Turds in the Punch Bowl (A Story of No Ordinary Friendship) (10 page)

“Well, she said she knew him.”

This piqued my interest in a way that only a protective mother could be intrigued. “Excuse me? She knows my son?” I asked redundantly, urging for a continuation of his story.

“Yeah, she said she met him this morning when she was leaving Steve’s house.”

“She met my son on her walk of shame this morning?”

“Apparently,” he continued. “And it took her a minute to put two and two together after she saw his picture. She couldn’t figure out why his picture would be in our house.”

“Well, we both know she’s not very smart,” I interjected. “But she does seem to get around. What are the chances?”

“Slim to none for me,” he joked. “After I explained that Steve was your ex-husband, she said it was too close for comfort and didn’t want us to think she was a hooker.”

“Us, as in you and me?”

“Yeah.”

“Too late,” I chuckled.

“She felt stupid,” he defended her.

“Well, in case you didn’t notice after the cop story, she is stupid,” I reminded him.

“I know, but she was going to let me put a bag over her head,” he said proudly.

At that moment I felt sorry for Joe. He had finally found someone as sick and twisted as he was (which was confirmed by her violent nature toward a police officer), but had sadly been blindsided by a second-degree cock-block from none other than my ex-husband. I needed to lift his spirits.

“Well, despite your blue balls, I am proud of you, Joseph my broseph.”

“For what?”

“For reaching third base under the bar.”

“You saw that?” he asked, a little more surprised than embarrassed.

“Yes, and if anyone else had been there, they would’ve seen it too.”

“That discrete, huh?”

“Hardly,” I assured him.

* * * * *

Two weeks later, Joe and I were sitting in Sierra Gold discussing the fact that we hadn’t seen Finger-banging Jane since that fateful night. We had already acquired a new regular waitress who always forgot to take the lemon out of my iced tea. I waved the manager over to complain and inquire.

“Hey guys,” the manager greeted us. He knew us by name too. “How’s it going?”

“We haven’t seen Jane in awhile,” I told him. “Sick leave again?”

“No,” he smiled. “She doesn’t work here anymore.”

“Really?” I acted surprised. “What happened? Did she get arrested again?”

“Not this time,” the manager assured me. He put his hand on my shoulder and looked across the table at Joe. “You see all those little things up there?” he asked, changing the subject as he pointed to the ceiling. We nodded. “Those are cameras. They let me see
everything
that goes on in here. Jane,” he paused before finishing his sentence, “got caught doing something she shouldn’t have.”

“Stealing?” I jumped at the opportunity to prove my instincts right.

“No,” he nodded. It was clear he was reluctant to say. “Is there anything else I can do for you?” he asked while still standing next to me.

“We’d like a new waitress,” I joked. “This new one isn’t cutting it. We want Jane back.”

The manager shook his head and laughed under his breath. A giant smirk crawled across his face and he squeezed my shoulder hard. “Well then, I suggest you tell your friend here to stop fingering my staff under the bar.”

Joe sunk into his seat, clicked his heels together thrice and wished really hard that he could go home.

We needed an innocent get away from Joe’s girl problems. There had to be something in Las Vegas to do on a Friday night that didn’t remind him that he wasn’t getting laid. Think, think, think. I needed a form of entertainment that wasn’t about sex, so no strip clubs. One that would keep his mind occupied. Perhaps a movie? Scratch that, the blockbuster marquee was filled with romantic comedies. Bowling? Ugh, we were broke. We didn’t have two hundred dollars to blow on knocking down pins that evening. I was searching deep into my reserves to fill a void only a best friend could fill.

“I’ve got it!” I yelled so Joe could hear me from his bedroom. He came running. “Roller skating! We’ll go roller skating!”

Joe looked at me in bewilderment and shrugged his shoulders. “Okay.”

“Don’t get too excited,” I retorted.

“But you know we can’t just
go
roller skating,” he left me hanging momentarily. “We have to go in style!”

If you didn’t know Joe, you would think he was gay. He always decorates a situation with shopping and musical montages. He has a theme song for everything, even his morning poo. And the way he announces his flair for fashion and outlet malls makes you want to adorn him with a head scarf and a Chihuahua. He would look fantastic riding shotgun in a pink convertible Corvette.

“And what do you mean by that?” I asked hesitantly. I knew Joe always had something up his sleeve, and those somethings often led to trouble.

“We’ll have to dress up,” he insisted.

“Dress up? Like formal, or in a costume?” I didn’t like where this conversation was going already.

“No Stupid, dress the part.”

I loved it when he called me by my given name. He knew it melted me and I would immediately be on board.

“And what part is that?” I asked. “The part where we both end up in jail?”

“C’mon,” he coaxed me. “Have I ever let that happen?”

He was right. None of our failed attempts at fun had landed us in the slammer…yet.

“Okay,” I said, “I’m in. What’s first?” I felt like such a pushover.

* * * * *

We walked into Sport’s Chalet and headed straight for the rollerblades. Luckily, they had roller skates too. I grew up on skates. Where I come from, we roll like cars. My skates always had their wheels in all four corners, not in a straight line. I’ve never seen a car whose wheels lined up underneath in the shape of a stick and until I do, my feet will abide by the same law of balance as my vehicle. Ironically, Joe feels the same. My best friend doesn’t fall far from my tree.

“Do you like the black ones with the white wheels, or the white ones with the black wheels?” Joe asked, showing off a different skate on each foot.

“The black ones.”

“Which ones are you getting, Monkey?”

“The pink skates,” I told him. I tucked my box under my arm and headed to the register.

“Monkey,” Joe called, “where are you going?”

“To pay.”

“Oh no you’re not. Not yet. We’ve got some shopping to do still.” He looked at me with a devilish grin and I knew I was in for something good; or bad, depending on how you look at it. “This way!” He flailed his arm to motion for me to follow him.

When we ended up trying on OP shorts and tube socks, I knew our night was going to be anything but just an escape from Joe’s inability to get some lovin’. Pair that with a headband and some matching wristbands, and I was a regular John McEnroe in pink roller skates. This was going to be bad. But I was a trooper and I purchased my new ensemble with pride and little bit of resentment.

“This is going to be so great, Monkey,” Joe exclaimed at the register. “What a great idea!”

My idea had been to sidetrack Joe’s feeling of self-sabotage and defeat in the mating department. And though it seemed I was doing a stellar job so far, it was at my own expense. One hundred forty dollars and the price of humiliating myself on the rink, to be exact. We should’ve just opted for bowling. I grabbed my bag full of roller skating garb, which ended up looking like a costume just as I had first suspected, and joined Joe in his jubilation.

Once home, we changed into our outfits and met in the hallway between our bedrooms. We looked ridiculous. Joe was wearing white OP shorts with an orange polo shirt. He pulled the look together with a yellow and orange striped sweatband around his forehead and matching wristbands. His white tube socks were pulled up to his knees and they, too, had orange stripes. The laces of his skates were tied together in a bow and he threw them over his shoulder like a pro skater.

“Ready?”

I stood in front of Joe wearing a cotton candy pink tee shirt with a rainbow shooting across my boobs and short blue shorts. My white tube socks had red stripes and my hair was in pigtails. I also wore a headband and wristbands, but mine were red, white and blue. I was a patriotic Carebear who was about to sweat to the Oldies. I looked a mess.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I told him, throwing my skates over my shoulder and giving myself a fat lip in the process.

We got to the rink a little early in the evening to get a feel for the real Friday night crowd. And it’s a good thing. Had we arrived later, we would’ve realized upon entry that we didn’t exactly fit in, and might have turned right back around and went home. Instead, the afternoon birthday parties and family reunions were just wrapping up and the place was relatively dead. For those of us who go skating because we actually want to roller skate, rather than socialize, an empty rink is beyond awesome. This means no slow grandparents or small children to trip over. This means no sneaky shuffle skaters whisking past you in the slow lane and scaring the Bejesus out of you. This also means, in my case, there are less people there to witness you fall on your ass and slide across the rink into the concession stand. Again, an empty rink is pure awesomeness!

Joe and I practiced skating for hours before the crowd shuffled in. I say
practice
because neither of us had been roller skating since our youth. It had been nearly two decades since I rolled around a wooden floor in circles for hours without getting dizzy. It had also been decades since I had attempted to skate backwards or spin around mid lane. I was wobblier than I remembered and though I was only in my late twenties, felt old enough to fear breaking a hip if I fell.

Joe and I did not know each other when we were little rugrats, so we compared notes and skill level on the rink.

“Can you do this?” he asked, doing two full twists and speeding off around the second turn. A little unsteady and a bit slower, I repeated and succeeded.

“What about this?” he called back, squatting before he launched himself up for a jump. I gave him a 7.5 for his landing.

“I think I’ll pass on that one,” I admitted in defeat. I had once jumped over a toddler on the rink when I was a teenager. I cleared the baby’s head, but my wheels didn’t stick the landing and my feet sped out from under me. I broke my tailbone. There’s no pretty way to put a cast on your coccyx.

I followed Joe around and around, twisting and turning. He skated backward so we could hold a conversation. And when his calves tired, I would speed up past him and turn around so he could face forward. If we had been holding hands, we would’ve made for our own couple skate.

The music sucked. It wasn’t the cool eighties and nineties rock I remembered skating to when I was younger. There was nothing like speeding past all the younger kids to a mean version of Pour Some Sugar on Me by Def Leppard or Locomotion by Kylie Minogue. I was the shit in my younger days, or at least I thought I was. I always wore some form of cut-off jeans and a ripped concert tee shirt. I polished off my look with black jelly bracelets and Strawberry Shortcake skates with red glitter wheels. I would taunt the floor guards and speed off singing I Can’t Get No Satisfaction. I flirted with the boys from a neighboring town and made fun of their choices for couple skate. I knew I was better than the other girls. That’s why I couple-skated with my dad.

The rink twenty years later was so different. Not the actual rink, but the atmosphere. Joe definitely wasn’t my father and the music was hip-hop. Perhaps I would try to shuffle skate to this music. After all, I was an aspiring white rapper in my early twenties and I could surely still carry a beat. Joe and I attempted to weave our feet and bend our legs like Jell-O to mimic what we could remember of the popular roller-dance. To no avail. This is where I did a nose dive coming around the fourth turn to fast. I will call it a little tumble, but anyone who was there would know otherwise, namely Joe and the person working the concession.

I didn’t waste much time getting back to my feet and laughing. That’s when I noticed a crowd pouring in. It wasn’t your typical roller rink crowd, or maybe it was and I was just twenty years behind. It didn’t take long for the place to fill up and the music to get louder. Before we knew it, we were two of two hundred people on the rink. It was a clusterfuck.

I couldn’t even hold a conversation with Joe and he spent more time bobbing and weaving as he searched high and low for his Monkey through the crowd than he did trying to perfect his shuffle.

“Whose Doberman?” Joe yelled across the floor to me.

“What?” I yelled back, placing my hand over my ear like a cone to extend my range of hearing.

“I’m
over
this!” he called back.

He waved me to leave the rink with him but I was caught in a current of teenage girls and would have to join him after one more lap. I broke free of the brat pack and met Joe by the skate rental counter.

“I’m ready to leave,” he told me. He was sweating from our two-hour workout. It was a good thing he was wearing his ridiculous sweatband to catch the beads before they rolled too far down and blinded him.

“Me too.” I was exhausted and the bruise from my fall was beginning to swell on my elbow.

We made our way over to a small bench to remove our skates when the DJ came over the speakers and announced couple skate. The lights dimmed and Keith Sweat’s Twisted started playing.

“Oh, Joey,” I meowed. “It’s couple skate.”

“So,” he barked back.

“You’re not gonna skate with me?”

“Um, no. Why?”

“Please?” I begged. “You don’t have to put your arms around me. That would be weird. Just hold my hand and skate to this one song with me. Be a pal, it’s been forever since I’ve gotten to couple skate. Please?”

“Alright, Monkey,” he caved. “But just this one song.”

There was no way you could miss Joe and me making our way to the floor. Not only were we dressed so absurdly that everyone had been making snarky remarks at us all evening, but we also happened to be the only two white people in the place. (Please note, I am with Jerry McGuire when he screams, “I love black people!” because I have loved a lot of them, mostly men. I love my chocolate, and prefer dark over milk. At one point in my life, I only dated black men. And at another, I thought I was black. I even spoke Ebonics. I should’ve been smacked for that. Regardless, I was familiar with the brotherhood and adored them just the same; they were my homies and I was their snowflake. At least that’s what most of my boyfriends called me. But this wasn’t the time or place to get reacquainted with my dark roots. I was as blonde as could be and I was being mocked by my brethren.) Needless to say, due to our race and ridiculousness, we were a double target for the hecklers. And there were plenty of them.