It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [1]
Another reason we’ve gone all out is that we suspect this could be the last time Grace, the older of our two girls, will want to celebrate at home. Oh well.
Planning this party was bewildering at times. When I called the photo-booth rental company, the first question they asked me was, “What will the theme of the photo paper be?”
Huh?
“Yeah, the machine spits out strips—four little passport style photos on each strip. You can have writing along the side.”
I got up to speed fast. The strips of passport photos will read Grace’s 13th Birthday Party.
Now the day of the party has arrived and I’m making sure everything is ready. The woman at the henna tattoo table has her book of patterns set out and is comfortably settled into a chair. I take her a glass of water. I hungrily eye the food table, where the makings of a delicious Mexican feast are being laid out. The caterer is even dredging up tortillas, made from scratch, out of a kettle of oil. There’s also an ice-cream bar. I love ice cream. This is going to be a kick-ass party.
DJ Morty puts on Prince’s “Controversy” and cranks the amp up to party volume. I yell to Susan. When she joins me in the backyard, I drag her out onto the little dancefloor and start to shimmy. Little known fact about the original members of Guns N’ Roses: we dance. Everyone knows Axl’s serpentine slither, of course. Far fewer people know that Slash is also a world-class Russian crouch-down-and-kick-your-legs-out dancer. And me, well …
“Dad!” Grace yells.
I stop in the middle of a move and turn to look at her.
“People are going to start arriving any minute!”
She’s mortified. Already.
Yes, yes, yes, I can deal with this. She’s just growing up.
As Grace’s friends start to show up, Grace again makes it clear that she has forbidden us from coming out to the backyard during the party. Apparently parents are an embarrassment at this age. Whatever. Peeking out the back door as the party gets into gear, I see little packs of boys and girls hanging out, smiling, and laughing shyly. Some of these kids are starting to look like adults—one of the boys is almost my height.
An hour or so later I’m thinking I should really take a glass of water to the guy running the photo booth and see how things are going for the henna tattoo artist and make sure everyone is behaving. I’m responsible for these kids, after all. Hell, the DJ is a friend of mine, so I have to visit a little bit with him. And, well, the food looks really good, too, and I should probably get a plate for Susan. And while I’m at it, might as well get one for myself.
I’m not snooping, I tell myself as I push open the back door and step out. By no means. I am just being a responsible dad. Yep.
Should I go for ice cream now, or come back for it later?
As I round a blind corner of the house I stop cold, stunned: a boy and a girl are kissing.
Oh shit.
I freeze, not sure what to say or do.
I wasn’t expecting this.
My mind rushes through a checklist I didn’t even realize I had in my head. It’s a checklist of things I was doing at this same age—and it doubles as a checklist of things that as a parent I do not want a group of kids in my charge doing in my backyard.
Are they boozing?
No.
Smoking pot?
No.
Dropping acid?
No.
I started smoking pot at a really young age: fourth grade, to be exact. I took my first drink in the fifth grade and tasted LSD for the first time in sixth grade when I was offered blotter acid by an eighth grader on my way to Eckstein Middle School in Seattle. In the Northwest, mushrooms grew everywhere—on parking strips and in people’s backyards and just about everywhere else—and I soon learned which ones got you high. By the seventh grade, I was an expert at distinguishing liberty-cap mushrooms from all the ones that didn’t get you high. I first snorted coke in seventh grade, too. I also tried codeine, quaaludes, and Valium in