Plus One 🍷

The side-effect of the return of dinner parties.

A soft pile of whipped cream on spoon. An oil-stained tailored shirt. A hallway filled with leather loafers and heels piled on top of each other. Someone dozing off on the couch behind a smoking joint in an ashtray. Somehow these are always the types of photos that come out of my diner parties.

My friends like dim photos of corners of things.

For the few hours of hosting, it’s easy to ignore that our guests (friends, neighbors, strangers) can do just about whatever they want in our home. The party ends, and while eating toast hungover in the morning we realize that someone broke a glass and didn’t tell us, bottles and jars have been shuffled around the medicine cabinet, a phone charger was mistakenly taken.

But we don’t get angry, because as the hosts, this is what we are supposed to expect.

I live on the Upper East Side with my boyfriend Eric, and although our friends are sprinkled around the city, once a month we find them all in our dining room (and living room, and on our fire escape, and in our closets).

We’re throwing a party during one of those unexpected April rainstorms. Two of our friends text us to ask if the plans are off due to the rain, which is funny because we’ve had much larger parties in much worse weather.. but I guess we were also much younger.

We spend all Saturday getting the apartment ready, jumping every time hail hits the window. I fill the bathtub with ice and bottles of wine and beer. I make a mustardy dressing for a salad. I write little signs asking guests to take off their shoes and to leave their coats in the closet and what the WiFi password is. I vacuum the corners of the kitchen for the first time since our last party.

At six, my friend Sarah calls me asking if she can bring a plus one to the party. She met him on Tinder last week and they’ve already gone on two dates. I hesitate knowing her track record with men but say fine. Eric comes into the bedroom and asks who called. When I tell him Sarah is bringing a date, he shakes his head as if he already knows how this will end, “Well there’s plenty of booze.”

The hour before the party starts always feels like we’re on a quiet set for a play about a dinner party that smells like Windex and caramelizing onions. Between big sips of icy cocktails, Eric and I place bets on who will be first to arrive and who will end up hitting it off. What starts as a playful conversation about each other’s friends turns into a snappy argument that is about to approach tired insults. He asks me if we can have a relaxing night with no fighting for once.

As I’m about to defend myself, the doorbell rings.

Friends start coming up in in two’s and three’s, commenting about the wet subway station and our apartment building and asking if there’s room in the fridge to place a tray of lemon bars.

Sarah comes up alone and tells me her date will be a few minutes behind her, the weather is holding him up.

---

Thunder booms behind our cracked window, keeping fresh air in and bong hits out. The room is warm and crowded. I speak to each guest for about 3 minutes each.

As wine bottles begin to empty, Eric and I stand side by side in our small kitchen. We add bucatini to boiling water, and then move it from the water to a buttery pan of black pepper. Oil pops against the water against our wrists and sleeves. Mounds of pasta piles into the pan, and our arms create knots as we reach across steamy garlic to stir the pasta, and then use a sharp knife to chop parsley and sprinkle across the hot pan, and then grate more cheese, and start to plate. I use my thumb to wipe away drips of butter and oil off the serving plates to avoid more of a mess on our table than there already is. I start doing math in my head to imagine what the correct portion size is so that we can feed the crowd sufficiently, when Eric’s phone buzzes on the counter. I see his ex’s name.

My face is hot from wine and imagined hostess pressure. I ask what they were talking about and he says they weren’t talking. I ask him to read the text and he says he will after the party. I ask why he can’t read it now, and I see a stranger in my kitchen doorway watching us fight.

Eric sees my face, turns around, and says, “Hey man, are you looking for someone?” The man nods and apologizes for interrupting. He says he wasn’t sure where everyone was, and that he’s Sarah’s friend. I give him a fake-excited half hug and walk him over to our living room, introducing him to our guests. Everyone looks up for a moment, before returning to their embarrassing political debates and conversations about the current state of movies. I watch Sarah walk him over to the bar cart and point around the corner to the bottle-filled tub, and then watch as he inspects every label and cap.

I return to the kitchen, excited to gossip with Eric about our new guest but instead decide on sticking to my residual anger about the ex text. Eric carries out plates of food balanced up his forearms, followed by oohs and ahhhs in the other room. I tapped his phone with a buttery finger hoping to see a preview of the text, but it wasn’t there anymore.

---

Dessert is always a blur. Shots of brown liquor, selfies of cake shoveled into friends’ mouths, remembering the lemon bars when everyone is already too full. There are three pints of melty bodega ice cream on the table, a well-trafficked rolling tray, and lots of mismatched cocktail glasses. “I’m not trying to be a dick but this is a very special bottle of pechuga from Oaxaca that I was saving for a special occasion. You don’t just open someone’s nice booze,” I hear my boyfriend say. “Eric stopp it,” I whine. “This is a special occasion!” I want to end the witch hunt in case it was one of my friends who mistakenly opened it.

I look around the room and everyone is either ignoring Eric or drunkenly giggling at him. My buzz is turning into sleepy and I want to go to bed. Sarah’s date is screaming a story about a horror short he recently watched, his voice is annoying people. I try to get a better look at what’s in his glass when suddenly everyone’s phone starts buzzing.

We crawl around on the rug like animals, grabbing at various chargers and table tops to see what the notification is. A party song from college blasts on the speaker as everyone silently checks their phone.

A few people question it, Googling tornado history in New York City, and I announce that this is a sign that I can finally go to bed. Our guests start standing up and drinking water before grabbing their umbrellas to brave the wet, cold night. I thank everyone and shove shopping bags full of leftovers into warm hands as they walk out the door.

Our best friend Blake is always the last to stay at the party. He lays on the couch as if he was in a therapy movie scene, and recaps the night with Eric and I as we scrape plates into the garbage.

“Your friend’s date was kind of awful,” he said while swiping through car service apps and picking bits of cold bucatini off a plate. “He was in your bathroom for a really long time, so I just opened the door and he was going through your cabinets and stuff.”

“What the fuck?” I asked him. “Do you think he took anything?” All of a sudden my house feels germy and lived in. I start taking out cleaning supplies and decide to leave them on the counter.

“Yeah I’m pissed he opened my mezcal. Sarah always dates the strangest men.” Eric says.

“I’ll call her in the morning.”

We practically roll Blake downstairs and tell him to text us when he gets home. “Let’s finish the dishes in the morning.” I take off all my clothes and climb into bed without brushing my teeth. Our dark home feels gross, but our bedroom feels clean and soft below the rain. I fall asleep as my ears ring with all the conversations of the night.

---

I wake up groggy and affectionate, kissing my boyfriend and staring at the misty spring morning. He still tastes like last night’s garlic. I stretch across him to reach for my phone. “Can we not look at our phones yet?’ he asks. Mine is dead which always makes me feel more awake, a ping of adrenaline, eager to charge it.

I jump out of bed in search of my charger. Balled up napkins and half- filled glasses of red wine are sprinkled around the living room. I wince at the mess. I check the kitchen and the bathroom and can’t find the long white wire. I sit down to pee, holding my dead phone in my hands, staring at the tub full of water and floating cans of beer.

I walk back to the living room and scream when I see someone sitting on our couch staring at me. It’s Sarah’s plus one. He never left the apartment.

I grab a towel from the bathroom and throw it around myself.

“I heard you guys say that the weather was getting pretty bad last night so I thought I could just crash here. Did I scare you?,” he grins.

“Yeah, yeah it’s fine, I just didn’t realize you were here. Did you tell Sarah you were staying?” I asked. He shook is head and just kept staring blankly at me. I noticed he had my boyfriend’s phone and both of our chargers in his hands. “Can I have my charger? My phone is dead,” I ask him. He doesn’t say anything.

I smile as if what he’s doing is supposed to be funny and go back to the bedroom to tell Eric. “What do you want me to do? She’s your friend,” Eric laughs while opening his laptop. “He has your phone and both of the chargers.” He gets up, throws on a hoodie, and walks over to the living room in his boxers.

“Hey man, hope you slept OK on the couch, we didn’t realize you were staying the night.” He doesn’t say anything. “Can I grab my phone?”

“You did text her,” Sarah’s date said blankly.

I’m going to puke up so much pét-nat.

“What?” Eric asked, “text who?”.

“You texted your ex.”

I remember the counter, the phone buzzing, the stranger watching us in the corner. My mind starts looping the question “How do I tell a stranger to leave my house? Is this a nightmare?” My gut wrenches, Eric asks again what he’s talking about. I don’t think I would’ve ever brought that text up again if this man hadn’t.

I realize this stranger listened to us talk about him after an entire party of people left the apartment, and how this stranger saw me walk to bed naked, and how this stranger sat in his clothes on my couch the whole night. I felt scared and invaded.

I tune back into the conversation and he sees the lights in my head turn back on. “Did Sarah not tell you guys I was a screenwriter?” He laughs. “I’m just playing with you. I had to see your reaction so I could work on my new movie. Here’s your stuff, thanks for letting me crash.”

“You’re writing a horror movie about our party?” I ask. He nods, “Something like that.” He pulls his coat on, walks out the door and from the hallways says, “Great party. We should do a double date soon?”

Eric makes sure the door is locked, and starts talking about what happened last night. I go to the couch, still holding the towel around me, and plug our phones in. I stare at our black phone screens waiting for the light to come back on.

---

This was more fiction. I’m believe that everyday normal modern acts (using social media, inviting strangers into your home, going on online dates) are the scariest parts of our lives.

I’m working on some longer form projects around my stories but I’d love to hear what you think in the meantime! 💌