Someone Else's House Party

As I drew my curtains shut last night, I noticed something in the darkness outside, some kind of commotion. Some movement in the lighted window in the house across the passage, the one that looks across the one storey extension that is the back of Drury's coffee shop. A figure in the window, flailing his arms. Illuminated in the light of my room as I was, I felt suddenly vulnerable and went to switch off the light. In the darkness I went back to the window, to see what was happening. At first I thought there was some kind of domestic argument. A man was swinging his arms about and gesticulating wildly. Then other people joined the scene. There was much laughter and the low thud-thus-thud of music. They appeared to be playing some kind of game. I saw a man in a paper hat, someone else inexpertly holding a cup of wine, or some other dark substance. They were having some kind of house party.
Pleased I had discovered the source of the noise I went to bed. As I lay there listening to the vague sounds of the party (these old houses are very soundproofed it seems) I thought about house parties. I never really got the hang of them... would pretend I would be enjoying them, would even look forward to them, but I was always glad when they were over and I could go to bed or go home. I always found something a little bit threatening about house parties, something shifty and unpredictable. Sections of the house in which the party was held, even well known houses, even your own home, would become off-limits, new kingdoms ruled by strangers, by those friends of friends with their loud laughs and aggressive voices, and you were never sure whose friends of friends they were. I think that's what always unnerves me about house parties, that odd sense of aggression, of chaos about to spill over... which often does happen. Some parties I have attended have left the house in an unbelievable state of utter destruction the next day.
Even the sounds of a house party, like that relatively restrained gathering last night, sound vicious and alarming. All that they're doing I told myself as I fell asleep, is enjoying themselves.
I really must be getting old.