Classy celebration, 5E-style by Jessie L. '07

Today – or I guess, now yesterday – was a special day on 5th East. Well, many days are special on 5th East, but today was Clayton ’08’s 19th birthday. Clayton decided that we would celebrate in style with a “Gentlemen’s Club” on hall, which included guests dressing up.

The only problem was, I didn’t have any “formal” clothes, especially not for warm weather. I hadn’t worn a skirt or dress since I was junior in high school. I doubt Clayton would have cared that much, but as it happens, I’ll need a nice outfit later this week – myself and my partner in cri…er…UA President John Cloutier are supposed to meet with MIT President Susan Hockfield to discuss our respective plans for the Institvte. So I went to the Garment District (where I buy hair dye when I put green streaks in my hair every so often), a 5-10 minute walk.

Now, what I know about clothing that’s not a t-shirt or turtleneck and didn’t come from the Army Barracks store on Newbury Street could fit on the palm of my hand. So I puzzled for a while about what to get. For one thing, I had no idea what skirt/dress size I was, or what the numbers meant. For another, I had no idea what articles of clothing were supposed to go with other articles of clothing. I picked out a nice, simple black skirt for $8 (I love the Garment District). Then, I rummaged through the blouses for a while and found a nice shiny pretty black one, also for $8. I worried for a while that, unbeknownst to me in my ignorance, it would be a major fashion faux pas to wear this blouse with this shirt. Finally, I decided that I was thinking too hard about it and bought the shirt and skirt. I’ll figure out what to do about shoes later – is it acceptable to wear shiny black combat boots (my usual dress shoes) with a skirt?

Any birthday party, of course, is a great excuse to eat lots of dessert. Matt ’08 baked cookies, and Sarah ’08 baked a cake. Here’s a picture of Sarah in the 5th East kitchen frosting the cake, dressed up all nice:

The Gentlemen’s Club was held in the Walcott Lounge, one of the two lounges on hall, which is normally a blacklight lounge but tonight was merely lit dimly with lamps.

The Birthday Boy! Clayton ’08 lights the candles, with the allegedly radioactive Marx Brothers mural in the background.

After the candles were lit, he used them to light a clove cigarette as Brian ’08 looks on.

It was a huge cake. This was my slice. Yes, that’s one slice.

The crowd was mostly 5th East, but a couple of non-5E people showed up, like Dennis ’08 of Senior Haus and Bethany ’06, who normally lives on 1st East but is currently on leave. Dennis and Bethany met, oddly enough, through the 2005 Black Morbid Fling-Together – I say “oddly” because that isn’t supposed to produce actual couples. But they look so cute together!

Dennis’ hair, which was blue when I met him, was black until a couple of days ago. Then it became orange for Battle Royale, the most recent Assassins’ Guild game. I rather like the new look.

My freshman-year roommate, Crystle ’07, looked sharp and classy. Here she is, with the face of Krotus, the Dark Lord of 5th East, on the wall next to her:

And here she is again, getting fed an olive by Matt ’08:

After cake and cookies and socialization, a poker game broke out.

Lex ’00 cuts the deck.

People dropped in and out, including Grace ’06, Deirdre ’08, and Milo ’08.

Milo even took a picture of me (with my hair down – it’s usually in a ponytail). I’ve decided that there’s some rule that every picture taken of me is fated to look incredibly stupid. And I have strong reflexes, meaning that it’s nearly impossible to get a flash photo of me with my eyes open. This was the fourth try, and involved Vogt ’06 standing behind Milo making stupid faces to distract me:

Eventually, Clayton decided that he should switch from his “nice suit” to his “birthday suit”, as it was his birthday. I had stopped taking pictures by that time.

So yeah. It was a fun party. The Children of Florey know how to celebrate in style. *grin*