It is 7:00pm, and I look down at my vibrating phone.  It’s from Mr. Cheese.

Interesting. 

I had met him awhile back, and he seemed nice enough, so we exchanged numbers.  But I rarely hear from him, and have never had more than a 5 minute conversation with the guy.  Hm.  I wonder what the occasion is.

“Diedre?  Hi, this is Mr. Cheese.  I would like to invite you to a party tonight.  It’s a pajama party.  The location is a secret, so there will be a limo waiting at a pick-up spot in midtown.  Be there at 11:00pm.  Sharp.”

A sucker for adventure, this sounds like it could be fun.

Mr. Cheese is a soap opera actor who seems to have it in his mind that he is the ultimate rock star.  As the evening unfolded, it became clear to me that this was to be a “pajama” party for horny soap stars with delusions of grandeur. 

So, I get to the pick-up spot and there are four other guys there, a couple of whom I fortunately had met once or twice before.  The limo was about an hour and a half late. 

I had another party I was invited to, and I might have gone to that instead, except these four guys were telling me that I really didn’t want to miss this and it will be worth the wait.  They said it would be like an Eyes Wide Shut Party. 

What in the hell am I getting myself into?  I don’t truly know ANY of these people and I’m about to get into a car and go to some house that I am in no control of my departure and/or escape, if necessary.  But my adventurous side was quite intrigued now, so I had to see what this “party of a lifetime” was all about. 

The car finally comes, we jump in, and proceed to drink most of the champagne that’s in there. During this time, we have been introducing ourselves and getting to know one another a little better.  There was a stripper, two actors and a PR person, and then there was me.  When they asked about me, and what I do, the PR guy responded, “oh, so you’re a real person”.  I had no idea what that was supposed to mean until I walked in the front door of the house. 

The car has now arrived and we begin to pile out.

We, apparently, have landed in some town called Alpine, New Jersey.

The house, of course, was immense.  It was almost entirely covered with glass, with a long winding landscaped and lamp-lit drive leading up to it. There was gated security and a guest list.  This guy was serious about this party.  There was a pool and a hot tub in the back.  The latter was occupied, as were the bathrooms that were packed to capacity with sexual acts in the shower, drugs sprawled out on the sink, and women peeing one at a time, never really flushing, thus mixing their creative juices while discussing the finer points of lip gloss application. These things were all happening simultaneously. 

I eventually came to realize what they meant by calling me a real person. I was not a playboy bunny.  I had a functional mind, and as such, I had something foreign to this group.

 I opened the enormous front door and walked into a room filled with women who were most likely bikini models running around in negligees.  Needless to say, there were plenty of guys there, too, of course.  I would imagine it is most men’s fantasy, possibly even heaven, to have a playground of drunk plastically-altered women running around in lingere, with a buffet table of champagne and hard alcohol and, of course, jell-o shots.  Some of these men had flown from as far as Los Angeles to be at this party.

So, when you’re tipsy and stranded in Alpine New Jersey and you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.  Which is what I attempted to do.  Mr. Cheese brought me around and introduced me to everyone, which I thought was fantastic, everyone was surprisingly nice.  Happy party people.  They were awesome.  I liked them.

I found myself engaged in a light-hearted conversation with one of the women about how totally cool Jimi Hendrix was, and then, Mr. Cheese disappeared. From what I understood later on in the evening, he was deeply concerned about the structure of the beds, and felt it was his duty to give them all a test run. 

It was a three-hour tour, for Mr. Cheese.  And I, like Gilligan, was stranded in Alpine, NJ.  No coconuts, just all the alcohol I could drink, all the fake tits I could marvel at and plenty of human interaction to observe.  Lovely.  Fantastic.  I could make this work. 

I danced for awhile with some very nice scantily-clad women who pulled me into their circle.  I talked with a lot of people, desperately looking for someone to say something interesting.  That happened once, from a guy wearing a peace sign discussing his mission in Africa with an organization called the right to water.  He was very adamant about his work, and wanted to talk about it. But his speech pattern was certainly exceeding the speed limit on the highway of conversation.  He apparently had spent some time at the bathroom sink. 

By the end of the night, I had grown tired of watching the men do their rounds and I really just wanted to get back home, but they only had two limos, shuttling everyone back and forth.  Mr. Cheese offered to drive me into the city and went to warm up his car, and I never saw him again. 

Fine, I guess I would sleep in Alpine, and worry about how I would get home once the sun came out.  I laid down on one of the couches in the back room and then, I overheard that a car had returned, so I raced out the door and jumped into one with a couple of the original people I came with, and we went back to the city.

My new friends told me that Mr. Cheese had taken some girl home.  Either it was supposed to be me and he couldn’t find me and left, or a better offer had come along.  One that involved taking her to HIS home, which required less effort and resulted in a much bigger payoff.  I do, however, have to give props to Mr. Cheese for having a libido the size of Mt. Everest.

I finally got home at 5:00am, after declining an offer to go home with one of the guys I had watched doing his own personal chick rotation all night. Actually, my entire night was spent declining offers, since I was fairly secure in knowing that the beds in the guest rooms had all been properly tested, and didn’t need a sticker from Inspector Number 5.  Or should I say, number 3,005. 

I have, in retrospect, realized that Mr. Cheese has absolutely no idea who I am.  To him, I’m a groupie, with a life-long dream of eventually being a notch on his headboard.  Why wouldn’t I be?  That’s what all women are, to Mr. Cheese. 

The life of a soap star. He may be delusional, but it’s acceptable, because he’s an actor on TV.