Spending the Holidays with People I Want to Punch in the Throat

by Jen Mann

  This got me thinking. I couldn’t do Cinco de Mayo. I’m 100 percent European mutt. I probably have some Irish in me, so maybe I could dress up like a leprechaun and tell my clients that a new house is like the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. I don’t really like corned beef and hash or green beer, though.

  I’m also a little bit Jewish, but I don’t know much about celebrating Purim except that people like to dress up in costumes. From what I can tell it’s a bit like Halloween, but with a religious tone to it. That could be fun, I guess. Until some chick comes as a sexy hamantaschen.

  These ideas weren’t working. I needed a quirky, offbeat holiday that people would like to celebrate with their Realtor rather than their family. I needed something that fit with me and my background. And then it came to me: Chinese New Year!

  OK, so obviously I’m not Chinese, but the Hubs is and he’s my real estate partner, so it kind of makes sense. Also, nobody in Kansas would be too busy on Chinese New Year to come to my house and eat fried rice. It was perfect! I checked the lunar calendar and told the Hubs that I wanted to throw a Chinese New Year party every year for our friends, family, and clients.

  And oh yeah, I wanted him to cook all the food while I entertained the guests.

  Luckily for me, he was totally down with that once I explained the possible return on investment. By now you know how hard it is for me to get the Hubs to cough up a few bucks on party supplies.

  The first year we threw the party, I’d only been selling houses for about four months, so I didn’t have a huge list of contacts to invite. We invited four couples. We ate at the kitchen table and had a great time. Everyone had bought and/or sold a house that year. That convinced me. I had found my quirky annual holiday.

  Over the next ten years we planned a party every Chinese New Year. Each year the guest list grew, because we added all the new clients, plus everyone kept having kids. The Hubs cooked mountains of food, I refilled tons of drinks, our children frolicked in ridiculous silky Chinese outfits, and I forgot to come up with a cute gimmicky giveaway. I should have made fortune cookies with my email address inside or paper fans that opened up to my smiling face and phone number.

  The party got so big that we had to extend the hours and make it more like an open house where people could come and go because we didn’t have enough room for everyone. The final year we hosted the party, we had more than one hundred people traipse through our home over the course of a day.

  That night, the Hubs and I collapsed on the couch and started figuring our ROI on this party. It cost us hundreds of dollars in food and booze, which was negligible when you considered you only need one house sale to pay for the party. It wasn’t the actual cost we were figuring; it was more the physical and mental toll it took on us. We looked around our house and found several spots where people had spilled soy sauce on the carpet, tons of broken toys, a hole in the wall in the hallway, and a backed-up toilet. The Hubs had been on his feet all day, cooking and replenishing the buffet table. I had to be “on” all day, chatting up people and filtering myself when someone said something kind of racist like, “I’ve never had oriental food before. Will there be cat?”

  “I’m getting kind of tired of throwing this party,” the Hubs said. “It’s really a lot of work.”

  “Yeah, it was great the first couple of years when we only had twenty or thirty people.”

  “I mean, it’s great that the business is growing, and it’s awesome that so many people want to come, but today kind of sucked.”

  “I agree. I felt like all I did today was yell at other people’s kids.”

  “Really? Like who?”

  “The McCallister kids were jumping on our bed, the Dempsey twins drew on Adolpha’s wall, and I had to tell the Cash kid’s mom that he hit me across the face with a Nerf sword.”

  “Why were the Nerf swords out? I thought you locked up all that kind of stuff in the guest room.”

  I’d learned my lesson a few years before when a wilding pack of boys attacked guests with swords and guns. After that I designated one guest room as the off-limits space. That’s where I locked up anything that could be used as a weapon. “The little bastard picked the lock.”

  “Wow. I think the party has gotten too big.”

  “Yeah, we need to cut back.”

  “But how? How do we decide who can come and who can’t?”

  “Maybe we can send out an email and let people know that we’re cutting back on the invite list.”

  “What excuse can we give for cutting back?”

  “I don’t know. We could just be honest: the party is too big and we need to pare it down. It’s not us, it’s you.”

  “So we just tell them straight up: you can’t come because you spilled soy sauce on the floor?”

  “Exactly,” I said. I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and I started writing. “Okay, here is why you’re not invited to our annual Chinese New Year party this year.”

  1. You’ve never deemed us worthy enough to join us in the past, so why waste another Evite on you?

  2. You’ve attended in the past, but you barely speak to us while standing in our home and shoveling our food down your gullet.

  3. You backed your car into another attendee’s car and didn’t tell anyone until we called the cops.

  4. Your mom, your best friend, and your neighbor all bought new houses this year and you didn’t call us.

  5. You are not someone we’d be friends with on a normal basis and you’re probably never going to move again, so step away from my egg rolls and let’s just drop the act.

  6. You didn’t bring a hostess gift in the past. Would a plant I could kill later or a box of chocolates be too much to ask?

  7. You brought a shitty hostess gift in the past. We’re not Japanese, so please stop giving us sake.

  8. You drink too much. What the hell? Our party is in the middle of the day; there is no need to get soused on the sake you brought us as a hostess gift.

  9. You spilled soy sauce on our white rug—and our duvet. Yeah, our duvet. Which one of you animals ate food in my bed?

  10. You want to sleep with my husband. You know who you are. I see how you flip your hair and laugh loudly at everything he says. He’s not that funny, nor is he that interesting. Also, he’s sort of dimwitted because he has no idea you’re flirting with him.

  11. You say racist things. Here’s my PSA: “oriental” describes objects, as in “an oriental vase,” while “Asian” describes people and culture, as in “Your daughter has beautiful Asian features.”

  12. Your kid(s) jumped on my bed, wrote on my wall, broke my son’s favorite toy, taught my daughter how to “massage” her vagina, kicked a hole in my wall, hit me, hit my kids, hit my mother, used my lip gloss on her bunghole, ran through my screen door, took a dump behind the potted plant in the living room, and/or threw a fit when we didn’t serve birthday cake or give out goody bags.

  In case you’re wondering, I never sent out this email. Instead, I took the scaredy-cat route and just never hosted another Chinese New Year party again. I’ve noticed that in the few years since I quit doing the party, my business has dropped off. I’ve decided to start throwing parties again, but it’ll be a little different this time. I’ve rented the clubhouse at the park, and I’m taking guitar and hair-braiding lessons so I can lead the song circle when we sing “Kumbaya” at my first annual Earth Day party.

  I belong to a local moms’ group. They have playgroups and an online forum where there’s always someone around at three A.M. to answer urgent questions about a clogged milk duct or to offer a recommendation for a great hairstylist. I like these things about the group, but if I’m being honest, I renew my membership every year because they plan silly fun stuff like random ladies’ nights out at the gun range and a monthly happy hour. Every Halloween, they host a party for the entire family. Normally, it’s a family-friendly event with face painting, a cake walk, and a photo booth. No alcohol, though; the only spirits offered ar
e toddlers dressed in sheets.

  Our family has attended the Halloween party every year. When Gomer and Adolpha were very small I would take them dressed up in coordinating costumes. We’d drag the Hubs along as well. The Hubs and I have never been big on dressing up in costumes. The closest thing that the Hubs has to a costume is a dumb T-shirt that says THIS IS MY COSTUME. I loved dressing up when I was a kid, but my costume was always something that I scavenged from my mom’s closet. Because of my unlimited access to peasant skirts and scarves, I was always a fortune-teller or a witch. As an adult, I can never find a costume that I like. Most women’s costumes are completely inappropriate. There’s been an annoying trend I’ve seen crop up over the last several years. Can we talk about this for a second? I’m so perturbed about the sexy Halloween costumes that are taking over the aisles of Target and Walmart. What is the deal there? First it was sexy costumes for toddlers, which really pissed me off, because who thinks a sexy devil costume should come in 4T? Then the manufacturers branched out to try to capture the moms of these sexy little devils. I realize this isn’t new—I remember the occasional sexy nurse or French maid costume from my childhood. But that’s about it. It seems like over the years more and more normal costumes have been re-created as “sexy.” I don’t know when it became a thing for women to walk into a party dressed as a sexy vampire or a sexy dog. (Yeah, that costume exists. Imagine a brown spandex monokini with a tail and paw prints on the boobs. I don’t know why there are paw prints on the boobs. I guess it’s because that’s the only way you’ll know she’s a dog and not some hot chick in a brown spandex monokini.) I guess I can kind of see the appeal of a sexy vampire, but I draw the line at a sexy piece of bubble gum. And why is it only the women? Where are the sexy costumes for the boys? How about a sexy Lego for Gomer or a sexy abominable snowman for the Hubs?

  Thankfully, this sexy costume thing is a trend that most of my friends have avoided. Normally the mothers at this Halloween party dress all in black, pin a tail to their butt, throw some ears on a headband, and call themselves a cat. Or if they’re really lazy they plop a pointy black hat on their head and declare themselves a witch. (I’m almost always a witch. I know, I know. Big surprise there.) The dads might occasionally bust out the Superman costume, but mostly so we can all laugh at their fake muscles.

  Every now and again, the moms veer out of the costume comfort zone of cats and witches and try something a little different. You might see a Super Mom decked out in bright tights or a mom dressed as a clown in a wig and full makeup, but I’ve never seen anything too wild. At least, not until the year we saw the costume that prompted eight-year-old Gomer and me to have a discussion about male and female anatomy and how they fit together so nicely.

  We’d just arrived at the party and I was trying to get my ghoulish-looking cupcakes over to the cake walk section. They were supposed to look like Frankenstein heads, but instead they looked like nuclear waste with bulging eyeballs. Either way, scary. Gomer went with six-year-old Adolpha and made a beeline for the face painting. They were both pirates that year and they wanted some scurvy scars to go with their eye patches.

  I finally deposited my sludgy-looking cupcakes and found a table to claim for our family. I dumped the Hubs and his smartphone in a seat and went off to socialize with my friends while he told everyone on Facebook how bored he was. A group of witches and cats were gathered by the drinks table, deep in discussion. I could tell something was afoot. Lots of scandalized looks were being thrown around and the eye rolls were out in full force. I love a good drama, so I decided to go there first and see what the hubbub was about.

  “…can’t believe it,” I heard one witch say as I approached the group.

  “Thank goodness my kids are too little to get it,” a cat said.

  I poured myself some punch and asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, hi, Jen,” Sandi said, adjusting her cat ears, which were slipping off her head. “I didn’t see you come in. Cute costume. Are you a cat, too?”

  “I’m a dog, actually,” I replied, shaking my head. “See? My ears are floppy, and no whiskers.”

  “Oh sure, I see it now. Love it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sometimes I wonder what people are thinking!” the lone clown in the group exclaimed. Her red cheeks got redder with anger.

  “What happened, Sandi? What did I miss?” I asked.

  “It’s Marge. I guess you haven’t seen her yet?” Sandi replied.

  I shook my head. I didn’t know Marge well. We didn’t run in the same circles. She was part of the Mature Moms subgroup. They were the mothers of middle-school- and high-school-aged children and they didn’t belong to playgroups anymore. They did weekly dinners together and took weekend antiquing trips—the kind of stuff we mothers of young children could only dream about.

  “I haven’t seen her tonight,” I said, scanning the room for Marge. “What’s she wearing?” Even though Marge was older than many of us, she was way hotter than all of us. Marge was a yoga instructor and her body was banging. She never hesitated to show it off any chance she could get. Every time she’d drop by our monthly happy hours, she was dressed in skintight pants and a sports bra. She would complain she was too warm to cover up, because she’d just finished teaching (or taking) a hot yoga class. She would drink white wine and tell us how bad the bowl of chips in the middle of the table was for our skin. We would tug at our frumpy sweatshirts and shamefully shove more chips in our mouths.

  I had no idea what Marge was wearing that night, but I figured she was running around in a full-body catsuit or something. “Is she a sexy cat or something?” I asked.

  “Worse. Wait until you see her,” Sandi sighed. “Desmond hasn’t figured it out yet, but he will soon enough. He’s so bright for a four-year-old!”

  “Just be glad you don’t have a twelve-year-old,” said a mom in a bathrobe and a shower cap, motioning toward a group of middle school boys giggling in a corner. “Can you imagine trying to explain that to them?” I nodded. I still had no idea what she was talking about, but I was too busy to care. I was making a mental note of her genius costume for next year. I wouldn’t even have to do my hair.

  Just then Marge came by carrying a stack of take-out pizzas. “Hi, girls!” Marge called as she breezed by. “Happy Halloween!”

  She went by so fast that I didn’t see her costume that well. From what I could tell, it didn’t look like Marge’s costume was sexy at all. It looked quite bulky, actually. I watched her drop the pizzas on the buffet table, but I still couldn’t figure out what she was. She was wearing a black catsuit (figures), but it was covered by a huge off-white rectangular box that went to her knees, with her head sticking out the top and her arms out holes in the sides. It wasn’t low cut enough to show off her bouncing beauties or high enough to show off her gorgeous gams. I was confused. What was everyone having a kitten about? “I don’t get it,” I said to Sandi.

  “You will,” she said.

  I watched as Marge turned around to greet someone else. Now I could see the front of her costume, and I could clearly see that she was a standard electrical outlet.

  “She’s an electrical outlet?” I wondered. “That’s weird. What’s so bad about that?”

  “Wait for it,” Sandi promised.

  “Hey, babe, can you bring me some more pizza?” It was Marge’s husband, Art, calling to her from across the room.

  “There,” Sandi said.

  I turned to see Art. He was also in a skintight black bodysuit (he was a weight lifter, so he looked good, too, of course) with a thick off-white cord rolling over his shoulder and down his chest toward his waist, where it ended in a giant three-pronged plug jutting out from his crotch.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked Sandi. “He’s a plug and she’s the socket?”

  Sandi nodded. “Yup. Now you understand why everyone is a little excited. Who does that at a party for kids?”

  “I’m going to barf,” I said. “Who
wants to think about him putting his plug in her socket?”

  “I think about him a lot,” said a nearby cat. “And now I will even more. Did you see his ass in that costume?”

  A witch giggled. “No, I was too busy admiring the size of his…”

  “Amperage?” I teased.

  “So you noticed it, too, Jen,” the witch said, winking at me.

  “How can you not? The first joke he makes about it being ‘life-sized,’ I will seriously lose my shit on him,” I fumed. “What an asshole.”

  “Well, I think it’s disgusting,” the bathrobe lady said.

  “Agreed,” a cat said. “She could have been a sexy cat and no one would have cared.”

  “Or noticed,” said Sandi. “I think that’s the problem. They’re attention whores.”

  About that time Gomer came looking for some food. “I’m hungry, Mom,” he said.

  “Okay,” I answered. “Let’s get you some pizza.” We headed to the pizza table, where Marge was dishing out slices to everyone.

  “Hi, Jen!” she said. “Looove your little pirate here. He looks adorable.”

  “Thanks, Marge.”

  “Are you a cat?”

  “No, I’m a dog.”

  “You sure are!” Maybe I was a little sensitive, but I felt like her answer had nothing to do with my costume. “Pizza?”

  “None for me. Just Gomer, please.”

  “Good choice. Pizza is terrible for your skin.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t said anything about my costume,” Marge said. “I know it’s been all the talk tonight. It’s a joke costume. People need to lighten up.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Should I tell her that she was the scandal of the night? Should I tell her that people thought she and her husband were tacky attention whores? I love a good laugh, and I’m usually the last person in a room to have a sandy vagina and get offended easily by anything off-color, but come on! This was a family-friendly party with tons of inquisitive little kids who were at various stages of learning about the birds and the bees. Know your audience! You didn’t see me grabbing the microphone from the teenager in charge of the cake walk and doing a two-minute riff about assholes in Congress and dropping f-bombs on the crowd. These costumes would have been terrific at an adults-only party. I would have laughed my ass off and probably posted their picture on Instagram. But when I’m around my kids and other people’s kids, I am motherfucking Pollyanna. Even though I was thinking all of this, I didn’t want to get into it with Marge. So I lied.