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tame dinner party
Monday, October 26 1998
Kim and I were invited to a dinner party at the residence of the brother of her unofficial "Godmother," Donna. Donna is a horse-loving child psychiatrist from the countryside to the north of Ann Arbor, Michigan. You may even recall the time Kim and I stopped in at Donna's to drop off a futon and an increasingly valuable Blue Dog print. Right now Donna is in town to visit her brother, and somehow we were invited over tonight for non-vegetarian lasagna.
Kim picked me up at work and, after first going home to pick up Sophie the Schnauzer, we eventually headed the several miles west to our destination, a big comfortable two-story home on the harbor in Point Loma. A Bilbray for Congress yard sign stoop prominently in the yard. Republicans.
We'd brought Sophie along because she'd been by herself all day, but we intended to leave her behind in the Volvo upon arrival. The change of scene was important for her doggy psychology, but we didn't want to impose her on unknown people. Normally Sophie would be content to hang out in the car, but this all fell apart when, during a brief excursion so she could "go potty," Donna came out onto the 2nd floor porch to greet us. When Sophie saw her, she had every expectation of going in the house and hanging out with all of us. When we tried to leave her in the car, she raised up such a fuss that we had to go back to get her. But she wasn't content to be out on a porch, the only place we could "acceptably" put her in the house. So I did my best to fool her into re-accepting the car. I took her for a little ride up and down the street and then parked just out of sight. She was far enough away that if she complained at all at least no one could hear her.
The evening was dull and unnecessarily serious. Conversation focused mostly on Kim's massage career and (to a lesser degree) my classy new web programming job. At least (for a change) I could say things that would actually impress these sort of people, but that didn't go far in gladdening me. Donna and her husband Jerry are fairly warm and occasionally humourous, but Donna's brother's wife is an austere, polite, poised, super-serious woman. She's slender and unsmiling and her face is prematurely aged by the bright San Diego sun.
The 13 year old daughter (an adoptee, I learned later) was (in contrast) whimsical, random and given to constant aimless motion. Her eyes were so close together that I felt a waft of headache whenever I looked at her.
Donna's brother showed up late for dinner. His conversational style mostly involved quizzing people about their careers. Kim was very serious and needlessly dull as she described her massage career, so I made a point of shaking things up a bit by comparing some of her "deeper" techniques to sadism, and launching into a brief mention of "my friend the Dominatrix in Philadelphia." Kim felt the need to hush me and feign shock (in a manner reminiscent of her mother), but the others seemed vaguely delighted with my casual mention of such impolite material.
Some fairly large dogs came trooping through the house after dinner. Being non-humans and uninterested in the show of dullness around me, they quickly became my primary focus. With my cooing and petting, I excited the black Labrador so much I feared his wagging tail would destroy the potted plants.
I gave a show of my art website to Donna and Jerry after dinner. The 13 year old niece showed up just as Woman Crucified on Man was coming up on the monitor.
What a tame, sober little evening. There'd been wine, but entirely too little. There'd been conversation, but it seemed there'd been a conspiracy to keep it from drifting into interesting material. I learned a lot about how not to have a dinner party.
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