Up north, it's an Emancipation Proclamation Celebration. Our host is finally free from an arduous two-year relationship, and his very pro-breakup friends have come to honor the end of the tainted love by getting tremendously intoxicated on a fine selection of excellent liquors. One partier repeatedly tries to get the group to head out to Bothell—he has heard that there's a triple kegger going on there, featuring six bands and a lot of girls who (after a few drinks) are topless and/or (after a few more drinks) are totally naked. Someone else suggests calling an escort to fulfill a partier's dream of tossing cocktail sausages into a woman's cleavage. It's all horny fun around the proposition of getting a newly freed friend laid, but our host wisely puts things in perspective: "I'm single now, and I just want to stay single for a while—enjoy my freedom." Who says that drinking impairs good judgment?

Down south, people gather around a backyard fire for champagne and s'mores. It's a going-away party for a much-loved friend who's moving to Thailand. Someone is opening beers with his combination flip-flop/bottle opener—"Try not to think about how close your beer was to his feet," someone advises me. Our hostess makes banana boats—you slit a banana, still in its peel, stuff it with chocolate chips, wrap it entirely in tinfoil, and then throw the whole thing onto the burning coals. Fifteen minutes later, you're unpeeling a gooey-sweet mess of deliciousness. Things get bittersweet under the stars as friends cry and hug and laugh: hello, goodbye, goodbye, hello.

Want The Stranger to watch as you try to convince a 90-year-old man on the sidewalk to come to your house party? E-mail the date, place, time, and party details to partycrasher@thestranger.com.