August 10, 2005 - After Hours BBQ

Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

August 10, 2005 - After Hours BBQ

Fruits Basket, not my
brother-in-law's favorite anime

I'm picking up where I left off writing about my sister and her husband's housewarming BBQ. Even after we moved inside, we didn't stay inside. Since some people smoked and weren't allowed to do it in the house, they would go on the porch and other people would follow to continue the conversation.

At one point, I wondered where everyone had gone because they weren't on the porch. It turned out they were upstairs at the computer, showing off their personal pages at MySpace.com.

The guy I described yesterday as a Southern version of Dennis Leary, had a background image of the interior of his eye, the sort of thing that's taken in an eye doctor's office to assess damage. This looked familiar since I've had the same thing done with my left eye.

When I asked him, he said that he'd been hit in the eye with a bungie cord and now has a number of dead spots in his eye. I'm lucky; I just have some floaters from being punched right next to my left eye. Certainly puts things in perspective.

He put something else in perspective for me later on in the night. He asked who the older guy was who'd been at the BBQ for awhile. My sister and I told him it was our dad. "He's cool."

"Really?" I asked. Dad is nice, for sure, but "cool" is not a word I'd heard applied to him too often, resembling, as he does, Bert from Bert and Ernie.

"Yes," he said. "He was joining in the conversation, making jokes. He was cool. I'll tell you what's not a cool father; somebody who says things like, 'What a gay hairstyle you have.' Not that I have any experience with that."

The friends of my sister's husband spent a lot of time picking on him that evening. I think it was the first time they got a chance to do so since the wedding. They were teasing him about how he's a married man now and he has to listen to his woman. The DJ was joking that the one advantage was that Jesus now approves of them having sex. "He's up in heaven giving you the thumbs up."

They were also merciless about a DVD they found in his office, for the anime series Fruits Basket. When I figured out what they were doing, I told them it was my fault, since I'd given him that DVD. But they kept making jokes about Jeff's love of Fruits Basket. To be honest, from the way he was smiling, I don't think he minded.

More than once, it fell on my sister's husband to try to convince people to move inside off the front porch. Every time he did, they made jokes and then complied.

Another guest arrived late, a former roommate of my sister's who had shared a house with her back in the day. He's a nondrinker and had brought along some board games he thought would be fun. My sister agreed to play "Clue." I think she was hoping it would help bring people in off the porch from the extended smoking break.

Players included me, my sister, her husband, The DJ and his husband, and the former roommate. Those of us who had played "Clue" before hadn't played it in awhile, so the Former Roommate went over the rules. The DJ said that he'd never played it and he seemed confused. He admitted it didn't help he'd already had several drinks.

Although he frequently had to be reminded when it was his turn, The DJ eventually got the hang of it. When he'd show people a card to disprove what they'd guessed, he had an amusing way of doing it: "I think I can help you out with that." Or "I know something about that."

It's funny; I won purely by accident. You see, the Former Roommate had suggested some strategy ideas. One was that if somebody guessed the same thing you'd shown them before, even if you had a different card, you could show them the same one. So I knew if I wanted to learn anything, I had to guess something he hadn't shown me.

I had narrowed it down to two possible suspects, so I guessed Colonel Mustard in the Billiard Room with a knife. Nobody could show me anything. They all started trying to head for the Billiard Room, although most of them were halfway across the board. (You have to be in the room in question to make your guess.)

"Don't worry," the Former Roommate said. "She might be using strategy. She might have been guessing something she held in her hand, just to eliminate the possibilities." But he could likely read on my face this wasn't the case.

The DJ, who was Colonel Mustard, left the room, apparently under the impression he had to leave before he could come back and make his guess. But I made my guess official the next round, opening the "confidential" envelope and announcing, "Eat it!" as the cards were, indeed, the ones I'd guessed. The game was over.

This is why my family always hated playing games with me. Dumb luck tended to side with me.

By now, The Gryphon had fallen asleep on the couch. I heard them talking about him: "No, no. He looks like the Boneless Chicken Ranch from 'The Far Side'."

When everyone retreated to the porch for a smoking break, I nudged The Gryphon until he opened his eyes. "You could go upstairs and sleep," I told him gently. But he said he'd prefer to sit up and socialize.

At the very end of the evening, they passed around a fundamentalist Christian track they'd picked up somewhere. While the text itself was rabid enough to be somewhat amusing, what really had me laughing were the comments The DJ had written in the margins, such as, "Only this religion is strong enough to beat the gay out of you."

Part of me wished they'd forget to ask for it back, but when they all got up to leave, The Amazon asked, "Where's my Bible track?" I handed it over, and she tucked it into her little shoulder bag.

They all filtered out the door, still laughing and joking. As soon as they were gone, my sister and her husband headed upstairs. The Gryphon and I tried to stay up longer but just ended up falling asleep on the couch, so we, too, gave up. The house was officially warmed.