The uninvited dinner guest also comes in other forms, such as uninvited party guest or uninvited wedding guest (the worst, really) and is actually not always technically "uninvited." Usually, in fact the person has somehow managed to work him/herself into plans because someone attending the dinner or party has a moment of weakness and can't come up with a good excuse for being busy when the Uninvited asks, "What are you doing tonight?" Usually, Uninvited Guest is an old high school or college friend that you've just discovered lives in the city and that maybe you hoped you'd never see again.
Last night, someone invited an old high school friend that only two of the four other people at the table knew to dinner at a Mexican restaurant downtown. I will call her "#5," because she was the fifth person at the table, the fifth guest to ruin a nice foursome, the fifth wheel, etc. Here is what happened ...
1. She showed up about an hour or more late, even though she lived right around the corner from the restaurant. This meant we had to wait to order food and were mostly through the guacamole when she arrived (a fact that likely did not escape her attention and will appear in future critiques of the evening. I mean, her fourth chin was super hungry!). It also meant we had time to drink large margaritas on mostly empty stomachs (meaning by the end of dinner I was almost completely incapable of keeping my mouth shut).
2. She talked about her telecommunications job like she was running Verizon, AT&T and every major conglomerate ... and feeding orphans. No one could be more awesome or important than she, so there was no point trying. Still, by the end of dinner, I had no idea what her job entailed, although I know it involved her being in high demand on her Blackberry during social functions. Yes -- her job is so important that she apparently receives work e-mails AFTER WORK HOURS (I know ... can you even fathom?) that need immediate attention.
3. She couldn't stop talking about people from high school and especially about how she was still in touch with the person who was apparently the hottest boy there (though I think I need photographic evidence to properly assess that his eyes were cerulean and he had great hair). I'm going to call him Chet Chetterson. She was so in touch with Chet, in fact, that she was texting him during dinner to tell him she was hanging out with two of his former classmates, one of whom apparently rejected his sexual advances 20 years ago. She kept referring to him as "The Rocket" which I felt was implying that, while he wouldn't touch the one that had rejected him, he had definitely "gone there" with her (if only to seek solace in the arms of a real woman). There was also some woman that was not there that kept coming up in conversation named "Virginia" that had apparently whored herself out to him post rejection (again, 20 years ago). (This also led to the quirky catch-phrase "He put his rocket in her Virginia.") Currently, according to reports, Chet still looks pretty good and has some uber-important job that is just as nondescript as hers, but that lands him regularly in exotic locales like Copenhagen, where he was apparently, much to #5's chagrin, stuck last night. She took it upon herself to call her Copenhagen contacts during dinner and set up a place for him to stay, thus further proving her wide reach.
And here is a dramatic recreation of a conversation snippet about Chet. All the phrases/details in it were actually uttered at some point, but not necessarily together in this exact form:
"OMG, can you believe when Chet Chetterson jacked off in my hat at volleyball practice while I was wearing a New York Giants Jersey?"
Could we get more
4. She talked about Chattum, NY and its fine, fine organic food and grass-fed cows, and how everyone in New York City has a house there, including Elliot Spitzer. As someone mentioned -- do you really want to admit you know where Elliot Spitzer's house is in Chattum, #5? You probably don't, unless you're a hooker. But what was really annoying about the conversation, of course, was that it was an endless string of her being so important and into the finer things that she can tell the difference between regular eggs and farm fresh and appreciates proper treatment of livestock.
5. #5's most pervasive trait was constant complaining about the service and quality of food at the restaurant. She was making it very clear to us that she is accustomed to getting the royal treatment everywhere she goes. She demands respect, and she's going to get it, even if it means being rude, loud and not even rooted in reality. Given, the service was not wonderful, but we were seated at a table outside that was way far away from the actual restaurant, meaning coming out to us once the restaurant cleared out a little was no small feat for the waiter. She did the following things to make her needs known: screamed at the waiter to at least bring her a margarita when he came out for the tenth time and we still couldn't order because she wasn't ready; asked me if the mussels were bad, because she said they looked and smelled "like shit" (after putting three on her plate with her greasy, fat fingers) and she wouldn't touch them ... and then put them back with the rest of the "clean" ones; went into the restaurant regularly to harass the waiter about coming back more often; went on a search for silverware and a plate because, again, she was the fifth and thus there weren't any set out for her, and then complained that she couldn't find any and stared at us all like we had killed her baby because we were eating without her. I thought at one point about going in and slipping the waiter a 20 just to make sure my food was served up "sin saliva." I'm also pretty convinced that when she came back from one of her recovery missions to get the waiter and told us he was inside complaining loudly about how much he hated coming out to serve us that she was making it up so we would build enough ire to stand behind her as she tried to get free cheese. I mean, he brought us delicious, free aperitifs at the end of the meal and drank one with us.
6. She didn't have cash on her ... and didn't tell us until the end of the meal (when the check was on the table, in fact). Because I was running late, I didn't stop at a cash machine beforehand, but after saying my hellos, I did indeed immediately leave and find a cash machine so I would be prepared. She was way late to dinner, and then sat there for two hours knowing full well she would need to get money at some point. Why not wait until the rudest possible moment? When everyone wants to get the hell out of there because you are so obnoxious that they need to go home and sleep it off or punch something in private, very hard. I will confess, this was the proverbial camel straw and the point at which I started to actually literally do evil things to her to make her miserable. The first thing I did was send her to a cash machine a couple blocks away that I knew was out of order. I don't know why, but her being forced to walk only to meet failure felt like a somewhat satisfying form of punishment. The second thing I did was, when the aperitifs came out while she was on her ATM quest, lick the entire rim of her shot glass and drink part of her drink. Others followed suit, but I was definitely first.
Take that, #5. I celebrate myself a little sometimes because I get away with saying and doing completely uncouth things to people that deserve it with a smile, a joke and a little sparkle. I don't know if people really let it slide because they think I'm kidding, or if they are so terrified of my calm glee that they just don't dare say I'm not a nice person. Either way, I win.
haha... yep, that's a pretty accurate assessment. Except her job is in advertising, which I remember because she made a point of going on about how the company she works for bought like 800 agencies to be part of this mega-agency. From the way she sidestepped my inquiries about her specific job, I got the impression that she's actually some sort of personal assistant to a "big important woman who makes big important decisions" (btw, did you know that only 3% of women are CEOs? 3%!!! WOMEN!!! DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT A BOARD MEMBER DOES? I estimate a 98% chance that one more margarita would have made my growing thinly-veiled contempt crumble completely). Also, when a common-denominator dinner guest suggested that #5 and I might have things in common because I'm in the design field, #5 did not ask me a single question about what I do.
ReplyDeleteHow did I forget about the conversation about "minorities and women"??? I think my response, after she was going on and on about women in the workplace as if we'd never heard of such a thing was "What's a woo-man?"
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