Our hostess—The Stranger‘s former
proofreader—is throwing her own goodbye party. She’s going to
grad school in Oakland for creative writing, but, as if packing and
getting her affairs in order wasn’t stressful enough, she’s spent the
last few weeks putting together an anthology zine of creation stories.
Rather than hosting a mopefest, her party is doubling as a zine-release
party.
The zine, titled This is the beginning., is a gorgeous
block-printed, hand-stitched affair, featuring contributions from,
among others, Stranger writers like Brendan Kiley, Cienna
Madrid, and, um, me. One contributor reads his piece—about the
first man in the world, the first woman in the world, and the submarine
captain who loves them both—and then performs several concertinas
for the audience. Thunder Grey Pilgrim performs a musical piece called
“The End of the World Is No More Beautiful or Ugly Than Today,” an epic
played on one guitar accompanied by weird electronic manipulations.
Someone’s in the kitchen making a drink composed of tequila and
orange-mango juice. I ask what it’s called and he draws a blank, but we
quickly decide that the drink is named “foreign policy.” Several
foreign policies later, wrestling matches break out. Our hostess
performs a full nelson on her boyfriend, which leaves him screaming and
injured, but heartily impressed at her wrestling prowess. Everyone
tries to do half nelsons on everyone else, but we learn that half
nelsons aren’t really functional wrestling moves; anyone can break
free. As going-away parties go, a literary reading that ends with
drunken half nelsons on the floor is an optimal one. 
Want The Stranger to perform the Wal-Mart
morale-boosting dance at your house party? E-mail the date,
place, time, and party details to partycrasher@thestranger.com.