Geoff Brousseau has a joke about shitty apartment complexes; the nicer the name, the trashier the apartment. He moved into a place called ‘Camelot Manor’–sounds nice, right? You’d never guess that in Camelot Manor, there would be white kids with cornrows smoking cigarettes in the swimming pool. If Camelot Manor had a mascot, it would be an eagle wearing a fanny pack, punching his wife.

As soon as I heard that punchline, I knew I had a birthday cake idea. I passed it along to girlpirate, who dutifully recreated it in icing and then sent me this message:

“Lol bakery manager just spent 10 minutes staring at your cake disapprovingly. She doesn’t understand it. She was asking questions about you like “was she weird?” And shit and I finally said “****, it’s a friend of mine…” And she got all flustered and walked away.”

This is what I imagine she looked like:

Which I, frankly, do not get, because I don’t feel anything other than unmitigated joy when I look at this:

I picked up the cake early because I had a lot of work to do in order to get the place to look appropriately trashy.

White trash hero mugshots had to be placed on the walls.

I put out both kinds of wine–the jug kind AND the box kind.

The kiddy pool needed to be blown up and filled with trashy beverages. Yes, there is a TV in front of the TV in the room, because the apartment manager neglected to tell me that the TV in the room was broken until the day of, which necessitated dragging the old tiny tv out of the storage closet and carrying it across the lawn to the Plastic Velveeta Ultralounge. It made things extra trashy but it still kind of pissed me off. Really, apartment manager? You couldn’t find a few bucks in the budget to fix one of the amenities residents are paying to have access to?

mschilepepper showed up first and helped me get a lot of last-minute things together, and then most graciously agreed to be kitchen bitch for the evening. amazoni and Andrew showed up shortly thereafter, dressed to the trashy nines.

Amy commented on Andrew’s fanny pack being a nice touch, and, uh, he got confused because apparently that’s something he wears all the time. Whooooops. How does one respond to that? “…Oh.*”

Amy said she was embarrassed to be seen outside in her getup, even on the short walk from our apartment to the Plastic Velveeta Ultralounge. I contend that it was much worse to have been caught by the cute downstairs neighbor whilst wearing mine…and with my hands full of coonskin cap, camera, and cigarettes.

It’s hard to see in this picture, but I’ve got a tiny cigarette pack as a necklace. Because I am a classy broad. And I have hot pink, leopard print nails.

When Ryan showed up, I knew we had a contest winner. Here he is with a pregnant conceptcanibal.

jimhark poured tequila shots of ‘El Jimador’ for anyone who wanted one…and I foolishly did one and the tequila pretty much punched me in the throat.

I had a spread available for anyone who wanted to make ‘Elvis Sandwiches’–his favorite was peanut butter, banana, and bacon, which I had available, in addition to strawberries, nutella, carmelized onions, marshmallow fluff, cheese, and twinkies, with the instructions to ‘hey, go nuts’.

Magic was born.

Theeeere’s that cigarette pack necklace!

poetrix618 and I shared a sammich. That’s right. And Amy. And about half the party.

And then we birthed a baby out on the back porch. I think I’ve found this year’s Christmas card!

After a while, I forced everyone to play ‘pin the pasties on the stripper’ and gave out trashy prizes.

What was particularly impressive was that only guys managed to instinctively find stripper nipples while blindfolded, and what was even more impressive was that I had only a couple of prizes that were aimed at girls and the guys picked them all, ending up with dollar store douche, pregnancy tests, and imitation ‘Tommy Girl’.

After that, we watched ‘Showgirls’ and played the accompanying drinking game, with people having to drink every time someone said ‘dance’, ‘darlin’, swung around a stripper pole, or punched a guy or a car.

Cake was consumed and fondant cigarettes were smoked. The baby was left floating facedown in the kiddy pool water.

The beeramid was built rapidly and knocked down a few times as well–eventually beer cans started getting flung around the room to distract those who were constructing the beeramid.

After Showgirls, we put in ‘Jackass’ and we didn’t get far before…uh oh, a security guard was at the door, wanting us to leave. “Didn’t you know you were supposed to be out at 10?” “No, that was never expressed to me.” “Well, the place closes down at 10.” “…Oh.*”

He gave us 10 minutes to clean up the place and get out, and you’ve never seen a group of people organize and clean so quickly. There was frantic emptying of the kiddy pool into the sink. Decorations and leftovers and everything were getting hurriedly shoved out onto the back porch. And I decided that since I couldn’t convince people to do the arm wrestling contest, the 40oz 40 yard dash, the belching contest, the twinkie deep throat contest OR the domestic violence re-enactment contest, we were NOT going to leave without mugshot photos. (Oh yes, at one point, Jeanine broke her pants and also whipped out a boob to feed the fake baby. We were all at peak form.)

Aaaaaaaaand just as I was wrapping up mugshot pictures, the clenched-fist, begunned security guard came back to lock us out, but of course, not before getting my full name and apartment number. We traipsed across the lawn with arms full of stuff and deposited it on my front stoop, I sent everyone on their merry way, and discovered that I had the cabana’s garbage can as well. Whoops!

I went inside and opened gifts while the room rotated merrily around me and found that Tristan gave me a velvet Elvis card stuffed with cigarettes. <3

Yesterday, I returned the office’s wastebasket, and the apartment manager gave me a look and said she’d heard I had a pretty crazy party. “Not THAT crazy.” (I mean, we were kicked out before 11pm–my trashy neighbor’s kids were making noise well past 1am the night before!) “And I heard you had alcohol up there?” “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees….” “That’s against the rules; it’s a liability issue in case someone falls down the stairs.” “Well, no one bothered to explain the rules to me beforehand, so I had no way of knowing the room closed at 10 or that no alcohol was allowed.”

So, it looks like we broke ALLLLLLL of the rules. WIN.

*”Oh” is the tried-and-true answer to any situation involving something where you’ve either stuck your foot in your mouth or find yourself in the wrong with no explanation, and is a staple in my family. For example, my dad once wanted to golf in Racine and get the resident’s discount though he did not live there. He asked for the discount, and they asked to see his driver’s license. “This says you live in Kenosha.” “…Oh.” Not “I just moved and haven’t updated my license yet”, not “Oh, I forgot my driver’s license”, “…Oh.” Try it! You’ll find it makes an awkward situation even moreso.