There’s a rumor going around that key parties are back. For those of you who haven’t read Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm or seen the movie with Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline, or who were born after 1975, at a key party the men throw their car keys into a hat, and at the end of the night the women go home with whichever guy’s key they pick out.
Back in the day, this suburban issue—quirk or debacle, depending what early vintage Baby Boomer you’re talking to—wasn’t fiction. I believe the rumor of its return, however, could directly be traced back to my neighbor Gary. Surely, you have a Gary in your neighborhood: At the Fourth of July block party, holiday cookie exchange, or impromptu backyard barbecue, he’s hitting on every woman. Sure, it’s only with his eyes, but you can tell he wishes that key parties were back so that, armed with the tacit permission of his wife, he could sleep with any of us without emotional entanglements or domestic upheaval. You know, sort of like HBO’s Big Love. Without the compound.
But I have news for you, Gary. You’re kind of cute and kind of charming, and even a little bit sexy, and yet none of us want to sleep with you. First of all, we know and love your wife, who’s made you all too human in our eyes. Second (or is it third?) of all, you’re just another husband, exactly like the ones we’ve already got at home. And lastly: No!
The only key party I can imagine wanting to go to is the one where the keys belong to Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Taye Diggs, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Tom Brady, with maybe even John C. Reilly thrown in for the quirky appeal. And where my husband doesn’t get to go home with anybody like Angelina Jolie or Gisele Bündchen.
Really, it was bad enough that people actually indulged in this tawdry kind of gathering in the 1970s, but they also boogied in gold lamé leotards to The Village People, so their entire value system and taste level is suspect. Plus, many of them never slept with anybody before their spouses, so the idea of random sex with vetted acquaintances must have seemed kind of exciting.
Today, though, most suburbanites have been around the block plenty of times before they settle down. They know exactly what sex with all the other spouses is going to be like, which is pretty much what sex with their own spouses is like, minus the anger.
Okay, okay, I’m speaking for the women. And our feeling is that if we’re going to get ourselves waxed, haul our butts back to the gym, invest in Cosa Bella lingerie, and otherwise make the supreme effort to enjoy sex with a man with whom we didn’t exchange any vows, it sure as hell isn’t going to be for Gary across the street.
If you wake up one steamy summer morning to find a pink plastic flamingo on your front lawn, it can mean only one thing: On the third Friday of that month, your neighbors will knock on your door expecting a cocktail—or seven.
At least that’s what it signifies in one Maplewood neighborhood, where the traveling plastic flamingo marks the next party spot. The homeowner who’s been flamingoed is mandated to throw a party for the entire block plus assorted friends on the third Friday of that month, supplying the booze (and juice for the kiddies) while everyone else contributes food. The real payoff for the surprise hosts: they get to choose where to plant the flamingo next.
Summer is the perfect time to throw a neighborhood party—or start the tradition of one— in your own neck of the woods. My own Montclair block organizes an annual progressive dinner, with cocktails at one person’s house, the entrée at another, and dessert at a third. All the food is controlled potluck; older neighborhood kids babysit the younger ones.
If organization is beyond your summer powers, you might want to take a tip from another suburbanite, who loaded a pitcher full of martinis and a stack of plastic glasses into a little red wagon and took off on a tour of the neighborhood. Stopping to offer a taste to every porch-sitter and gardener, the perambulating party went on for hours, growing steadily—make that unsteadily—more festive as evening darkened into night.
When we moved into our house—in the summer, naturally—we threw an impromptu housewarming on our front porch, inviting all our new neighbors. The fare: top-shelf champagne and a stack of pizzas. Everyone lounged on the steps, helping themselves to house tours and paper cups full of Veuve Clicquot.
Like all great parties, it was simple and it was fun. And from that moment on, we were home.
It was one of those ridiculous holidays, the kind where the kids may be off from school but all the men still go to work. At the best salad place in town, lunch was proceeding pretty much as usual, which is, the women were behaving as if they were in a girls’ locker room. In a girls’ locker room at an all-girls’ school, where the teachers and the administrators and even the janitors were all women.
The topic at one table was the no-plastic diet, and whether eating only meat, vegetables, fruit, and eggs would make you lose weight fast. (It will.) At another table, the talk was about how to hide the purchase of very expensive shoes from one’s husband, while another female foursome discussed whether, pre-marriage, they’d ever slept with two guys on the same day. (Yeah, baby!)
And then, a hush swept over the room. If this had been a science-fiction movie, a red light would have started blinking and a loud honking siren might have gone off. Intruder Detected! Man in the room!
The poor guy probably didn’t detect the shift, but the poor women were instantly having a lot less fun. Though everybody knows the Sex and the City girls bared all about their lives, the list of things suburban women talk about when men aren’t around is equally long and juicy. A few examples:
- Who’s hotter, the furnace guy or the UPS guy? And do you actually fantasize about him?
- What kind of vibrator is best when you’re alone and which is best during sex?
- How we will live after our husbands die.
- What we fantasize doing when we fantasize about running away.
- How often we have sex and how much we really want to (or, often, don’t want to).
- How much money our husbands make and how much less that is than what we spend.
So, in mixed company, the discussion lags, since most of them don’t seem to think we have anything interesting to say. Sexist view? Maybe. Could it get me fired from my gig as a DJ? Doubt it. The guys would be talking about golf or something, and wouldn’t hear a word we said... |
