dimly lit, but nice

[jay]

This evening, after a bit of friction with patgreene, I went up to House Dreamland's housewarming party around 10pm... it was a party. Pretty good, a bit crowded, lots of people I'd never met or only seen once or twice. My soon-to-be boss at work, RD was also there (invited by hopeforyou... he knew no one else there besides her and I, so I talked with him much of the time. To the exclusion of several other people with whom I would have liked to spend more time, granted, but I felt that I needed to be responsible and welcoming where RD was concerned (and hopeforyou was too busy hostessing).

But I nonetheless got a chance to have a nice talk with charlottesmtms, probably longer than if I'd gone to tomorrow's brunch. And my housewarming gifts seem to have been put to good use. And I should find a way to see brooksmoses more often... however, rosemom wasn't there tonight, pity.

OTOH, rosefox looked beautiful and stylish in her long black dress (another LBD ;)! circusscreamer had a lovely scarf woven through her hair, and she and bikerscum and karenbynight and others were exchanging clothing outfits for awhile... I have a photo *).

There was a power outage at one point... people who were there with a partner or two could cuddle in the dim candlelight. Which diminishes conversation, at least verbal... less fun for the non-partnered, but that's our problem. I actually left the party feeling a bit touch-deprived...

Which reminds me that I don't know the etiquette for dealing with puppy piles at parties, as a general issue. Do I pretend that they aren't there and look through them? Try to avoid glancing in their given direction? Or smile and make vaguely salacious remarks in their general direction? What if the pile includes people I'm otherwise friends with? I don't know whether I should respect their privacy (even on the floor at a gathering) and not officially recognize them as present... or pretend that nothing is going on, and try to chat with them while standing at the edge and looking downwards. It isn't an easy situation, IMO...

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

It seems that you got there immediately after I left.

[ame-chan.livejournal.com]

I don't really know how to deal with puppy piles either. But the last one I saw I sat down on the fringes and joined in the discussion and pretty soon I was in the middle of it getting spanked, so you know, that was good. ;-)

Joining in the discussion is always ok as is sitting down on the edge and joining the group I think, though I don't know what the etiquette is about the touchy stuff.

[brooksmoses]

We should find a way to see each other more often, yes. Definitely.

(Incidentally, I think you've got your Lauras confused -- while I suspect intenselaura would be a good LJ handle for the Laura at the party, it belongs to a different person -- somewhat younger, and she lives in Ontario. Unless I'm deeply, deeply mistaken.)

More thoughts on the puppy-pile etiquette thing....

[brooksmoses]

I'm not sure if my thoughts are really all that useful, since this is just from a very limited amount of observation, but still; I offer them, and hope they're useful.

The main thing, it seems to me, is that to a large extent puppy piles aren't that much of a special case -- they're just a group of people who happen to be sitting close together and touch-interacting to a greater or lesser extent, and the relevant etiquette seems to be about equal to the sum of its parts.

To elaborate: From previous conversations (with hopeforyou, among others) I'm fairly sure that nobody in that group of people minds people watching them be "physically demonstrative" in public -- if they wanted privacy, they'd go find some. As a more extreme example, I'm pretty sure it's fair to treat the impressively non-G-rated kisses that circusscreamer was giving a few people as in some part performance art for sake of anyone who wanted to watch. Or to ignore, if one preferred to ignore them; no obligation either way.

Beyond the snuggly stuff, the puppy piles at the party seemed essentially to just be a group of people who happened to be sitting on the floor really close together, and they interacted with other people following what looked like the same etiquette rules as any other group of people would. Sometimes the people in them were clearly looking at each other and having an obviously somewhat private interaction (whether talk or touch), but more often, they were facing out into the room, and seemed to have the same sorts of interactions with passersby and not-in-the-pile conversers as one would expect from someone sitting at the side of a room.

I also don't think that it was a matter of "pretending that nothing was going on", so much as that a lot of time there really wasn't that much going on that affected conversing with the people involved; it was mostly sharing personal space, and a lot of the touch seemed to be the half-subconscious sort that's about creating an environment rather than a focus of attention. So it seemed more a matter of not taking it as relevant to the conversation, rather than pretending it didn't exist at all.

As for joining the group -- I think, really, that the same sorts of rules apply as any other case where you want to sit next to someone in a spot that might be in their personal space. Generally, in most of the cases, there were places near the puppy pile where one could sit and join the conversation without invading personal space, and those were occasionally occupied by people who just sat down and started talking. In some cases, this was followed by a bit of nonverbal (and probably half-subconscious) negotiation in which the people in the puppy pile moved a little bit closer, and responses were judged, and the newcomer got absorbed into the pile to a greater or lesser extent -- exactly the sort of nonverbal negotiation that you'd expect from a case of sitting down next to someone and having it lead to cuddling.

This doesn't, I suppose, mean that it's easy; wanting to be in someone's personal space can be really awkward to ask for outright unless one is quite sure the answer will be yes, and sometimes the relevant people don't notice that you might want to be there and make a direct offer, and sometimes there isn't the space to sit nearby and have a nonverbally-negotiated moving-closer happen ... but this really seems to be a general issue rather than one specific to puppy piles. I suspect there's a whole art to nonverbally asking without really doing so, and to verbally asking without making things awkward, that neither of us are really particularly good at.

At least, that's how it seems to work from what I can tell.

[dancing-star.livejournal.com]

humm I don't know the etiquette for puppy piles either, I've always noticed that when I end up in them it is pretty natural or I wander off and find something else to do.

Glad to hear you had fun.