I remember the last Xmas party I was ever at. Bad enough it was a shitty party -- it was an office party. Does that surprise you? Before I started writing for what little scratch I get I used to hold down an office job.

I worked in a PR firm. I won't name it, due to NDAs, restraining orders, and other legal issues, but that doesn't really come into play. No. Anyway, it isn't like I wrote PR or anything like that. I didn't spend my days telling you why, in detailed language, this brand of toilet paper could cure cancer or that brand of sock would re-grow missing toes. No, it was worse.

I had to write the inter-office memos.

Your company doesn't have someone that does that, do they? I bet they don't. See, at our firm the President decided that all memos should have the same tone. A happy uplifting voice of the company that would inspire and elate us all. That was my job. If you needed a memo written, you would sketch out what you wanted to convey, all the needed details, and bring it to my office. I would then write a memo and send it out to the company. I crafted these things carefully. I was king of the memo.

By the time you got to the end of one of my memos you generally didn't know why you were going to the break room at noon, but you had the sense that there would be cupcakes, clowns, and confetti. Then you found out it was a layoff meeting. I was good.

So this one year I went to the Xmas party (the memo announcing it seemed to promise not only strippers but also a live reindeer and free cash), and things got strange.

For starters everyone else was in costume. Not as elves and Santa’s and all that shit, no, this was like a Halloween party. People were dressed as Smurfs, as General Zod, as Charlie Tuna. Instead of Xmas decorations, there was a mangy looking piñata in one corner and a life sized leprechaun in another.

It was a Very Pot Luck Xmas.

Thankfully there was booze.

Michelle from PR, internal PR that is, which is a bit like being a doctor's doctor, got into the gin and started telling anyone who would listen, which included plastic plants, all about how she lost her virginity to a rodeo clown who was still in face paint when they consummated their teenage love. She went on to explain why, to this day, she can't go to the circus for fear of orgasmic memory issues.

Jason from the mail room confided in us that while Michelle's story seemed strange to many of us that there was incident in his past involving a goat and that he totally understood where she was coming from.

The President of the company was dressed in a Batman suit, and he was talking to the head of accounting who was dressed as Zod. Well, to be fair, he had a bunch of Hefty bags taped around his body. He may not have been going for Zod, but that's what it looked like to me. They were debating the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.

The night progressed steadily like that, more and more drinking, more and more mixed holiday moments -- at one point Laurie from accounting started throwing beads to the assembled masses -- and we all just made the best of it.

For a while.

About three hours into it people started getting melancholy. People were sitting in crumpled heaps against the walls just weeping, remembering their families and their loved ones now lost to them. They were telling dark stories of nights they never wanted to remember.

It was the biggest example of people who can't hold their liquor living it up too much in a mass of emotional confusion. The lack of focus in the party didn't help, I'm sure. No one photocopied their ass, no one wore a lampshade or danced on tables, no one at all came in wearing a Santa suit and screaming for ho’s.

It wasn't long after that that I found myself on the street and looking for work. Which is when I decided to write for a living. I had a lot of time on my hands by then.

I guess I shouldn't have slipped the drugs into all the booze, really, not to mention people's lunches earlier in the day. But fuck, I was sick of your normal Xmas parties. I guess you get what you deserve on Xmas.