My "people skills" are "rusty".

Last night, I attended a party for Zed's cousin's 18th birthday. This is the first gathering of a group of kids my age large than, say, five people, where there is alcohol and no adults.

It was... interesting. I don't know what I expected, but there was a lot of emotions, a lot of mess - though that was mostly due to party poppers - and a lot of drinking.

The girl who's birthday we were celebrating had a bit of an emotional overload, as did her ex-boyfriend who still has a mass of feelings, one guy drank too much in the first hour and was miserable all evening, and another guy collapsed at the end of the night. But mostly, myself, I had an alright time. Didn't drink too much, didn't get involved in the drinking games, and made sure people were mostly alright.

I even made some friends, one of which we nicknamed The Secretary, because he's that in our union at school. He was like the responsible adult. And a guy from media that's into Doctor Who and I've been on the edge of a friendship with for a while. So it was nice to finally get there.

And seeing Zed play around with kids was nice, too. He really reminds me of Dean Winchester, sometimes, how it's always a little surprising that he gets on so well with them.

And remember the grandmother that seems to like me? She actually battered him out of the way to hug me. Good to know I'm still a hit.

Towards the end of the night, before the adults arrived to help clean up, I started sweeping up all the debris on the floor, around the guys that were re-enacting Queen songs. I thought I'd be angry that I had to sort things out, but it felt nice enough to be helpful.

I learnt, though, throughout the night, that we've hit an age where it's a given that people are comfortable with kissing each other in their age group. It seems common grounds that if someone starts spinning a bottle, of course people will kiss whoever the bottle declares their momentary partner. I, obviously, hung back, because no way in hell am I doing that when I'm in a relationship. Not to mention I didn't want to get caught in the guys that refused to do gay stuff in case they didn't think I counted, and so on.

My age group confuses the hell out of me. I can't see why you'd kiss someone you weren't attracted to, especially in a public environment when if it lasts more than three seconds people start cheering and goading. If you're attracted to someone, and want to kiss them, sure, but peer pressure doesn't seem the way to go around it.

But at least now, I've experienced a part like that, and I've got to know some of my classmates a little better. I even managed to threaten an ex-classmate because she had Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines on her ipod. She promised to delete it.

I guess the message of today is, people are damn weird, but at least a lot of people are really okay with kissing people of the same gender. Even the most hetero of boys ended up agreeing to kisses on the cheek.