Poison River Players, Part Two

31 December 2005

It was a lot of work, but we managed to get the house repaired and ready in time for the New Year's Eve party. I had invited people from the theatre group, and of course Rick and Charles and Bob and Matteson's band were all planning to be there, and Matteson explained that there was almost always at least a few people that would show up as a friend-of-a-friend that he had never met before. I offered to cancel when I saw how bad Matteson was taking things over the past week, but he insisted he could use the distraction and refused to cancel another major party.

I knew this likely meant he would not be as invested as usual, but since I knew almost everyone coming by this time, I figured I could handle it. He helped set up and greet people, but as soon as there were enough people that they could largely entertain themselves I pretended not to notice him slip away.

After about an hour, Rick asked a couple people from the troupe about improv. Some had experience with it, others didn't, but with a few more drinks they were all willing to give it a go. He started soliciting prompts from the rest of the party and throwing them at the actors, who pretty quickly occupied the living room and made use of anything they could find there or have handed to them. We never turned the music off, so sometimes that was part of the bit and sometimes it wasn't. Some of it was abysmal, but there were some amazing highlights and Rick managed to keep it interesting and get people invested throughout. By midnight, basically everyone was involved in some way or another, even if it was just handing people more drinks and snacks or yelling out some new element Rick would decide whether or not to give to the actors. I was, if I'm honest, a bit impressed.

During the last half hour before midnight, Rick was pretending to be Dick Van Dyke and narrating the various forms of entertainment happening at his wild New Year's Eve countdown while the actors tried to keep up. We'd lost four to sleep or the need to rest and throw up by then. I had jumped in to replace one. We were painfully loud at the stroke of midnight, and when people grabbed someone nearby to kiss at 0, I turned to find Rick and made the split second decision that maybe there was more to him than I'd assumed.

I don't remember what time everyone else left. Some people were trickling out by one o'clock, some people just crashed on the couches and floor. I left the party at about 1:30, leading Rick by hand to my room.

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