit about
tiny
sports. If it is a miniature version of a preexisting sport, I turn into a maniac. Seriously. I could be in a sports bar during the last game of the World Cup, and I’d ask the bartender to change it to
Ellen
. But if there’s a foosball table in said sports bar? It’s
on
.
But my true tiny calling is Ping-Pong. I think I love the idea that I can get super competitive while not really having to move my body all that much. The lack of movement, however, doesn’t stop me from letting out backbreaking groans and wearing tennis skirts.
In New York, down in the West Village, there’s an amazing bar called Fat Cat that has at least twenty Ping-Pong tables and always some random a cappella gospel and doo-wop group singing in the corner. The crowd there is great: guys trying to teach their dates how to put backspin on a serve, along with no-nonsense players who never talk and wear wrist sweatbands unironically. It was the perfect spot for my Table Tennis Tourney Birthday!
I set up the tourney March Madness–style, with sixteen people competing in a bracket that we taped up on the wall of our private room, away from the heated competition of the main room and the crooning of the a cappella gospel. Not that they didn’t sound great—I love me a good bass voice—but it wasn’t exactly pumping me up. I needed less “This Little Light of Mine” and more Prodigy’s “Firestarter.”
As in any good tournament, a trophy had to be awarded to the winner. Luckily, making trophies is one of my hidden talents. Pro tip: You can essentially make anything into a trophy as long as you have gold spray paint and a hot-glue gun.
This is the one I made for the party:
A jumbo can of black beans provided the necessary heft for the base, topped with a regular-size can of garbanzo beans for the second tier. The top is a dollar-store T. rex figurine. But a keen eye can see all the details that really set this homemade trophy apart from others. Upon close examination, you’ll see that the T. rex is holding its own Ping-Pong paddle—and that, my friends, is the tiny magnifying glass from a glasses repair kit. In addition to the dino having the proper sports equipment, you will also notice that he is wearing a tiny bandanna around his neck. The very same bandanna that I was rocking that night. BOOM! It is those minute details that make a five-dollar trophy something that adults will fight over.
Competition got heated, and not just because a basement bar full of people in September is steamy as hell. We kicked off the first round of the bracket and immediately could tell that people were in it to win it. People were giving it their all—backhand serves,hard-core topspin, nonchalant nip slips for distraction. They were so hard core that I was knocked out in the first round. This is shocking for two reasons:
1. Me losing at Ping-Pong is like the 1993 Chicago Bulls not making the playoffs. *
AND FURTHERMORE:
2. Who the hell
Terra Wolf, Mercy May
Jennifer Collins Johnson
Louise Penny
Tamara Hogan
Mary Hanson
Roderick Gordon
Aimee Agresti
Dean Murray
Amy Malone
Katharine Davis