The whole freaking system's out of order

Much has been said on the subject of forensic partying – a lovely term coined by Dans which I have since appropriated and will henceforth refus to acknowledge as his invention at all.

Forensic partying, if you’re joining us late, is the art of putting together the events of the previous night based on a)the text messages on your phone, b)any cuts and bruises you may have acquired on various limbs, c)morning-after phone calls received from (former?) friends and d)the presence or absence of someone on the other side of the bed.

It truly is an art and one with which I flatter myself I have much experience. But the system, though a good one, breaks down when the evidence amassed the following morning is Completely. Freaking. Contradictory.

For instance, to take a purely hypothetical example let us suppose that upon waking up on New Years Day I was informed by a semi reliable source I had been a drunken mess the night before, only about one more drink away from putting a lampshade on my head and doing a silly dance. Oh Fuck, I sighed, just brilliant.

But just as I am about to make an apologetic ‘sorry, by the way, if I threw up in your cupboard/insulted your partner/passed out on your shoulder’ phone call enter exhibit two: an email received from someone I vaguely recalled meeting the night before, who assured me I had been a charming and a passionate conversationalist the night before. And what did we talk about, according to this semi stranger? The stockmarket. Hmmm. Curiouser and curiouser. On the one hand: drunken mess, on the other: charming schmoozer who cares about shares and the people who make money out of them. Who was I to believe?

Enter parties three and four. Party three being the host of the party in question, who greeted me on the street the following day with the ominous yet thoughtful suggestion that I “must be feeling a bit shabby”. And yet, on the other hand, she was still smiling at me, still talking to me, and did not appear to be handing me the dry cleaning bill to get vomit out of a silk dress.

Onto Party four, someone who hadn’t been at the party at all but was friends with most of the people who were. Having sent me about two emails over the entire course of our friendship he sent me Email Number Three today saying simply “I heard you didn’t have enough to drink on New Years Eve”.

Now this is, I assume, sarcasm. Or is it? No, no, it must be, of course. Or is it? So scrambled is my brain, so confused is my reasoning that I actually sit here and stare at this email for five minutes, trying to decide if there was in fact any chance I didn’t have enough to drink on the night, was able to converse in a reasonable if impassioned way about business matters and was, in fact, quite charming?

Yeah, that’s what I figured too.