This weekend brought up a very difficult question for me, one that I haven’t had to deal with before.

If it’s possible for me to have a bad time at a “dress to get laid” theme party, am I reaching the end of my house party career?

I was at such a scene last Saturday, and realized that for the first time in my life, I don’t really enjoy myself at parties that much anymore.

There I was, surrounded by hot, hot ladies (granted they weren’t all, or even mostly, dressed to get laid, but it’s the thought that counts) on all sides, and all I could think about was going outside for a breath of fresh air.

I couldn’t take all the noise and pushing, the claustrophobia of a crowded party hitting me like no time before.

In all honesty, the idea of sitting around with some good friends having a pertinent conversation about stuff I actually care about seemed a whole lot more pleasant.

I don’t want to lie and say that I had no fun at all, for that certainly was not the case.

There was Madonna, 50 Cent and even G’N’R blasting from the stereo, and I was dressed to get laid at the drop of a hat.

I met some interesting people, also quite ready to get laid, and my dad even came and partied with us (an incredibly surreal experience in itself).

Our gracious (and very layable) host did the best to ensure that one could have a good time (thanks, Lindsay), and altogether, as far as parties go, it was a success.

Nevertheless, the mass amount of silly guys not dressed particularly sexily, or comfortably, was just too much to handle. I heard shouts of, “let’s go to Lamda,” and I wished I were a more violent person.

What had promised to be a wacky party/possible orgy had turned into just another grazing field for guys who wanted to take a girl home more so that they could talk to their friends about her in the locker room than because they were actually interested.

The gig had started out wacky and fun, but had been reduced through a barrage of negative karma into a mere mob, some of us dressed a little funnier than others.

I had wanted a good, sexy party, not a bunch of guys with CK underwear and Abercrombie hats looking to get real drunk and act stupid.

When you have an apartment fit for 15 to chill comfortably, and you pack in a hundred kids, the count mostly dominated by horny guys, I cannot figure out how to have a conversation.

Everybody is pushing you at all sides, their eyes fixated on the beer keg just out of reach, yelling at one another.

Man was not meant to live like this.

I always assume I’m going to go out on Saturday and wake up on Sunday still glowing from the life-affirming excess of weekend college life.

Unfortunately, I woke up feeling as if an era had come to an end.

The only sensation I can really liken it to is that of being cattle.

Everyone being pushed around from one direction to the next, corralled to the bathroom, or the keg, or the couch, or out the door or just into the wall so someone else can make their way to one of those aforementioned destinations.

The only difference being that in a cattle farm, there are ranchers to tell the cows where to go.

Our parties don’t have those forces looking out for us, so we just run around in circles bumping into each other, exercising our communal ability to resist claustrophobia.

There are only two kinds of conversations you can really have at these parties-either one with your friends whom you know enough about already that it doesn’t matter if you miss half the things they say in the general chatter, or one with someone you don’t know, regarding how crowded it is, the temperature, names and maybe, if you’re lucky, a bit of actual conversation.

But none of them ever last more than 30 seconds.

The crowd is just too strong.

There was a time in my life when this was my absolute dream. Beer, many people to meet and no class in the morning.

But these days, I have been finding myself glad when the weekend’s over so I can leave the monotony of partying to get back to the day-to-day stuff that has seemed more and more appealing recently.

I am the type of person who requires control over his life to be happy.

I need to know that the things which happen to me every day are under my control, and can be changed if I start to have different interests.

Huge house parties are the antithesis of that.

Once somebody walks in the door, they give up their rights to sovereignty.

You become a cog in the machine.

Your opinions don’t count, and even if they did, it would be next to impossible to express them.

Just shut up and get drunk. Just shut up and get drunk.

If you get bored, go find some girl that’s been shutting up and getting drunk.

Maybe my personal bubble has increased.

In high school, going to a party with so many people that one couldn’t turn around without insulting someone was novel and exciting.

When that happened, we would talk about it for weeks. Now the option is available to me every weekend, and I think I may just stay in next Friday.

Maybe it’s because when I was in high school, or even for most of my freshman year, I felt comfortable in the position of “anonymous partygoer.”

Rather than risk being an individual (the one and only true mortal sin of high school), I liked just being amongst the crowd. Nowadays, however, I’d rather be thinking.