A few weeks back, I was “riding†one of those phony bicycles at the YMCA when an old high school lacrosse teammate, Scott, came over to say hello. We had chatted before at the Y, catching up on the seven years of events (marriages, babies resulting from said marriages, fist fights, food fights, cock fights, arrests, impending arrests, and allegations of malfeasance). After chatting it up, Scott invited me to a crawfish boil/pool party he was having at his house, which he shares with my friend Tim and two other guys from high school. There was also going to be plenty of spicy deer sausage, which sounded good. I agreed to the terms of his invitation and whipped out my Palm Unit to electronically pencil the party in for the following Saturday afternoon.
On the day of the shindig, I was running a little behind because I had to see a man about a horse. I finally got to the party. As I was walking in, I ran into Lambert, from high school with his new wife and parents. They were carrying some sort of meat product with them, I presume to contribute to the party. I did not have any meat products with me, but I figured Tim and Scott would not mind. Inside, I ran into a few people I remembered including a friend’s younger sister who had been at Loyola New Orleans for part of the time I was at Tulane. We chatted for a bit about Katrina and whatnot.
Out back by the pool, the first person I ran into was Scott. The first question he asked was about what kind of meat product I had brought. I told him that I had brought no such product. He seemed momentarily perturbed, but he recovered and offered me various beverages. I settled on a soda drink. All around the pool were various people from the past, some of whom I have seen nor talked to in seven years. I found out many interesting things about these people who I have not seen in so long.
Mindy is a teacher and she was wearing large, complicated earrings. B-Frazier works for the Astros and hangs out with Vince Young. I tried to trick him into giving me tickets by ingratiating myself, but he saw through my ruse. His brother Matt is a law student at U of H who has a penchant for looking at women’s hands for wedding rings. A girl named Ryanne owns a house and sells insurance. She helped me get insurance on my potential beard hair just in case some sort of accident renders me unable to grow a beard in the future. Another girl, named Jody, is a food critic. Travis was not wearing a shirt and boiling crawfish and deer sausage. I caught up with Travis during one of his brief breaks from the fire. He has substantial beard hair configured in goatee format. He does not have it insured though, so I told him to talk to Ryanne. Travis sells orthopedic medical devices like metal knees. He told me if my orthopedic surgeon could not fix my knee, I should go to his (Travis’) father. I relayed that to my orthopedic surgeon, which caused some major strife in the orthopedic surgeon community. A guy named Clark was there. He graduated from UVa and is now working as a word worker, crafting high quality wooden pieces that border between art and furniture. If anyone is in the market for such pieces, they should check out Clark’s portfolio. Clark’s main squeeze from high school works at the museum of science maintaining the yellow swirly coin donation station (I don’t know what she does, but that is my dream job, so I hope she is getting a chance to live my dreams). Adam was there with his wife Sara. Adam is helping to develop a strip center and Sara is pregnant. They were going over possible names. I suggested Svetlana for a girl, but they did not think that was a good idea. Nobody ever does. Blake came in later with his wife. He is becoming an expert in the Middle East at UT. We discussed how my attempts at undermining his life had not been working. He is now eleven feet tall and had a popped collar. He claimed the collar was because of the sun, but I did not believe him. There was one guy there I did not know, who had a Malowitzian mustache. He could have been one of our old football coach’s sons. Young Coach Malowitz vomited in various strategic locations throughout the house and went to sleep on a floor. There were also various parents there including Tim’s and Adams. Guys named John and Daniel dabble in the real estate arts. Another Tim and a third generation Walter are on some island mining sand. James Schlessinger is in Jamaica doing Peace Corps. There was also a guy there with whom I attended St. Francis many years ago. His sister was in my grade. I recognized him and said hello before realizing that I had committed myself to a conversation with someone with whom I had never been friends. Fortunately, he defused the situation by abruptly walking away when I got distracted and turned my head for a moment.
I spent a great deal of time chatting with Timmy and eating the crawfish and deer sausage. The deer sausage had been stuffed with cheese and jalapeños. It was quite spicy; so much so, in fact, that when Timmy ate it he turned extremely red and started crying. He turned so red, in fact, that it hurt my eyes and I could feel the heat coming off his face. I am pretty sure I saw some steam come from his ears. Then, he started crying. At first I thought that the spicy heat was just making his eyes water, but then I realized that he was actually getting emotional over the amount of heat in the sausage. Tim mumbled for a few minutes then started trying to drink a bunch of beer to quench the fire. I don’t think it helped much. Later, while I was talking to somebody, Jennifer finally showed up and unexpectedly slugged me in the stomach in retaliation for my witnessing Tim’s complete meltdown due to his inability to successfully ingest the deer sausage. I also felt that she was warning me not to tell anybody about what happened. However, I will not let her scare me. She has been using her fierce temper and penchant for unmitigated physical violence to get her way for years. It is time for Jenn’s reign of terror to end; that is why I am offering this complete retelling of Tim’s inability to eat spicy foods without becoming emotional and red.
The situation began to deteriorate as the evening pressed on. Many of the parents and married folks had left, leaving the people who had been in the sun all day drinking beer. After the sun had gone down, I sat with the tardy Maria and her man-engineer. They had been in Austin and arrived late for the party. We covered a wide variety of topics, including math and economics majoring, squeezing the last drops of oil out of seemingly expended wells, law school, Philadelphia, PhDs in math, and new music. Maria’s man-engineer recommended a band called The Stroke, saying they were better than the over produced and engineered popular singers of today. A few days later, I listened to this band. Unfortunately, they are of the genre of “post punkâ€, and they sounded pretty punky to me; punk is one of my least favorites types of music, right above popular country and gangsta rap. However, I have forgiven him for this recommendation as I am sure amongst people who like that kind of music, The Stroke is highly regarded. I commented on my affinity for Paul Simon, in particular his Graceland album, so Maria’s man-engineer had Scott put on in vinyl format prior to Scott’s becoming incoherent from the day of beer and crawfish.
As things died down, I went out front and sat on the lawn with Tim and Jenn. Clark joined us out front and we had a frank exchange of ideas about a variety of current topics. We could hear the folks inside throwing each other in the pool. Then they finally went inside and settled down to watch one of the Lord of the Rings on DVD. Finally, it was time to go home. Clark rode his bike all the way back to West U. I left Timmy and Jenn sitting on the lawn and went home.
As I left, I could not help but feel disillusioned over the deer sausage incident. Timmy has always been the epitome of manliness, and he has always claimed to have an affinity for all things manly. This was not the first time I have felt misled. When Timmy came back from Spain, he began expressing a strong interest in Johnny Cash. I figured he had always had this interest and that he had just started speaking about it recently. He has an appreciation for Johnny Cash’s manliness. I came to find out on New Years Eve 2003-2004 that he had discovered Johnny Cash in Spain. That revelation totally rocked my world. I had actually been listening to Johnny Cash for a while at that point, trying to figure out why Timmy liked him so much. I found that he had many excellent songs, which are now on my play lists. I was able to get past that incident, but now with this deer sausage thing, I don’t really know what to do. Men aren’t supposed to get emotional over deer sausage. I suppose I will eventually get past it. All in all, though, I had a good time, and it was interesting to see how everyone changed. I will probably see very few of them again until the high school reunion rolls around, since I am moving to Philadelphia soon. That reunion should be interesting.