You can't share a house with 8 women and not have delusions
about being the next Hugh Heffner. My playboy mansion might be disappointingly
short on silicon boobs, bikinis and bare bellies to snort coke off, but my bunnies
compensate by being genuinely beautiful people. And to celebrate the town
planning violation of turning our residential property into a hostel, we
decided to throw a house warming party.
The house was already rather warm given that Laura and I had
been there for over a month. Such details are rarely relevant, but if one
required further justification, it was JJ's birthday and Laura's Irish friend
Emily was arriving to make the eighth and last addition to our
family. Word of mouth spread the news like a virulent cold sore and rumours
were circulating about possible attendance beyond capacity.
That fact was barely relevant as well, and we catered as
best we could. I stole another 20 odd chairs from work, Laura brought enough
potato based snacks to make her Irish heritage proud and we filled every basin
and bath tub with enough ice to build an igloo village. Whether it was my
limited backpacking wardrobe, or just my desire to undertake random stupidity,
I brought a dressing gown for the occasion and did my best Hugh Heffner
impersonation. I knew nothing about the guy other than his age and healthy
libido so I threw some flour in my hair to look grey and distinguished, and
carried a big cigar around in my pocket in mock invitation of the good times I
could offer under my robes.
Only JJ briefly entertained the idea of dressing up as a
bunny and I am a little bit disappointed she didn't. It might have helped
convince everyone I wasn't just an old flasher thrown out of a mill for having
an indecent bulge pointing out my intentions. The robe was some cuddly felt
material that forced me to loiter near the bathroom iceberg in case I sweated
too much and my hair rose to an afro style loaf of bread. Thankfully most of my
friends were smart enough to know who I was supposed to be and there ended up
being so many random people I gave up caring what people thought anyway.
Most people didn't care what they were celebrating, and
those that knew the living arrangements were far more interested in the eight single
girls than the one taken male. Within two hours of the party starting, the
entire back yard was packed and even more focus fell upon the single people
amongst the crowd. With a large percentage of the house mates being hospitality
workers, it was inevitable that many friends would be working on the night.
That spelt bad news for the neighbours when the party went up another notch
around midnight with the arrival of the workers. Numbers had leveled out by
that stage but alcohol was prompting certain individuals to make more noise
than a Formula One race.
As a host, I tried to stay relatively sober and um, I nearly
choked as I wrote that. Let me rephrase that to say that I didn't want to be
totally shit-faced and throwing up in the garden before the night was half
over. To this end I surpassed all expectations. At some a.m. point in time I
managed to cook up snacks and circulated them around hungry revellers. There
was naked people in the pool and I wasn't one of them, or even hiding in the
bushes taking photos. People who weren't paying rent for the rooms still
managed to have sex in them, and some of more questionable morality even had a go at it in the hallway.
Even as one of the biggest house parties I had seen, and the
biggest party I had been a host of, I felt it was happening wherever I wasn't.
Perhaps I was too worried about my pool filling up with sperm, my bond being
lost to me forever and the neighbours putting out a contract on my head. By the
time I had stopped caring and gotten drunk enough to overlook my dance moves
being a frightening spectacle, the party was over and it was time to go to bed.
My bed had a post shag warmness to it, but I had to sleep, and fatigue overcame
me before I rolled into someone else's wet spot.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to sleep through the clean up
and my hangover recovery consisted of 3 hours turning a junk-yard into a
hospitable abode again, then 8 hours of dishes at work. A few pool noodles got
trashed, a pair of shoes were stolen and some stoner brought some seriously bad
karma onto themselves by pinching Laura's marijuana plant. The house is well
and truly warm now and should I be able to convince the girls of regular bunny
dress ups, I may be able to emulate Hugh Heffner in more than dress sense
alone. But then I'll just look like an old pervert instead.
