I am able to deal with a wide range of people effectively. I am a mirror that way. I am skilled at absorbing dialect, fathoming philosophy, predicting expectations. Within a few minutes I am you and we have struck a deep chord of agreement. Granted, if you offend my sensibilities our conversation will be a short one, if I don't like being you.

It is difficult to know when to arrive. Too early seems like a good idea, descending upon a surprised and pleased circle of friends slightly loosened by the initial drinks and optimism for the evening to come. But the affair will snowball rapidly. Soon, in the midst of a group of nine sixteen twentyfive I will lose track of my identity altogether and will drift between conversational clusters, a singular questionmark stripped of personality. Then it is time to leave unannounced through the back door, a disillusioned spectre of the night. My absence is even easier to overlook then my presence. Nobody will catch on. Unless the party is at my house.

meanwhile the party avalanches on, has set the ginsoaked fabric of night ablaze. it is Death's art opening. the guests admire the paintings loudly and foolishly. "oh this one is more surreal than that one." "like pointillistic cubism." "how much is this one?" lofty artistic ideals are slowly being trampled in the honesty-inducing climate of drunken hedonism. the conversation is rising to waterfall decibels. people who recognize people who know people are able to arrange introductions, coy masks of superficial acceptance paved over cruel preconceptions. those they are not able to meet they are able to safely draw conclusions about from across the room. your friends are your clothes. you are what you wear and the styles in your hair. full of anticipations Jordan is preparing to exit with a giggly woman whose name he stoicly and heroicly struggles to remember while his fiancee Amy stirs sluggishly asleep on the bed amidst the minks. other people have formed more concise parties behind sealed doors of adjoining rooms releasing the demons of shared perversions. you did not expect to see the reaper of souls poised serenely in the fur and emerald tide of perfume pretensions and white wine.

everything is going exactly as death predicted. many will attempt to drive their loved ones home to demonstrate their poorly articulated denials of intoxication. what have we learned in the morning, hung 1000 miles over the living room floor examining the shrapnel of the broken lamp, a garden of makeshift ashtrays?

"this reminds me of Edouard Monet."