By Tatiana Blackington

I live on the West side of Los Angeles, so I’ve been to a few lavish parties over the years.  Playing down one’s wealth may be a virtue to puritanical East Coasters but it has never caught on here.  Still, since the recession, I thought I had noticed if not a stripping down, at least a de-escalation in the Russian-oil-magnate behavior.  That was before last weekend.

I took my two boys to a birthday party for a classmate of my pre-schooler’s.  Word around campus was that her father, Dr. M, had done all the party-planning himself.  In the age of gender equality, this shouldn’t be surprising, but Dr. M told us he had started the preparations in January, nine months prior.  From the looks of things as we drove up, it wasn’t because he was a procrastinator.

Both parents are petite people and Alexis is small for her age, which is four.  Normally a joyful child, she was clinging to her father, looking anxious.  Spurning the valet parking, I parked my car in front of the In-n-Out burger truck that had come to cater.  Everyone loves In-n-Out burger.  The only drawback with the truck is that they don’t serve fries, so Dr. M had hired a separate company, Fry Girl, to provide these.  In addition to the usual ketchup and mayo, guests could choose from half a dozen other toppings, including truffle oil.  The party had a pirate theme, and actors dressed in full pirate regalia – real swords, gold teeth, Johnny Depp dreads -- lined the front walk holding live parrots, some over a foot tall.  A woman very much past her prime was done up as a wench in a low-cut red dress and corset.  True to the period before bras were invented, her enormous breasts pointed starboard and larboard, but mostly to Davy Jones.  We had yet to enter the house.

Once inside, we donned eyepatches and dodged various props – cannons, stockades – and proceeded to the full bar, where the bartender was nearly obscured by a gigantic pirate ice sculpture.  The Play-Doh set apparently like their tequila shots nicely chilled.  If they arrive via a plastic tube in Blackbeard’s bowels, even better.  A three-man band, also in costume, played pirate music, leaving minimal room on the patio for the ice cream sundae cart.  We ordered apple juice.

The back yard was a steep hill, with a winding path up to the play area.  Here they had installed a temporary tattoo artist.  You might be imagining a game college student with a damp sponge and some appliqués, but you would be underestimating the good doctor, who has made a nice living providing “concierge” service, specializing, as Tom Lehrer put it, in diseases of the rich.  This woman did multi-colored works of art in glitter paint that lasts up to a week.  While my boys climbed on the play structure, I headed back to the In-N-Out truck for solid food before the sugar onslaught I knew was coming.

The birthday girl was still clinging to her father’s neck, as were several of her classmates.  The pirates were frighteningly realistic and the little girls were scared of them, making difficult work for the two professional photographers trying to find happy party-goers through their enormous lenses.  Nearly as many mothers were freaked out by the birds.  I nodded to one who was just arriving.  She waved to me, then felt obliged to greet the parrot. 

“Go to Hell,” quoth the parrot.

At the In-N-Out truck, the Wench was leaning on the take-out window.

“What are you having?” she asked each man who walked up, then repeated his order to the fry cook, making salty small talk as it was being prepared.  This struck me as unnecessary, but the party was nothing if not overstaffed.

I stood with the host and hostess, also in costume, as we waited for our burgers.  A smiling woman in her sixties was standing nearby.  She had tied a Jolly Roger around her cropped gray hair and seemed to be having a good time.

“Is that lady your mother?”  I asked the doctor.

He gave a rueful smile.

“No,” he said with visible irritation. “That is my mother.”  He jerked his head in the direction of the Wench, who was accosting a fresh pair of men.

“She’s certainly in the spirit,” I offered lamely.

His wife gave him a consoling hug.  “Everyone loves the party, Honey.”

Back inside, I met the doctor’s dad.  Wearing a black t-shirt with the sleeves hacked off, he held a glass at the bottom of the ice sculpture as the bartender poured straight liquor into the top.  It was 11:30 in the morning.

By now, every part of the house was uncomfortably crowded.  There must have been forty or fifty families crammed in a modest, two-bedroom affair with negligible yard.  I made my way up the steps to the play area to deliver the burgers.  Amazingly, nothing my children had encountered at the party could distract them from their favorite activity, which is fighting with each other over a plastic water gun.  They did this in their own home, where we have two of everything (“I want the orange one!”) and apparently in other people’s as well.  Two other boys were having a raucous sword fight, which was broken up by calls to see the show.  Children entertaining themselves was not on today’s program. 

“Boys, come watch,” I called, and under my breath, “They’ve spent ten grand on this.”

“My wife thought seven,” whispered the dad next to me.

I shook my head.  “The In-N-Out truck costs $1250 just to show up.  That’s before they flip a single patty.”

At least two of the actor pirates were professional stuntmen.  They swashbuckled convincingly up and down the hill until one of them, pretending to be mortally wounded, dropped like a stone down a 12-foot wall.  The second took the stage for a fire-breathing and sword-swallowing act.  Boys gawked while the girls peered anxiously at the spot where the first pirate had fallen.

It took a while for all the blackguards to be run through, but eventually it was time for cake.  The crush of people was such that I could not see it, but at that point, I really didn’t have to.  No doubt it was a pièce montée in the shape of a three-masted frigate, with spun sugar rigging and gold leaf coins in a marzipan treasure chest.  While the little kids ate, my third grader, who was the oldest at the party, got some private instruction in sword fighting from the actors.  Throughout the afternoon, I kept thinking of the interview I’d heard on the radio that morning with the Nicholas Kristof and Cheryl WuDunn, discussing their new book about women in poverty. 

“Just $7 will buy a Cambodian girl’s school supplies for a year.” 

I had an image of sullen waifs hawking breadfruit by the side of a dusty road, unable to afford pencils, their illiterate brains dulled because of people like us blowing money on ice sculptures. 

My third-grader had no such thoughts.  He seemed to be enjoying the party the most of anyone.  It was, in fact, paradise for an eight-year-old boy.  The four-year-old girl in whose honor it was thrown had yet to crack a smile, however and I wondered what had possessed her father to choose a pirate theme instead of say, Angelina Ballerina.

Grandpa was still at the bar.  Grandma Wench waited for cake, her jowly chin resting on plump fingers tipped with long acrylic nails.  She was disappointed that none of the In-N-Out customers had stayed talking to her.  It hit me, suddenly; this was the birthday party they had never given their son. 

He had been a good son, too, gone to medical school, become a doctor and a family man.  He was still loyal enough to invite them even though they embarrassed him, but he would be damn sure he showed them how good parents behaved.
 
I felt sympathy for Dr. M.  He had nursed his grudge a long time and I hoped this day would get it out of his system.  But wouldn’t it be hard next year, not to try to top it?  And after another two such birthdays, Alexis would come to view these extravaganzas as ordinary.  Anything on a normal scale would be an insult, a sign that her parents loved her less.  By the time she turned sixteen, they’d be renting out the Hearst Castle and hiring Jay-Z and Beyoncé to sing “Happy Birthday.”

After the required customs check verifying that neither of my boys had more candy or Chinese novelty items in his favor bag than the other, we headed for the car.  Alexis’ mother waved good-bye.

“I can’t wait to see what you do for Halloween,” I called to her.

Her eyes widened in horror.  The ship had sailed.
 
(Some names have been changed to protect the affluent)

Tatiana Blackington is a screenwriter.  Her award-winning film, The Narrows, starring Vincent D’Onofrio, Kevin Zegers and Sofia Bush, was released earlier this year. She lives in Santa Monica, California, with her husband and two sons.