Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come

by Jessica Pan

  There’s something invigorating about doing something everyone else is afraid of. If everyone says, “Don’t go into the bathroom; there’s a bear in there!” and you’re like, “It’s fine; I can handle bears”—there’s a power to that. Even when the bear mauls your leg and you are bleeding badly, at least you faced the magnificent fucker. Some people never see the bear. Some people never even make it into the bathroom.

  Lily said that, for her, stand-up comedy was 50 percent the most stressful thing she’d ever done and 50 percent the most fun thing she’d ever done. For me it was more of an 85/15 split.

  The best part for me has been the intimacy of friendships forged in the fire of public humiliation. I haven’t had a work husband or wife since I met Sam and promptly made him my real-life husband, and my Ryanair relationship with Jaime was beautiful but fleeting. Now, in Lily and Vivian, I have two comedy wives.

  When I text them about the Cavendish, Lily immediately replies: “Everyone who wins the trophy on their first try goes on to be arrogant and disappointed.”

  Everyone deserves a Lily in this life.

  fifteen

  Come Dine with Me

  or

  Hosting a Dinner Party

  My year was nearly complete. The comedy had been performed, the strangers approached, the friend-dates conquered, the improv acted out, the Danube visited, the magic mushrooms ingested, the networking tolerated. I’d been humiliated, vindicated, and elevated, and I had publicly bathed multiple times. I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me.

  Eleven months. And now it was time.

  For the finale: a dinner party at my apartment that would bring together the people I’d met during my year in the literal and figurative wilderness.

  A dinner party is social and unpredictable and requires juggling many things at once—all things introverts aren’t crazy about. For me, it meant so many anxieties to be addressed in one evening: fear of cooking bad food (a rational fear—I regularly burn dinner), fear of being held hostage by guests (how do you have an exit strategy in your own home?), fear of throwing a party that is no fun (which means you are no fun), fear of being exposed by your own environment (what if you leave out your retainer?), and something truly horrifying: the mixing of various social groups.

  There should be a word for the fear of combining your social circles. If the fear of long words, the cruelly named “Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia,” gets recognition, then so too should this fear.

  Don’t think you have it? Just imagine every person you know on Facebook in the same room together, asking each other how they know you. Your parents. Your coworkers. Your childhood best friends. Your roommates. Your exes. Your friends who are too cool for Eat Pray Love and your friends who call Eat Pray Love their bible. Pious churchgoers and polyamorous couples. Friends who saw A Star Is Born five times in the theater and your boss who calls it cliché garbage. Friends who think Adnan definitely did it and friends who won’t associate with anyone who thinks he’s guilty. You get it. Now imagine throwing a topic like building “the wall,” a bad casserole, and some alcohol into the mix.

  Now how do you feel?

  Just the thought of it makes me spiral, because in that room, I’d find out the answer to uncomfortable questions like: Am I a different person for all of these people? If so, which version will I be when we’re all together? What if they like each other more than they like me? Who did I lie to about reading 1984, and who knows the truth?

  I ask around to see whether other people feel this way, and men consistently tell me that they feel this anxiety at their bachelor parties.

  “Dads, uncles, the lads, the lads’ lads, work friends, childhood mates, brothers, soccer mates, your fiancé’s brother—it’s a nightmare,” one tells me. “You don’t know which version of yourself to dial up or dial down.”

  I’m relieved to know I’m not alone in this, though I suspect many extroverts don’t have this fear because they like hanging out in groups more in general. Then there are the psychopaths who throw out an invite to all seven hundred of their Facebook friends saying, “Birthday drinks this Friday! The more, the merrier!” At least, this is what I think until Jori tells me she throws out invites like this, and now I’m rethinking our entire friendship.

  For my end-of-year finale, this can’t be just any old dinner party. I have to imbue the night with a sense of occasion so people actually show up. My birthday wasn’t for a few months. The December holidays were too busy. I know that what I can’t say is “I’ve been doing a social experiment on myself (and sort of also on you) for a year, and I need to get you all in the same room, force you to drink alcohol, and watch the results unfold.”

  Then it dawns on me. I have the ultimate key to getting British people to have dinner at my house. The trump card. The ace in the hole. The trick up my sleeve. A secret weapon.

  Thanksgiving.

  British people think Thanksgiving is a magical holiday because they don’t get to have it. It’s been glamorized by our American movies where families always have enormous brick houses, sprawling backyards, and kooky family members wearing cozy sweaters who fall asleep in beds piled high with an irrational number of crisp, luxurious pillows.

  I, too, want this mythical Thanksgiving, but, at least for me, it does not actually exist. I just don’t have that many pillows on my bed. But the British don’t know that. I will entice them with mysterious desserts like pumpkin pie and sweet potatoes with mini marshmallows.

  It is the perfect bait.

  It also means that I can have the meal at 2 p.m., instead of in the evening. This relaxes me, slightly. The pressure of a full-on dinner is stressful. Lunch? Lunch isn’t important. If I fail at lunch, people will live.

  Wary after trying to plan my mass friend-date and being stood up by twenty women, I cast a wide net. I’m competing with weddings, holidays, birthdays, and work trips. Trembling, I invite twenty-five people whom I’ve met this year.

  The RSVPs roll in. Unfortunately, Paul, Vivian, and Lily are out of town. But ten people say they can make it.

  Jermaine and Toni, two other people from my comedy course. Toni’s husband, Rob. Laura, Liz, and Caroline from improv. Laura’s boyfriend, Alex. Charles, my travel mentor. Benji, the psychiatrist-comedian and his girlfriend, Sylvia.

  Which means there really will be twelve people in my apartment.

  I count the number of plates I have. Five.

  Reality sets in.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  As I’ve never hosted a dinner party before, my frame of reference is the definitive dinner party show Come Dine with Me. As I mentioned, before all of this began and I first moved to London and could not work, I was mystified and obsessed with this reality TV program. Let me explain. During each episode, four to five strangers take turns hosting a dinner party in their homes for their fellow contestants over the course of one week. At the end of each evening, the contestants rate each other’s nights (food quality and hosting prowess) in the back of cabs on their way home. The contestant who wins the most points over the week takes home a prize of £1,000.

  My favorite episode of Come Dine with Me is when a man named Peter, who expected to win, discovers he has come in last place. He is livid at the winner. With a withering stare that flits between her and the camera, he delivers this monologue:

  “Enjoy the money, I hope it makes you very happy. Dear Lord, what a sad little life. . . . You ruined my night completely so you could have the money, and I hope you spend it on getting some lessons in grace and decorum because you have all the grace of a dump truck reversing.”

  This is the bar I’ve set for myself. If no one utters, “Dear Lord, what a sad little life . . .” then I’ll consider the night a roaring success.

  The Come Dine with Me dinner party format is strict: appetizer, entrée, dessert. Then a bad forced activity like karaoke
or dancing. Why don’t they ever show the contestants scream-crying to their mothers on the phone when the sauce isn’t thickening? Surely it’s the defining moment of any dinner prep.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  This summer, Sam and I were eating dinner outside at the River Café, a famous restaurant in London, courtesy of a gift certificate my brother and his wife had given us as a Christmas present. It was a warm, balmy evening, just before sunset, when two wonderful things happened in quick succession. First, the waiter put down a plate of handmade pasta and truffles in front of me. And then I glanced up just as Nigella Lawson glided by our table, beaming at my pasta.

  It was like the patron saint of delicious and decadent pasta had blessed my plate. I was giddy; it was like I’d been touched by an angel. The pasta was divine, and Nigella’s approval was its crowning glory.

  Nigella, as we all know, is the embodiment of coziness, comfort, and sophistication. The queen of dinner parties. The original domestic goddess. My hosting mentor had revealed herself to me.

  But that was in the summer. When everything had seemed possible and this dinner party had seemed so far away.

  When it comes time to plan my Thanksgiving dinner, my mentor is on the other side of the world. Nigella is on tour in Australia. It’s almost as if she can’t go around personally helping every anxious woman hosting a dinner party.

  No matter. She smiled at my pasta, and so it is written. She will be my mentor in spirit. I pore over her website, books, and TV shows.

  When I find a video she did in the US with her Thanksgiving tips, I sink my nails into it. In other words, I follow it to a tee with unhinged dedication.

  “If you were to say to someone . . . ‘Can you bring a dessert?’ I think they would be delighted,” Nigella says.

  I text Laura, the girl with blue hair from my improv class: “Bring your signature bake.”

  Then I text my friend Toni, who was in my comedy course: “Bring pumpkin pie.”

  This was easy.

  Elsewhere, Nigella says she often likes to foster a casual atmosphere by going barefoot at dinner parties. That I could do.

  I study her books and take notes like a high schooler preparing for her SATs. I decide to make her Super-Juicy Roast Turkey and then am stunned into silence when I see her recipe for Coca-Cola Ham. Boiling ham in Coca-Cola? It is so decadent, so ludicrous, so unhealthy. So American. I add it to the menu.

  Then, I order a bench that will seat more people. I arrange to borrow plates and silverware from Hannah (new best friend) and her husband downstairs who were invited but will be out of town.

  Crucially, I pretend to have everything under control, but in reality, I have no idea what I’m doing.

  And as the date creeps closer, I realize Nigella on a screen is not enough for me. I need a real-life mentor. Someone I can confess my fears to. Someone who can coach me through the practicalities of proper hosting. Someone I can possibly scream-cry to on the phone when the turkey is raw.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The English journalist Dolly Alderton and I look very different on paper. And in 3-D. Dolly is six feet tall and blonde. I’m five two and brunette. She has shiny, long hair and thick black eyelashes and wears flowy dresses: if you threw her in the clothes drier and tossed in a dirty dish towel used to change an engine’s oil, then I might emerge an hour later, shrunken, crumpled, shyer, wobbly. More house elf, less supermodel.

  In her memoir, Everything I Know about Love, Dolly’s life is full of soirees, dinner parties, dates, dancing all night, music festivals, and talking to strangers in pubs for fun. She regularly does all the things I had to have a quarter-life crisis to try once.

  Dolly fell in love with hosting dinner parties as a teenager, and she says that she’s happiest at the stove, shouting to her friends and being responsible for everyone’s well-being. I wouldn’t know whether that makes me happy because it’s literally never happened.

  Three days before my Thanksgiving dinner, I call Dolly.

  Over the phone, while she’s waiting at a train station, I explain my situation to her: I’m a shy introvert, and I’m inviting ten people who don’t know each other for a dinner party. And I’m a very average cook.

  Dolly senses the urgency and fear in my voice and immediately transforms into my official guide. At a rapid pace, she begins firing off advice, as if I’ve just told her we need to diffuse a bomb and only she can talk me through it.

  “OK, a good playlist is really important. I’m amazed at dinner parties where there’s no music playing and the overhead lights are on. You need to have all the lamps on, lots of candles, and you need to have a great playlist of music people love,” Dolly says.

  I had not even thought of music or lighting. I know even less than I thought I did. I start writing down everything Dolly says verbatim. There is no time to waste.

  “The best thing you can do, my love, is do all of it in advance. Do a cold appetizer, so you can pre-prep it on plates. For your entrée, do something slow-cooked,” she says.

  “Do something in a tray or pot that you can leave. Don’t do elaborate Ottolenghi side dishes—no one wants that. People just want comfort food, like lasagna. Do NOT do a risotto.”

  I write “risotto” with a big slash through it.

  “Do a cheese board. Just get three cheeses; you don’t need any more—one hard, one blue, and one soft,” Dolly says. I will follow this advice exactly.

  “Dessert-wise—don’t do any fancy dessert. Just buy the dessert or get really nice ice cream so you don’t have to do anything on the day or be away from your guests.”

  Luckily, I’d already outsourced this to Laura and Toni.

  When I admit to Dolly that actually this isn’t just a dinner party, this is my first dinner party ever, I hear her take a deep breath.

  “Place a big order at the supermarket so it comes straight to your house a day or two before—make sure you have foil and tons of dishwashing soap. Leave all of the dirty dishes until everyone’s gone; have extra wine in the house even if people are bringing some,” she says. “You do not want to run out of alcohol.”

  This woman is a hero.

  I confess my fear of how the other people will get along. How does she ensure that conversation flows?

  “Before I host, I work out the different connections between different people. Sometimes hosts need to act like the social lubricant. Sometimes you need to be the person who says, ‘Oh, you were saying you want to go to Mexico this year.’ . . . ‘Chris—you went to Mexico last Christmas’—stuff like that.”

  I think back to Bridget Jones. Ah, Perpetua. This is Mark Darcy.

  “People think that socially relaxed people don’t think about stuff like that, but before I go on a date, I already have, like, five fallback funny stories to tell in case conversation falls flat.”

  I’d never imagined that confident, outgoing people did this, unless they were going on late-night talk shows. It’s comforting to imagine the most charming people I know telling themselves stories on their journeys over.

  “It’s so hard to imagine people we deem successful to be vulnerable,” Dolly says. “When we see a perfect hostess, it’s so hard to think of her doing a menu plan or thinking about what to talk about—but that’s what people do.”

  Dolly is one of these women whom I deem to be successful and a perfect hostess. It’s incredibly reassuring to hear her say this.

  I want to run one more thing by her. Games. Despite being shy, I like party games because they can bond guests and can take the pressure off conversations, which actually exhaust me more. But when I ask her what game she would recommend playing, her tone changes.

  “I’m so English; I hate any organized fun,” Dolly says.

  Why do all British people say this? Aren’t croquet, polo, and soccer all organized fun? Why must all fun be chaotic?

  �
�But wait a minute—we do a massive Christmas lunch every year, and we do play charades, which is a lot of fun.”

  I consider this tacit approval of game playing and move on.

  After we hang up the phone, I make a menu list, then place an order for the ingredients with a nearby supermarket along with all the extras Dolly had recommended. I buy two chairs from the charity store so everyone will have a seat. I move a lamp from our bedroom into the living room so we don’t have to use the overhead lights.

  I flip through Nigella’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess book and feel the need to invoke her spirit. I decide to bake her brownies. Just for me, oh so casual. I begin melting dark chocolate and butter together over the stove. I am barefoot, my hair is down, I am calm, the epitome of Zen in the kitchen. The mixture is gooey and smells amazing. I pour the brownies into a pan and place the brownies in the oven.

  And burn the shit out of them.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The twelve-pound turkey arrives frozen, which is not what I had expected, and I nearly break my back carrying it upstairs. I realize that to get it to defrost in time, I have to submerge it in cold water and change the water every thirty minutes. It requires more attention than an infant.

  I stress about a playlist but then find one called “Nigellissima” that is full of sexy, jazzy Italian songs. It’s perfect. (The Spotify user is Marc Roman—go subscribe immediately. You’ll feel like you stepped into a summer night in Rome, wearing a backless silk dress, sipping a Negroni, minutes away from making love to an Italian named Giovanni. And, crucially, not like you are massaging an oversized dead turkey baby with cold butter.)

  Taking Dolly’s advice to heart, I bake the Thanksgiving stuffing with sausage, apples, onions, and mushrooms the day before. Charles, my travel mentor, can’t have gluten, but I’ve made it with gluten-free bread. I’m feeling self-satisfied as I look at it, already prepped a full day before the party.

  Together, Sam and I prep the giant turkey to cook the night before. There’s a lot of yelling. After some elaborate maneuvering, we manage to shove the bastard in there, run cool water over Sam’s inevitable oven burns, and make up. Then, when I’m not looking, he peels a pile of sweet potatoes I’d wanted to leave with the skins on, and I shout, “YOU’RE RUINING EVERYTHING!” He storms out of the kitchen.