My dearests! As you will know if you follow me on Facebook I and Gunther have been invited (also, Myrna and her husband Harry, about whose male balding pattern in a bit) for dinner at Ethel’s to be introduced to her new partner. I am, as you know, the least judgemental person in the world, but I also fancy myself a bit of a detective, and believed that since Ethel has had no partner until her, let’s be frank, considerable age, the cause was that there simply aren’t many (if any) other women of Sapphic persuasion in the small town where we live.
I have first educated myself, and Gunther, about ‘pronouns’ which means that when you meet Ethel’s partner, you don’t make assumptions just because she is a woman (the partner) (but also Ethel) that means she is a she, because she might be using different pronouns, as I found out from Twitter when it was not yet taken over by CIA and renamed to X-Twits). It is polite to ask first, assume later. (I forgot to explain what ‘pronouns’ are for my European Union readers. It’s when the person wants to be addressed in third person, for example, ‘Karen, she is such a special author’ – then ‘she’ is a pronoun and also you are telling the truth, although it’s a bit weird of a sentence, but I (‘I’ is also a pronoun, I know this from my creative writing course) am explaining pronouns here, not writing sentences about myself for you to say to me in third person.) I also considered wearing slippers, because Ethel’s marble surfaces – Ethel has a bit of a thing for marble, I think, if that was possible the chairs, cutlery, and cushions in her house would also be made of marble – scare me. In fact, I have developed a marblephobia as a result, where I am terrified of dying by slipping on Ethel’s floor. Nevertheless, when you are invited to an elegant dinner to meet someone’s new partner, you can’t really wear slippers, even if they are very fancy slippers.
So, we arrive, say hello to Ethel hovering in the doorway, I am still holding my bottle of sherry while Gunther holds on to his wine (we decided it might be necessary to bring two presents just in case) and Ethel hurriedly presents us with:
Leather slippers.
Fancy leather slippers made of leather.
We kind of stand there, staring at her, and she stands there, staring at us, until she leans towards and whispers “he thought you might like them.”
AHA. Armed with sherry, the correct pronoun without asking and then having to explain to Gunther again very quietly why I am asking, and the leather slippers I enter the room and see a familiar face.
I KNOW YOU THOUGHT IT WAS POSH ROBERT.
Standing up to welcome us is our neighbour Ray. The one who always wears leather clothes. He has leather shorts for the summer (which is happening right now, as I am writing this, and I wish we had air conditioning while Lassie clearly wishes she could fit in the fridge), but now he is wearing a leather suit with a leather short and tie underneath the jacket. If he also had leather gloves when he shook our paralysed hands that were not holding the presents, I would have probably screamed and ran away, although I would love it if Andreas was also invited to this dinner (although my sister Petunia’s children would love it much more to be streamed live on Threats), but he has completely normal hands with fingers and such.
Ethel takes us back into the kitchen, where I half expect baked leather to be in the oven, relieves us of our presents, and whispers: “it’s not a fetish. He just likes wearing leather.” I did not for a moment think it was a fetish until she said it was not a fetish, so of course right now I am imagining things that my imagination can’t really imagine. Then again, Ethel has everything made of marble and I am almost certain that is not a fetish either, although in today’s world apparently everything is somebody’s fetish, the things I have read (for research) about the use of spatulas would turn you off fornication forever unless you were a member of the closed Sexy Spatula forum, which I am not a member of, but Facebuck tells me it has 664 members and frankly, what do you say to that?
Instead of leather plates with blocks of marble Ethel serves perfectly normal spaghetti as I try not to stare at Ray the way Myrna and her husband Harry with the male balding do without any manners. Which allows me to stare at Harry. Who now has short hair that seems like an invite to admire his male pattern balding. LOOK AT IT, says the hair (metaphorically). IT IS THERE. I hope, for Myrna’s sake, that he doesn’t turn into one of those people who grow out their hair and think that if they comb it to the side they will look like a Russian politician from the 1980s. It’s bad enough to be forced to listen to Simple Red’s “If You Know Me By Now” which was a hit when the band formed in the 1970s or so as an alarm clock. Suddenly, I appreciate Gunther much more and realise no men are perfect. Some don’t have a fetish, as Ray and Ethel repeated a few times, so that it would sink in, as we ate truly delicious spaghetti followed with those little cakes that you have to burn on purpose and then they have pudding inside. (I am currently working very hard on not imagining Ray not having a fetish while canoodling with Ethel and avoiding the drilling and banging and clanging coming at me through the wall from Vasoline’s house. Don’t expect me to remember words.)
The thing is, Ray is a bit… boring. He is pleasant, smiles like a normal person, looks like someone who wandered off the shooting (but not like that) plan of horror movie, and talks about his job. He is, turns out, an accountant. Accountants, I realise with a silent gasp that makes me choke a bit on the burnt cake with pudding in it, are the worst. There are forums within forms for accountants with fetishes of all sorts. In fact, I believe it is necessary to have at least one fetish to be allowed to become an accountant, which is why I don’t have an accountant, which is why I haven’t paid your invoice yet, Clive, but surely you see that I have been somewhat distracted. I will pay it very soon. But back to Ethel and Ray, exchanging lovey-dovey looks (with each other, not with me). Suddenly, I realise that she is wearing a leather skirt. At least on top of it she is also wearing a rather flattening blouse, but I know that underneath the skirt (leg-long underneath) hide the leather slippers I am also wearing.
How do people like this get together? Gunther and I, of course, were not a pair made in heaven either, but there was the suitcase with between one and three million dollars involved. If Ray is a criminal, he is definitely hiding in plain sight, because he’s impossible not to notice, especially when there is sunshine and the reflection from his polished boots blinds me and I nearly cause a traffic accident. Ethel, from what I know, is neither an accountant nor a criminal. I find myself unable not to ask and I am rewarded with an answer.
“Oh,” says Ethel, blushing, “it turned out that we use the same dating app.”
“And,” says Ray, and I can metaphorically see little hearts fluttering from his eyes, “I thought Ethel was irresistible, especially when in her ‘likes and dislikes’ section she…”
“I,” Ethel cuts in in the way that makes me want to install all the dating apps the moment I get home, “sent the first message, because I am a liberated woman who does not wait for the man to make the first move, and suddenly we found ourselves discussing Kafka and various translations of Rilke Marian…”
“Maria Rilke Rainer,” says Ray, uncertainly.
“Poetry,” says Ethel. (Throughout the entire dinner, Myrna and Harry said “hello,” “oh,” and “we should be leaving.”)
I become distracted by trying to remind myself of the name, too. Rilke Maria Mainer? I can’t even giggle this on my phone, because how do you giggle ‘the name of a poet that I can’t remember’? This also distracts me from the realisation that on top of the marble table, underneath our plates, lie leather things you put under plates not to spill (although I don’t think marble requires them). When Myrna and Harry suddenly stand up, announcing they should be leaving, I kick Gunther under the table and he remembers we, too, must be leaving.
“But you haven’t even touched your drinks,” says Ray, who does not have a fetish, taking out his leather handkerchief to pat his nose in a way that seems almost demonstratory.
And then Myrna touches her belly in that way and winks.
I quickly return to the table, swig my sherry, follow that with Gunther’s wine, and we run away as fast as we can. (Gunther drives.)