Party Crasher

short excerpt from my memoir, set in the 1970's, in southern California

 

 

When the Saturday night production was over, and everyone was getting ready to leave, two or three women asked me, “Are you going to the party at Frances Dunn’s?” or simply said, “See you at Fran’s!” 

But no one had actually invited me to a party at Fran Dunn’s.  It was clear that one was happening.  I said to Dagny, “Hey, I hear there’s a party at Fran Dunn’s.  Where does she live?” 

I was asking Dagny because she seemed to be a friend of Fran’s, or at least connected because Fran was lovers with Liz Phillips, who had been Dagny’s lover for a long time.  Also, my question to Dagny implied a presumption: that everyone from the production would be invited -- because I had a belief that is how a post-production party should be.  When I asked Dagny for the address, she said something that was a non-sequitur, and turned and walked away from me.  Clearly, she did not want to give me the address.  I was not invited?  

Now I think Dagny did not see this as a post-production party to which everyone who worked on it comes.  She apparently wanted to party just with her own friends.  She may have wanted to get away from all the idiots and difficult people she had to work with, if that was her perception.   True, there had been some real issues in the work of the production, but so what?  I could not fathom why everyone wasn’t invited, why I wasn’t invited. 

So, a moment later, when yet another woman asked me if I were going to Fran’s, I said yes, and asked if she had the address.  She wrote down the address, and I said, “We’re going to get a quick meal at Zuckie’s first, though.” 

At Zuckie’s, Susie said to me, about Dagny, “She doesn’t care about the production as a whole.”  This seemed an astute observation.  There was evidence to support this.  Dagny had gone on even longer the second night, which was totally inconsiderate of the production as a whole, plus the incident with the grand piano, both of which Susie had the opportunity to observe.  She did not even know of Dagny’s resentment that Susie’s dance piece had been videoed with a rented port-a-pack, during an onsite practice.  Nor did she know that Dagny’s idea of a post-production party did not include the other participants in the show. 

The original idea behind productions such as this was to bring together an expanse of lesbians for a supportive, meaningful cultural evening.  This kind of production intended to showcase some women’s creative lesbian expressions, to showcase performance art that captured something about lesbian lives, yes, but also to bring everybody together in a format that was not a bar, or even a meeting, but community theater.   I did not want the community aspect of the production to be lost.   

I was the producer of this event.  So it was my job to take care of the wholeness of the production, regardless of other people’s behavior.  I had been inconsistently successful in that role.  This seemed now like one last chance to step up for community and the wholeness of the production. 

 

  I invited everyone I knew at Zuckie’s to the party at Fran’s.   I did not tell anyone that there was an underlying issue in the invitation, that the party seemed to be for Dagny and her friends.  I just treated it as if it were an honorable post-production party, for everyone who was in the show, or who had worked on the show, and whomever we brought, to relax and party together, now that it was over, issues aside. 

There were about ten women who came from Zuckie’s to Fran’s house, in the Venice Canals. Most were affiliated in some way with the production, including Susie, Ellen, and Arlene, Judy and Wendy, myself, and a few others, maybe Lynn Antenhoff.  When we parked our cars, I thought I saw Dagny leaving, getting into a car, in the dark but picturesque environment.  When we entered the house, it was clear, the party had already thinned out, and a few people were presently straggling out the door as we were coming in.  We were fresh party goers to re-invigorate the evening, and we were warmly welcomed. 

I personally was welcomed effusively, by Fran, Liz, and by a couple other women.  “I’m so glad you came, Evyn,” and “Thank you so much for coming,” were statements said to me, with emphasis. 

Liz and Fran continued talking to me, in earnest.  There was something they were trying to tell me.  I think they were trying to convey to me about Dagny, that she could make shallow snap judgments about people, or that was the inference I drew from the anecdotes they were telling me. 

“When Dagny first met Fran,” Liz said, “she just dismissed her in two seconds as a hippie chick.”  Then Fran verified and supplemented this.  What were they getting at?  I’ll bet that Dagny had been badmouthing my friends, or maybe all the other performers in the production, dismissing them in a quick shallow way.  She’d probably been doing this during the first shift of the party. 

I already knew explicitly that Dagny didn’t like my friends.  So why had I invited her to be in the program?

There was also hazy evidence that Dagny did not actually like me, either, but only her fantasy of me, remolded for her use.

 

And where was my writing?  A year before, after the Great Lesbian Talent Show, Susie Gluck had asked me where was my writing?  How come my writing was not in the lesbian talent show?  That was the first production in which I had been recast from writer to producer, with both my resistance and my complicity, alternating weirdly.  That question, where was my writing, was still applicable, alongside new questions that were emerging, left and right, in abundance.