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Zseni goes to a Partylite party. by Zsenipoo 12/02/2007, 7:50pm PST
So here's the setup: my beard is pretty sparse so I get asked to all kinds of mary kay tupperdongs candlefluffing parties. Sometimes I even go! Because I'm lucky, the hostess bails, or the saleslady can't make it, or something else comes up such that I get full credit for good intentions but don't have to sit through a salespitch. I've been to seven multi-level marketing "parties" without ever seeing a catalog.

My luck ran out yesterday.

Boy oh boy, Caltrops, it was the most comfortably depressed I've ever been. In a pleasant suburban home, a gaggle of eight or so tremendously fat women (FULL DISCLOSURE: YES, CALTROPS, I THOUGHT ONE OF THEM WAS CRAZY HOT, AND SHE WAS VERY FAT AND HAD SIX CHILDREN) who had all known each other for their entire lives shared two bottles of wine and giggled about how kaaaaarrrrrayzeeee they were and who was preggers and what the latest on whatsherface's cellulitis was. I was quickly lulled into the passive and receptive mindset of a fourteen-year-old at Mom's parties; it was only when one of the six children of the six-children-having-milf showed up that I realized I was frighteningly old and bound to have children and jewel-tone v-neck sweaters any second now. They also all had much more professional haircuts than I had.

After sipping one-twelfth as much bargain chardonnay as would have been considered hospitable at Rivenzsenidell and pawing over the mound of diced salami to get at the strawberries and some sort of rye-colored object which was neither rye nor bread, it was time. The saleslady was the poorest person in the room and the first to call for wine. I watched her deepen her poverty by purchasing more Partylite crap along with the rest of us.

She waggled uncomfortably through a variety of cult-like pitches. The most memorable was the laminated card reading SNUFF, SNIP, HUG: this sent me reeling giddily through relationship scenarios. I hoped that I wouldn't have to hug anyone in the room. "...we HUG our CANDLES," she emphasized. "It's very important for proper candle maintenance." I wasn't sure if I could withstand the subtle but omnipresent pressure to conform which suffused the room; if I had been handed a votive and told to cuddle it, I probably would have. Fortunately "hug" means "shove the soft bits on the high side of the candle in." But I was scared for a while there.

"And why do we have candles? Does anyone know?" Saleswhore prompted.

"OO!! I know!" Squealed the unhappy soul who invited me. "It's to illuminate, celebrate, and decorate." Ha ha! Culty!

"That's right. And Partylite candles are the finest candles made today."

The sales part was dull when it wasn't gratingly horrifying: clearly, you have to be an organized ballbuster to make any money at this shit. If the salesperson accepts checks, she's responsible for the bounced check fees; she winds up with a lot of candle bullshit that people purchase and later decline to accept or pay for or bounce checks on. She has to buy her own marketing materials and display models and whatnot; obviously, there are no health benefits or other perks. Unless you buy a lot of candles!

Oh yeah, the candles. They're crap, by the by.

I sniffed every single candle in the scent samplers. This was partly so I could emit soothing noises on cue ("Mmm, smells lovely." "Oh, that's so interesting.") but also because I was curious as to whether I could find one that didn't smell like hotel shampoo or Airwick. They're simultaneously loud and bland, like jewel-tone v-neck sweaters on fatties. "Hinoki Stream" - Disney World Resort shampoo circa 1986. "Ginger Pumpkin" - Autumn Spice Airwick. "Imagine the savings - if you go through a lot of air fresheners..." instead you can get an air freshener that will soot up your wall! I eventually settled on "Scarlet Oaks", which managed to smell inoffensively like Aroma Disc WinterBerry. And a pair of votive holders. Well I had to buy something; everyone else was.

Conversational oddities. "Oh Zseni, my husband is a mortician!"

"Wow, that's cool."

"Ha ha! Most people don't believe me when I say that! ha ha ! ! So crazy!"

"Why would anyone lie about that? I mean - seriously, if you're going to lie about what your husband does for a living, why pick 'mortician'? If someone tells me that their husband is a mortician, I'm inclined to believe them right away."

(room is silent)

Or later, after a conversation in which all of the women complain about their boobs:

"Oh Zseni, I even had my boobs REDUCED once! I bet you can't even tell!"

"No, of course not. Why would I even think about that? Who goes around saying 'whoa I bet she's had those worked on... the other way!"

(room is silent)

A minute or two later:

"Oh yeah, YOU got the perfect boobs, but I got the perfect FEET."

Perfect boobs lady cries "what's wrong with my FEET?!"

Zseni exclaims (to perfect feet lady) "what's wrong with YOUR BOOBS?"

Despite these lapses, I managed to lie often and well enough that the cultists began to say things out loud that I never imaged people said at all - I mean, less so about me in particular, and more in that I thought the terms and concepts belong entirely in meta-discussions and would never actually come up in the course of normal conversation.

"Ohhh, she fits in real well with our crowd!"

"Oooo, Zseni's fitting in so nicely!"

Humans say these words!

It was not like Yaoiworld where everyone was fucked up in ways that I wore myself out trying to pin down; it was just - pleasant and normal, and gently sad: every child has a passport to this protected world with its very close boundaries, gratis, and they have to wander very far off the path before they do themselves out of it. Stupid and pudgily kind matriarchs will forever follow you with cookies and scrapbooks until such time as you are too old for their care, and then, horror of horrors, it's your turn to shit out a child and make scrapbooks and buy candles at their inane gatherings.

I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy myself. It's nice to act normal sometimes. But there isn't anything that I could do with such people on a regular basis; I attend their to-dos in the same way that I go birdwatching. Except it's birdwatching with strings attached, like if the birds gave you the first hit free and then after that, if you want to keep watching, you'd better be ready to run errands and squeeze ooze out of their toes and buy even more candle bullshit. So I envied the little girl who came in and sat amidst the momcows, dreamily leafing through catalogs, until such time as she was bored, and then she left.
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Zseni goes to a Partylite party. by Zsenipoo 12/02/2007, 7:50pm PST NEW
    The male equivalent by Fussbett 12/05/2007, 11:31am PST NEW
        So the male version is better (and for COOLGUYS). NT by Jhoh Clbbl O_____O 12/06/2007, 2:05am PST NEW
            Hey, put your sunglasses on. NT by Fussbett 12/06/2007, 3:03am PST NEW
        I reward your empathy with by Zsenipoo 12/09/2007, 1:24am PST NEW
            More like FuckedCompany 2.0 NT by Fussbett 12/09/2007, 10:10pm PST NEW
                That was a great site. NT by Jhoh Clbbl O_____O 12/09/2007, 10:29pm PST NEW
    Apropos of nothing, I still have 11 out of 12 Scarlet Oaks votives. by Noi Dau Don 02/11/2010, 12:09am PST NEW
        I'm trying to remember what we did with those tea candles we got from our aunt by irony 02/11/2010, 3:09am PST NEW
        I fucking hate candles, but here's a story. by up with pod people 02/11/2010, 11:40am PST NEW
            You caught our assburgers disease. NT by Jhoh Creexul (custom software) 02/11/2010, 11:43am PST NEW
        Sure, I'll take one. NT by Last 02/11/2010, 12:08pm PST NEW
            Cool. Address? NT by Noi Dau Don 02/11/2010, 12:44pm PST NEW
                Oops, didn't see this until just now. by Last 02/18/2010, 2:06pm PST NEW
 
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