Thank you for a memorable evening

I used to be on the dinner party circuit when I was around thirty, but not many people seem to have dinner parties these days. Maybe I am just not invited to them. You will find out why not shortly.

You have two duties when you go to someone's house for dinner: To be entertaining or at least interesting on the night, and to reciprocate by eventually cooking dinner for your host at some point in the future. Very entertaining people can get away without cooking dinner themselves, but bores are never invited back again.

A bit of wine is good for making people more entertaining than they would be stone-cold sober, but too much is guaranteed to turn them into bores, although sometimes an excess can lead to interesting events.

At the last dinner party I went to a few years ago, everyone was well-oiled and our hostess ended up waylaying me on my way back from the WC in a small ante-room adjoining the dining room. She blocked my path by standing in front of me, putting her arms around me and planting a kiss full on my mouth, saying "I find you very attractive."

I mumbled something about being flattered and she said, "You don't understand. I find you VERY attractive." She was still draped over me and blocking my exit, so I had to struggle to get away with a sort of fixed smile on my face.

What made it doubly disturbing was that she did all this in full view of her adult son who was sitting at one end of the dining table next to the ante-room. He pretended not to notice.

When I finally made it back to the table, her partner was alluding to how much money he had in the bank adding that anyone who uses a credit card is an idiot. I said that I often used credit cards and he said, "Then you are stupid."

I responded by saying, "And you are a cunt."

Amazingly, I was invited back to another dinner at the same house, but I made a feeble excuse about being committed to some other event. She must have found me VERY attractive.