she's in parties (part one)

"...It was at the Sacré Coeur spring dance and garden party, at Missy Boudreaux's house- on St. Charles- We hadn't even been properly introduced , but she was sweet enough to follow me into the powder room and hold my hair while I puked into the bidet. It was my deb year so I of course was wearing white, and do you know, she was kind enough to pin her wrist corsage over the puke stain on my dress... That's the kind of friend she was... " -Bitsy Charbonnet (from Uptown)

I tend to attend parties, so of course, it is natural that I should want to sing their praises as well as pick them apart as do piranhas adore picking apart a careless cow stooping to drink from the Amazon river.
So, speaking of Piranhas, lets start with the most archaic of parties, one that is held outside, for some godless reason.
Garden parties are afternoon affairs that were extremely popular in the first half of the twentieth century -and still remain as popular among the elite of the south-eastern quarter of the United States- that were invented and encouraged by nationalistic European governments in order to make people so bored that they were willing to have a first and second World War- anything to get out of attending another garden party.
Garden parties consist of standing around in a garden -with perhaps the addition of drinking dismally low proof yet sticky sweet drinks in the heat of the day, as a reward for showing up in your crinolines and/or seersucker and/or linen finery.
That is all.
The only way to get a worthwhile amount of alcohol out of this is to sneak in your own flask or if you fail to have the opportunity to spike the punch yourself, actually dunk your entire head into the punch bowl. As a matter of fact the real cause of the first World War was a German ambassador doing just that at a Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace. (for public consumption, however, a story was circulated about Archduke Ferdinand's assassination.)
There are particular types of persons that are key to the success of these parties.
There is of course The Debbies, the young and fresh, shiny, happy people, (usually because of the contents of Mummy's medicine cabinet) that, at first blush, are shy, demure and dewy, or bronzed, stacked, blond and full of "All American Team Spirit", who are later to be found having sex in the parking lot or in the formal powder room snorting blow.
Then there's The Hot Walker and the Crypt Keeper, a hot, young and poor man who escorts a old and very rich widow to the party. Everyone is to assume that the two are having "pretend sex" that is, the young man actually does have sex with the older woman, yet we all pretend that it never happens. (Even the young man does this.) Next, there is The Beard.
The Beard is secretly a knob-gobbler that is out on a date with another person that is either secretly a tuna-twizzler or simply bored with her husband who is in the habit of making passes at the other bored female guests in the sweltering heat of the garden. The perfect union occurs when the two decide to marry, then they have a garden party of their own. These unions are for the most part successful, possibly because they play cards a lot. Pansies trump mother in laws tongue.
The Stalking Horse is the next perfect garden party date, they are the person that you go out with in order to make the person you really want to date insanely jealous. The only stipulation is that you actually have to sleep with the Stalking Horse or you won't make the person you really want insanely jealous. It is important that you excite this emotion well enough, hopefully to the point of either causing your jealous suitor to drive Daddy's Bentley into a wall -or bayou- or into his having twenty one roses delivered every other day with a note scrawled "Forgive me" for six months until you either tire of the color choices available in roses or you decide he has suffered enough- for now. This is the highest form of flattery.
There are always the additional ornaments, sparkling figures dressed to kill that you know spent $255.00 on their floral micro briefs (read: man panties for the really rich) from Tomas Maier, (I can get them for $68.00 on gilt.com, don't judge me...) that are welcome, yet somewhat rare, these are Hollywood types, celebrity chefs and/or lawyers and the ubiquitous Mob/Kennedy Family members that make one a trifle uneasy when they tell the hostess she has a "Sweet chassis".........

Mix and mingle...
Garden Party Bomb Pop
A versatile drink. Whether you're making it in a rocks glass, a cocktail glass, or a tall highball or Collins glass, all you need is equal amounts of each ingredient. Simple!
2 oz Bacardi® Razz rum
2 oz lemonade
2 oz Blue Curacao liqueur
Pour the Bacardi Razz rum into a small rocks glass or otherwise. Add blue curacao, and then lemonade, and serve.