PLEASE INVITE ME TO YOUR PARTY

I’m a great guest. For one, I will appreciate all your deep cleaning. The baseboards you scrubbed, the silverware you polished to a high gleam, the corners you awkwardly maneuvered the Swiffer into, to sweep the last crumbs and bits of cat hair out of sight.

- SAMANTHA IRBY

I, too, have stood in a room that no guest is supposed to enter and worried what someone who mistakenly stumbles in looking for the bathroom is going to think about me because there’s dust on the back of the TV.

Speaking of the bathroom, I will notice that you wiped all the toothpaste flecks off the mirror and ran a wet washcloth across the scale you hide under the radiator, and I’ll appreciate that your toothbrushes are in a new toothbrush holder you ran out to buy three hours before the party. I will see your Anthropologie shower curtain and think, Damn, she’s fancy enough to get her shower curtains at Anthropologie? Your Aesop hand soap won’t be lost on me, either.

When I squeeze past the couple having an under-their-breath fight in the kitchen, I promise to note the recently purchased fruits on the counter and register not only that you are getting your fibre but that your fibre is organic and in an earth-conscious compostable bag. And, yes, I’m clocking your tulips in an actual vase, and the loaf of crusty bakery bread you bought to trick people into thinking you prefer to bake your own sourdough. If you do, that’s cool, but I bet you actually don’t!