Rules for Hosting

for Esmé

1. The word host has a few meanings, one being an animal or plant on or in which a parasite lives.

2. A host is also the portion of bread used for Holy Communion in Christian churches. In this sense, the word host comes from the Latin word hostis meaning victim, but eventually came to signify sacrifice. The host is the consecrated bread of the Eucharist - the Body of the Risen One - now alive among us, surrendered to us as food and drink. 

You take and eat the host.

3. The word host is also a person who receives or entertains other people as guests. Women often host in their homes, especially during holidays that are also religious observances. During these times, an appetite for stories of sacrifice and forgiveness is only matched by an appetite for meat pie. 

4. If someone tells you that you are “the most gracious host” more than 4 times in your life, something is wrong. At any point, if someone calls you a saint, things are not going well for you. Stop smiling for a week. Scream into the void. Reassess.

5. Deep cleaning and carefully reorganizing a home in order to provide a place for tipsy revelers to crowd the kitchen where they’ll shout to be heard over shouting and stuff their face with food is as rewarding as it sounds. 

6. Too salty, too sweet, too extravagant, too meager. It’s difficult to please one person, never mind forty. Forget the playlist. Unclench your jaw. But never ever let your teeth become stained with wine. Wine-stained teeth show you have no class. How dare you indulge yourself while everyone else indulges themselves.

7. Always clean the toilet. Don’t be the only one who cleans the toilet. You will be the only one who cleans the toilet. 

8. Hosting is 55 percent broken conversations, 10 percent digging for utensils, 15 percent scraping uneaten food into the trash, 15 percent hoping no child concusses their still-soft skull on any of the hundreds of sharp edges that define a home, and 5 percent hiding in the bathroom with your phone.

9. If someone has never hosted a large gathering, they will always offer feedback on how it can be done better.

10. Consider changing your name one week before you host, so when someone calls for a refill to the bowl of mixed nuts you will not heed their call, as they will not have called you by name, Lozrufenspog.

11. When you find the partially chewed bolus of food tucked between the corner of the sill and the blinds, do not ask yourself Who would do this? because it’s always a child or the very elderly. It’s also always the children and the very elderly who urinate on seats, agitate the dog, and become dangerously dehydrated.

12. Good guests make a French exit because they understand that no one wants to say goodbye to forty fucking people.

13. The light yellow couch is light yellow. It was a mistake, but it’s the only thing that makes you happy. Protect it with your life.

14. Your husband will help. He’ll do anything you ask. Of course he will! But truthfully, you’re a demanding bitch. Your needs are incessant. Calm down. Though you forget nothing on your 6 foot scroll of preparatory tasks, be gentle when he forgets one thing on his list of two, yet manages to learn an Christian hymn from the 4th century on his ukulele that brings everyone to tears when he plays it, and stay calm when you hear a guest refer to him as “an eccentric.”

15. Hosting a holiday party illustrates the insidiousness of invisible labor. Sure, there will be enveloping hugs and loud laughter. Your guests will tumble into bed full-bellied, ruddy-cheeked, satisfied. But at the end of the night, after wiping down the tables, after snapping shut the dishwasher for the 3rd time in under six hours, you will drink the dregs of wine from three different bottles and stare beyond the dark window and conjure Bob Cratchit, then you will pack up your car and drive into the night never to be seen again. 

16. Kidding, I’d never do that to you, Esmé. You’re the only parasite I’ve ever wanted to host. 

17. Playing hostess is a rigged game that many women play even after they discover it’s engineered against them.  It’s unfulfilling and demanding and expensive. I trust you’ll find more interesting ways to spend your time than assiduously tending the needs of festive ingrates who’d prefer you do your job without complaint so that they can carry on pretending the abundant provisions have appeared miraculously. 

You take and eat the host.