Who had the most fun at Carl's last night? Nora, because she was in another hemisphere

Seriously, I'm going to display my immense tact and not even get into it. This post exists only to inform readers that my mood did not improve over the course of the evening. That party ended before it ever began. This post isn't going to pick over the disgusting events of last evening, at best it might reference them as specific examples of symptoms. Symptoms of something which has gone seriously wrong with us, and which I intend to try and address now.

Parties at Carl's have stopped being what they were a few years ago. When I am there now I feel like I'm playing through the motions: Like I'm an actor in a long-running musical smiling and dancing on the outside with everyone else, wanting to stab out my own eyes on the inside. Perhaps I am alone, alone in some sort of mental disorder. Or perhaps things have actually changed through the years. Are we the same people we were the first time we got together at Carl's? Certainly not. Hugh Laurie would obligingly inform us that we are completely different people from a physical standpoint. Every cell, with the exception those in our brains, that experienced the first time at Carl's has died and been replaced; the blood cells involved didn't even last until the next morning. As for the brain, the cells themselves are the same but the organ is always changing.

Mentally, are we the same? Debatable, but again, I would answer no. During my 5th year I took grade 11 chemistry. It was terrible. I could certainly empathise with the behaviour of my classmates, a number of them were tolerable or better; the behaviour wasn't alien, but I had outgrown it. I am emphatically not the same person I was in grade 11, and by extension not the person I was when we started the Carl's Place experience.

By that do I mean to say that I have "outgrown" Carl's? Hardly. "Party at Carl's" was the most exciting thing I could hope to hear for a long time. It was absolutely the thing to do. But if we accept that the "Party at Carl's" formula was perfect then, but that we are different now, then we must also accept that "Party at Carl's" should either mean something different now than it did or that it is something of the past.

So, it's time to stop dealing in verbose nonsense and start dealing in concrete terms. Here are the 2 top things about "Party at Carl's" that I don't find as appealing anymore:

1) Keeping it in the family. We were young, full of uncertainty, hopes, dreams, alcohol. We made out with each other. It was okay then, it was new, we got it off our chests. Do we need to keep doing it every time we're together? Now, I'll give into your snickers and revise the grammar in that last sentence: Do you need to keep doing it every time we're together? The only person I've ever made out with at Carl's was Tibby, and I feel comfortable saying that that was a long time ago. So what's the big deal? After all, we've all discussed plenty of times that my major problems with hook-ups in general are that they're totally impersonal and they cheapen the romantic experience, which are things that don't matter to most of the people hooking up today, why am I trying to paint my views on everyone else? Anyone reading this can confidently smile and remind themselves that they've gotten more than me and probably gotten it more recently (and probably from someone I've known for years). But if you do that, you'll be missing my point. Why do it with your friends every time they get together? Why can we not widen our nets a little? I'm sick of getting together for a night with my friends and watching them all pair off and head for the bathrooms. Not to mention that the whole concept should have lost its alure by now. It was a learning experience for a while. If you get drunk and fool around with your friend (or your friend's little sister) its rather akward for a while and damaging to the friendship. And if it isn't, for god's sake see a shrink. It is not normal or healthy to shrug off some of the things that have happened between friends at Carl's house.

2) Drinking until we vomit everywhere. It was great before, just another part of a sucessful evening. And after you did it, you felt great! Of course, back then the borders of our alcohol tolerance were uncharted; drunkeness was a bold new land full of untapped experiences. There was every possibility that if you drank enough to make you puke last weekend, the same ammount this weekend would be fine. This is my sixth year of drinking to get drunk and I know all the stops on that train. I also know to get off at the last one before the train derails. What's fun about spending a significant portion of your evening (or all of it) draped over the bowl of a toilet? What's fun about spending a significant portion of your evening (or all of it) holding your friend over the bowl of a toilet? Such crosses were easy things to bear way back when. After all, the unmapped drunken frontier was dangerous to single travelers. There was safety in numbers and they would have done the same for you. But today, such things are ridiculous. A brilliant example is Carl himself. The man has a prodigeous ability to consume all kinds of things, and luck beyond belief when it comes to getting home unscathed. If I spent an evening holding Carl over the toilet I'd have to seriously reconsider my opinion of the man, and the same goes for most of my friends, certainly all those my own age.

So, with the above in mind, here is what I see being wrong with the "Party at Carl's" mentality: We are preserving for no good reason rituals surrounding "Party at Carl's" which are not only less than fun, but can be actively detrimental to all involved. I enjoy the company of everyone at a Carl party, but the collective experience of the party itself is not enjoyable. I can only speak for myself when I say these things. As far as I know, everyone else is having a blast. But, to return to the example of acting a part mentioned above, denial, presumeably through embarassment, could be the most annoying symptom of the plague possessing our evenings together. It is rather like a pair of lovers trying desperately to please each other in an effort to convince themselves that their time isn't done. If one of them is happy under whatever the circumstances, it isn't as hard for the other to be so. When I am in the midst of a drunken whoring Carl-party, I feel like I am caught in a screaming vortex of insanity. No one could possibly be enjoying it, but no one is giving any indication to that end.

If this were an episode of House, we'd be progressing backwards. Above I have outlined the major symptoms of the condition involved, and put a name on their final product: misery. It's worth pointing out again that I'm only assuming anyone else has noticed this. But, to continue with the House metaphor, we now need to deal with the red herrings, the symptoms or preexisting conditions which make it hard to pin down the real problem and/or make it worse, and provide examlpes for House to be wrong because there's still 15 minutes left.

1) The unchanging location. Carl's house is a great place to have a party. The adults are lenient and understanding, and treat the kids like equals instead of mindless automatons, we could stay in the basement and there would be no trouble. I always had a sense that I could do whatever I wanted and be OK. It's still a great place to have a party. Unfortunately, the sense of freedom we had then cannot encompass our needs today. The freedom to stay out late and get drunk is something I take for granted now instead of being grateful, but the feeling of freedom that goes with a party at Carl's is still there. The only difference is that my definition of doing "whatever I want" is now much bigger.

2) The unchanging "core" of partygoers. Also not a real problem. If anything, I enjoy the company of the Carl Regulars more than I did when we started. Newcomers aren't that much of a problem either. There are exceptions, but they usually aren't anything too spectacular. To take an example from last night, Jordan and Alex were completely expected at Ellen's birthday. Yeah, Timmy G, haven't seen the kid in a while, and Mauricio (or however you spell it) is cool shit as well. But who the hell were those other kids in leather jackets? Before the St Mikes crowd made their extremely brief appearance, the ratio of people who knew Ellen to people who didn't even know it was her birthday party was close to equal. Is this a regular occurance at Carl parties? Of course not. Did it exacerbate the problem? Completely. Who wants to go to a party full of screaming children drinking 40s and puking everywhere (probably all of us a couple of years ago)? Did anyone else have the feeling that they would have gone about the evening in the exact same way if they'd been the only ones there? Or if they'd been somewhere else? Aaaaand they were all loaded before they even showed up.

3) Carl himself. Carl is one of my best friends, and I can't believe that he's still enjoying shin-digs at his place as much as he was before. Perhaps my use of "Party at Carl's" and Carl party throughout this article have given the impression that I have a personal distaste for the man -- nothing could be further from the truth. However, as I said, I would be shocked if his amusement at his own gatherings wasn't flagging a little of late. I would put the question "Why the hell doesn't he do anything about it?" but anyone who knows Carl already wouldn't need to ask. Carl is a man who exemplifies the saying "death before dishonour". The man is stubborn and prideful to a fault, which makes him incredibly loyal to his friends and incredibly driven to do whatever it takes to make them happy.

The above herrings need to be taken together. Seperately they couldn't have brought things to the point they are now. But together they are significantly more than the sum of their parts. Carl's unparalelled abilities as a host contribute to the freedoms and rule-structure of his house; Those rules allow people to get out of hand, and establish precidents for behaviour that Carl's parties shouldn't necessarily be synonymous with; and the two of them both force Carl's gatherings into a narrower and narrower band of possible outcomes, mainly the two I mentioned closer to the start of this post. Carl's parties are not the problem, it is the fact that they have become a) our major source of social interaction and b) severly narrowed in their scope that is the problem, and the red herrings above, and the reputation and expectations they create, only serve to limit any attempt to change the way things are going. Seriously, we need to do something here. I don't care what it is, we can see a movie, go bowling, I'd even take in a Coldplay concert just to spend some time with everyone without booze or loose affection.

A patient presents with anxiety about his friends. He's worried that they're losing touch. They spend most of their time apart and when they get together there's no real connection, like a family that spends Christmas together remembering why they moved away. Differential diagnosis, people!

A house-party. dingy punk music is coming from a tape-player. A large number of people are in the room drinking and talking.
There are a group of punks on the couch yelling at each other and knocking back 40s of malt liquor.
There are a bunch of generic college students in the middle of the room, some of them have oversized beer bottles taped to their hands.
Three other students sit against the wall talking unexcitedly to each other.
The whole room is in constant flux. People are entering and exiting through a staircase, coming from or going to the bathroom, kitchen, or the porch for cigarettes.
The host of the party is omnipresent, drinking, smoking, and encouraging others to do the same.
A teenage girl and two dour-looking mexicans enter from the staircase. The host begins talking to one of them.
After a while the talking turns to more violent and people calm the two down. The girl and the mexicans leave, and are pursued by the host, trying to make peace with them as they walk to their car.
He tries to enter the car with them and the mexican knocks him down.
He tries again, and the mexican punches him in the face.
He falls down, camera focuses his baseball cap, knocked off by the force of the blow, as it hits the street behind him.
Cue opening credits.