I did eat gooey butter cake in St. Louis (and toasted ravioli! and fried chicken! And mashed potatoes!). In fact, I didn't eat just one, but two gooey butter cakes in the five days I was away. I'd like to say I split these with other people, but the fact is that I only shared the first one three ways and the second one? I ate it all on my own. When I got home, just for shits and grins, I weighed myself and the scale read a number I hadn't seen since my fat days back in my freshman year of college. I don't think I'll be eating gooey butter cake a while.
Highlights of the trip to St. Louis included (in addition to seeing family, of course): winning over $100 on a one-dollar play on the slots at the Ameristar casino, watching my 6'4" father break out surprise hula hoop skills none of knew he had, playing poker with my mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, and Drew and kicking serious ass.
Speaking of serious ass, I returned to New York just in time to make one of myself at our friends' 4th of July BBQ/talent show in Brooklyn. You might remember that I was planning a hula hoop routine in which I'd also make balloon animals while wearing a tacky red sequined, shoulder-padded gown from the 80s? Before the BBQ, Drew and I had decided this would be a two-person routine and while I hooped and twisted balloons, he'd recite Nixon's resignation speech, at the end of which he'd pull off his break-away pants to reveal silky star-spangled boxing shorts, all of which would be accompanied by the Lawrence Welk Show theme song playing in the background.
Things did not go off without a hitch, though. Disaster began in the bathroom while trying to dress Drew in the home-made break-away pants. I was drunk after too many vodka tonics, the bathroom was tiny and hot, and I couldn't seem to find enough soft-sided velcro pieces to make everything stick in place. Things went downhill from there when we couldn't locate the pump to blow up balloons to make the animals and pressure only mounted as word spread through the party that a girl in a red sequined dress carrying a hula hoop had been overheard just outside the bathroom yelling " shit, shit, shit, mother fucker, shit" over and over and over.
We were to be the grand finale of the talent show, but Drew's pants wouldn't close and I still couldn't find my balloon pump as the final act in the show before ours — an 8-year-old girl playing Chopsticks on a Casio keyboard was finishing her set out in the garden.
"The show must go on!" Drew yelled to me in a panic as I tried to blow up a balloon with my weak, little lungs.
"It won't work!" I yelled back, throwing the sad, limp balloon to the ground. "I can't go on without balloons! This is a disaster!" I screamed, stomping my feet.
"We'll have to do it without the balloons," Drew tried to reason, "It'll still be good."
"It'll suck!!" I said, "Don't you understand anything?! I'm just going to be some stupid back-up hula hoop girl to your Richard Nixon and that is NOT WHO I AM! I am not a BACK-UP HULA HOOP GIRL!"
"You're being unreasonable," Drew said through clenched teeth, "Everyone is expecting us. We'll be letting everyone down if we don't go out there."
"Fuck everyone else!" I said, "I need my balloons! Why didn't you bring my pump?! I asked if you had my pump and you said yes! I THOUGHT YOU HAD MY PUMP!"
"Why is everything always MY responsibility?" Drew yelled.
"Because you were carrying the bag!" I yelled back, "You said you had everything! I TRUSTED YOU!!"
The little girl finished playing Chopsticks on her keyboard as I pulled the zipper down on my dress and stepped out of it.
"So that's it, huh?" Drew asked, "You're going to quit just like that? You're not even going to try?"
"What does it look like?" I said, glaring at him.
"I spent a lot of money on all this!" Drew said, gesturing to the balloons and confetti and broken pants.
"You forgot the pump!!" I yelled. And with that, I changed back into my street clothes, my career as a hula hoop/balloon animal artist over before it even began. Word spread through the party that the grand finale had been canceled and the girl in the red sequin gown was having a meltdown in the den. Shoulders were offered for me to cry on, a boy who'd flirted with me earlier in the evening while I was still sober ran over and asked excitedly if I'd had a bad fight with my boyfriend, the upstairs neighbor invited me to see her brand new kittens in an effort to cheer me up.
Half an hour later, maybe an hour, I ran into Drew at the table set up as the bar.
"Look what I found," he said, holding the balloon pump out like a white peace flag as I poured myself another drink. I took the pump from his hand, gave him a sad half-smile and shrugged my shoulders.
"Where was it?" I asked.
"In the bathroom," he answered, "Next to the toilet."
It was a few minutes later -- out in the back yard watching fireworks over Brooklyn that we softened towards each other again. I inched my way back over to him and rested my head on his shoulder -- mostly to stop the world from spinning, but also to let him know I wasn't angry anymore.
"I'm sorry," I whispered in his ear.
"Me too," he replied, hugging me tight against him.
"Should we try to do our act, after all?" he said as the fireworks came to an end a few minutes later and the night sky regained its composure. And with that, I rushed back inside, changed back into my ugly red gown and proceeded to join him in a drunken disaster of a routine. Our music wouldn't play, the break-away pants were duct-taped together too tightly to actually break away, and I had to concentrate so hard on making a balloon dog with four legs instead of three, that I dropped the hula hoop more than twice.
But in the end, it wasn't about having the most talent, or the best act this side of the Mississippi, or even about showing up the little girl with her Casio keyboard. It was about looking stupid together. Just the way we like it.
