Free I'm Only Here for the WiFi by Chelsea Fagan

clubs and lounges called Love/Hate or the Blue Room, it certainly doesn’t leave you with the ability to sleep afterward. Having to wake up at 7:00 a.m. every morning for a commute, followed by eight hours in meetings and in front of computer screens doesn’t exactly leave you wanting to scream at each other over David Guetta songs at the end of the day. Friends who work in the service industry, however, will be down as a clown to hit the after-hours club directly after their shift, and can do as many lines in the bathroom as they want, because their alarms are set the next day for a robust 4:00 p.m.
    Undoubtedly the worst combination of these two is working at a coffee shop. Having done stints at two of them myself, I can say with confidence that not only does it leave you doing a job pretty soundly shit on by society at large, but it also requires you towake up at 4:00 a.m. to start the morning shift. Why should any human being have to wake up at 4:00 a.m.? It’s the absolute worst in terms of sleep cycles, because it’s not working the night shift, but it’s not quite working the day shift, either, so it completely destroys your day. You get out of work around 2:00 p.m. and it’s as though you’ve awoken after decades of being cryogenically frozen; you’re not sure what time it is, what you are supposed to be doing, or who is even around you. Nothing makes sense. And even if you can adapt to starting your after-work life in the middle of everyone else’s afternoon, it won’t change the brutality of having to deal with people at 5:30 in the morning. If you can, I’d stay away from morning shifts at a coffee shop, as it will only serve to remind you that humanity is often at its cruelest when you are at your most tired.
    But I digress.
    We’re all at different schedules and levels of income, which means that finding a happy medium that pleases everyone when it comes to going out is a battle in and of itself. You’re sure to have half your friends talking about how “This shit is so expensive” at literally any establishment you could go to, even if they only drink cans of domestic. The other half is always offering to go to these lavish parties on weekends that are hosted by a magazine, website, or what appears to be a high-class escort service. The fact that these people are often friends may be astonishing, and it’s likely they’ll stop speaking to each other entirely bythirty, but for now it makes for some tough weekends. The three options—dive bar, club, and house party—seem to each make less sense than the last when it comes to “having fun,” but these are our options as they stand.
The House Party: Are We Supposed to Be Sitting Down?
    When you’re nineteen, a house party is exactly what it sounds like. You’re in a structure with four walls, you have no idea who owns it, and everyone is drinking out of red cups. No one brings anything to offer the host, people might steal an iPod, and you can be sure horrendous pictures of you will surface the next morning. There is no shame in walking upstairs into someone’s parents’ bedroom and having drunk sex with a guy who is studying anthropology and wants to work as a “community organizer.” You can just start dancing on the kitchen counter if things are getting boring. You’ll meet about a hundred people, twenty of whom you’ll add on Facebook the next day, eighty of whom you’ll forget forty-six seconds after learning their name. It’s a sordid affair, to be sure, but it’s quaint in its honesty. “We’re here to get drunk. Let’s not make this any more complicated than it needs to be.”
    But as we make it reluctantly into our twenties, the entire idea of a house party and what it should entail becomes increasingly fuzzy. We all have a vague image in our minds about what“adults” do when they gather for an evening among