Begin with a genuine desire to build your community in the city in which you live, an underlying desire to be a brilliant, better-than-Martha hostess who throws carefully cultivated but effortless-looking parties, and latent social anxiety that sometimes leaves you feeling like an awkward tween right before your guests arrive.
In a fit of New Year’s optimism, pick a date to host a wine tasting and invite a bunch of people. Choose a few whom you know fairly well and some you don’t really know at all, but interesting people whose company you enjoy and who you would like to know better. For fun, make sure that none of them know each other.
Plan. Plan what wine you will offer and what wine you will ask people to bring. Plan what food you will have. Plan what you will wear, how you will set the table, where you will have people sit, what music you will play, and how you will keep the dog calm when the doorbell rings. Plan all of this so intensely that you forget to plan how to actually do the tasting.
Have half of the people you invite decline because they have other plans. Try not to let your inner awkward tween take it personally. Have two of the people who did accept not be able to make it because they were suddenly deployed. Try not to take it too personally, because #humanitarianlife.
Have a really shitty week at work leading up to the party. Make sure that there have been lots of major geopolitical shifts that affect the sector you work in and a surprise team restructuring thrown in for good measure. Feel your anxieties proliferate, so much that your anxieties are getting anxiety.
The night before the party, spend an absurd amount of time in grocery stores (yes, plural) looking for exactly the right meats, cheeses, tarallini, and chocolates. Visit two different casalinghi to find the exact types of glasses that you want. Communicate poorly with your partner, to ensure you’re both cranky.
The day of the party, wake up to a message from a person who did accept, letting you know that they can’t make it because of a family emergency. Do not take it personally.
Clean. Clean the guest bathroom, dust everything, vacuum up as much of the dog hair as is possible, put away the flotsam and jetsam of life—coins, lip balms, books, coasters, shoes, books, dog toys, jackets, books. Be careful not to clean so much that it looks like you’re trying too hard because trying too hard isn’t cool, it isn’t chic, and you want this to look as though your apartment is always the perfect balance between maximalist and minimalist, sophisticated and “I just found this at a flea market,” extremely tidy and lived in.
Two hours before the party, quietly let your social anxiety take over. What do you do if there are horrendous awkward silences? What if you say dumb things? (As you undoubtedly will.) What if your partner or a friend says dumb things? What if you don’t have enough people coming to really make it fun? What if it’s all so terrible that the people you invited over will leave and tell theirfriends about what a terrible party they went to and what a terrible, weird host you are, and all of their friends will tell their friends all around the world so that you never build a community and only have your dog for company? (And she doesn’t even really like to cuddle.)
One hour before the party, get a message from a person who did accept that they are sick and can’t make it. Again, do not take it personally. Then, get a bunch of messages from friends who work in your sector that the president is rumored to be dissolving the agency in which you started your career, the agency that provides the most humanitarian assistance to countries around the world in the world, which could leave millions of people without lifesaving assistance and, not to mention, the agency that provides most of the funding for your current organization. Have your existential anxiety, which you had been attempting to set aside, come roaring back as you are again confronted with the idea that you might be watching the death of multilateralism, international cooperation, and principled humanitarian assistance… Not to mention potentially your job.
It’s now the time you told people to come, and you and your partner are still slicing and plating a few final things when your first guests arrive. Be thankful that it’s the two people you know best, both of whom are affected by the swirling shitstorm that has descended over your country of birth. Kvetch over a quick glass of prosecco before the others arrive.
Get everyone seated at the table, tasting white wines, eating salumi and marinated artichokes and tarallini and olives and ricotta with truffle honey. Discover that, to your surprise, you’re actually able to set aside your anxieties. Discover that everyone is getting along, that the number of people you have around the table is a great number of people to have over, that all of the wines are good and no one really cares that you forgot to decide how you should do the wine tasting. Discover that you love doing this and can’t wait to do it again.