Turds in the Punch Bowl (A Story of No Ordinary Friendship) (3 page)

“Nice!” he shrugged with a smile, reaching over to grab the hand of the mortified woman still in last night's skin-tight mini standing next to him, who was still coming to terms with her own guilt by association. Looking over to her and trying for a hint of consolation, he introduced us. “Those are my friends. I'm really sorry about them.”

Joe forced a smile and nodded his head in my direction. I knew what that look meant. At some point in my very near future, I was in for it. There was no doubt in my mind that Joe was better equipped to one-up me in the embarrassment department. He was also more brutal, brash and undeniably creative. I knew then that I had it coming to me. And by the wink he sent my way to follow, I'll admit, for about half a second, I was scared. But then I remembered how I had predicted his retribution and adequately armed myself with a one-up arsenal of my own for an explosive grand finale to the morning's events; for no other reason than to simply just outdo myself this time. The sheer thought of what still awaited my best friend in the aftermath of his little party made me giggle inside. I couldn't wait for him to see what I was truly capable of. My ego desperately craved the due respect from my fellow prankster, and it was a long time coming as far as I was concerned.

Joe took the girl’s hand and led her into the kitchen where Michele had already taken the rolls from the oven and I was setting out plates for breakfast.

“We felt this called for a celebration,” I announced, placing the gift-wrapped trophies in the center of the dining room table for the two of them. “These are for you.”

She swallowed hard to hide her embarrassment, although something about the expression on her face read more like “I can’t believe this is happening again,” as opposed to believing this was happening at all. Something told me this wasn't her first rodeo.

“And these,” I added as I placed the blue ribbon badges in front of their place settings as they both sat down. “And this is for you, Joe.” I walked over to him and slid the mock gold medal over his freshly-fucked hairdo and let it come to rest around his neck where it hung like a shiny showpiece of humbled conquest.

“Wow, it must've been a really long time for you Joe, to deserve all this. I'm flattered.”

Alas, she spoke! And she did, in fact, possess a sense of humor. She winked at him and laughed aloud. We all followed suit and had a good laugh together. By the look on Joe's face, I don't think I was the only one who was pleasantly relieved that she was a real trooper about the whole thing. We all sat down and enjoyed a rather quick breakfast together as the red and blue streamers fluttered over our heads in the spring breeze coming in through the windows.

“Alright,” Joe sighed as he abruptly rose from the table, “thanks for breakfast...and the party. It's been fun, but I need to get her home.”

His machismo was taking over again. That, or he really was the one-night-stander I knew him to be, and was perturbed that we had invited her to stay longer than he had intended. To this day, I still don't know the answer to that. The fact that Joe lived with me for several more years and I never saw the likes of her again, makes me think the latter. But then again, my grand finale may have put the icing on that cake, sealing her fate to never return unless she was a glutton for more sick and twisted punishment.

“Well, it was nice meeting you,” I said a little condescendingly, smiling bigger than usual.

“See you again soon,” Michele mocked from behind me.

We watched her do the walk of shame to the front door where she leaned down to strap on her heels from the night before. She half-smiled in our direction, pulled the hem of her mini dress down a bit, presumably not to look like too much of a stripper as she exited the building, and followed Joe out the door. Michele and I waited for a few seconds until the sound of her stripper heels clunking down the sidewalk faded into the distance, and then let out the gut-busting laughs constipating us for the greater part of the last hour while we had held our breaths.

“Bahahahaha!” We blurted out in unison. We were so loud. It never even occurred to us that they could hear our commotion through the open windows. I can’t imagine what was going through the poor girl's head as she walked away.

“Okay, Michele, lets count to ten,” I whispered, though there was no need to be quiet.

“Then we'll follow?”

“Yes. Grab your camera.”

We counted backward from ten together.

“Three, two, one!!!” We shouted aloud and ran out the front door.

Giggling like little girls, we snuck down the drive just in time to catch Joe and his companion nearing the end of our street where he had parked his truck earlier that morning. Michele set up her camera for the shot as Joe, and said stripper, turned the corner to witness Jen's Grand Finale; the end all, be all of my rite of passage into One-Upmanship.

As soon as Joe turned the corner, his shoulders sank into oblivion and his tail dropped between his legs. His girl friend held her head in shame and brought her hand to her mouth in amusement, or horror. I'm not sure which. Joe stopped dead in his tracks in awe. Staring him in the face was a decorative party mobile that had once been his truck. He looked down at the ground, shuffled his feet and looked back in my direction to pay tribute.

“Wow!” He called back to me, smirking in assurance that I had earned my rite.

HONK IF YOU”RE HORNY was written in giant text across the back windshield of Joe's truck in fluorescent paint. His tailgate was appropriately adorned with streamers and coke cans dangling from its bumper. His passenger door window was labeled VICTIM. The driver’s side was a bit more of a challenge to draw, but I had somehow managed to paint Captain Morgan in his signature pose with the phrase CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN across the entire left side of his vehicle. And nothing says party like a little silly string, so we topped off the design with a shit-ton of it. Actually, more than a shit-ton, we may have gotten a little carried away in that department.

“You've really out-done yourself, Jen!” A defeated Joey flipped me the bird in a gesture of both annoyance and endearment.

“Oh, you just wait” I mumbled to myself, waiting for yet one last surprise at the end.

Finally, when he lifted his tailgate and closed it, Joe came face to face with the piece that tied the whole theme together again. Rolling his eyes, poor Joe came to the realization that he would be driving across town that morning in his new, freshly-fucked-mobile that announced his milestone in big, bold pink letters that read, “I JUST GOT LAID!!!”

It was Valentine's Day. I was standing on the front porch of Joe's house with him and his girl waiting for my date to arrive. The sun was setting fast and we were already late for our 6pm reservation. That should've been the first sign to indicate the evening that followed would be a bust, but I was new to town and excited to go out with a local boy. His name was Anthony and we had one thing in common. We were both married.

I met Anthony my first night out as a newly, somewhat single gal. My husband and I had separated pretty quickly after relocating. Seemed the bright lights and late nights of Sin City were luring him away from our marriage and I didn't have the patience to wait out his wild oats. So, upon being given my freedom, I grabbed Joe's girl and hit the town one wintery Vegas night. Enter Anthony, the smooth talking bartender with the crystal blue eyes that melted my soul. A flirty conversation ensued and we were quick to discover we were both treading water in our unhappy marriages. He, too, was estranged from his spouse. Something clicked with us. Perhaps it was the need for companionship, a lending ear or the excitement of a shiny new person to start over with in the event our spouses never returned, but it was enough to suggest that we spend Valentine's together that year.

Here came Anthony barreling up the drive in his beat up, blue Dodge Neon, throwing it into park even before the car stopped like an eager beaver in heat. His floppy, blonde hair bounced out of the car before he did, and then I saw those steely blues. It didn't matter that his best dressed was jeans and a collared shirt, complete with two year old tennis shoes, nor that he rocked a five o'clock shadow that was reminiscent of a Brillo pad. He was cute, and like I said, his eyes melted me.

“I almost forgot!” he called out, tripping over himself as he turned back around, tangling himself in the seat belt that still clung to him and hadn't quite been given the proper chance to retract after his departure from the vehicle. He was kind of a goofy fuck. He reached inside his car and pulled out a basket. Walking toward us, he overshot Joe and his girlfriend, and walked directly to me. Kissing me on the cheek, he asked, “Mind if I give you this inside?”

We were already late and the front door was locked, but Joe let us in anyway. He rolled his eyes and gave me the hurry up look. I followed Anthony as he blindly led me to Joe's office where he took a seat on a leather chair.

“Sit” he insisted, patting his thighs and signaling for me to sit on his lap.

“What's this?” I asked, trying to speed up the delivery of what seemed to be my Valentine's gift.

“This,” he said, pulling a hardback journal from the basket, “is for you.”

I took it from his hands and opened it. It was a scrapbook. At first I thought it was sweet; a cute sentiment, a token of his affection, a gift that he had put some thought into. It wasn’t often I met a man, or boy as I like to call them, that actually put romantic intentions into a gift. I usually ended up with socks or a blender for Christmas, only to find out later that my partner was pumped up about a new smoothie diet he resolved to start in the New Year and his feet were cold. Fail.

I thumbed through the pages, curious as to what might fill them since I had not yet made enough memories with this person to fill a journal. And that’s when it got weird. I began realizing that it was filled with poems and mementos of memories we hadn’t created yet. I cringed under my false smile, not knowing exactly how to respond.

“You love it,” he answered for me, squeezing me in his arms with an enthusiasm that suggested that if I were to continue with him beyond this night, he would always offer to tell me how I feel rather than ask me. “I knew you would! You love it so much you’re speechless!”

He couldn’t have been more wrong, and I suddenly felt as though any moment we shared beyond that point would only steer us even further from his truth. Perhaps that feeling in my gut was intuition, a foggy premonition, or merely an intestinal episode brewing due, in part, to my IBS brought on by stress. It was at that moment that I knew I wanted out of the situation...and fast. But my prayers wouldn’t be answered so quickly and soon, only moments later, he was retrieving even more gifts from the basket, exclaiming, “Wait, there’s more!”

I rolled my eyes and turned in time to find him holding a pound cake in one hand and a cheap package of lingerie in the other. What the hell was he doing? Had I still been even the least bit interested in him, I may have cracked some flirty joke about the irony and followed it up with the phrase, “no pun intended.” But that wasn’t where my head was. I eyeballed the mis-shapened heap of brown cake, assessed it as inedible, and turned my attention to the lingerie. It was a pre-packaged number from Frederick's of Hollywood; one of those $3.99 get-ups, adorned with hearts for Valentine's Day. How sweet. No, actually, not really.

“I made this in my culinary class today,” he said, placing the ball of mushy brown dough into my hand. It oozed between my fingers and felt more like warm, half-cooked batter than any pound cake I had ever seen. Moments before, my first instinct had been that something was awry with that cake and now I knew that I was right. The truly sad part was that I knew I needed to make conversation about it, pretend to appreciate his efforts and somehow keep our attention on it in order to thwart any attempts to move on to the dreaded hotsuit awaiting my praises in his other hand. I was too late. He scooped the cake from my grasp and lobbed it back into the basket.

“You want to try it on or what?”

Or what
sounded best.

Not only had I been appalled by the fact that he thought it was appropriate to buy me lingerie in the first place, but I began to imagine how big his balls must be to further request that I try it on for him. The literal translation of that thought left me with an image that made me squeamish as I slid down his lap closer to his knees to escape the chance of discovering their actual size by accidentally sitting on one of them. Now, aside from being appalled, I was also throwing up inside my mouth. There's nothing attractive about an eager beaver whose delusional fantasy suddenly has you wondering about his elephantiasis of the testes.

There were a few key factors that Anthony neglected to take into consideration and one big factor I couldn’t help but notice in this whole situation. I was still married and he had the wrong idea. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been excited to have a companion for the evening, but he clearly was rushing into something that neither of us could follow through with due to our circumstances. I pursed my lips and half smiled.

“I don’t think that would be appropriate.” I told him.

An expression of complete and utter disappointment washed across his face immediately. He looked as though someone had just killed his puppy. I stood up and tried to change the subject, but before I could say anything, Joe impatiently barged through the door. Saved by the bell!

“I don’t mean to interrupt your little party, you two, but we've been late since twenty minutes before he even got here.” Leave it to Joe to be blunt.

I got the stink eye from Joe until his eyes wandered down to the lingerie in Anthony's grip. In classic Joe style, he pointed and laughed aloud in nothing short of a condescending tone and followed it with an “Oh my Gawd!” as he flung himself down the hallway and out of our sight. It was an awkward pause as I shrugged my shoulders and turned to follow Joe's lead.

“You might want to put that away,” I suggested on my way out.

“But...” I heard Anthony whine as I careened down the hall.