4 December 2004

There are a few criteria that make a party the ultimate experience for me –

#1 It should be in the house you are staying in, yet not be your house so you can avoid most of the cleaning.

#2 There should be lots and lots of good looking available men.

#3 There should be limited competition for the attention of aforementioned men.

#4 You should be the most interesting person there.

Judging on these four criteria alone I went to a party that got a perfect score.

Tom has a friend, Elaine, in Leeds and Elaine invited her up for her Christmas party and invited her to bring a friend. So we spent forty quid and three hours getting to the party. We got into town at about 12 and looked around for a while before we went to Elaine's house.

Leeds has been called the London of the North and I think I will declare it Max's Ultimate City. The shopping precinct is a gob-smacking six city blocks that included huge covered markets and stunning malls that were more beautiful than anything I saw in Paris. There was every shop imaginable, huge outlets for the really very expensive shops like Harvey Nichols and specialty shops that made me gibber with lust. As a barely reformed shopaholic, I was walking through the ultimate gauntlet of temptation. The shops had me so hypnotized I didn't notice a single hot Northern guy – and THAT is a miracle.

When I simply couldn't cope with another moment in shopping heaven with no money, we left for Elaine's house. We arrived, settled into our own room and waited for the party to come to us.

Criteria #1 score = 10

The guests had been invited from three pools of people – Elaine's gym, Diane's police co-workers, Kirsty's customer service job that included trainee firemen and marines. To Max's utter delight the door kept admitting groups of tall, young, cute and fantastically fit men into the living room. I got ogling overload. I grinned like the cat that got the cream. I decided that I simply had to meet EVERY ... SINGLE ... ONE of those lovely, LOVELY men. Thirty single men looking for a good time. Life is indeed very hard sometimes.

Criteria #2 score = 10

There were about six other women in at the party. All of them there with their boyfriends. Tom drank so much she can't remember past 10 o'clock. I was the only single, upright female there. I had a big job and I was prepared to step up to the plate.

Criteria #3 score = 10

Every other girl there was a typical Northern girl – tall, straight blond hair, legs up to her ears, skirt barely big enough to be a belt, lots of cleavage and well known socially to the guys. Your correspondent? Short, covered from head to toe in clothes, dark curly hair. SEXY ACCENT. They don't get many Australians up there and I was a complete unknown. I was the CENTER of all eyes at all times. I could feel the crowd move when I did, I could hear the murmurs of 'who is that?' as I made my way to the kitchen for my water and back. It was like being in Turkey again. Except I was surrounded by Scottish, Irish and Northern accented hulks of manhood raring for a go at the bubbly Australian.

Criteria #4 score = 10

The happenings.

I spotted my man within twenty minutes. Blue eyes, brown hair, cheeky grin, broad shoulders, narrow hips, bum to die for – the spitting image of FSO. Within about 5 minutes of talking to him I was getting seriously rubbed up against, me grinning like a maniac, his friends cheering us on as soon as they discovered I was three years his elder and I liked to get my hands up the shirts of pretty boys. I think we could have gotten down and dirty on the floor and they would have just stood around, drinking, suggesting moves. It was hilarious. He wriggled, he flirted, he pouted when I left to get a drink, he got jealous when I talked to other men, he charged through the crowd to collect me from conversations so he could purr in my ear.

He left, thank god, because he got bored with me and I was absolved of having to snog him in front of everyone AND I got to talk to all the other gorgeous men.

So I spent lovely moments with a towering blue eyed and black haired Irishman named Jack who hunched over his height and enormous chest to purr in my ear that I was a 'bubbly mad bitch' and that he had been looking for a bubbly girl all night. Only his accent allowed him to get away with that comment. And that fantastic set of shoulders. And that spectacular bum almost at my eye level. *purr*

I talked serious history talk with another English history graduate who was a very sexy man with green eyes and gorgeous dark skin. I talked surfing with a Welshman with a fantastic chest filling out the stylish t-shirt. I talked cricket with a shaven head Northern bruiser built like a brick shithouse who knew all about the WACA as soon as I mentioned where I was from. I talked guns with the two trainee marines with their huge blues eyes and unique take on just how crudely you can talk to a girl. And at 2pm I was talking about a writers' responsibilities to their readers to experience EVERYTHING with a blond Geordie fireman who did a 'Max' to me and asked just the right questions to keep me talking about myself for about an hour.

By the end of the night I was beginning to feel a little guilty that I was having ALL the fun. It almost felt like it was a party thrown just for me. Elaine declared I was her favourite guest. I hadn't spilt a drink and I had taken on the mammoth task of entertaining thirty lusty lads and not a single one felt he hadn't had a good go at trying to score with me. What can I say? I am just the perfect guest!

So I was asleep by 3, dreaming the contented sleep of a girl that had just attended the most perfect party possible. And got out of it without a single stain on my pristine reputation as a good girl. Sometimes fun can be just illegal.