Theme Party

...it's a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in bacon...mmmmmmm....

Two weeks ago:

"If everyone is bloody when they get in, won't that be a problem?"

"Nah. The filter can take care of the blood. Excuse me, I have to get online to get my killer quotes."

Now:

I love it here. It's like Halloween every day. There's a chalk outline...okay, it's not chalk; we couldn't find chalk, but a charcol briquette is a fucking awesome substitute. Bloody footprints lead away from it into the underbrush. (I catch Tammy washing her feet in a pool too cold for anyone unrelated to a polar bear.)Ryan's got his arm bandaged and asks me to help him carry packages to his Volkswagon. Nisey wears a "Got Milk?" T- shirt with what looks like bullet holes. The Animal claims to be a non-descript black man from Atlanta. I'm in a bloody nightgown with bootprints on it and rope wound round my neck.

(Coco dips her fingers in blood, writes PIGS on the skirt of my gown, wipes most of the mess on my bodice and gives me her finger to lick. Mmmm, zesty mint.)


BuddahPat drinks a very dry martini with about seventeen olives "Bad luck to have an even number of olives," he informs us. So what, start with odd, and eat them by twos? Tammy offers to make me a cocktail, and recites a dizzying list of alcohol available. "Taste this," Coco insists. Oh, it's vile. She and Pepito invented it, based on a hot fudge sundae or some goddamn thing. I have no idea what Gracie's drinking, but she's been doing it all day, and it hasn't impaired her braiding technique in the slightest. The Animal pumps out another beer and harasses me about my inability to follow a lead. I've been dancing solo for so long, I have no idea what to do with a partner. Maybe I don't need one. "There's Bloody Mary Mix," suggests Sparky, ever helpful in his Porn Director glasses. "It's thematic!" The Tribe is in the house.

"Bed wetting past the age of twelve is common?"

"I knew about the torture of small animals, but the firestarting is new to me."

"This one's great:'I didn't want to hurt them, I only wanted to kill them.'"


Having consumed my weight in Liquid Courage on Saturday night, I am uninclinded to accept alcoholic offers. Having used up every ion of my Making New Friends energy Saturday night, I am uninclined to manufacture an interest in the twenty-somethings that Sparky's nieces have drug along. Having been teased mercilessly about Saturday night by the astoundingly strange man I married, I am uninclined to leave him entertaining our children while I sit elesewhere, watching our friends get polluted. Tammy makes Hawk a couple of cocktails, and sits beside me when The Tiny Dictator wheedles her father into the pool. I change out of the bloody nightgown, but I'm still cold and sober. No lapsitting today.


The cake is decorated with toy guns, bullets, handcuffs (I catch Gracie licking them clean so she can wear them) a badge, an id photo of... is it? Yes! It's Tom, in the pig hat I made long ago when we were all unwrinkled and sassy. M.A. gasps: "Rest in peace, little angel." "I was in a devil suit," Hawk remembers. Ah, Darius Grieving, whom I named simply to afford the following lines:

"Hello, Officer; I'm Grieving."
"Yes, there's been a murder. We're all grieving."

Salute to the Prarie was okay. Last year's Salute to Rhode Island was better. But for a couple with a company named Do Or Die, who have a skull on a pedastal in the front hallway, whose Tribe will show up as Ted Bundy, a sniper victim, Wayne Williams, and Sharon Tate, there is no fitter theme for the Memorial Sunday Party than a Salute to Serial Killers.

I love it here.