One of which has already been written about--this is the Internations Christmas Party from Mars.
The other two:
Christmas with the United Nations, aka, Mike's house party.
This party was the party everyone sort of wishes they could go to after they get married/ get engaged/ grow up a bit and are too old for keggers but yet dread stuffy dinner parties where everyone nips at each other in a kind of slow motion shark tank. Mike, the host, and myself were the only Americans (although not the only Caucasians), and the crowd was Iranian, Indian, Hungarian, Filipino, Brit, and "other" (a painfully shy Middle Eastern man who hardly spoke two words). Mike made turkey, ham, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, stuffing, cranberry sauce, enough liquor to choke a horse, and everyone brought food (we brought naan). I brought Kent, who was as happy as a clam at high tide to settle onto the smoking balcony and talk philosophical politics with the most dangerous man at the party, Ash.
Ash is, no exaggeration, the most magnetically attractive man I've ever seen. His eyes, which are the most beautiful I've ever seen, are huge, hazel, prominent, and fringed with sooty lashes. The man also manages his chi like it's his job, and is most often found draped over various couches like he's being handed an invisible cluster of grapes by a nymph. It's impossible not to try to flirt with him, even though I'm really not, on an intellectual level, interested. But when he gives you that simmering stare, you can feel the rest of the world melt away, and you feel the melancholy pull of a dangerously beautiful man who is not only aware of his beauty, but is an old hand at using it to get what he wants.
Anyway, he was safely tucked away on the porch for most of the party, talking to my date, while I talked to this kid Tomas, a shy, sweet, slightly dorky guy from Hungary, who was solo, his wife being ill that night. He was super nice, and super earnest, in that Germanic way some travelers have, and we talked about astrology (!!). The night wore on, and people got plenty rippered (me and Kent included, we had to leave before things got too crazy), and we cranked up the music and danced a bit, before going home to sleep it off.
There's some things I'm leaving out, of course, like Akosh, the huge Hungarian dude, who barreled around saying things like "Everyone gets drunk now!" and grinning through his Popeye mustache (which was brick red). And Ash flirting with this girl by slipping her sandal off her foot with his foot, which is a move so far advanced even I, a professional flirt from the old school, have never seen anything quite that smooth.
Christmas with the Ozzies: aka, Alison and Stewart's Xmas day dinner:
This was significantly less wild, as it occurred during the day, for one, and for seconders, most of the parties involved were over 40. Alison and her husband, Stewart, were nice enough to make Christmas day dinner for us, and her mother in law and step daughter. The food was excellent, there was champagne and Kent--who is Christian, and whose family celebrates Christmas, (who I brought to this event, as he was stranded here-- his original plan, which I knew would fall through, was to go to India for a few days for his nephew's christening, but this fell through when his boss begged him to stay and work--and I couldn't stand the thought of him being all alone all day, so I sold it to him hard and he came for a few hours) gracefully fielded all manner of questions about India. But in everyone's defense, when you explain that having a good elephant on your coffee estates is "just like having a good farm dog", you kind of leave yourself wide open for a deluge of questions after that. Just sayin'.
After the meal, when we were laying around talking, and he suddenly gathered me up in a closer cuddle, and said "Thank you for inviting me". So nice. No matter how old, how much of a workaholic, or where they're from, nobody oughta be alone on Christmas. And they never will be as long as I'm around.
