Paintings and a story I thought of while hungover in an uncomfortably warm room.

Party Story

As Lana sat in the room, she somewhat consciously rated the people in the conversation out of 10, based on her perception of their level of intellectualism. 9, who unintentionally made her feel extremely inferior, was listening intently to 3's story about his problems with his landlord. The two 4's both had good hair and shared a private joke. They tried to suppress their laughter unsuccessfully and they knocked heads, in a slapstick fashion, messing up their hair in a way that made them look better. Lana felt mildly jealous of the exclusivity of their joke, which quickly switched to a feeling of paranoia that the joke was about her. She went back to rating people to distract herself from this unnerving thought. There were two people sitting slightly off to the side of the main group, a guy and a girl. They were not a couple. The guy was a 6 and the girl seemed like a 7 or 8, though Lana did not know her too well. 6 seemed to be entirely uninterested in the other people there, but managed a slight smile or nod when spoken to by 7 or 8. He would probably have rated himself higher if he had done this himself. After doing this for an unknown amount of time, Lana realized she was being addressed by 3. Something about her opinion on the landlord situation. 9 was also awaiting her response intently. Not wanting to appear dumb in front of 9, she tried, slightly panicked, to think of something insightful to say that would not reveal the fact that she was not listening. To her relief, a noise near the front door distracted everyone including 9. Two people whom Lana had never seen before walked in and greeted the host, who was a 7.5 and whom Lana quite liked. She assigned them both 5's as placeholders. As she ran out of people to rate and started thinking of what to rate herself, she realized she was being an asshole. Even though no one knew what she was doing, she was still being an asshole; a secret asshole. 7.5 approached Lana with the two tentative 5's and introduced Lana as "kind of quiet". Lana wanted to yell "I'm an asshole!" and storm out, but instead she said "yeah.." and meekly waved at them.




Just thought I'd try writing something.
-sarah xoxo