ABL 2003

Okay, I’ll get this out of the way right now: there was no jello wrestling this year at the Alpine Butterfly Lodge party. None whatsoever. That probably will disappoint whoever it is that occasionally gets here by searching for jello+wrestling on obscure non-Google search engines, but I think the denizens of the ABL are much happier that we didn’t do that this year. They are certainly much less sticky.

This party has become something of an institution in my life since its inception in 2000. I missed it one year due to multiple weddings and much travel, but have been a faithful partygoer every other time. It’s great. I get to see people I don’t often see, I get to enjoy the lovely California sun, I get to giggle and flirt and dance. It’s not that I don’t do some or all of those things in my normal life, it’s just that I don’t do them all at once in such concentrated doses for an entire weekend. (And why don’t I? Perhaps a subject for another entry). The ABL party is not just a party, my friends, it’s really and truly a vacation from my entire life, wherein I go to my job and take the car for its 50,000 mile checkup and make dinner and watch movies and all those things that we all do all the time. This weekend, I wore my cutest clothes and went barefoot all the time and ate whatever I wanted and talked and laughed so much I temporarily lost my voice and stayed up late had three thousand crushes and hugged and kissed and hugged some more and had secret plans and told stupid jokes. I didn’t carry my cool new purse and forgot where I put my keys. I didn’t knit my brow in frustration once.

See, I don’t even know where to start here. Chronologically? Should I subdivide everything into little topics? Should I just write about individual interactions I had with various people, or is that a little too private jokey? I think this journal is maybe taking over my life a little too much because this morning I found myself making notes to myself about what to put in this entry. My notes say “ Idea cave (Sun God). Layers of party. Bikini shot. Tainted Love. Contact lens of water.” See? How do I write an entry based on that? Okay, I guess I can just write a little about each of those notes and try to give you a cross section of the party (um, at least the parts of it I saw), should you yourself decide to form an intentional community and buy a big swanky party mansion with a pool and a pool table (those two things are mutually exclusive, I understand) and a bar and then have a big swanky party there. I kind of think I should wait to post this entry until I can download some pictures, but whatever, let’s go commando, okay?

1) Idea Cave (Sun God)

So what could possibly top jello wrestling, you ask? I know the ABL folks must have wracked their brains to find a solution to that quandary. What they came up with was a little hidey hold made out of chicken wire and some plywood, I think, that was lined with cloth strips and in which many plastic Easter eggs were hidden. I know this is hard to picture. I know it is. Okay, pretend you are lying on your back. Look up and see the chicken wire mesh above your head. Now imagine that someone, for example me, has spent several hours painstakingly cutting old costumes into strips and then tying one strip to each little piece of mesh, thereby creating a sort of pelt for the cage. Kind of like inside a car wash. There are Easter eggs hidden all around in special pockets built into the cave, and people write down ideas, wishes, hopes, gossip, suggestions, whatever, on strips of paper and put them in the eggs. You can go into the cave and open an egg and learn something about someone else in the party (anonymously of course). Does this sound dorky to you? Maybe it does, but that is only because you weren’t in the cave. It was so nice in there. I loved it. It was kind of shady because of all the pieces of fabric fluttering in the breeze and felt very much like a fort I one time made by the front fence of my mom’s house (which was then my house as well) out of some branches of the grapetree in the side yard. Even cutting the fabric and tying it was fun; it was the perfect type of almost meditative busywork that lets your hands work while your mouth talks to whoever else is in there with you. I liked the idea cave at every stage of its inception, from when it was being decorated and I roped people into helping me tie fabric to when people stared planting eggs in various places to when it got dark and you had to take a flashlight in there to read the eggs, which only intensified the Fort feeling. It was so fun. We’re taking it to Burning Man with us, where I think it will fit in very well. I can’t wait to see it and sit in it again.

The Sun God thing was something I put in an egg. This is an idea I disseminated when I was a freshman in college, so sadly enough, a lot of people at this party had already heard it and told me (multiple times, in some cases) it’s really dumb. I don’t think it’s dumb, however, and I’m sure neither will anyone who reads this once I explain it properly. Anyway, it’s an idea for a boy’s hairstyle. It involves growing a reverse Mohawk…like it’s spiky, but instead of going the front of the head to the back, it goes from ear to ear, and of course everything else is shaved. With me? Okay, and then , this very fashionable boy has also grown one of those weird Amish beards where there’s no mustache, and then kind of spiked the beard too, thereby giving him the appearance of someone who has a sun for his head. I drew a little picture of this to help the egg readers, but you’re just going to have to use your imaginations here. Isn’t that a great idea? Sadly enough, when someone opened that egg (while I was in the cave, at least), either Anna or Rob was in there with me and instantly recognized it as my idea, and soundly and repeatedly disabused me of the notion that it was a good one. They never let me have any fun.

2) Layers of Party

Now, let me admit right off that I am a little bit of a baby in certain social situations, in that if they don’t match up to my expectations I get upset and pissy. One of the reasons I really like this party every year is that I have an 80-to-85 percent chance of knowing most of the people and feeling comfortable with them. There are always new faces, of course, but most of the time I can sort out the degree of separation in a couple of minutes. I like that about this party very much. Two such fine examples with these cute boys Rion and Paul who came up with a bunch of people from San Diego that no one else really knew. Rion and Paul? Flowers of manhood, is what I’m telling you. They bounced up to me and introduced themselves and were very friendly and fun and cute and had nice hair and were all deep conversationalists and everything. We promised to hook up at Burning Man, even, which promises to be hysterical. So, Exhibit A: Rion and Paul, friendly people whom I didn’t know but with whom I felt instantly comfortable and of whom I simply did not get enough.

Exhibit B was Upstairs. In absence of an ABL floor plan, I have to just tell you that the house has two stories and that one of the stories is the story with the kitchen and the living room and the hardwood floors and the sliding glass doors that go out to the pool and the hot tub. The other story is accessible by a very funny spiral staircase and houses the pool tub and the wet bar. Much like a vinaigrette, the party separated at some point into People I Know and Love and People I Don’t Know and By Whom I Felt Vaguely Intimidating. I think the problem was that a lot of the people Upstairs weren’t geeks. They all seemed nice, I guess, but when I went up there I felt like I had walked into the wrong part of town somehow. I spent most of my time Downstairs with the geeks I knew. Maybe this makes me anti-social. I don’t know.

3) Bikini Shot

I don’t blush, for some reason. I never have. I don’t get hot cheeks or anything. Do I not have enough blood vessels in my face? I know the reason isn’t because I’m never ashamed or embarrassed or humiliated because, you know, that happens all the time. I found myself, the other day, desperately wishing that I did go beet red at the slightest provocation because it would have distracted me from covering my eyes with my hands and wailing when randomly confronted with a picture of myself in a very unflattering blue bikini that was broadcast on about eight hundred computer screens during the party.

In what I thought was rather a meta move, the ABLers (confidential to the ABL: what do you call yourselves? Lodgers? Butterflies? I never know how to refer to you except as “The ABL.”) bought a bunch of very tiny and cheap digital cameras and had people take pictures at the party and then download them to some sort of something that would broadcast those very pictures during the party on all these computer screens all over the place. You could, in effect, watch the party unfold and completely disassociate from it at the same time. I found this oddly compelling, sitting there going “Hey, that’s from breakfast this morning! Oh, look, that’s when John and Ian were sitting on the couch two hours ago.” It was like TV but with people I know. Fascinating. Anyway, I was sitting there watching the screen, waiting for a certain photo of some canasta players that the aforementioned John and Ian had cleverly photoshopped to look as if they were old. Canasta makes you old. We had photographic proof. La la la la, waiting waiting, hey look a shot of Tyson sleeping! La la la la la, picture of people swimming. Picture of people eating. Picture of people talking. Picture of Chiara in a bikini. PICTURE OF CHIARA IN A BIKINI! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I did, I had to cover my eyes and wail. The photo generator was on random or something, but darn if that one come up two million times while we waited for the canasta shot. Who cares about canasta? Ugh. I was totally betrayed, of course, by Anna, who had lured me into her room when I asked to borrow a bathing suit. That’s where she keeps her bathing suits, so I was completely fooled. I was feeling sassy so I picked out this blue bikini with, um, a push-up top part, and put it on, and in a rare moment of body acceptance…which I will never have again, was all, “Oh, whatever, not like I don’t know everyone in the pool, no one cares what I look like, can I borrow a sarong, come on let’s go swim.” To which Anna, sneakily, was like, “Oh, okay, but let me take a picture of you first, you look so cute.” Anna is good this way. She’s very complimentary. She has taken the only pictures of me in which I look halfway photogenic. One time she did a set of me in really high heels and a halter top that made me look kind of a like a model when I swung my hair around. I had no reason not to trust her, is what I’m saying. I posed in a kittenish manner and then put on a sarong and went down to the pool and got in the pool and swam. Little did I know that Anna would later upload all those shots to the Party Cam, and would forget all about it until that very moment when it kept coming on. And on and on. I haven’t worn a bikini since I was eleven and (non Key Girl) Ashley Fogg pulled my top off at (Key Girl) Ashley’s pool party, and now, of course, much to the delight of everyone involved, I will never do so again. I’m having Anna killed.

4) Tainted Love

Uh, I don’t know why I thought this was so noteworthy, other than this was the song that initiated my brief turn on the dance floor. I have weird dance requirements, like the room has to be pretty dark and there have to be a lot of people in there dancing already before I feel comfortable. This doesn’t apply to bellydannce, of course. I never do that on the dance floor, preferring to watch people and laugh to myself a little and then do stupid jokey dance stuff. But, come on, Tainted Love. I’m not made of stone here, you know? Everyone was singing along, that’s how much they love that song. You know how with Love Shack you kind of do hand motions? “Bang, bang, bang, on the door baby,” and you kind of bang on the door, and then you gesture that your Chrysler is, in fact, as big as a whale, and so forth and so on. Saturday we were all yelling, “Don’t touch me please I cannot stand the way you TEEEEEEEAAAAASE!” and doing this weird thing where we all sunk to the floor, trying to escape the teasing and the touching. Pretty fun. Dancing in someone’s dining room is inherently fun, but it just helps when the song is Tainted Love. I also made Patri do this thing during that “4 3 2 1 Earth beloooooow us, drifting, falling” song wherein we impersonated a space ship, worried technicians down at Houston, and the drifting, falling Earth. It was great. I think.

5) Contact Lens of Water

Okay, so what I was doing in that horrible bikini, was swimming around and pretending to be a whale a little, just like last year. I got back into the pool that night and orchestrated some more Beautiful Whale Ballet, but during the afternoon’s swim, I became obsessed with these funny coconut shells that were in the pool toy box. I don’t think they were really coconut shells, but they were shaped just like them and, when paired with some juggling balls, became the basis for a rousing game of Catch The Ball With The Coconut Shell. Remember kids, any object becomes instantly funner when used in the pool. Anyway, yeah yeah, coconut shells, pool. I filled one with water and went up to John and was all “Ring ring, John! Phone’s for you!” John, to his credit, didn’t even blink, but actually answered the coconut, thereby getting water in his ear. Hoo hoo! “Oh, Chiara, you are so sneaky!” he said. “It’s a telephone…made of water!” And thence the running joke began, much to the disgust of everyone else who had to watch us do it over and over again, with different things made of out water every time. “Hey, John, now that I cut and colored your hair, it’s time to sit under the dryer! Ha HAAAA! Hair dryer made of…water!” “Okay, Chiara, make sure you put on your earmuffs when you go outside, it’s cold out there. Yes! Earmuffs of water!” On and on.

My personal favorite, however, as you may have guessed from the subtitle, was when he held them both out and went, “Here! I got you some new contact lenses…contact lenses of water!” as I threw them in my face. I know this isn’t funny. I know it’s dumb. I just couldn’t stop laughing. Later when we got back in the pool, everyone else got into it, but none so much as Carl. We haven’t stopped since. The plane back to Seattle yesterday must have been excruciating for everyone else on the flight, what with the “SkyMall…of water!” and “Jamba Juice…made of water!” Please note that to do this correctly (in case you’re tired of having friends and want to die alone with your cats) you have to really draw out the “water” so it sounds like “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaater.” Also, for extra fun, really enunciate that T in there. It makes it that much better. Or worse, depending on your perspective.

Okay. That’s it. That’s the end of my notes. It’s been a little hard to readjust to my regular life, so last night I was cranky and grumpy and generally not so much of a peach to be around. You can’t blame me for wanting my life to always be like that: being with my dear friends, sitting in the sun eating yummy food, dancing, being one of the best parts of myself all weekend.


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