Me and my band of “merry men” exited the Uber and made our way to the house in the most dignified manner, save for Tweetz. I was watching her meandering walk and thinking to myself “this can’t be good”. Chip’s house was huge, hell, it was somewhere between a McMansion and a real mansion, reminiscient of the kind of house you’d see on those Hollywood “my parents are out of town so let’s throw a party” houses, with the chandelier for a porchlight, and columns that would make a plantation owner cringe. After the door was opened to us, there was revelry in every direction–people were playing beer pong, flip cup, and other drinking games. There was a table for everything, Halloween candy, a full bar and you name it, he had it. We walk around as group for a little until Tweetz spots a guy dressed up in a court jester costume. She runs up to him and gives him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. I give the “people’s eyebrow”.

“Mmmmmmwah!! Chippy-poo!” Tweetz says as she kisses the guy on the cheek.

He’s already surrounded by good looking women. He steps back to examine her through the costume.

“Tweetz?! Is that you? Hey babe!” He says as he damn near lifts her off of the ground.

“Chippy Poo? ” I recite to myself thinking that this guy must be Chip, and she must’ve given him a pet name. My swagger stride was broken. My strut became a shuffle. I walked up thinking like Omar Epps I had the juice, but by the time this introduction had hit, it became Kool Aid.

I can see Sundeep out of the corner of my eye and he’s looking at me as I am focused on the exchange between Tweetz and Chip.

“So, uhh, beer games anyone?” Sundeep says in a clear effort to ease the tension. I look at Megan and we both hunch our shoulders and leave Tweetz to her devices. As I walk away, I see the energy that is taking place with Tweetz and Chip, but I decide there’s more fun to be had, and there’s other girls at the party to talk to, right?

Well, that’s the truth, but in reality, if the one girl you’re with–the one girl who invited you to be her guest or date or whatever feels the need to go off with you there, then that brings feelings of abandonment. It tears a new wound in childhood fears.

Sundeep, Megan and I find ourselves at a flip cup table. There’s something gloriously magnificient about the creativitiy and simplicity of white people’s beer games. And most of them revolve around using the plastic “SOLO” cups–a fitting name as I was flying solo at the time. Here, we stand in a row each with a drink in hand. We face the other team–imagine Family Feud with the two families about 2 feet from each other and Steve Harvey on one side of the table saying “On your mark, get set, go!” The first two people take their drink to the head and then turn the cup upside down with half of it on the table and the other half off of the table.  Then they take their middle or index finger, position it on the rim portion hanging off of the table, and attempt to “flip” the cup so that it stands in upright normal position.  You can tell the pros from the bros, hoes, and Negroes. The losing side has to drink a full cup of whatever, and the winning side stays sober for a little while longer.

 

I amuse myself with this game, as Sundeep, Megan and I are kicking ass. The song “Party Rock” by LMFAO plays in the background as various teams come up to challenge us. Keep in mind it’s dark in there, and when I want to drink, I turn my back to the table and lift my Trump mask slightly to get the fluid in my mouth. With the next team, I noticed that there was, a Middle Eastern looking woman is salty and giving me the “stank eye”.

“What?” I say to the chick who looks like Jamine from Aladdin.

“You have the nerve.” She says with her arms crossed.

 

“What? Well who are you? A belly dancer?”

“No, I’m Jasmine from Alladin–but in real life, I’m Afghan-”

“Well if it makes you feel better-”  I say as pull up on the mask to reveal my face.

 

“–in real life am an Af-can”.

The people at the table who overhear us laugh, and a lot of white guys were surprised I had a Trump mask on, I was getting hi fives though. I get a nudge and I turn to face it. It’s Sundeep.

 

“We should probably find Tweetz, we’re going to start getting ready to leave, and we want to also make sure she’s safe?

“So wait, is this how she rolls?” I asked.

Sundeep just hunches his shoulders.

“Alright, Imma find her.”

 

I walk to a separate area of the house to find Tweetz pouring alcohol into multiple shot glasses for a bunch of guys. I go up to her, and she doesn’t look as drunk, but she has a blank look on her face.

“Oh hey! It’s Reggie! It’s good to see you!”

She says as she looks at me like we just met.

“Hey, you okay?”

She gives me a blank stare then she turns around to all the other guys and says:

“C’mon everybody! Let’s do shots!”

Then she turns back around to me and says:

“Hey babe, you wanna do a shot?”

“No, I’m good, I think you need to slow down, I-”

She puts her hands up in the air in revelry.

“Woo hoo!! (hic) I’m so drunk, (hic).”

In between her hiccups and announcing how drunk she is to people, I realize she may not be all there, and she’s playing in a very dangerous position. I pull her by the arm to the side.

 

“Thuy! Snap out of it–this ain’t you shorty–you’re wayyy too drunk-”

She then starts to get in aggressive and get in my face.

“Oh–it’s you (hic)–you called me“stooooopid””.

I’m perplexed by her actions, I don’t remeber us having that type of exchange, and where she got that accusation from, I don’t know, but right now this was looking bad as people were watching.

 

“Huh?”

No she starts pointing fingers in my face

“You–you said I’m a dumbass–”

Another guy comes in between us and breaks it up. This is bad. I’m glad that he did. I walk off to go outside on the patio where there is a bonfire. I see her being held back by the guy and in the background I can hear her say:

“Hey! Where you goin’? I’m talking to you–”

As her words trail off, I get a bad feeling inside. At this point, I don’t care where the others are, I just need a break. I plop down on one of the patio chairs and watch the bonfire. There was a cool couple next to me that we had struck up a conversation. It was an Asian female and a white male. She was better looking than Tweetz and not super drunk, chilling with her dude. I’m sure that they saw me before, but they were really friendly. Then the self-deprecating thoughts start to creep in:

“Why do I have to get the crazy Asian bitch? How come I can’t have one like the white guy? They get the best of everything, man fuck my life man, this is some bullshit. I do right by this girl and she’s completely being a drunk showoff. Why does everything I touch seem to turn to shit?”

About 10 minutes pass and then Tweetz comes out and sits on my lap, seemingly a different personality. She puts her arm around me and she gives me a gentle smile and sighs at the same time. The people around the bonfire look at us, and at this point, I don’t care about what has happened, I just am just in my state of calm, looking at her, slightly disheveled, but still sexy in my eyes. I smile back. There was a harmony in the crackling of the wood on the fire and the flames from the fire swayed to and fro, like hula girls dancing in front of a Hawaiian sunset. No sooner did my thoughts melt into the feeling of warmth from the fire, her body on mine, and then imagining myself under the covers with her back at her place, did she hop up and run over to a table that had many different types of alcohol, and surrounding it, the host of the place and a few of his friends.

There was now an inflow of cold air to the place she once occupied. The people at the bonfire, along with myself, watched as she ran over, made some conversation with the host, and then start walking around and giving each of the guys conversation. She poured a round of shots while screaming “Shots! whoo hoo!” And after they had toasted, the host put his arm around her and pulled her close. Then in another scene, she went over to the hosts friend, who was dressed up like Opie from Sons of Anarchy and put her hands on his chest and belly, and as this scene played out, my jaw dropped to almost a mumble, kind of like Von Kaiser from Mike Tyson’s Punchout when you have punched him into a stunned state. I slowly, and nervously turned my attention back to the people sitting around the bonfire in different chairs; and they gave me mixed looks. Some gave me “I feel sorry for him” look, some gave me the “what a bitch” look, and others just shook their heads.

I was trapped in a way, because technically, she and I weren’t an item, but she had invited me there, and had on many occasions made me feel unwelcome. A part of me wanted to go up and pull her by the arm, and reprimand her, but then I thought about the fact that we weren’t in a relationship, and then the feminist overtones of modern society, which give women the right to romp around. So while I was in my feelings, and the paralysis of analysis, I sat there and tried to look calm, when underneath I was paddling like hell, like a duck. Then I heard her voice answering questions that the guys were asking her. I couldn’t hear them, just her talking, loud and stupidly, and then I heard this dialogue:

“Yeah, we got here around 9:30– oh him? I think we’re like supposed to be dating or something.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I turned to face them and they were looking in my direction briefly. Then I was horrified. Not only did she invite me out and was totally inhospitable to me, but she put me out on front street. She talked about me as if I wasn’t even there. Embarrassment and  feelings of childhood abandonment crept in. I could have sworn that I saw some of the guys over there chuckling. She kept on cavorting with those guys, and I had that “alone on the schoolyard” moment being stared at and laughed at by other kids.

In a burst of rage and pain, I took my Trump mask and threw it into the fire. I watched it melt and hiss for a minute and I walked off. I could smell the plastic burning in the bonfire as I walked off. I stormed back into the house and out of the front door and ironically saw an Uber there, dropping off a couple.  I ran up to the car and after they got out I asked him if he would take me where I wanted to go, which wasn’t far away. He told me that it’s technically illegal for him to do it, but he would do it for me. I was very thankful, and I mentioned in the midst of the dialogue:

“Please get me out of here, my girlfriend is acting like a whore.”

I think this moved him, to act on my behalf. I found camaraderie and brotherhood in a moment of extreme vulnerability. As he drove, I watched the lights of the street and the different business and other cars flash by. The lights became blurry as if I was looking at them from under water. The driver asked me a few questions here and there showing sympathy for my situation. The lights blurred because my eyes watered. I was holding back tears, but as the water pooled on my eyes, a stray rivulet cascaded down the side of my cheek. I wiped my face quickly so the driver wouldn’t see–trying to hold my pride. But when I looked up to the rear-view mirror I saw him looking at me, then he turned away to give me “privacy”.

After he dropped me off he told me “I hope you get a new girlfriend.” I thanked him and overpaid him for his risk-taking and being convenient to me. And as I walked to my apartment complex, I thought ” I should have dressed as It or the Joker, because I got clowned at this party.”