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

by Jen Ashton

  Joe's girlfriend started honking her horn, which set off a string of repeat offenders down the Strip as everyone clapped and yelled at my drunken date and his projectile performance. The worst part was that my date reached behind his back and grabbed my hand, squeezing it for comfort and compassion during his episode.

  “Oh great,” Anthony managed to say between hurls. “I can just see it now.”

  “What's that, Anthony?” Joe chimed in, laughing his ass off.

  My poor date heaved and puked again before he could put two more words together. “I can see it now.” Hurl. “Jen's gonna go home to her husband and say, 'yeah Steve, my date was great'.” Heave. “First, he cried and then he puked.” Heave, this time unleashing enough to splatter back onto the car.

  “Not on my car!” Joe's girlfriend yelled, unlocking the door. “Open the door and puke, man.”

  His eyes filled with tears, his mouth throwing up all over itself and his hand on the door handle, Anthony somehow managed to compose himself long enough to lay his head on my lap for a moment. I reluctantly allowed it, half feeling sorry for him in his rare form and half fearing I might get drooled on. And then it happened; the moment that Joe will never let me live down, even after all these years. Between the honking horns, the whistling, hollering and gurgling, it was quiet for only a moment, as Anthony looked up at me in the silence and whimpered.

  “I love you.”

  Joe let out a belly laugh from beyond the headrest that blocked my view of him. His girlfriend joined in the apparent hilarity. I, on the other hand, didn’t find it funny. I was mortified and my fingers were growing numb. I released Anthony’s grip and pulled my hand away, rolling my eyes and praying that the night would end soon enough.

  “See, Jen,” Joe began, “what's the worst that could happen?”

  “Fuck you, Joe,” I snapped, half endearingly as I looked down and noticed that my date was already passed out and snoring.

  FEAST OR FAMINE

  It was half past ten on Thanksgiving morning when I noticed that my roommate hadn’t come home yet. Although he was an adult and free to come and go as he pleased, he was my best friend and it was a bit out of character for him to stay out all night. I was growing more concerned by the minute. By noon, I began to worry. I phoned Joe repeatedly, only to be greeted by his voicemail. I was hoping that at some point he would pick up so that I could remind him it was a holiday and that our guests would be arriving soon. With every call in the interim, I tried to replace my worry with happy thoughts. Perhaps he had a met a girl, or better yet, gotten laid.

  Around twelve thirty, my family members began to shuffle in from out of town.

  “Where's Joe?” each would ask as they handed me the dish they chose to donate for dinner.

  “Good question,” I would answer time and again.

  Sneaking another call in every twenty minutes, I was determined to reach him.

  “Hello?” he finally answered, sounding out of breath.

  “Joe! Where are you?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “Hold on, let me see what this sign says. Industrial Road?”

  “You’re on Industrial? What's your ETA? People are already here.”

  “Well, that depends,” Joe mumbled.

  “On what?” I asked, confused by his disregard for our soirée.

  “On how long it takes you to come and get me.”

  “Why? Where's your truck?” I asked, assuming he had a relatively normal explanation for why he was where he was and needed me to rescue him.

  “That, I don’t know.”

  It wasn’t the answer I expected, but it sounded juicy.

  “You don’t know? Omigod, I can’t wait to hear this story!” I’m sure I came off as a little too elated about his dire situation. “So where are you now? Where should I pick you up?”

  He hesitated to answer as he looked for a landmark. “Uh, I'm just walking right now. Let me find a place and I'll call you right back.”

  I waited by the phone. I was torn between worry and anticipation. I wondered what awesome events had transpired in the early morning hours of that Thanksgiving Day thus far in Joe’s world. A few minutes later, he rang me and gave me the address of an adult book store in the business district under the freeway and told me to hurry. The battery life on his phone was about to die and he didn’t want to hang around for long. I threw on my boots, put the turkey in the oven, made sure my guests were situated and ran out the door to rescue my best friend; who at this point was stumbling through Las Vegas like Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing.

  When I pulled into the parking lot, Joe was in fact dazed, confused and disheveled. His hair was parted on the wrong side, his shirt was ripped from collar to hem and his nipple was bleeding. I feared asking him exactly what happened, but I couldn’t resist the temptation. The expression upon his face was that of relief and regret, although I had a hunch he didn’t know much more than I did.

  “What the hell happened to you?” I asked as he opened the door hurriedly and slumped into my passenger seat.

  “I wish I knew,” he said on a long exhale. “All I know for sure is that I've been walking down Industrial Drive for about an hour.”

  “Do you have any idea where you were coming from?”

  “Nope.” He leaned his forehead on the passenger window as we drove away, apparently just happy to be alive.

  Realizing he needed me to be more of a friend than a mother, I dropped the questions and assured him everything would be alright.

  “Okay, Joe, let’s just get you home.”

  “Thanks, Monkey.”

  Upon our arrival home, I diverted the attention of our guests so Joe could slip upstairs and change his shirt. There really wasn't any explanation as to why it was torn to pieces and covered in spots of blood. Even if Joe himself knew the true story of how his shirt came to be that way, I was pretty sure even the watered down version would be unbelievable to the innocent ears of my Midwestern family. I felt it best to sweep the whole thing under the carpet for the time being. At least until Joe's memory could serve him better.

  I poured Joe a glass of orange juice and headed upstairs to take advantage of a few minutes together while my family and friends helped make preparations in the kitchen.

  “Have you slept?” I asked as I sat on the edge of his bed and handed him his juice.

  “I'm not sure,” he told me as he peeled off his shirt and stood in front of me half clothed.

  “Do you have any recollection of last night?” I watched him wad up his ruined tee and throw it in the trash as he looked down at the ground feeling ashamed and defeated.

  “Oh my God, Joe, you're still bleeding!” He glanced down at his chest to witness a stream of blood dripping from his nipple. “Where is your nipple ring?”

  “Wow,” he chuckled. “I guess I lost those too.”

  “Too? What else did you lose?”

  “So far? Well, let’s see. My truck, my wallet, my keys, my nipple rings and, apparently, my dignity.”

  We both laughed, trying to make light of the situation. I felt sorry for him, but in the same respect, I didn’t. After all, I had a feeling this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. He seemed to be handling it exceptionally well.

  “Well, get yourself cleaned up, call your bank and I'll see you downstairs. We still have a table to build before dinner. We have no place to eat otherwise.”

  In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, I had closed escrow on my new home and moved in, but was still without a dining room table. After days of shopping both in stores and online with no luck finding what I truly envisioned for my new place, I opted to build my own; with the assistance of my handy-dandy best friend. In true Jen and Joe fashion, we had neglected to take on the task before the holiday, leaving it a last minute job for the day of; which wouldn’t have been a big deal had Joe not taken a slight detour the night before. Now, with dinner approaching, it was crunch time. It was a good thing we worked wel
l together under pressure.

  Joe dragged himself downstairs after a long shower to rinse off his regrets and joined the rest of us.

  “Did you call your bank?” I whispered.

  “Yep.”

  “Well, that's good.” I assured him as I nudged him.

  “The bank?” My mom asked, slaving over the potatoes. “Isn’t a holiday?” She had overheard.

  “Joe lost his wallet last night,” I announced, winking at Joe. It was my half-hearted attempt to end her curiosity before it began, mixed with an ample amount of teasing on Joe's behalf.

  “Your wallet?” my mom asked rhetorically. “That's not good. Did you report it stolen?”

  “Yeah,” Joe replied. “Not a big deal, except now I have to go to the DMV on Monday to get a new license too.”

  “License for what?” I joked. “You don’t even have a car anymore!” I more so mumbled it under my breath, but my family must have supersonic ears because my sister inquired further.

  “Why? What happened to your car?”

  Joe gave me the stink eye and then turned to my sister to answer her. I could see the gears in his brain working overtime to recall anything from his mysterious eve. I let him struggle for a moment before chiming in.

  “He's not sure. It was a long night.” I mowed right over the juicy bits and left it vague to protect the innocent.

  “Well, did you report it stolen?” my mom asked, not quite understanding that his truck was missing on his own accord.

  A grimace moved across Joe's previously solemn face. I knew what he was thinking. My mother's naivety had just sparked a solution to his irresponsibility. “No, but I need to,” he said with a smile.

  Joe and I moved to the garage where several pre-cut pieces of pine were awaiting our hands and tools. Even in his moments of disarray, Joe is somewhat remarkable in his talents to be crafty. He slaved away in that garage for hours, sweating out what he believed to be a hangover, until the table was done. At one point, a conversation ensued between us about a faint memory.

  “I think I remember where I went last night,” Joe revealed out of the blue.

  “Oh yeah? Do tell.”

  “I'm reluctant to say, but I remember being at OG's.”

  “Olympic Gardens?” I asked, not shocked but still amazed. “The strip club? What were you doing there?”

  “I think I tried out for the male review.”

  There has rarely been a moment in our ten-plus year friendship where Joe has surprised me. That being said, I am also not a person without words, therefore am rarely speechless. But at that moment, I both bit and swallowed my tongue to keep from saying something I would regret with a belly full of laughs that would have left me breathless and snorting. Instead, I turned red with embarrassment. For him, not me.

  “Shut up!” he scolded me before I even spoke a word. “I’m not proud. I remember buying a thong at the boutique.”

  “A banana hammock?” I could hardly keep from bursting at the seams as the tears welled up in my eyes and the laughs crept up my throat.

  “Yes. It was red. I don’t remember dancing in it, but I've been trying to figure out if that’s what happened to my nipple rings. Maybe I took them out before I went on stage. But that still doesn’t explain why I was bleeding.”

  “Bahahha! Wait! Wait!” I begged him to give me a moment to catch my breath and my thoughts, but he just sat there with an honest look on his face. “You're serious?” I couldn’t help but snort on my inhale. The story of his night was going to be so much better than I anticipated. I had shot low when hoping that he met a girl and got laid. It seemed there was much more to Joe than even met my eyes. I kept prying.

  “Do you think that’s where your truck might be?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember having it there. I think I lost it earlier than that.” He kept looking off into the distance trying to recall the order of his night’s events.

  “And you have no idea where you were before OG's?”

  “No. I remember a waitress. I think she was feeding me pills with my drinks.”

  “Oh shit, Joe. That’s not good. Was the waitress before or after OG’s”

  “At OG’s.” He replied, gazing off again.

  We stood there for a moment as he strained his brain, searching deep into the confines of his memory bank for any clue that might connect the dots. It was no wonder his whole night was foggy if he had been rightfully roofied by a temptress.

  “If you were buying drinks, I assume you still had your wallet at that time? That at least narrows our search,” I said cheekily.

  We left the conversation at that and took a break to let the wood glue dry while we got freshened up for dinner. The house was filling with family and friends eager to share in the blessings of the feast, and equally excited to partake in our first annual Feast Fight.

  Inspired by the movie Hook, it has been tradition in our family to invite those into our home on Thanksgiving who wish to share in both love and fun. Our guests are required to arrive with a traditional dish for our potluck dinner, accompanied by a colorful dish for the food fight to follow. Every square inch of the garage is wrapped in painter's plastic, and the guests don smocks, ponchos, goggles or any other form of protective gear as we delight in the most childish of behaviors on behalf of the Pilgrims and Indians. In part, we wage war upon each other using food as our weapon.

  * * * * *

  I was drying my hair after a long needed shower when Joe tapped on my door to share another memory with me.

  “A dancer stole my nipple rings,” he said matter-of-factly.

  I wanted to believe him, but after witnessing how easily he conspired to report his truck stolen when we both knew he had merely forgotten where he parked it led me to think this was another way to avert responsibility.

  “Oh really?” I inquired.

  “I'm pretty sure. I think the waitress with the roofies was in on it.” Here go the conspiracy theories. “I think they drugged me for my diamonds.”

  Joe had in fact been wearing his brand new diamond nipple rings the day before and had bragged about them to everyone who crossed his path. While shopping for a dining room table, he had even lifted his shirt up and showed the sales woman his new bling. Needless to say, she never sold us a table. There was no doubt in my mind that upon entering a strip club filled with beautiful gold-diggers doubling as sweet sirens, Joe unmistakably boasted about his piercings to at least half of them. Quickly doing the math in my head, the probability that one of them possessed enough criminal instincts to lift a few pieces of diamond jewelry off an unsuspecting and inebriated victim, even if it was from the most unlikely of places on his body, made a little sense.

  “How would she have gotten them, Joe?' I asked, attempting to pose a question that might jog more recollections.

  “With her tongue.” He didn’t even crack a smile. He was peering through the crack in my door as I glanced up at him in the reflection of my mirror. “Don’t laugh,” he urged. “I'm serious.”

  The look on his face told me he was. I imagined Joe thought he was the shit the night before; the waitress bringing him pills and free drinks, a dancer rubbing up on him for free. He most likely felt like the man. It didn’t take much for Joe to think he was a stud. When he came home from getting his first black-light tattoo, his only request had been that we head straight to a strip club to show it off. It’s no wonder that’s exactly where he also ended up after spending his month's salary on a pair of diamond nipple rings. He still had a lot to learn.

  Looking down at the scab forming around his nipple, I assumed further, “She must’ve been in a hurry then. Looks like she ripped those suckers out.”

  We went downstairs and moved the table into the dining room. My mother and sister prepared the place settings and my ex-husband, a chef, stopped by to visit with our son. A few other friends arrived bearing gifts of strange casseroles and desserts, and the aroma of a delicious meal began to fill the air. The day seemed t
o finally be coming together like a traditional holiday as the chaos of the morning slowly faded into distant memory.

  “Jen?” My mom asked, overtly inquisitive.

  “Yes, mom?”

  “Where are your chairs, honey?”

  Shit. I had been so focused on the perfect dining room table and making sure that it was built before dinner that I had completely spaced the fact that it didn’t come with chairs. We were seatless.

  “Jen?” my ex-husband called from the stove.

  “What?” I could already feel the chaos ensuing. First the chairs and now something else, and it sounded important.

  “Who's in charge of the turkey?”

  “Me,” I answered reluctantly. “Why, what’s wrong?”

  “Mind if I check on it?” he asked, needing to feel important.

  “Go for it!” I half hoped he would just stay and take over that duty for me. I only had an hour to locate seating for twenty guests.

  In the moments following, I performed a quick online search for chairs, called my brother who was en route from California and placed an order with him and Ikea for pickup and delivery. I thanked the retail Gods for their holiday hours and then found myself knee deep in 'fowl' play by the time I returned to the kitchen. Everyone was panicked as they fought hard to find a solution to my mistake and save the turkey.

  “You cooked it upside down!” my ex announced as I walked into the room.

  “I did?” I acted surprised, as if I actually knew what I had been doing when I unwrapped the bird in the midst of my covert mission to save Joe earlier that morning. I had simply just unwrapped it, set the temperature on the stove and shoved it in the oven. I assumed it was a no-brainer. I have since realized that it does in fact require a brain to cook a turkey, and in turn, stand humbly corrected for believing that my ex-husband did not possess one.

  “And you left the gizzards in it.”

  “I did?” again, looking dumbfounded.

  I watched as my mother and ex-husband pulled a bloody bag of turkey parts from what I thought was the ass of the bird. I was later informed that it was the neck and that I had also forgotten to stuff the turkey with all the fixins. I suddenly felt a little stupider for not knowing my turkey anatomy and somewhat regretted treating Joe as though he was the one who had lost his mind that day. Noticing that my family and former spouse seemed to have everything under control, I shrugged my shoulders and decided to prep the garage for the food fight later rather than stay for a lesson.