Warned to be ready to dance, my getting-down attaché and I find ourselves in the company of the highest ratio of preschool and kindergarten teachers I've ever found at a house party. The celebration is in honor of the golden birthday of Mark, a heavily tattooed "floater"—early-education parlance for an assisting teacher. A professor of engineering introduces himself and explains the camaraderie of men with long beards. This leads, of course, to breasts, which aside from being great, are not as funny as Robin Williams, he says. From him I learn that many of the assembled met at Burning Man­­—where, apparently, free waffles can be found. I find myself reconsidering the desert-themed festival.

After a "20-person spank machine" for Mark, cakes are brought out. The first is a carrot cake, homemade by his mom (who opted out of this microbrew-saturated event), and the other a coffee and chocolate affair that someone says tastes like caffeine. The shimmying begins on the living-room dance floor, but when the DJ's wires begin to fail, the uncoordinated and unstyled boogying turns into musical chairs without the chairs or eliminations. Everyone drops to the floor when the mixed reggae, hiphop, and soul randomly cuts out, until the symmetry of the turntables finally dies, leaving us with only background music sans scratching.

There's a diversity of careers, backgrounds, and ages present, but similar bladder schedules and a profound gregariousness—which must be derived from those "everybody's special" class discussions—unites us late into the evening.

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