You're the first one we're gonna kick out of here!

This was my heartfelt welcome to our company holiday party last night.

The party was at a nightclub called Crobar—which I thought was a great idea because the place is all hip and trendy so it promised to be a lot more fun than a sit-down dinner in a hotel ballroom.

So we get to the door and there's this bouncer who looks kind of hot from a distance but you realize he's not so hot when you get up close and discover that he just has a misleading distrubution of bodyfat and a buzzy haircut. He's putting these I'm-old-enough-to-drink wristbands on us without even checking our IDs and he has on this walkie-talkie headset that makes him look all important and shit. He seems friendly, and I'm in a good mood (having just gotten cheers and laughter and tons of compliments on my—I shit you not—company-wide sheet-folding demonstration), and as he's snapping my wristband on me I ask: "Do you sing with Britney?" And the dude gets PISSED. He finishes snapping on my wristband very roughly to indicate his displeasure and he tells me on no uncertain terms that no, he most certainly does NOT sing with Britney, despite the goofy headgear he's wearing. And then he threatens to kick me out of the bar with what turns out to be a great headline for a holiday blog post. Realizing it's probably pointless to pursue the matter any further with him, I craft a response in my head, which I am now posting here to exact my sweet revenge:

Dude. I'm gonna type this slowly so you can read it: I was making a stupid joke for the sake of lighthearted conversation. It was about nothing, so it meant nothing. It's what people who aren't assholes do. Just because you have no sense of humor and a worthless little penis that looks like a button on a fur coat doesn't mean you have to get all angry and up in my face. And I hate to play the arrogant classist jerk card (which is a metaphor, so don't get all excited thinking that your man-boobs are a pair of queens and you're gonna win something), but you're a bouncer with cheap shoes who works at a bar with a long and distinguished history of police raids, drug busts and court-ordered shutdowns. I'm a professional with a degree and a mortgage and a lifetime of friendly, lighthearted conversation under my belt. I have no interest in insulting you or belittling your job or starting a fight with you—or even being within 50 feet of you, for that matter. So chill. And go fuck yourself.

His weird little outburst actually puts a damper on my fun for a while, but as the party gets going I soon forget about him standing out there in the cold, lashing out at everyone's holiday cheer. (As you may recall, I have not been able to attend the last three company holiday parties because they were always scheduled the same weekend as my chorus shows. This year, I asked nicely if the company would consider scheduling the party around the show, and I was surprised—and more than a little touched—when they (enthusiastically) agreed. So I was especially motivated to have a great time last night. And I did.)

So the party's going and the food is good and people are having fun and we get to meet everyone's spouses and significant others—and the gay spouses are treated no different from the straight ones, but that's no surprise because my co-workers kick ass.

And the people with consistently bad judgment get wasted. And I get three very unequivocal sexual overtures (two girls and one guy), which I find completely flattering even though these people are so drunk they need help standing and I find people that out of control to be weak and beneath contempt.

And all this time, Crobar curiously won't let us on the dance floor, even though they're playing some great dance music. I'm moments away from quoting Bible verses to John Lithgow when they suddenly pull back the velvet ropes and let us kick off our Sunday shoes and everybody cuts footloose.

And despite some musical missteps (note to DJ: R&B is not appropriate for the dance floor, though it is appropriate for garbage cans and hard drives that are about to crash), we all cut a rug and shake our cleavage and two straight guys try to unbutton my shirt and suddenly it's 1:00 in the morning and I'm tired and I head home in a cab the company promises to pay for.

On the way out, I pass the pussy boy bouncer, who's shivering self-righteously at the front door. And I kick his ass blog about him the very next day.