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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