Topic: Party

Author: Chris Dunn

Each year I would descend the stairs flanked by my brother and sister, our hearts giddy with anticipation. Our sense of wonder and excitement had nothing to do with the typical reasons of the season. Santa had typically come and gone day’s earlier. This time we came to view the carnage. Bowls of chips gone stale, half-drunk cocktails, overflowing trashcans, and every so often an unconscious family friend passed out on the couch having “fallen into the punchbowl” the night before. The air stank like a bar, heavy with the twin odors of alcohol and tobacco. The punchbowl would be dry, the hors d’oeuvres consumed down to the crumbs, the meatball sauces congealing in cold crockpots, their prized morsels long ago exhausted. This was the aftermath of the Dunn Family Christmas Party, formerly a yearly vigil and now a vacant hole in the midst of my holiday season.

Those early years were the best, or I assume they had to be since, my siblings and I were shuffled upstairs once the first few partiers had arrived. We’d huddle in our beds and listen as the mayhem built up below, certain that we had been kicked out of paradise once again for the crime of our youth. As a child, I always assumed that the places where I was forbidden had to be the place to be. The images I formed in my mind to coincide with the sounds bubbling up from below were likely far more entertaining than reality could actually be.

As years went by, we would be allowed to stay up later and later, and even after we had been exiled we discovered that we could often sneak down to stare in wonder from the stairs at the chaos these previously staid and mature adults got up to. Dancing, yelling, making out, carrying on, eating, and drinking, drinking, drinking. The center piece of the DFCP was always the Boston Bay Fishhouse Punch – essentially a mixture of rum, brandy and sugar cut with champagne. It packed a wallop! I remember one year, I saw one of my mother’s work friends seemingly asleep in a chair. I tried to rouse her by helpfully blasting a sharp note on my father’s recorder right in her ear. She woke up and I was righteously and thoroughly chastised. At the time, I felt I had been wrongly disciplined since I was only trying to help, but with age came wisdom and a knowledgeable guilt I can never forget. Asshole kid! Leave the poor drunk people alone!

Eventually, the Dunn’s graduated from townhouse to actual house, and as the saying goes, with more house comes more responsibility. I believe it’s something like that anyway. In addition to being given stewardship of all party coats, we were permitted to invite a few guests of our own – provided of course that we stayed upstairs and did not cause trouble. I think this actually served a dual purpose I missed as a child. My friends were my parent’s friend’s children. They made me feel like I was getting a perk, when in fact I was merely saving several families the hassle of finding sitters. We’d spend the night sitting on the floor of my parent’s bedroom, playing trivial pursuit and daring each other to steal drinks from downstairs. One year we all got fairly tipsy when we over indulged on a bottle Blue Nun. The last time I saw Steve Grey, the heart-throb of my parent’s hippy commune days, he came up and sat with us on the floor. He said he just needed a break. There were just too many “old people” downstairs.

As years wore on, and I moved out, attending the DFCP became more of a chore. The Pit Crew didn’t have the same attachment to it that Karl and Drew did. Sure we were allowed now to drink the alcohol, but the raucous days were behind the affair. We would come and find a corner in the basement or the porch – wherever smoking was still allowed. We were now far from the 70s! I watched as my niece and nephew turned our coat check duties into a business wondering why I never thought to charge a buck or two.

Over the years the crowd morphed from hippies, to Amcodes employees, to North College Hill Democrats, and - in its final incarnations – a giant cast party. The latter years didn’t hold the same magic for me but there were still moments. The time Bobby fell in the punchbowl and helped Bridgid learn one of her long-time friends was gay. Or the time I managed to convince my crew to hang around long enough that we closed the place down, and I got to sit with my mom on the kitchen floor. I remember she was crying, but said she wasn’t sure why. “I guess, I’m just so happy,” she said.

Later, when she got sick, there was actually a debate. Maybe just a small affair... Maybe we don’t stay up so late… Maybe we cook all the food… But in the end, it was not to be. The impact of the pronouncement, “There will be no Dunn Family Christmas Party this year…” was blunted by the severity of the underlying cause, but from now until forever, the weekend between Christmas and New Year’s won’t pass without me feeling a painful vacancy.