Why doesn’t anybody come to my parties?

I filed these stories away and began to reach out to a new list of people, the San Franciscans, people who'd known Claire longer, even before she was a mom.

I sent my emails.

I waited for responses.

[upbeat music] Why do parties matter? I hesitate to say this next bit because I believe it so earnestly it makes me cringe, but I do think parties matter in a deep, serious way.

Parties summon the thing we actually care about, community.

Not community meaning fans of an influencer, not community meaning consumers of a product, actual community.

When people who know each other a lot or a little come together to risk something, risk being embarrassed or embarrassing, bored or boring.

Nobody has time for a party.

We all work too much.

It's shameful to care about them, certainly as much as I do, certainly as much as Claire does.

But I think they reach us somewhere that's deeper than modern.

Two inches beneath the surface of our brain, we're cave people, scared, alone, afraid that when we wake up the tribe will have moved on, and we'll have to fend for ourself against all these bears.

Claire doesn't know what it is about her that drives people away.

That woman she tried to befriend, the woman's husband, her group of friends in middle school who one day out of nowhere just permanently voted her off the lunch table.

You don't get to do exit interviews with the people who decline your friendship.

But a party, it's a way at least to test her current phone book, to see if the people whose numbers she knows will actually show up if she calls them.

That's why she'd asked about the parties.

That's why I was here.