watch-wrist

That’s the question Stephen asked me last weekend when asked what time everyone was expected to be at Donovan & Brian‘s for our Homorazzi 6 month anniversary party. It was a fair question. As we all know, although a specific time is assigned to a particular event, there are SO many other variable that determine your ACTUAL expected arrival time. Here’s what I go by…

Dinner Party
Scheduled Start Time: 7:30pm
Gay Start Time: 7:30pm

When it’s a dinner party, either at a restaurant or at a friend’s house, it’s rude to show up late. When it’s at a restaurant, someone has gone out of their way to set up a reservation for a specific time, so out of respect you should show up on time. Not only that, you’ll annoy the hell out of the servers that end up having to wait until everyone has arrived in order to get going with your table’s orders. Also, if your friends are hungry and because you showed up late, they haven’t been able to order their food yet, they are not going to be too pleased with you. There are even advantages to showing up on time. You get to choose where you sit. Who wants to sit on the end, away from all of the conversation or stuck with the leftover people that no one wanted to sit with. Not me! I like sitting in the middle so I’m not left shouting across the table, and I have access to more people to have conversations with throughout the evening, without having to get up.

House Party
Real Start Time: 8:00pm
Gay Start Time: 9:45pm

Yeah, I know – there’s a big difference but here’s why. You don’t want to show up too early because you’ll be the only one there. You want to show up when the party is picking up and it actually looks like a party when you get there. There is one except to this. If the person that is hosting the party is one of your BEST BEST friends, then it is actually your obligation to be there by 8:30pm at the latest. The party really starts After 9:45pm, (in real honesty we know you’re not gonna show up until 10:30pm) and the host of the party knows this. If the host were to write 10:30, then the host knows that no one would show up until after midnight. It’s this weird unspoken thing in our culture. People will actually be thrown off if you show up at their place on time. THEY won’t even be ready. In real honesty, you only need 1.5hrs to predrink (prefunk for our American friends) before hitting the clubs anyway.

Club/Bar/Dancefloor
Real Start Time: 10:00pm
Gay Start Time: 12:30pm

Wow, I didn’t realize we didn’t really go to the clubs until that late. But it’s true. We may hit a lounge first before ACTUALLY hitting the dancefloor at a Nightclub, at which point we won’t recall the rest of our night. Going to the bar too early will result in a bigger dent on your credit card bill and depending on where you are and how loud it is, you have less time to socialize with friends, etc. (like at a house party), which is my favorite part. After midnight, everyone is good and drunk and your friends are will at any point thereafter, start dropping like flies (either too drunk to function, or they’ve found someone to go home with).

Lastly, there is one more thing to address that may throw the above scenarios off. That is double bookings. In the event of having two parties to go to, and chances are that they have the same start times, you have to go to plan b. For example. Say you have two house parties to go to. Plan B is going ON TIME to the house party you would least like to go to (for one reason or another), and assuming you need drive / walk time, stay there for about an hour and twenty minutes before making your way to the second party – the one you want to end up at.

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