A Party at Rustam's

A geek finds himself stuck at a house party

By all accounts I have failed by the new generation’s standards and the new generation has failed by every one of my standards. Where the latest teen fashion magazines tell me to consume in an ever growing Hedonistic haze, I grudgingly cling to the philosophies of forgotten lore. I should have been born in the 1700s when scientific thought was all the rage, or perhaps the 1950s when Existentialism was the mainstream. Instead, there I was, at some drunken party with a group of people I did not know and I was attempting to hide the ideological clash that to this day is occurring between me and the world.

The date was July 8th, 2011. The place was the house of one Rustam Knovosalov, who was celebrating his eighteenth birthday. I arrived at the typical suburban household, awkwardly early to help prepare for the main steam guests, or “normies”, as I prefered to call them, who would undoubtedly be fashionably late and fashionably intoxicated. Rustam, or Rusty, greeted me with his usual goofy smile and we made idle chitchat while we waited for the crowds to arrive. Soon enough, or perhaps too soon, the normies trickled in and I was left with the greatest challenge of my life, try not to look like an a*s while convincing the people that there was more than just Dr. Pepper in my plastic cup.

Almost instantly, the once sober houseguests turned into a mob of drunkenness engulfed by the latest electronic dance music. I noticed in particular, one brunette staring deeply into the abyss that was the end of her empty cup. Her jeans were torn and her hair brought a completely new meaning to the word anarchy. At this party nothing about her stood out. To my despair, she noticed my staring and stumbled over in my direction.

 “Oh I know you! You’re that Charlie guy Rustam always is talking about!” she shouted in an almost incomprehensible slur of words.

“Um…yeah, Charles,” I attempted to say, “Cool party…right?” I managed to stammer.

“Oh yeah wicked! Everything is so chill here!” Of course, that little tidbit managed to make the whole conversation about a million times more tense.

As I desperately tried to think anything to say, the girl spoke again,

“Oh hey, aren’t you that geeky politics guy?”

Finally having reached a topic I can deal with, I gained a burst of confidence and said, “Well, I don’t mean to brag but I’ve read a bit on Dengism. I must say, it is the perfect dialectic between the Socialist system of the USSR and the capitalist system on the road to Communism!”

She looked at me like I should have been immediately placed in a high security mental hospital and given electric shock therapy.

“What the hell are you talking about? God, you’re such a nerd!” she said, verifying her previous look.

“Oh…right, yeah…sorry about that…um…,” I stammered. I pointed to the door, saying something about fresh air before almost running out of that textbook example of an awkward situation.

There were many places I should have been, this party was not one of them. At that very moment, I could have been with the freaks and geeks playing Dungeons and Dragons, slaying monsters and saving maidens. I could have been clashing with the greatest generals in the Greater Toronto Area at the Warhammer Tournament, or the greatest minds at the fabled forums, I could have been having some fun. But no, instead I was instead at a celebration of drunkenness and stupidity.

The moment I found myself deep in thought, I heard a girl sobbing behind me. I turned around to see a blonde emaciated normie, who came to bring me back to the land of awkward moments.

“Hi,” she said through her tears.

Oh deities and demigods, be they supernal or abyssal I prayed to those fickle beings that brought forth this torment to release me of my sufferings. What terrible thing had I done wrong that I have made a girl come to me in tears!? The gods themselves must have laughed at my follies. In an effort to maintain decorum, I turned around and with a smile showing probably way too much teeth I questioned, “What’s wrong?”

“I just got into a fight with my best friend again. We were so close before! Now, all we do is fight. I’m just so different from these guys, I feel so left out!”

I left, she yelled at me as I walked away. I didn’t have anything to comfort her, she was one of the people who fit in. By the end of the night she would have her best friend back and, on the off chance she remembered I was even at that party, she would never bring it up again.

Still, she felt sorrow, if only for a moment two souls separated from their bodies met and traded glances of the same image, if only for a moment there were two of us.