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

by Jen Ashton

  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.

  “It's not gonna happen,” I yelled behind me, closing the conversation and hoping to stifle any thought inside his head of a future fashion show.

  We arrived at the restaurant an hour late for our reservation. The only place we could be seated at that point was the sushi bar. I sat at one end of our group next to an old man with a white mustache that crept across his cheek and reached for me like a branch to the sun. It was damn near the most well-kempt ‘stache I had ever witnessed as I took note that even the ends were twirled delicately. We shared a moment as he nodded at me. It was the first silent conversation between us, but it surely wouldn’t be the last.

  “Sake bombs!” The boys called out to the sushi chef behind the bar. Those two words were the beginning of the end that night, and our evening had only just begun.

  It wasn’t long before I was making friends with the mustache to my left. The boys were getting drunk and I was getting pissed. In retrospect, I do not possess even one faint memory of actually eating dinner that evening. I remember the drinks, the embarrassment, the open apologies I mumbled under my breath to the other patrons at the bar and my instinctual need to abort the mission. At one point, I even headed off to the bathroom to call my husband and beg for him to come and rescue me. If the other women in the room listened closely, they could hear my whimpering sobs echoing from the last stall on the left.

  “Hey,” I whispered frantically once my husband answered my call.

  “What's up?” he asked.

  “Can you come get me?”

  “Hahaha! What? That bad, huh?” His voice cracked as he laughed at my expense. He was more amused by my request than the reason behind it.

  “Steve, please. Don’t give me shit. It’s bad enough I have to call my husband to rescue me from a date from hell. Don’t ask questions, just come and get me. Please!”

  “Why are you whispering? Where are you?” He immediately went into covert operation mode with me, but only momentarily.

  “I'm in the bathroom. I don’t want to go back out there.”

  My husband laughed under his breath and paused. I could hear his gears cranking as he thought it out. I awaited his response as I shook my head in defeat on the other end, knowing full well that he was going to leave me to lie in the bed I had just made.

  “I don’t know, Jay. I would really love to help you out right now, but I don’t think I can bring myself to do it.”

  “But....but...” I went on to tell him about the awful Valentine's basket, the journal, the terrible cake and the lingerie. I admitted I had gotten myself into this predicament all on my own and that I would be ever so grateful if he were to help me out. To no avail. My husband, who had always been my best friend and also possessed quite the sense of humor, first teased me, and then wished me luck before he hung up the phone.

  I sighed hard and felt more like curling up into the fetal position right there on the floor of the ladies room than walking back out into the middle of Sake Showdown. Had I known anyone else in town, I may have sat in that stall all night making desperate phone calls until someone did finally come to rescue me. But as luck would have it, my husband was my one and only lifeline that evening. And to my dismay, he would rather watch me drown than to throw me rope.

  I had been in the restroom for well over forty minutes by the time my date even noticed I had disappeared. Banging on the door, he called in for me.

  “You alright in there?”

  He was slurring his words and sloppily throwing himself against the door from the outside, half opening it to sneak a peek inside the ladies room.

  “Where'd you go?” he asked, leaning on the handle as
he poked his head in.

  I kicked the handle of the toilet with my heel and flushed it. I stepped out of the stall and walked toward him holding my belly.

  “Diarrhea,” I told him as I grinned, slipped past him and headed back to my seat at the bar.

  An hour and seven sake bombs later, I apologized to the mustache once more before departing the restaurant with the inebriated crew. I imagined the staff and patrons were more relieved than I was that we were finally leaving. As I reached the front door, I looked back one last time at the ‘stache hoping he would hear my silent cries and offer to rescue me himself. Perhaps he had a boat, a first mate and a small place below deck for a stowaway such as myself. Ahoy matey! But alas, he only waved and spoke his goodbye with a clueless, elderly grin that left me wishing I had written my plea on a paper napkin and handed it to him under the bar before I left. I had become a hostage of my own tragic date, and my last hero was fading into the distance as I walked out of his life and into a car with two drunken idiots and a mute girlfriend.

  “Where to now?” Joe called out from the front passenger seat.

  “Home,” I answered at the same time Anthony overshot me with his bright idea.

  “The Beach!”

  “The beach?” we all chimed in, confused by his request because we lived in the desert.

  “My bar,” he reminded us. “Let's go to my bar. I can get us free drinks!”

  The name of the bar where I had met Anthony was, in fact, called The Beach. He worked there and I had no doubt that if we pressed on, he could adequately continue to intoxicate himself and my other friends with limitless amounts of free alcohol. Seemed nothing short of a bad idea to me.

  “No!” I called out, again overshadowed by the other voices in the car that found him to be brilliant for suggesting so.

  “Joe,” I said discerningly.

  Joe turned around to find me nodding my head and rolling my eyes.

  “C'mon, be a sport! What’s the worst that could happen?” I loathed those words and Joe knew it. Every instance in our past where those words had been spoken, things had only gotten worse, and at this point, I was having a hard time imagining what worse could look like.

  I cringed as I thought about the answer to his question. I knew right then that I didn’t have my best friend's support. He had been wooed by the booze. Even Joe’s own inhibitions were straying as he taunted my disgust.

  “You know what Jen loves the most?” Joe patronized, looking at Anthony. “She loves affection. She absolutely adores touchy-feely guys.”

  I snapped a look of death at Joe just as Anthony placed his hand on my knee and smiled. I shook my head as politely as I could in the heat of all the anger brewing inside my little body and forced a fake smile.

  “No need to play coy,” my date assured me, adjusting his seat belt to stretch over to my side of the back seat so he could snuggle up. “I knew you were playing hard to get.”

  “Joe,” I growled, “Thanks!”

  “My pleasure,” he replied, turning back around with a cheesy smirk.

  Once inside the nightclub, Joe and his girl found a dark corner booth to canoodle in while my date drug me from bar to bar introducing me to his fellow coworkers. Pulling me through the crowd by my wrist, he was enthusiastically showing me off to his colleagues. One after another, they pacified his arrogant display of showiness and shot me pitied stares behind his back. They felt my pain. There was no doubt in my mind.

  Cue Joe. He must’ve finally felt my pain too. He approached us from behind, placed his hand on my shoulder to relieve my worries and tapped my date on the back.

  “Hey bro, whataya say?” Joe pointed to the stage where there was a line of meatheads waiting for the beer bong contest. Anthony's eyes sparkled like a child's on Christmas morning. His smile grew, and grew, and grew.

  “Fuck yeah!” he shouted. “Watch this!”

  He ordered me to be impressed by whatever he was about to embark upon and I couldn’t have been more repulsed and relieved at the same time. I mouthed the words thank you to Joe as he grabbed Anthony and slipped into the crowd on their way to the stage.

  Somewhere between my planned escape and Anthony's ridiculous performance onstage, as I was standing alone on the dance floor, I was hurled around by a cloud of white caped invaders and suddenly surrounded by a swarm of flying Elvises (Elvi, as I prefer to call them). Could this night get any fucking weirder?

  “Hello,” One Elvis whispered into my ear with a British accent.

  Before I knew it, I was chatting up a slew of English gents celebrating a bachelor party the best way they knew how. A time or two, I glanced at the stage where Joe, and what was left of his sobriety, continually shot me a thumbs up to make sure I was okay. I responded with a brief thumbs up on my part and took joy in watching him play wingman to Anthony's testosterone-enriched display of macho drunkenness in the beer bong competition. I was safe; at least for the moment.

  I must’ve gotten too deep into conversation with the Brits, because before I could check the stage again, I caught a glimpse of Anthony over the shoulder of the Elvis standing directly in front of me. I was mortified as he began circling around us, gesturing like a Neanderthal with a broken heart. He moved like a bulky ape, side-stepping around us like an alpha male standing his ground. He didn’t say anything. He just kept dancing around like a boxer dancing around the ropes of the ring, hesitant to make the first move yet preparing his plan of attack. My shoulders sank and I waited to see what was inevitably in store. The lovely chap I was talking to turned to witness Anthony clasping his hands together in front of his chest and pulling them apart in the shape of a heart, symbolizing its brokenness. I rolled my eyes.

  “Um...” the Brit started hesitantly, not sure what to make of Anthony’s foolish performance. “Do you know him?”

  I smiled as delightfully as my lips would let me and simply replied, “No.” I tried to resume the conversation, but Anthony's gimmicks would not allow our attention to venture anywhere other than to him.

  “Are you sure he's not with you?” the Brit asked again.

  “Yep,” I answered confidently, but it was useless. I saw Joe entering my peripheral view to the right, seemingly confused by how Anthony had eluded him. But before Joe could arrive at our destination to save me, Anthony broke through the ring of Elvises that surrounded me and shouted out in pathetic desperation.

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  He fell to his knees in front of the crowd, in front of the British Flying Elvi, in front of his coworkers, managers and friends, and burst into tears.

  “Get up!” I whispered to him as the crowd dispersed around us. “Anthony, get up!”

  I looked around. Everyone was staring. Some people looked concerned, others looked amused. Anthony looked heartbroken and I know that I looked embarrassed.

  Trying to keep my lips still, I spoke through my stiff expression. “Get up! Now!”

  “Why?” he begged, running his fingers through his blonde mop and staring up at me. He clenched his hair in his fists and let the tears roll down his face. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Stand up,” I told him once more.

  “I can’t,” he cried aloud. His steely blue eyes runneth over in magnificent waterfalls of salty pleading. “Why? Why are you doing this to me?”

  I rolled my shoulders back and stood up straight. “Listen,” I started, “I'm not doing anything to you. You’re doing this to yourself. I'm leaving.”

  I turned to apologize to the Elvises and find Joe, but the caped invaders had flown the coop and before I could locate Joe's face in the sea of onlookers, I was pushed to the ground. Joe's hand swept through the crowd and assisted me in getting up.

  “What the hell happened?” I asked him, as I got back on my feet.

  “That...happened.” Joe insisted.

  He pointed over the heads of everyone around us toward the stairs leading up to a second story terrace. Anthony was plowing his way th
rough the bar patrons, pushing them all to the side as he barreled up the steps in a crying fury, stomping like a child during a temper tantrum. He shoved someone aside, swiped the tears across his face, then pushed someone else and repeated. He was on a one-way, self-destructive path up the river to drown himself in sorrow at the bar upstairs; making a complete ass of himself in front of everyone along the way. I just stood there in awe.

  “I'll go talk to him,” Joe assured me.

  “Please don’t,” I said. “Let's just go.”

  “Good call, I'll just let him know we're leaving.” Joe agreed.

  Ten seconds after Joey slipped up the stairs, Anthony came running back down them in a hurry. I was still standing where Joe had left me, just near the bottom of the stairway.

  “I want my stuff!” Anthony shouted, tears still streaming down his face as he flew past me.

  Joe followed, motioning to me and his girlfriend to join him. We followed my belligerent date out into the parking lot where he demanded we open the car and let him get his things, including the gifts he gave me. He was so drunk he failed to realize that he had left his car keys and Valentine's basket at Joe's house earlier in the evening. His foiled plan quickly transitioned into a drunken game of charades where the message clearly was “take me home.”

  We all got in the car and locked the doors to keep the drunken monkey from escaping on the trip home. I was the unlucky one who accompanied him in the back seat. The ride was relatively quiet until we pulled into traffic on the Las Vegas Strip. As we pulled up to a busy intersection in bumper-to-bumper Friday night traffic, my date rolled down his window, hung himself out and lost his dinner.

  “Nice!” Joe called out from the front seat.