He comes up behind me, grabs my head with both hands and kisses my scalp with a ferocity you only give to your nearest and dearest. I spin around. He blinks.
‘Ah! You’re not who I thought you were.’
Jack just arrived and thought I was someone else, another enby with black curly hair, slight height and an eccentric fashion sense. I’ve met Jack before though, a floating acquaintance in this social world, so it’s pretty chill. We end up chatting about our mums, who are both wedding celebrants, before disappearing into the rest of the place.
After squeezing past the bins at the gate, I walk through the patio stuffed with people and end up in the kitchen, wedged between the curved stairs and semi-opaque glass wall protecting the bathroom. The space runs mostly straight, with a clear line of sight from the fairy-lights outside to the kitchen to the living room, where a friend of the host is playing an electropop DJ set. It’s squishy, but somehow people are still dancing and chatting all throughout.
I’m at a house party, and though the line between a house ‘event’ and a house ‘party’ can be blurry – let’s not pretend dinner parties are always house parties – here, sprawled out in an Inner West share house and on the neighbouring street, the intention is clear.
House parties were not a formative part of my teenage years, so when I was entering the world of university in 2021, I was expecting them to magically appear before me as a gateway into social spheres I couldn’t begin to fathom. They didn’t. Not at that point.
Now, I keep circling back to the question: what’s the appeal of a house party? A domestic space can be much less intimidating than the behemoth that is the club, and in a growing cozzie livs crisis, a night out very quickly hits the triple-digits. While the outside is full of strangers, there’s comfort in knowing everyone at the house party knows someone. Each person could be a new friend, lover or momentary confidant.
I eventually find the beautiful host of the event in their bedroom, currently doubling as a cloakroom, and ask about the appeal of hosting. They respond as if it’s obvious, ‘Do I not live in a house? Is it not within my grasp?’ They tell me they slept for almost 10 hours the night before, knowing it’d be a big one, and bought ‘ice, spring rolls and Turkish bread for snacking’, encouraging everyone to BYO alcohol. Their job, really, is to provide the house and the vibes.
The host lives near a station on the T8, which makes commuting easier. Beyond the fear of being financially burdened, hosts (and guests) are dealing with urban sprawl more than ever before. Priced out of urban creative hubs like the Inner West, we’re all split between small student accommodation, overstuffed share houses and our parents’ suburban homes.
Everyone my age, graduating post-2020, missed the generational handover of the art of the house party, so we’re making it up again as we go.
I planned to stay at the party for about 15 minutes so I could make my last train. Instead, I scrambled to the nearest bottle shop and wove my way through the house, bottle of wine in hand, for nearly four hours. I caught up with old friends, made new friends and sank into the beauty of the melting pot.
Everyone I asked about the appeal of house parties says the same thing: that they’re learning or relearning how to host and be a good guest. Everyone my age, graduating post-2020, missed the generational handover of the art of the house party, so we’re making it up again as we go.
Later that week I caught up with Matthew, who went to the party and who I’ve known since high school. He hosts semi-regular dinners, once at his parents’ place and now at his own apartment. Matthew likes having his friends over in his own space, cooking and hosting, and the parties are often curated around the food he makes, croissant mornings and pasta nights.
In Matthew’s eyes, hosting is a give and take, but his baseline rule is that ‘if people aren’t being fed, the event is a failure, but it’s not about the food being good’, it’s about eating together. The food, much like the venue itself, creates familiarity and social glue, that same comfort you won’t find in a club.
House parties are ‘very near and dear’ to my manager Jade. She grew up rural, and house parties were the option for teens seeking a ‘third space’ between the domestic and school, a way to get messy and have responsibly irresponsible fun. She attributes Sydney’s lack of house party culture to the nonchalant Olympics, people not wanting to seem like they care too much.
She reckons that since lockdowns, ‘young people don’t really know how to socialise anymore, we spent our formative years confined to our homes on our phones.’ I feel symbiotic with my devices these days, but have also felt the pull to detach from technology, aware of how it has stunted my ability to be a social creature.
I think house parties are where we need to relearn how to socialise again. I love them. I can see friends of friends who regularly pop up in different circles or on my Instagram, like the middle of a platonic Venn diagram. It’s so easy to ask ‘how do you know the host’ and get the ball rolling from there, floating through conversations and deciding how drunk I want to get as the night goes on.
It’s so easy to ask ‘how do you know the host’ and get the ball rolling from there, floating through conversations and deciding how drunk I want to get as the night goes on.
These sorts of fleeting connections, once everywhere, are essential to grounding us in a place and the way we live. Catching wind of a fun conversation and then disappearing when it’s done is perfect at a house party. Those profound semi-drunk chats in someone’s lounge room or kitchen tether us to the world outside of our phones.
They also shape lives in unexpectedly profound ways. At the party, I caught Matthew talking to Cecilia, one of my other dear friends, about potentially moving in together, and Cecilia reminds me that they actually met each other through me. I’d had a dinner party before I left my family home in 2024, which was the first time they were introduced, and their friendship has evolved alongside my life ever since. Now they’re here, at this alleged third space, laying the foundation for their potential next chapters.
House parties can’t just be a teenager’s game. As long as houses exist, house parties will also persist, because we still need somewhere to gather that doesn’t cost a fortune. Sydney can feel too spread out for easy spontaneity now, so a house party is one of the only ways everyone ends up in the same room.
Just make sure when it’s your turn to host the music is good, or I’ll be taking over the aux.
