How To Throw A House Party

by Alexandra Molotkow

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average number of hours per day 15- to 24-year-olds spent attending or hosting social events on weekends or holidays — the times they are most likely to go to parties — declined sharply from 2003 to 2014 to nine minutes from 15.

OK, well how about these statistics, culled from the Bureau of Whatever, I Know I’m Right: 100% of people love a good house party. Unfortunately, 150% of people love complaining about how house parties are too expensive and too far away and offend their delicate introvert sensibilities, giving the false impression that house parties are dunzo.

Here’s how you throw a house party: get a bunch of people together, give them something to hype themselves up with, and let them go at it. Christopher Bollen remembers “cheap vodka in a plastic container.” Cookie Mueller served dog food pate. My preference is grocery-store cake and a couple of 2-liter bottles of Citra. Honestly, anyone who’s going to complain to you about the booze you’re serving for free in your warm, loving apartment is a bummer who is never invited again.

I lived in a 25-square-foot broom closet for six years of my adult life and I was frequent host to a perfectly manageable form of house party known as “Hey, The Bar’s Closing But We’re Still Having Fun, Why Don’t We All Go To My Place And Play Records, I Probably Have Some Sauza And We Can Stop At The 7–11 For Seltzer.” Everyone sat on the bed, or the floor, or a heap of laundry, and enjoyed themselves immensely.

But if you really need an incentive to throw a house party, here are some low-commitment themes you are free to use.

Rollaround Party
Everyone brings a soft item, like an old sheet or a thing of toilet paper, throws it in a big pile on the floor and rolls around in it.

Piano Party
Everyone sings around a piano like in olden times, except you get to sing whatever you feel compelled to sing in the moment, like Brandon, I’ve always been in love with you and Kathy, you give me the willies.

DOS Game Party
Because they archived all those DOS Games early this year, but I haven’t had an excuse to just sit and play them for 10 hours.

Laughter Party
Remember that game from childhood where everyone encircled one friend and tried to make them laugh? How do we not play that anymore? How are there 80,000 board game parties per weekend, and 60,000 board game bars in North America alone, and board games are resentment-churners whose instructions make no sense, and yet no one thinks to play the simplest and only real fun game from childhood that translates to adult life?

Nap Time Party
Yes, I would like to hear about your dreams.

Adult Talent Show
For fun and as a preventive measure, so you don’t freak out and decide to quit your job at 44 to pursue your dream of being a thing you really aren’t cut out to be.

(…Or maybe you are.)

Murder Handshake But With Drugs
Some guests get these pills, some guests get those pills, some guests get nothing.

NBD Costume/Housecleaning Party
Costume parties are a great idea, but they’re terrible if you don’t have money for a costume, or the ingenuity required to build a swan cape out of Q-tips and glitter glue. For this party, everyone hauls over the weird junk in their apartments and uses it to build costumes. (You can call yours whatever you’d like.)

Ultimate Sex Party
A guy on the street once invited my friends and I to a “top-secret” sex party during Nuit Blanche. They made you sign a waiver at the door, in case you had a heart attack, and to get inside you had to crawl through a maze of cardboard boxes plastered with magazine cut-outs that looked vaguely sexually menacing. Inside there was someone duct taping someone to the wall, someone else duct taping themselves to a chair, a guy in a gimp mask in a plywood box full of marbles, and a bed with a cage on it. Our friend got into the cage, and a woman in lacy pajamas came out and shook it for 30 minutes, yelling about the G20.

Your DIY sex party will be way better than that. It will be like a haunted house or a Mad Hatter but with sex. Set up a quiet, romantic room for lovemaking except a guy in a gorilla suit jumps out in the middle of it and chases you both around. Spread out balloons to fuck on filled with different kinds of mystery substances. “Curate” a wall of gadgets for sex that aren’t exclusively sex gadgets, like circuit boards and pillow cases and bags of flour and those plastic crumple-tubes that make whooooo sounds when you spin them. Be creative because human sexuality is vast and full of wonder!

Tear Party
Request your favorite crying trigger, then sit around and cry.