Saratoga News

Point of View

Carl Heintze

Cocktail parties serve nation of strangers

The other night we went to a "cocktail party." I put the words in quotes because it really wasn't a party, and cocktails were not served. But that's what they called it.

Really, it was a kind of social mixer where people who had never met before were all tossed, more or less, into an arena where they had to talk to one another and presumably become acquainted. Wine was the beverage of choice. It long ago supplanted mixed drinks as the social lubricant to loosen tongues and inhibitions.

There were things to nibble on, as there usually are. A mixed bag, as it was a kind of potluck get-together. There were combinations guaranteed to unsettle the stomach and add to the waistline.

There was music, too; there always seems to be at these affairs. I've never figured out why. I suppose it is intended to fill the spaces in the conversation so everyone will feel everyone is talking to everyone else. But to me, all it seems to do is add to the bedlam, and before the evening is over, you find you're shouting at whomever you're standing beside. He, of course, is shouting back, and neither he nor you are paying much attention to what's being said.

Just to check this premise, I yelled at my new acquaintance: "I've just left my wife and taken up with an 18-year-old. Male, of course."

He nodded sagely and went on with what he was saying, which was something to the effect of "I put something in John Hancock three months ago and it's done great, just great. You ought to try it."

I presumed he meant stock, although it could have been life insurance. It didn't really matter. We were both at that stage where we were desperately looking to end what was clearly neither a conversation nor an exchange of ideas and move on to someone else at whom to shout.

There are ways to do this, but it had been a while since I'd been to such a "party," and I was out of practice.

One way is to pretend you see someone you know across the room--not likely in this crowd of strangers. Another is to say you have to go--anywhere. It's not necessary to be specific. And the most impolite way of all is just to walk away, leaving your conversational partner talking to him or herself.

A couple of other things I've learned:

Never sit down. If you sit down next to someone, you're anchored for at least an hour, maybe longer, depending on how much of their life story they want to tell you. For cocktail parties are a great place to collect biographies. For some reason--maybe the alcohol--people at these affairs tend to treat others as their psychiatrists, pouring out the more intimate details of their lives to strangers for no good reason.

It must be a little like going to confession, anonymous in a way. You're certain you're never going to see this confidant again in your life, so why not tell him or her what you've just been through, what you're about to go through or what you'd like to go through? Doesn't matter much which it is; it all seems to just pour forth.

Don't drink your drink. If you do, someone is going to fill it up immediately. Hold your glass high enough so everyone can see it is still comfortably filled. Sip once in a while, or pretend to sip, but above all, don't match sips to talk. You're going to end up tipsy at the least and crocked at the most. Then you'll never know what you said to anyone--but, unfortunately, they will.

Watch your food intake, too. This kind of food is not likely to mix well with alcoholic beverages. The tendency is to match bites with conversation, too. Keeping your mouth full keeps you silent, a blessing among the babble.

Arrive late and leave early. Arriving late means sufficient din has been created by the music to which no one is listening and the conversation which is not really conversation at all, so you can get by without even muttering. Leaving early avoids those who have not followed my advice about drinking and who are now in full charge toward inebriation. Sitting down next to a drunk is even worse than standing next to one late in the evening. Escape is very difficult.

I sometimes wonder how "cocktail parties" were invented. Without researching it much, I think they appeared on America's horizon after the end of Prohibition. The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had killed off the corner saloon, our answer to the British pub as a place for social gatherings. When Prohibition ended, the cocktail party was devised to replace the bar and the brass rail.

Too bad, in a way. A bar was a lot quieter, conversation was conversation--some of it fairly illuminating--and drunks were usually handled with tact and sympathy. They also were readily identifiable. They didn't suddenly burst from a pack of people standing in a tight circle and yelling at one another at the top of their lungs.

But progress must prevail, I suppose, and until someone invents some better way for complete strangers to convene in America, a nation of strangers, we are doomed to stand and pretend to drink.

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